Miss Jane Marple was one of Agatha Christie's two most famous sleuths. An elderly spinster, she lived in the small English village of St Mary Mead, where her close observation of human nature honed her detection skills to a razor-sharp edge. Miss Marple fist appeared in Murder in the Vicarage in 1930.
By being unassuming and quiet (contrary to Margaret Rutherford's portrayal), and often appearing rather silly, Miss Marple persuaded people to confide in her, and (usually by drawing some banal village parallel) unerringly uncovered the wrongdoer.
Unlike Hercule Poirot, Chrisite's other famous detective, Miss Marple was modest, considering others, such as her nephew, detective novelist Raymond West, to be much cleverer than herself - she always claimed that it was only seeing humanity in the close proximity of St Mary Mead that allowed her to identify 'types' and therefore solve the crimes she was presented with.
In the 1980s , the BBC ran a series of Miss Marple stories, starring Joan Hickson, who was probably the perfect actress for the role.
Miss Marple books
- The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
- The Thirteen Problems (short stories - 1932)
- The Body in the Library (1942)
- The Moving Finger (1942)
- A Murder Is Announced (1950)
- They Do It With Mirrors (1952)
- A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
- 4.50 from Paddington (1957)
- The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962)
- A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
- At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
- Nemesis (1971)
- Sleeping Murder (1976)
- Miss Marple's Final Cases and Two Other Stories (short stories - 1979)
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