Sleuthing Miss Marple : gender, genre, and agency in Agatha Christie's crime fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Sleuthing Miss Marple : gender, genre, and agency in Agatha Christie's crime fiction
（Liverpool English texts and studies / general editor, Philip Edwards, 93）
Liverpool University Press, 2022
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-213) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Sleuthing Miss Marple mirrors the structure and playful analytic style of a detective novel. Beginning at the 'scene of the crime', this investigation places Agatha Christie and the clue-puzzle in historical context, casting light on the methods, the motives, and, in a sense, the alibis that underpin Christie's crime fiction. In keeping with the clue-puzzle analytical method devised for this book, each chapter builds towards a conclusion that delivers a surprising intellectual payoff.
This enquiry is unapologetically textual in approach. It constructs a rigorous evidence base drawn from the Marple short stories and novels, and presents a useful interpretation of crime fiction scholarship.
This provides a foundation for original literary analyses that reveal Christie's engagements with gender roles and genre rules, and the sleights of hand that they conceal. Christie's modus operandi is uncovered, as are the narrative strategies and literary devices that she deployed to ambush unwary readers. Crucially, this investigation shows how Christie's ingenious methods made it possible for an elderly spinster to get away with solving murder. Sleuthing Miss Marple will be invaluable for students and researchers of crime fiction, twentieth-century literature, and creative writing.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Scene of the Crime: Social and Cultural Background, Gender Politics, and Christie in Context
2. Establishing Means: The Clue-Puzzle, Genre 'Rules', and Christie's Modus
Operandi
3. Solving The Thirteen Problems:
A Fresh Analysis of the Inceptive Miss Marple Mysteries
4. 'I've no doubt I am quite wrong': Spinsterly Camouflage and
Deceptive Reassurance in the Marple Novels
5. Marple and Agency: The Female
Detective, the Feminine Heroic, and Appropriating the Gaze
6. Heroic Women: The Ironic Femme
Fatale, Comic Vindication of the 'Dotty' Old Lady, and Marple's Female Assistants
7. Breathless Men: The Comic Male
Characters of the Marple Mysteries
8. Christie's 'Rational Women' and Common-Sense Dispersal of the Gothic
9. 'Breathless Men': Gothic Limitations on Masculine Agency
Denouement
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