Miss Marple The Complete Short Stories

•   From The Thirteen Problems
• The Tuesday Night club
• The Idol House of Astarte
• Ingots of Gold
• The Bloodstained Pavement
• Motive v Opportunity
• The Thumb Mark of St Peter
• The Blue Germanium
• The Companion
• The Four Suspects
• A Christmas Tragedy
• The Herb of Death
• The Affair at the Bungalow
• Death by Drowning

• From Miss Marple's Final Cases
• Miss Marple Tells a Story
• Strange Jest
• Tape-Measure Murder
• The Case of the Caretaker
• The Case of the Perfect Maid
• Sanctuary
• From The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding
• Greenshaw's Folly

Harper Collins' effort for the complete short story collection of Christie's Miss Marple along with the auhtoress' introduction of the character, had been a jewel of my collection as the aged spinster had gradually become a favourite as I grew up. Initially her stories seemed boring to me but with maturity I found them interesting in the sense of the unique utilization of analogy in solving problems. This is not only very true but the tend to generalize on the human nature and amplifying or attenuating the supposed effects according to the ambient conditions indicates the scientific or more correctly the statistical way of dealing with problems. This aspect had been the most appealing in Miss Marple's adventures. The surrounding may be a village but her  hypothesis applied to more apparently bizzare activities in the cities as well.

Thus whether it was a complicated murder mystery or a nonchalant remark or some unusual theft, everybody who knew Miss Marple also knew that she had the solution that stumped others. Her simple way of approaching the problem and comparing it with the parallel that happened in St. Mary Mead where she spent the most of her life almost always resulted in the truth that lay hidden from the worldly folks. Her enthralling art of deduction and her firm belief in punishing the evil made her a nemesis to all evil near her. In many ways she remains the average kind hearted village elder - fussy, an infrequent babbler, shrewd but good at heart, all ears to the village scandals. But underneath her apparent older self, the energetic analyst remains dormant to the public. Thus when the others see her busy with her sewing - her only established hobby - underneath she may be deducing knowledge from the facts strewn here and there. Thus the chief constables and the seekers of justice takes the help from this grand old lady - their surer hope for the truth - whenever a baffling mystery challenges the limit of their wisdom.