I wanted to read Murder at the Vicarage because it is Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple book. After reading a bunch of Hercules Poirot mysteries, I enjoyed this one. The descriptions of a rural English country village and a focus on the "pussies" - the little old ladies nosing about everyone else's business was amusing. Christie's humor really struck me this time around. I was also struck by her quite conservative outlook and traditionalist POV, which I think comes through more strongly in this book than in the Hercules books. (Maybe because of her own closeness to the subject matter?) I won't bother going into more plot details, as plenty of info on that already available... Christie never fails to "wow" me, when at the end of the book, she throws off the curtains of the mystery and reveals ALL. :-)