Characters in The Thirteen Problems

Supporting characters

• Miss Jane Marple

  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.

  Also in The Murder at the Vicarage, The Body in the Library, The Moving Finger, A Murder Is Announced, They Do It with Mirrors, A Pocket Full of Rye, 4:50 from Paddington, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, A Caribbean Mystery, At Bertram's Hotel

• Sir Henry Clithering

  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.

  Also in The Murder at the Vicarage, The Body in the Library

• Raymond West

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

  Also in The Murder at the Vicarage

• Joyce Lemprière

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

• Dr Pender

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

• Mr Petherick

  A precise legal mind who frames his mystery around questions of motive versus opportunity.

• Colonel Arthur Bantry

  A bluff country gentleman whose home hosts the later storytelling circle.

  Also in The Body in the Library

• Dolly Bantry

  Warm and gossipy, she is delighted by the mysteries and recurs in later Marple novels.

  Also in The Body in the Library, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

• Jane Helier

  Beautiful but presented as none too clever, she joins the second round of storytelling.

• Dr Lloyd

  A doctor among the second group of storytellers who contributes a case from his own practice.