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The Thirteen Problems

The Thirteen Problems

ClassicsCrime
Pages
262
Published
1965
Language
English

Synopsis

A group of friends gathered one evening at the home of Miss Jane Marple form an informal society they call the Tuesday Night Club. Each week a member recounts a real but unsolved mystery from their own experience, and the others try to reason out the truth. Among them are Miss Marple's novelist nephew Raymond West, the painter Joyce Lemprière, the solicitor Mr Petherick, the clergyman Dr Pender, and the retired Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Henry Clithering, who all assume the quiet, elderly spinster knitting in her chair has nothing to contribute. Time after time, drawing on shrewd observation of human nature and parallels to village life in St Mary Mead, Miss Marple supplies the correct solution the professionals miss. The thirteen linked stories fall into two sequences of six, the second told over a dinner party at Gossington Hall hosted by Colonel and Dolly Bantry, with the actress Jane Helier and Dr Lloyd added to the company, plus a closing case in which Sir Henry helps Miss Marple investigate a death close to home. Each puzzle is self-contained, ranging across poisonings, disappearances, an ancient shrine, and a drowning, while the recurring framing device keeps the focus on competing methods of deduction. Originally written for magazines between 1927 and 1931, the collection establishes the armchair-detective method that defines Miss Marple across the later novels.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

CozyIntellectualThought-ProvokingNostalgic
Mystery BoxMultiple POVsMentor FigureMorally Grey

Genres

Classics Crime Mystery Amateur Sleuth Short Stories Suspense

About the author

A
Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time and the writer the world calls the "Queen of Crime." Born Agatha Miller in Torquay, Devon, she came to fiction on a dare: her sister Madge bet she could not write a convincing detective story, and the result, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Her dispensing work in a hospital pharmacy during the First World War, repeated again during the Second, gave her the expert knowledge...

Characters

Miss Jane MarpleSupporting

An elderly village spinster who knits quietly while the others theorize, then solves each case by drawing parallels to human nature observed in St Mary Mead.

Sir Henry ClitheringSupporting

A professional ex-policeman who comes to respect Miss Marple's intuition; he recurs across the wider Marple canon and helps her in the closing story.

Raymond WestSupporting

Fashionably cynical and proud of his literary sophistication, he consistently underestimates his aunt's quiet powers of deduction.

Joyce LemprièreSupporting

An artist who proposes the club's storytelling game and contributes one of the early mysteries.

Dr PenderSupporting

A mild churchman whose own contributed case touches on superstition and the supernatural.

All characters in The Thirteen Problems

Frequently asked questions

  • Is The Thirteen Problems the same book as The Tuesday Club Murders?

    Yes. It was published in the UK in 1932 as The Thirteen Problems and in the US in 1933 as The Tuesday Club Murders; both titles refer to the same Miss Marple short-story collection.

  • Do these stories come before or after the first Miss Marple novel?

    The individual stories were written for magazines between 1927 and 1931, before The Murder at the Vicarage, though the collected book appeared in 1932, a year after that first novel. They effectively establish Miss Marple's armchair-detective method.

  • What is the Tuesday Night Club?

    It is the informal group that gathers at Miss Marple's house, where each member in turn recounts a genuine unsolved mystery and the others attempt to deduce the solution.

  • Who are the members of the storytelling group?

    The first six stories feature Miss Marple, her nephew Raymond West, the painter Joyce Lemprière, the solicitor Mr Petherick, the clergyman Dr Pender, and ex-Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Henry Clithering.

  • Does the setting change partway through the book?

    Yes. The second six stories are told about a year later at a dinner party hosted by Colonel and Dolly Bantry at Gossington Hall, joined by the actress Jane Helier and Dr Lloyd, with a final case set near St Mary Mead.

  • Is this a single novel or a collection?

    It is a collection of thirteen linked short stories rather than a continuous novel, each presenting a self-contained mystery within the shared storytelling frame.

  • Does Sir Henry Clithering appear in other Miss Marple books?

    Yes. Sir Henry Clithering, introduced here, is a recurring figure in the wider Miss Marple canon and reappears in later novels such as The Body in the Library.

  • How many stories are in the collection?

    There are thirteen stories, structured as two sets of six told by each gathering plus a thirteenth concluding case.

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