The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side - Literary Significance and Reception

Literary Significance and Reception

Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley Cox) was somewhat muted in his praise in his review in The Guardian of 7 December 1962 when he said, "she has of course thought up one more brilliant little peg on which to hang her plot, but the chief interest to me of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side was the shrewd exposition of what makes a female film star tick the way she does tick. And though one could accept a single coincidence concerning that married couple, the second and quite wildly improbable one tends to destroy faith in the story – still more so since it leads nowhere at all."

Maurice Richardson of The Observer of 11 November 1962 summed up, "A moderate Christie; bit diffuse and not so taut as some; still fairly easy to read, though."

Robert Barnard: "The last of the true English village mysteries in Christie's output, and one of the best of her later books. Film milieu superimposed on the familiar St Mary Mead background. Like most Marples this is not rich in clueing, but the changes in village life and class structure since the war are detailed in a knowledgeable and fairly sympathetic way."