Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple has the first name Jane.
Jane Marple is an elderly amateur detective who lives in the fictional English village of St Mary Mead. Christie introduced her in the short-story collection The Thirteen Problems, published in 1932, before her first full-length novel appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.
Readers sometimes confuse Miss Marple with Christie’s other major detective, Hercule Poirot. Poirot is a professional Belgian investigator known for formal logic and the “little grey cells,” while Marple draws on her knowledge of village gossip, human motives, and recurring patterns of bad behaviour.
The title “Miss Marple” is normally used instead of her first name in the stories. Christie wrote 12 novels and 20 short stories featuring the character. The television adaptations starring Joan Hickson helped make Jane Marple especially familiar internationally.