The Murder at the Vicarage

Christie’s Jane Marple inspired me to write mysteries. As Miss Marple made her starring debut in Murder at the Vicarage, it holds a dear place in my heart.

In quaint St. Mary’s Mead, a man named Colonel Protheroe meets with foul play, and it’s Miss Marple’s keen insights that prove invaluable. Jane Marple may be “of a certain age,” but she’s as sharp as a tack. I admire how Christie plunks the reader right into the story, introducing would-be suspects at a rapid pace, particularly Miss Marple, who takes tea with the Vicar’s younger wife and spills plenty of… show more.

I was immediately enchanted with Miss Jane Marple, the leader of the pack. Miss Jane Marple is the original amateur sleuth. Everyone else pales in comparison to the queen.

Dame Agatha Christie penned twelve novels and a collection of short stories about the elderly spinster from the tiny English village of St. Mary Mead. Solving twisted crimes with her shrewd intelligence and incessant questioning, Miss Marple is a keen observer of human nature.

I still go back to her mysteries time and again. I love to brew a cup of tea, settle in, and learn from the best. Agatha Christie… show more.

The Murder at the Vicarage is the first time we get to meet the iconic Miss Marple.

We get to really see her transition from clever elderly woman to an honorary detective. Like Poirot, Marple has an uncanny ability to read evidence, and is perhaps even better at reading people. In this novel the whole town is suspect, so it takes all her wits to figure out who shot the colonel.

As I learned in Christie’s autobiography, Miss Marple is based on her grandmother, so it's quite poignant to follow Marple’s adventures.

I was tempted to put Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier here, but in the end, this won out, because it is less rarefied, and therefore more telling of the time. This is the first appearance of Miss Marple; gentle, even frail, spinster lady, with a keen eye, keen ear, profound knowledge of the human heart, and an impressive sense of moral rectitude. Christie’s judgments of people are psychologically astute, and her faithful rendering of middle-class 1930s life is a godsend to writers of historical fiction. The way she knits her characters and plots in and around small details like train… show more.