A small warning – you may plan to read just a chapter or two before you go to sleep, but don’t be surprised if you suddenly look up and realise it’s 2:30am. Ocean Drive is the type of book that you can’t put down. 5/5
Mark Gaskell looked at Miss Marple in a somewhat puzzled fashion. He said doubtfully, “Do you—er—write detective stories?”
The most unlikely people, he knew, wrote detective stories. And Miss Marple, in her old-fashioned spinster’s clothes, looked a singularly unlikely person.
“Oh, no, I’m not clever enough for that.”
Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library
The horror author Stephen Graham Jones wrote a great article in Texas Monthly called “My Life with Conan the Barbarian.” Jones, like creator Robert E Howard, were both kids from smalltown Texas, and both lost themselves in the adventure fantasy of Conan.
Jones writes:
When you’re a kid looking over into adulthood and all its strange rites and incomprehensible motivations, one way to fend all that off is to align yourself with a different set of values. We all do it, with whatever we have at hand, be it punk rock, comic books, motorcycles, Star Trek—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we identify with it so completely that it insulates us from the real world, lets us be Conan the Invincible, -the Unconquered, -the Valiant,at least to ourselves.
Conan is a fantasy readers can identify with. So, in her own way, is Miss Marple.
The Body in the Library starts with the image from the title—the body of a young well-dressed blonde is found strangled in the library of an elderly couple. The wife is a friend of Miss Marple’s, and invites her down to snoop. Their gossip is put to good use, since if the case isn’t solved, it will ruin the reputation of the woman’s husband.
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When a rich friend of the deceased tries to bring in a retired Scotland Yard inspector to solve the case, the inspector tells him there’s a much better sleuth already on the scene:
“Downstairs in the lounge, by the third pillar from the left, there sits an old lady with a sweet, placid, spinsterish face and a mind that has plumbed the depths of human iniquity and taken it as all in the day’s work. Her name’s Miss Marple…and, where crime is concerned, she’s the goods.”
True to his prediction, Miss Marple unravels the mystery, relying on her knowledge of human nature gleaned from life in the village.
Marple is dowdy and a gossip, but the male investigators are far inferior—Colonel Melchett (the same name as Stephen Fry’s character on Blackadder, and similarly stupid and blustering), and Inspector Slack (all mindless busywork with no inference or intuition.)
Miss Marple shows up these dolts. She’s not entirely welcome in their circles, yet infinitely better suited to doing their job.
There’s a metafictional touch to Christie’s writing. She’s aware of the conventions of the mystery, and of her standing as the queen of the genre. And she has fun with this.
The beginning to The Body in the Library feels like it’s a response or commentary. A dead, glamorous blonde in a library—is this a shot at the hardboiled school of fiction that frequently kills beautiful women, as if they’re the only worthy victims? Or a shot at bad mystery novels in general, putting bodies in places like libraries simply because they’re incongruous?
The characters are also aware of the mystery genre. A young boy in the novel collects autographs from famous mystery writers—including Christie’s.
This exchange not only pokes fun at the conventions but their evolution:
“The head of Scotland Yard is usually a complete dud in books, isn’t he?”
“Oh no; not nowadays. Making fun of the police is very old-fashioned.”
The Body in the Library is a satisfying mystery. But it’s also a power fantasy.
Miss Marple is a character with one foot in wish fulfillment, like Sherlock Holmes, yes, but more like Conan the Barbarian. A power fantasy for the powerless. An elderly woman whose foibles bely extreme competence, who outsmarts the idiot young men and women who dismiss her, whose relevance is assured, and who always gets the bad guy—and the last word.
Doubtless there’s something of Christie herself in the character, who still bestrides the mystery world. Anthony Horowitz’s blockbuster Magpie Murders is a loving tribute to Christie (with the same metanarrative nods The Body in the Library has, including a cameo from Christie’s grandson). Kenneth Branagh has made three Poirot films, and Christie’s works are never far from being adapted by the BBC or ITV.
Miss Jane Marple is the anti-King Lear, the dismissed elderly person who should be running things. I wonder if, as that generation ages, this character will undergo a renaissance—I like Kenneth Branagh as Poirot, but Emma Thompson as Miss Marple would be even better.
I love your analogy of Miss Marple She is very unique. I adore all the actresses who have played her and I think it's time for a new Marple series. It will be tough for anyone who gets the job.
I’m thinking Helena Bonham-Carter.
I love your analogy of Miss Marple She is very unique. I adore all the actresses who have played her and I think it's time for a new Marple series. It will be tough for anyone who gets the job.