1932: The Thirteen Problems / The Tuesday Club Murders

Publisher: William Collins & Sons, 1932 (UK); Dodd, Mead & Co, 1933 (US)     

Series: Miss Marple

Category: Short stories

Cross refs: Murder at the Vicarage; Murder in Mesopotamia

For me, there is nothing more comforting than a Miss Marple mystery. Of course, there is a murder or two involved, but there is also something strangely reassuring about this ‘pink and white’ heroine, with her knitting, gardening and bird watching.

Introduced to the world in 1927, as part of a series of six short stories in which a group of people gathered to discuss unsolved crimes, the character of Miss Jane Marple had a ‘faint affinity’ with Christie’s own grandmother. As Christie wrote in the foreword to The Thirteen Problems, her grandmother was:

… also a pink and white pretty old lady who, although having led the most sheltered and Victorian of lives, nevertheless always appeared to be intimately acquainted with all the depths of human depravity.

In her preface to the 1953 edition of The Thirteen Problems, Christie declared a preference for Miss Marple over Hercule Poirot, not least for the former’s ability to solve short problems, as suiting her ‘more intimate style’. Poirot, on the other hand, she noted, ‘insists on a full-length book to display his talents’. She also remarked that these 13 problems contain ‘the real essence of Miss Marple’, and as such act as the perfect introduction to this new sleuth.

The Thirteen Problems is made up of two ‘sets’ of stories and a final, slightly longer tale. The first set comprise six accounts told by the ‘Tuesday Night Club’, who gather – at the home of Miss Marple (‘Aunt Jane’), in St Mary Mead – to discuss ‘unsolved mysteries’. These are, in fact, mysteries to which the teller knows the solution and to which the rest of the party must use their powers of deduction to resolve. Alongside Miss Marple, the gathering includes former Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Henry Clithering, Miss Marple’s nephew Raymond West – described by Christie as, ‘a modern novelist who dealt in strong meat in his books, incest, sex, and sordid descriptions of bedrooms and lavatory equipment’ – Joyce Lemprière – ‘a modern painter … just getting on very special terms with Raymond West’ – Mr Petherick – ‘a local solicitor, dry, shrewd, elderly’ – and Dr Pender, the clergyman of the parish.[1] While at first Miss Marple appears incidental to the group, dressed in her black brocade dress and black lace mittens, and knitting quietly and seemingly benignly in the background, it is soon clear that she has the sharpest mind of the party. As Sir Henry later observed:

We hardly realised that Miss Marple was playing, but we were very polite about it, we didn’t want to hurt the old dear’s feelings, and now comes the cream of the jest: the old lady out did us every time … straight to the truth like a homing pigeon.

Thus it was that Miss Marple gained Sir Henry’s admiration and with it an invitation to a second dinner party, where stories seven to 12 take place. Here, in the ‘extremely cold’ dining room of Colonel and Mrs Bantry, Miss Marple is joined by St Mary Mead physician Dr Lloyd, Sir Henry and the beautiful actress Jane Hellier. Around this table ‘the conversation hovered round undiscovered and unpunished crimes’. Though Dolly Bantry at first describes Miss Marple as the ‘typical old maid of fiction’, she is soon won over by our heroine, and in later novels the pair appear as friends (see, for example, The Body in the Library (1942)).

The thirteenth story, ‘Death by Drowning’, takes place on a separate occasion, during another visit by Sir Henry Clithering to the Bantrys in St Mary Mead. Here, Miss Marple calls on Sir Henry with a request for him to intervene in a case surrounding the murder of a local girl. Miss Marple has (of course) already solved the case, but requires assistance in nudging the police in the right direction.

Throughout these stories, the importance of the proof of innocence is highlighted. This is emphasised explicitly in ‘The Four Suspects’ when Sir Henry declares:   

But you know, it isn’t really guilt that is important – it’s innocence. That’s the thing that nobody will realise … some people may go through a lifetime crushed by the weight of a suspicion that is really unjustified.

Writing in her autobiography, Christie made this same point, underlining its importance to her on a personal level, and not just as an idea in a story: 

One of the pleasures of writing detective stories is that there are so many types to choose from: the light-hearted thriller … the intricate detective story ... and then what I can only describe as the detective story that has a kind of passion behind it – that passion being to help save innocence. Because it is innocence that matters, not guilt.[2]

In The Thirteen Problems we are introduced not only to Miss Marple, but also to her modus operandi. This leans heavily on her ‘village parallels’, by which she views St Mary Mead as a microcosm of the world at large, and the premise that human nature, ‘being what it is’, is much the same wherever you are. Miss Marple is something of an authority on human nature, declaring to her nephew: ‘Human nature is much the same everywhere, and, of course, one has opportunities of observing it at close quarters in a village.’ Miss Marple also operates under the cloak of her ‘fluffy’ pink and white appearance. Yet while she plays the part of a fussy, spinsterish maid with aplomb, her twinkling eyes and keen intuition belie that frail exterior.    

The Thirteen Problems was dedicated to Leonard and Katharine Woolley. This dedication brings us, for a moment, back to Christie’s own life story. She had met the couple in 1928 during her trip to the Mesopotamian site of Ur (now in Iraq), that followed her divorce from Archibald Christie earlier that year. Leonard Woolley (1880–1960) was an eminent archaeologist, and Katharine (1888–1945) an integral field assistant on the Ur dig. Katherine had admired Christie’s novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), and as such warmly welcomed the writer at the dig site. Christie later observed:

Although I didn’t know it, I was greatly honoured. After the experience now of being on digs for many years myself, I realise … how loathed visitors were … wanting to be shown things … and generally incommoding everything … But I was received most kindly as a valued guest … This treatment was due entirely to the fact that Katharine Woolley … had just finished reading one of my books … and was so enthusiastic about it that I was given the V.I.P. treatment. Other members of the expedition were asked if they had read the book, and if they said they had not, were severely reprimanded.[3]

Katharine Woolley was very much a character in her own right, and one who was ‘often criticised for having a strong, tyrannical personality’.[4] She was authoritative and intelligent, but was also described by her colleague at Ur, the archaeologist Max Mallowan (1904–1978) (who would later become Agatha Christie’s second husband), as ‘poisonous’ with a ‘dominating and powerful personality’.[5] Christie herself called Katharine her ‘great friend’ and an ‘extraordinary character’. Though she acknowledged: ‘People have been divided between disliking her with a fierce and vengeful hatred, and being entranced by her.’ Continuing: ‘Of one thing I am quite positive, and that is if one had to choose one woman to be a companion on a desert island … she would hold your interest as practically no one else could.’[6]

It was Katharine Woolley who introduced Christie to Mallowan during another dig in Ur in 1930. Woolley had described Mallowan as ‘the perfect assistant’ and insisted that Christie accompany him to Najef and Karbala, declaring ‘Max will be delighted’.[7] However, the relationship between Christie and Woolley became strained in the run up to, and following, Christie’s marriage to Mallowan. Woolley had wanted Christie to delay the marriage and clearly took umbrage when Christie demurred.[8] The Woolleys’ subsequent insistence that Christie should not accompany Mallowan to Ur was met with annoyance by the couple, and not long afterwards Mallowan left the Ur dig to go to Nineveh.[9]  

Woolley was to appear again later in one of Christie’s books, this time thinly veiled as the murder victim Louise Leidner in Murder in Mesopotamia (1936).  

[1] Christie 2011, p. 436.

[2] Christie 2011, p. 438.

[3] Christie 2011, p. 376.

[4] ‘Katharine Woolley’, Here and Over There: Penn, Philadelphia, and the Middle East, n.d.,  https://pennds.org/nelc133/exhibits/show/kwoolley/kwoolley [accessed 24 September 2026].

[5] Max Mallowan, Mallowan’s Memoirs (London: Collins, 1977).

[6] Christie 2011, p. 377.

[7] Christie 2011, p. 392.

[8] Christie 2011, p. 421.

[9] Lisa-Marie Shillito, ‘Katherine Woolley’, Trowelblazers, 17 November 2014, https://trowelblazers.com/2014/11/17/katharine-woolley/ [accessed 24 September 2026].