Authors of a new collection of stories featuring one of Agatha Christie’s most beloved creations, Miss Marple, have described the character as a “feminist icon” and “one of the great unsung heroines of literature”.
The collection, titled Marple, marks the first time anyone other than Christie has written “official” (as recognised by the Christie estate) Miss Marple stories. The 12 women who contributed to the collection include award-winning crime writers Val McDermid and Dreda Say Mitchell, historical novelist Kate Mosse, classicist and writer Natalie Haynes and New York Times bestselling author Lucy Foley.
Jane Marple first appeared in 1927 in the short story The Tuesday Night Club, which was included in the collection The Thirteen Problems. The first full-length Miss Marple novel was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930, and the character went on to appear in a total of 12 novels and 20 short stories. She was partly based on Christie’s grandmother and her grandmother’s friends, although Christie wrote that her fictional sleuth was “far more fussy and spinsterish than my grandmother ever was”.
Miss Marple is a “feminist icon in a way”, according to Foley. “She’s patronised, she’s overlooked, she’s slighted yet she runs rings around everyone.”
Mitchell said Miss Marple was a “cracking character” who was “rocking it for single ladies, for post-menopausal women”, while Mosse called her “one of the great unsung heroines of literature”. She is also an “extraordinarily subversive character”, Mosse added, due to being an “old woman who’s there in her own right”.
“I do think the invisibility of older women is still an issue,” the Labyrinth author said. Miss Marple stands out, being one of the few “great enduring characters” of her demographic. And, Mosse notes, the stories have “nothing to do with who she marries or who she loves”.
Marple’s 12 writers, who also include British crime writers Elly Griffiths and Ruth Ware, Israeli-American fantasy author Leigh Bardugo and New York Times bestselling novelist Jean Kwok, were given certain criteria. Firstly, the stories had to be set within the period covered by Agatha Christie’s own Miss Marple fiction. They could draw on characters and situations that occurred in any of the Marple novels and short stories, but weren’t allowed to incorporate characters or events from any of Christie’s non-Marple books, nor to invent any backstory upon which Christie herself had not touched.
Foley’s story, Evil in Small Places, finds Marple visiting an old school friend as the village she lives in celebrates its version of Halloween. The author was inspired partly by “being locked down with my parents” during the pandemic in a little village.
“There is a lot of curtain twitching,” Foley said. “I love that sort of village dynamic [where] if you’re a newcomer you stand out like a sore thumb.”
Mosse’s story, The Mystery of the Acid Soil, is set shortly after the second world war and involves Miss Marple solving a mystery by using her gardening knowledge. “I think what is so great about Miss Marple is that everything she understands comes from the person she is,” said Mosse. “It’s that she has observed human nature for a very long time, and the things she knows about are the things that give her the clues to say what’s happening.”
A Deadly Wedding Day, Mitchell’s story, sees Miss Marple team up with friend Miss Bella – a former member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force whom Miss Marple met in an air raid shelter – at the wedding of the latter’s niece, Marie Baptiste.
Mitchell said she was fascinated by the role of Caribbean women in the war effort, and the story gave her the “opportunity to create a character who’s an amateur sleuth, like Miss Marple”.
The book also includes stories from Naomi Alderman, Alyssa Cole and Karen M McManus. It feels timely, Mitchell believes, coming at a point when “we are talking about the role of women”, particularly “women who are going through a certain cycle in life”.
Mosse agreed that the character is highly relevant right now. “I think she has integrity,” she said. “We are in times where there is apparently a great lack of that.”
