A Pocket Full of Rye is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 9 November 1953,[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead & Co. the following year.

Like several of Christie's novels (e.g., Hickory Dickory Dock and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe) the title and substantial parts of the plot reference a nursery rhyme, in this case "Sing a Song of Sixpence".

Two reviewers at the time of publication felt that "the hidden mechanism of the plot is ingenious at the expense of probability"[4] and that the novel was "Not quite so stunning as some of Mrs Christie's criminal assaults upon her readers".

Son Lancelot and his wife Pat are travelling from Kenya to London, at the invitation of his father, according to Lance; at Paris, he wires that he will be home next day, and police meet him at the airport.

The day Lance arrives at Yewtree Lodge, leaving his wife in London, Adele dies of cyanide in her tea, and a few hours later the maid Gladys Martin is found strangled in the yard, with a clothes peg put on her nose.

Miss Marple explains to Inspector Neele who killed Rex Fortescue: Gladys, who put the poison in the marmalade believing it was a truth drug, and the rye in his pocket, at the direction of her boyfriend, Albert Evans.

He murdered his stepmother because she would inherit a large amount of money, but only if she lived thirty days after her husband, and he killed Gladys so she would not talk, leaving the clothes pin to match the line in the rhyme.

Philip John Stead in The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December 1953 wrote that "Miss Christie's novel belongs to the comfortable branch of detective fiction; it never harrows its readers by realistic presentation of violence or emotion or by making exorbitant demands on their interest in the characters.

In the present case it may be felt that the hidden mechanism of the plot is ingenious at the expense of probability, but the tale is told with such confidence that (like murder itself, in this pastoral atmosphere) it does not matter very much.

"[4] Maurice Richardson in The Observer (15 November 1953) posited, "Not quite so stunning as some of Mrs Christie's criminal assaults upon her readers; the soufflé rises all right, but the red herrings aren't quite nifty enough.

A Pocket Full of Rye was the fourth transmitted story in the BBC series of Miss Marple adaptations, which starred Joan Hickson as the elderly sleuth.

Despite remaining faithful to the novel, apart from giving the title as "A Pocketful of Rye", the characters of Mrs MacKenzie, Gerald Wright and Elaine Fortescue did not make an appearance.

The novel was first serialised, heavily abridged, in the UK in the Daily Express starting on Monday 28 September, running for fourteen instalments until Tuesday 13 October 1953.