Stories
The Thirteen Problems
“What class of brain succeeds best in unraveling a mystery?”
Raymond West – The Thirteen Problems
Such is the challenge Miss Jane Marple’s dinner guests set themselves: who can solve the latest problem presented each Tuesday Night? Why have they never been solved before? Perhaps because this is the first time Miss Marple has heard them.
The Thirteen Problems (1932) first published as The Tuesday Night Club in the USA, marks Miss Marple’s first appearance in print. In her autobiography, Christie says she chose six people whom she thought might meet once a week in a small village and describe some unsolved crime. She started with Miss Jane Marple, “the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my grandmother’s Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl”.
Six of the problems were first published in The Sketch magazine in 1927 and 1928. Colonel and Mrs Bantry who later appear in The Body in the Library, were first introduced in two of the final seven stories in this collection, specially written for book publication.
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