She had been my favorite character in the book – an acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything: the complete detective service in the home.”Ĭhristie claims her pleasure over Caroline Sheppard was made even clearer when writer Michael Morton adapted the novel into the play Alibi and transformed the character into an ingenue:

Sheppard’s sister in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. arose from the pleasure I had taken in portraying Dr. According to the author, the character quite possibly “. She came to life in The Royal Magazine in December 1927 when “The Tuesday Night Club” was published. At least we can surmise fairly clearly over how Miss Marple came to be. We will never know for sure because Christie was always reticent about her process. Why, after publishing one novel and story collection each, would Christie choose to write and hide away a “final novel” for Aunt Jane, especially when she had written much more about the Beresfords? (Why, indeed? John Curran uses this idea to argue, quite convincingly, that Sleeping Murder must have been written much later in the 1940’s than previously surmised.) Did she see greater potential in Miss Marple? Did she understand that, while the Beresfords were a charming variation on the much-employed trope of married detectives, there were next to no amateur spinster sleuths out there?

She stands out as a sleuth by being a complete amateur, sometimes consulted but more often butting in, and not “hired” for money until her last mystery. I would never accuse Agatha Christie of being disingenuous, but something about her statement above seems – let’s call it “playful.” Even though she developed her spinster sleuth differently from Poirot or even Tommy and Tuppence, one can’t help but think that Miss Marple always mattered to Christie. I did not know that she was to become a rival to Hercule Poirot.” Agatha Christie, An Autobiography Certainly at the time I had no intention of continuing her for the rest of my life.

“Murder at the Vicarage was published in 1930, but I cannot remember where, when or how I wrote it, why I came to write it, or even what suggested to me that I should select a new character – Miss Marple – to act as the sleuth in the story.

Fool of death with your beauty