Book of the Month - The Thirteen Problems

TuppenceTuppence City of London, United Kingdom
This May we will be re-reading the Miss Marple short story collection, The Thirteen ProblemsThe Thirteen Problems was first published as a collection in the UK in 1932 and later under a different title, The Tuesday Night Murders, in the US in 1933. These were some of the first Miss Marple stories that Agatha Christie wrote, and the first in the collection, The Tuesday Night Club, was Miss Marple's debut in print when it was published in The Royal Magazine in 1927.

The original dustjacket blurb of the collection reads,'Each story is a little masterpiece of detection, clever and ingenious, with just that added twist that only Agatha Christie can give.'

Which of these short stories do you like the best?
Do you think that Miss Marple's character develops throughout the collection?
When comparing these stories to later Miss Marple novels, do you think Christie's style of writing changes or stays the same? 
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Comments

  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    This is a wonderful Collection of Short Stories, I don't like "The Bungalow" or the woman who tells it and I only liked "Ingots of Gold" and "Idol Hands Of Astarte" 2nd Time around but I love the idea and Collection
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    I think that "Death by Drowning" is one of Christie's best stories.  The story takes a look at numerous aspects of village life, scandal, and Miss Marple knows who did it without even interviewing any of the suspects.
  • I've never read this book! I'll buy and start reading it as soon as possible.
  • I like all of them except for "The Bungalow" and "Ingots of Gold".

    I think my favourite is "The Bloodstained Pavement" followed by "A Christmas Tragedy".

  • I liked the whole collection, but I think my favourite is "The herb of death". It is different in that Mrs. Bantry can't tell a story, and the others elicit the details - including the characters and dynamics - bit by bit. It enabled me as a reader to be "on line" with the listeners. 
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    I don't like those 2 either, I don't like Raymond and the Actress infuriates me, mI really can't stand those 2 or Raymond's Fiance, I love Dolly, if she had been a regular Side-kick that would have been Brilliant, Isn't Herb of Death the one with the Trifle? I realised today I have a book with all the Miss Marple Short stories in them, Heaven on a Book Shelf
  • TuppenceTuppence City of London, United Kingdom
    Was it just the characters that made you dislike those two particular stories, or the story line too?
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

    Tuppence it was both in both cases, With Raymond, I think he is patronizing andb Conceited, Superior and Egotistical and Ingots of Gold not very interesting, with The Bungalow, I think The Actress is vain and stupid and exasperating and very annoying but at least she is Great in Strange Jest my favourite Miss Marple short story.

    Thankyou GKCfan.

  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    I don't like Joan either but like The Blood-stained Pavement.
  • Tuppence it was both in both cases, With Raymond, I think he is patronizing andb Conceited, Superior and Egotistical and Ingots of Gold not very interesting, with The Bungalow, I think The Actress is vain and stupid and exasperating and very annoying but at least she is Great in Strange Jest my favourite Miss Marple short story.

    Thankyou GKCfan.

    This is just great! This just goes to show how good Agatha Christie is at creating characters. She can create a character that you can hate the heck out of! 
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    I wish I had your encyclopaedic Knowledge of Christie Books, I often start talking about one book when I mean another, sometimes with a different sleuth.
  • TuppenceTuppence City of London, United Kingdom
    Do you think that the character of Miss Marple develops significantly from these short stories to later full length novels?
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom
    Not from these stories No, because they take place over 3 separate days but over the MM Canon yes.
  • TuppenceTuppence City of London, United Kingdom
    As it's Friday 13th we've put together 13 facts about Book of the Month, The Thirteen Problems. Did you know them all already?

    1.       These were the earliest stories to feature one of Christie’s most famous creations, Miss Marple.

    2.       Miss Marple’s very first appearance was in short story The Tuesday Night Club which was released in the UK in The Royal Magazine in December 1927.

    3.       The first six stories from the collection initially appeared in fiction magazine The Royal Magazine between 1927-1928. It wasn’t until 1932 that all 13 stories were published in a collection as The Thirteen Problems.

    4.       When the collection was first published in the US, it was published under the title The Tuesday Night Murders.

    5.       The first known image of Miss Marple appeared in The Royal Magazine in December 1927.

    6.       The original dustjacket blurb read, ‘Each story is a little masterpiece of detection, clever and ingenious, with just that added twist that only Agatha Christie can give.’

    7.       The collection was dedicated to Leonard and Katherine Woolley. Leonard was a famous British archaeologist who Agatha Christie met in Ur.

    8.       In 1932 the Daily Mirror reviewed The Thirteen Problems stating, ‘The plots are so good that one marvels at the prodigality which has been displayed, as most of them would have made a full-length thriller.’

    9.       The story line in the 8th story, The Companion, was reworked and expanded to form the basis of the full length novel, A Murder is Announced, which was released in 1950.

    10.   Short story, The Blue Geranium, was adapted for the fifth series of Agatha Christie’s Marple. The episode starred Julia McKenzie first aired in June 2010.

    11.   In The Tuesday Night Club, Raymond’s future spouse is called Joyce, but in later Miss Marple stories she is renamed as Joan.

    12.   Some elements from short story The Herb of Death were woven into Agatha Christie’s Marple adaptation of The Secret of Chimneys.

    13.   Tom Adams designed the Fontana cover for The Thirteen Problems. The artist would go on to design covers for Christie’s paperbacks for approximately twenty years.

  • It is astonishing how good the short stories are. When I read short stories in penguin collections and the like by great 20th and 21st century authors, nothing seems to happen in them - they are just extended descriptions. Agatha Christie, though, writes proper stories. I found this list of facts really interesting, by the way.
  • Griselda said:
    It is astonishing how good the short stories are. When I read short stories in penguin collections and the like by great 20th and 21st century authors, nothing seems to happen in them - they are just extended descriptions. Agatha Christie, though, writes proper stories. I found this list of facts really interesting, by the way.
    Agatha Christie was a great storyteller and she had such an imagination that she was able to "flesh out" her stories and instead of writing stories that as you said Griselda, "nothing seems to happen in them", she wrote stories that actually had something happen in them and was able to keep the reader's attention and curiosity to the very end. 
  • I think this scholarly post, or article, idea is a good one, Tuppence. It seems to me it gives vitality and  nourishment to discussion. What you could do too, is to get some journalists to write some 'think' pieces giving their opinion on various novels and short stories.
  • edited May 2016
    Griselda, which short stories have you read and can call to mind that appeared as if "nothing seems to happen in them - they are just extended descriptions"?
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    Here is Tom Adams' cover for The Thirteen Problems.  Can you figure out which story or stories are being depicted here?
  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    And this is Gilbert Wilkinson's first sketch of Miss Marple (found on Wikipedia):
  • I will think carefully, because I don't always keep books, but I borrowed a couple of volumes of stories, each commissioned to help raise funds for the charity Oxfam, called Ox - tales or something similar, and containing short tales by celebrated writers. I felt that most of them offered prescient character studies, largely of disappointed lovers, and most seemed like a fragment. I have read a brilliant short story by Helen Fielding (I think) which really stayed in my mind (I think in Ox-tales, 2009). I have read short stories by all sorts of authors over the years and none get to the knub of human nature in a way that AC is, on occasions, able to do. I don't necessarily think all of AC's stories are worked up enough to give the full taste of a story. There is an author - I will have to find the volume - called VJ something, or initials like that who was supposed to be the master of the short story, when he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, but I didn't think he was as good as AC. Apart from the story about the dwarf killing the guy in Venice, I was not greatly enamoured of Daphne Du Maurier's short stories. The stories I like, which come in the form of volumes of reminiscences, are those by James Herriot (nom de  plume) who wrote about working as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s. A televisions series and a film were made based on the stories, 'All Creatures Great and Small', was one. The stories are not self-contained short stories, but rather are  contained in chapters of the novels, but each is about a different character in the small farming community the author served. They are funny, full of incident and message, and very moving. It is quite sad and moving to think of a way of life that can't return, albeit we have antibiotics and better medicine, by way of  compensation.
  • SvetoaSvetoa New york, united states
    I literally just started reading AC books, and I just finished my first story: Tuesday Night Club. But I think that I already came across a plot hole.

    The deduction that the character Miss Marple gives at the end, while revealed to be true, isn't perfect.

    While everything she said was sensible, Raymond's deduction that the doctor's daughter dispensed arsenic instead of opium was just as good, albeit also missing some details. If we add to the deduction the following, it will be shown to be equally acceptable:

    Mr. Jones, the head of the household could not have tampered with the lobster, but he could tamper with the bread. But rather than poisoning it, he simply arranged to give everyone food poisoning. The lobster was purchased that night from the store, but there's no reason to believe that the bread wasn't already in the house for days prior.  This would make sense given that a respected doctor was certain that Mrs. Jones was suffering from food poisoning, not arsenic poisoning. The reason that Mrs. Jones felt the worst is easy to explain as well. Someone who is on a no carb diet, specifically one who would scrap off some grains of sugar, would barely eat bread rolls. It's entirely possible that Mr.Jones had been trying this trick for multiple nights now, but the infected bread simply had not been used yet. It make sense, if this is the case, for it to not have shown up in the police investigation; after all they were nonevents.

    Finally it makes perfect sense that the Inspector would only find out 2 years later for the same reason as Maple's deduction: instead of the housemaid confessing after being heartbroken, it is the doctor's daughter.

    This was my own deduction though, so it's possible that I'm missing something through bias - any thoughts?



  • GKCfanGKCfan Wisconsin, United States
    ***SPOILERS***

    Yes, technically Raymond's solution fit the available facts– it just wasn't true, and it didn't take into account the blotter clue of "hundreds and thousands."  If the guilty party had been brought to trial and brought up Raymond's solution as an alternative explanation of events, and might have been used as reasonable doubt in the absence of alternative evidence, or the guilty party's confession.  It's not a plot hole, but as in real life, sometimes an alternative theory can fit the basic facts, although an utterly innocent person may not be able to prove they didn't do it.  Also, the "doctor's daughter" solution doesn't take the kitchen maid's agitation into full account.


  • SvetoaSvetoa New york, united states
    edited May 2016
    So lets recap: There are two solutions which are possible, reasonable, and have an equal amount of evidence supporting them. The "hundreds of thousands" or "maid's attitude" clue not being included doesn't matter because including it in the deduction doesn't add anything other than circumstantial evidence. You're right that the true solution was Miss Maple's but that was pure coincidence. Her deduction wasn't any more "right" per say, than mine.

    I suppose I'm expecting the puzzles to actually be theoretically solvable by the reader; but a very big agatha cristie fan told me that that was the case. But certainly Thursday Night Club is not theoretically solvable by the reader; it requires a wild guess that Miss Maple's version of the events - not mine - is true.
  • tudestudes Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
    I'm re-reading it. And I'm enjoying a lot. It's very intering the way Miss Marple solves her case (The Thumb Mark of St Peter). She talks and inquires everybody just like Poirot. And she studies the poison! She's amazing!
    I also love Motive v.Oportuny. It's a very good story and a clever solution!
  • Tommy_A_JonesTommy_A_Jones Gloucestershire, United Kingdom

    You mean The Tuesday night Club, I wonder if the one with the 2 ladies would actually work in real life?


  • katiebowenblogkatiebowenblog Worcester, United Kingdom
  • Today I'm reading  "A Christmas Tragedy" from the book. I can't seem to remember this story at all!
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