Agatha Christie's Miss Marple
Jane Marple’s Best Mystery Books
Miss Marple is one of Agatha Christie’s most popular detectives. Christie wrote twelve novels and several short stories about this perceptive old woman who surprised her neighbors and the police with her ability to solve complicated mysteries with just her knowledge of human nature.
In many ways, Miss Jane Marple is the quintessential English spinster. She lives in the quaint village of St. Mary Mead where she is well known in the community and friends with the vicar. She knits, gardens, and gossips, and her novelist nephew Raymond West believes she lives a very dull life indeed. People who otherwise would keep their secrets to themselves open up to her because she seems harmless and a bit scatterbrained with her reminiscences and random remarks. But her china-blue eyes have seen a lot of human behavior in her many years, and she is able to use her intuition and knowledge of human nature in order to solve many baffling mysteries.
The Best Miss Marple Mystery Books
Murder at the Vicarage (1930): Col. Protheroe, a wealthy grump, is unliked by everyone; even his daughter and the vicar think it would be better if he died. So when he is found dead in the vicar’s office, everyone in the small village of St. Mary Mead is a suspect. Was it his wife, who was having an affair with a young artist, or perhaps his daughter, who was tired of his interference and wanted her inheritance?
The Tuesday Club Murders (1932): In this collection of short stories, a group of people gets together once a week to see who can guess the solution to a crime. Each week, a different person describes a crime, and each week Miss Marple is the only one who can solve it simply by means of her intuition and lifetime of observations of human nature.
The Body in the Library (1942): When the elderly Bantrys find the body of a young girl in their library, Mrs. Bantry calls upon her good friend Miss Marple to help them solve the crime. The body seems to be that of the young girl Ruby who was staying at a seaside hotel some miles away, often seen in the company of a wealthy old man. But Miss Marple notices some oddities with the corpse that help her solve this crime of murder and switched identity.
A Murder Is Announced (1950): The local news in the small village of Chipping Cleghorn announces the time and place of a murder. Interested neighbors congregate at the house, thinking it will be a mock murder party. But when an unknown young man is killed after seemingly trying to kill the hostess, the villagers wonder who the intended victim was and why.
Sleeping Murder (1976): This book was actually written during the 1940s, but Christie withheld its publication and it was actually the last Christie novel published. In this murder in retrospect, the young newlywed Gwenda moves to England after a lifetime abroad and buys a house she loves. But as she fixes up the villa, she is disturbed by how familiar the house seems to her and keeps having flashbacks to something horrible that seems to have happened in the house. Miss Marple is convinced that Gwenda is remembering a murder she witnessed, and sets out to discover who was killed and why.
The Continuing Charm of Miss Marple Mystery Books
Agatha Christie's unassuming detective Miss Marple solved cases in twelve mystery books and several short stories. Murder at the Vicarage and The Body in the Library are probably her most famous cases, but she also solved such mysteries as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (1957) and A Caribbean Mystery (1964). Readers continue to be interested in the cozy murder mysteries solved by the observations and human intuition of the quiet spinster Miss Jane Marple.
Detective Miss Marple Observed Life in Her Village
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