Agatha Christie’s elderly amateur detective from St Mary Mead is Miss Marple, whose full name is Jane Marple.
Miss Marple lives in the fictional English village of St Mary Mead and solves crimes through close observation, knowledge of human nature, and comparisons with village behavior. Although she has no official police rank, her understanding of jealousy, deceit, gossip, and social tensions repeatedly helps expose killers who underestimate her.
She first appeared in the short story “The Tuesday Night Club,” published in 1927. Her first full-length novel appearance came in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. Her final appearance in a Christie novel was in Sleeping Murder, published posthumously in 1976.
Miss Marple is sometimes confused with Christie’s other amateur investigators. Ariadne Oliver is a mystery novelist, Parker Pyne is a professional problem-solver, and Mr Satterthwaite is an observant gentleman who appears in different stories. Miss Marple’s defining setting is St Mary Mead, though several cases take her beyond the village, including to London and the Caribbean.