The Tuesday Night Club
Lets dive back into the mystery genre, but this time we're not looking at great male detectives. No this time who look at one of the greats who's in a league all her own.
The Facts
Text: The Tuesday Night Club Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery, Detective fiction Year: 1933
Available: The Thirteen Problems Short Story Collection
The Fiction
I've written a few times on this blog about mystery as a genre works really well in the short story format. Essential to the genre is a good detective. But what makes a good, no, a great detective? Observation, cleverness, an attention to detail, and imagination are a few traits that come to mind for me. Another is an understanding of human nature. In that respect there is one detective in pop culture who outshines all the others.
Not an eccentric Victorian gentleman, not a gentleman at all actually. This week I'm writing about one of literature's greatest detectives that little old woman from the small village of St. Mary's Mead.. the spinster Miss. Marple. Agatha Christie is one of the most published authors of all time and the undisputed Queen of the mystery genre. One great thing about Christie as a writer is that she was not pinned down by genre. She wrote novels, short stories and even plays. She was a prolific and genre defining writing and as I enter the final month of posts on this blog I knew I had to cover one of her stories before my fifty two weeks were up.
I wanted to write about a Miss. Marple mystery because I've been a fan of these short stories for such a long time. I decided to keep it simple and chose the first story she was ever in for this week's post: The Tuesday Night Club. The Tuesday Night Club is the first story in The Thirteen Problems, a short story collection which introduced the sharp minded Miss. Marple. The Tuesday Night Club sets up the premise of the collection: after a dinner party attended by six people, writer Raymond West, proposes a game on the topic of unsolved mysteries. Each of the guests much share a story of a problem which they know the solution to, the other guests must guess the solution and at the end the storyteller will reveal the truth.
That's right its a frame narrative! Twelve of the Thirteen problems/short stories in this collection are stories within stories being told as a part of this game. The first six stories taking place at Raymond West's party are told by the writer Raymond West, the artist Joyce Lempriere, the clergyman Dr. Pender, a lawyer Mr. Petherick, and the former head of Scotland Yard Sir Henry Clithering. Oh, and Miss Jane Marple, Raymond West's old aunt who has spent her whole life in a small village is there too of course. The other guests politely let Miss. Marple in on the game, but it is clear they don't really take her seriously.
The first story told in this first game of the Tuesday Night Club is told by Sir Henry Clithering. He recounts an unsolved case of his which he only just received the solution to a few days prior. The mystery is a poisoning case. Three people have dinner together and one dies. Suspicion is on the husband but there is no clear way he could have gotten his wife to ingest the poison. Sir Henry lays out the facts and the guests take turns sharing their thoughts on the problem, many of them stumped with a couple making guesses. At the end Miss Marple, the little old lady knitting in the corner shocks them all by solving the case.
The Feeling
Miss. Marple consistently solves every mystery in the collection by relating them to a small town event from her village life. She believes that human nature is always human nature, and her life spent in the village has allowed her to put human nature under a microscope. She doesn't believe people are inherently good or evil but she understands that they are, well, rather silly. There is a great contrast in her character. In some ways Miss Marple seems so much the opposite of a great detective. She looks a like fluffy kind old lady, but a razor sharp and suspicious mind.
Through out her adventures, both in short stories and novels, we learn that her small town village life has not made her naïve or ignorant to the ways of the world or the people in it. Miss. Marple has a firm grasp on what people are like, and with this understanding solves mysteries by understanding their patterns, and emotions. The dramatic irony as a reader, once you read a few mysteries and know Miss Marple's talents, is seeing characters in universe underestimate her and get thoroughly out smarted by her time and time again.
Even decades later Miss. Marple is such a subversive character. She is an elderly woman, but she is not weak, or stupid, or ignorant. There is still ageism in our culture around the elderly, and Miss. Marple is still serving as a great counterpoint to a lot of these negative stereotypes by being consistently sharp and brilliant.
She isn't the only great character in the story of course. Agatha Christie is excellent at the "cozy detective" genre. Those isolated mysteries featuring a group of eclectic people at a dinner party, or on a train, or in a mansion. The other characters in the Tuesday night club all have distinct backgrounds and personalities that bounce off each other and bring the frame part of the narrative to life.
All I have to left to say is after re-reading this first story in the Thirteen Problems collection I know I'm going to spend the rest of my weekend re-reading the others. If you haven't read a Miss. Marple mystery before, well here's your chance in thirteen easy to read short stories! What more could you want?
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