Is Miss Marple Cozy?
I don’t know too much about Agatha Christie. Having read a couple of her books (both Poirot and Miss Marple) and seen three or four movies (depending on how many times you count remakes), I’m nowhere near an expert.
What I know is that she’s just about the most famous writer in the world. Only the Bible and Shakespeare have sold more books than Agatha has.
Her books are famous, and her own life story is interesting and in some ways mysterious too.
In Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie created two of the most famous fictional characters in history. Any list of top ten detectives—perhaps even top five—will have both of them on it.
Miss Jane Marple
Here we’re focusing on Miss Jane Marple. The little old lady, the spinster detective, whatever you call her, she is the archetype of the amateur detective.
Every modern female detective owes their existence to Marple. Jessica Fletcher became the most famous television detective by being based on Miss Marple (and Angela Lansbury even played Miss Marple in a movie before starring in Murder She Wrote!)
But is Miss Marple cozy?
The question we are trying to answer here is whether Miss Marple is cozy.
There’s no doubt the Marple books are mysteries. There’s a murder, and the story is about solving it.
What we want to know is if we should include her as a cozy mystery, or if she more properly belongs in the traditional or amateur sleuth sections.
Somewhere I read that the Marple series changed over time, both in character and style, and the later books differed from the early ones. I can’t say if it’s true, because until now I’ve only read the first few books. So I will have to judge based on them and update the answer as I read through the rest of her books.
Please note: there are no spoilers in this article, although since the book was first released a hundred years ago, spoilers might not be possible.
How we evaluate Cozy Mysteries
In our analysis of a book, we go through three major categories. Each of them has multiple questions, and in some cases a Yes is enough to say the book is Not Cozy, while others require multiple Yes answers.
Most of the questions are subjective, which means you might get slightly different results each time, but the final result should be the same.
You can get a free copy of our list by subscribing to our newsletter.
The Miss Marple series
There are a dozen books which the Agatha Christie website calls Miss Marple books, and we will go through each of them in release order. We’re not including short stories, or the new stories written by other authors.
The Murder At The Vicarage
I was very surprised to find the first of the Miss Marple books doesn’t star Miss Marple.
The protagonist of the story, and the person from whose perspective we see, is the Reverend Clement. Everything we know about the case comes from him.
Miss Marple appears in the background for most of the story, as she is just one neighbor who witnessed what happened. She gives some pointers, but not more than the other characters.
Then she suddenly shows up near the end with a complete explanation of the crime, and reasons the guilty party acted the way they did.
Is it enough for a Marple story? Is it enough to make it cozy?
Well, it’s true the protagonist doesn’t solve the crime, but he has almost all the information necessary to do so. There are things hidden from the reader.
Let’s use our story checklist for a cozy mystery to decide if it’s cozy or not.
All the Dealbreakers are good, but I’ll note once more how the Reverend is the protagonist, not Miss Marple.
Our Warning Signs are mostly good. There are a couple of places where Christie withholds information from the reader, such as when the Reverend reads a note and puts it in his pocket, but we don’t get to know the contents until later. Still, that’s only one Yes vote, which is low enough to keep us in cozy territory.
If I count through the How Cozies, I get 9 / 20 (remember, several of these are subjective). This score puts us firmly in the middle of the ratings.
Thus, The Murder At The Vicarage is Fairly Cozy. We’re off to a good start with Miss Marple.
The Body In The Library
The second of the Marple mysteries gives a fresh problem. It’s written in Third Person Omniscient style, which means we see the story from several perspectives as we go along.
This makes it difficult to judge the Dealbreakers, because several of them assume a single perspective.
If we wanted to be harsh, we might throw the book out on some technicalities, most notably being at least one perspective is that of a senior police officer.
I’m feeling generous though, so we’ll skip down to the Warning Signs. There we can see how much of the book is about family relationships rather than solving the mystery, and with multiple perspectives, sometimes the reader knows things the current character doesn’t know, and vice versa.
It’s hard to say the book is cozy after all that.
Continuing to the How Cozies, I can only give a 5 / 20, and that’s the nail in the coffin.
The Body In The Library is Not Cozy. Not at all surprising, it’s much more of a Traditional mystery, of which cozy mysteries are just a small part.
The Moving Finger
We’re back to one perspective in the third Marple story, but it’s that of Jerry, who has come to the country to recuperate.
Miss Marple doesn’t even appear until three quarters of the way through the book, and she solves the puzzle in an instant, spending the rest of the book gently trying to point Jerry and the police in the right direction.
All the Dealbreakers easily pass. The Warning Signs are good too.
I get about 11 / 20 for the How Cozies, and that’s even better than The Murder At The Vicarage.
This means The Moving Finger is Cozy. Ignore the fact that it’s a Marple though, because I don’t think it is. She had little to do with the story itself. I also must admit her explanations somewhat annoyed me.
A Murder Is Announced
The fourth of the Marple books is like The Body In The Library in style, in that we switch back and forth between several people as the book goes by, and we also get the last ten pages being Marple summing up the case and explaining all the clues.
We can skip through the Dealbreakers if we pretend there’s just one perspective, and we’ll say they’re all good.
The first Warning Sign is the appearance of multiple perspectives, and the second is how people in the book know things the reader doesn’t. There’s a point where Marple writes on a piece of paper, but we don’t know what it is.
Still, there’s only two warning signs, so we can say it’s possibly cozy.
Our problem then arrives with the How Cozies, which I can only get about 6 / 20. This suggests it’s not very cozy at all. I might even say it’s more of another Traditional mystery, so I will say it’s Not Cozy.
They Do It With Mirrors
Miss Marple is involved throughout this book, although the perspective is still from multiple characters. Thus, we know things she doesn’t know.
Without spoiling anything, I will tell you this is the first Marple where I guessed whodunnit halfway through the book and was completely right about everything. Surprisingly, as I came to the end of the book, it didn’t matter that I already knew the outcome.
We can, as usual, skip the Dealbreakers, as none of them apply.
The Warning Signs include the multiple perspectives, and again there are things the protagonist knows that we don’t. I don’t think that will ever stop happening in these books.
Going through the How Cozies, I think we could probably get about 8 / 20. This is slightly higher than previous books, but is it enough? I think on balance I would say They Do It With Mirrors is Probably Cozy.
A Pocket Full Of Rye
I loved this book. This is what a true mystery is all about. There was a poem which gave us the title, Marple was fairly included because she was tangentially involved, we had suspects dying to mix things up. Everything was happening, and it is possibly my favorite of the series (so far).
But is it cozy?
We should probably start skipping the Dealbreakers and Warning Signs. It seems like we’re going to get the same results every time: Multiple protagonists, one of whom is Marple, and she tends to know things we don’t.
Still, it’s enough to get us to deciding the How Cozies.
At this point I think I’m only getting 6 / 20, which tends to take us away from cozy territory. As much as I liked it, and as much as I want it to be so, I think this is more Traditional, and therefore Not Cozy.
4:50 From Paddington
This is another classic murder mystery style, with a person seeing a murder in the train next to them, but unable to do anything about it. Again I loved it, and I think these books are getting better and better.
This was a case with much misdirection, multiple suspects, and changing theories throughout. I will tell you I had no clue who the killer was when they were revealed.
Just as the last few, the Dealbreakers and Warning Signs roll by without anything different.
It’s the How Cozies where things get interesting. Always subjective, this time I get to 10 / 20, which is almost the highest we’ve gotten to in the Marple series. I would have said it was a Traditional mystery before counting up, but getting to this many tells me it is Probably Cozy.
I am surprisingly pleased with this result, and I don’t know why. Perhaps I really do want them to be cozy?
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
I was slightly disappointed with The Mirror Crack’d, and I don’t know why. It was a little more psychological than others, but that shouldn’t make it bad. Perhaps it was because I guessed the murderer very early on, but didn’t quite know their reasoning until the end.
The interesting part was how Jane Marple was involved without ever meeting the people involved, at least until the very end. This is the kind of thing you see in television, when an actor is injured in some way in real life and has to sit in a chair for their character. Surprisingly well done for Agatha Christie to put this in a book.
As has become regular, our Dealbreakers and Warning Signs are the same as usual, and the How Cozies give around a 6 / 20. Slightly cozy, you might say, but I would lean a little more toward Traditional and Not Cozy.
A Caribbean Mystery
Apparently Agatha Christie traveled to the Caribbean, and decided to write a book set there. I think I agree with the critic who said that it was standard fare for an author writing about their vacation.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but this was perhaps the first where I simply couldn’t follow the timeline or the layout of the action. It is set in a resort in the Caribbean, but every time I tried to figure out where was where I was confused. I will simply say the setting is very self-contained, so it didn’t matter if it was the Caribbean, Mediterranean, or any other resort or hotel somewhere in the world.
Jumping past all of our ratings because the Dealbreakers, Warning Signs and How Cozies are all going to be the same as before. If I had to say anything, it would once again be Traditional and Not Cozy.
At Bertram’s Hotel
And now I’m back to enjoying a Marple again. The last couple were kind of meh, but Bertram brings us back into an interesting story and setting.
This story evokes much of what I like about Agatha Christie. She is clearly reminiscing about the old days, through Miss Marple, but in a way which doesn’t make you think of her as a fuddy-duddy. She’s really just missing what she grew up with, and I think that’s something all of us do from time-to-time. Nostalgia can be fun or painful, depending on what you are thinking of, and it’s important to remember the past should stay in the past.
Bertram was a fun read. I think we can move past the Dealbreakers and Warning Signs quickly, because they are the same as they have been for the last several books.
Where we get is to the How Cozies, and I find myself giving the book 9 / 20, which is a little higher than recent books, and pushes it right into the Fairly Cozy category. I know, I’m as surprised as you.
Nemesis
We get a small throwback to an earlier book, as a couple of the characters from A Caribbean Mystery return in one form or another. Surprisingly this isn’t too common. In a mystery series, especially a cozy series, you would expect several of the locals to show up in every book. This is one of those clues to whether we should consider Marple cozy, right?
Although she doesn’t go into the locals as much as a cozy would, we still see a group of familiar characters each time. They have different names and come from different places, but there’s almost always the old friend, the reverend, the local busybody, and the maid. The difference is, Miss Marple doesn’t seem to need any of them. None of them help with clues and rarely with solving the puzzle. It’s almost always down to her.
In Nemesis we see this much more directly. The rich man has left her a sum of money if she can solve a mystery, and it is all on Miss Marple to figure it out. Spoiler-but-not-a-spoiler: of course she does.
Same old Dealbreakers and Warning Signs, and again I get a 9 / 20 for the How Cozies. We’ll put this one in the Fairly Cozy pile as well.
Sleeping Murder
Last, and I don’t want to say least, but I’m not sure if I could name a Marple which I could consider least.
Sleeping Murder was bizarre in some ways, with the main character’s realization of certain things from her past (trying not to give spoilers). It all seemed very coincidental, and I had to think about it for a while. I conclude that Agatha is suggesting we’re driven by things outside of ourselves – or perhaps buried deep inside. Why else would they go right to that town? (this is in the first chapter, so not really a spoiler).
I couldn’t decide if I liked this book or not. The simple truth is that I don’t usually like stories about what I would consider supernatural events to happen, and a couple of times I wanted to put the book down. Persevere I did though, to a reasonable but expected conclusion. The last of the Marple books and I was a little disappointed at how they end. Also disappointed at how Miss Marple herself was involved – or not.
Standard Dealbreakers and Warning Signs by now, but pleasantly surprised to give the How Cozies an 11 / 20, which pushes it firmly into the Cozy group. At least we finish with a success.
The Verdict on Miss Marple
So is Miss Marple Cozy?
Just past halfway through the series, the conclusion we made was to lean against it being cozy, but now we are at the end and we have two books which are Cozy, two Probables, three Fairly Cozy, and five Not Cozy.
I wanted to say the Not Cozies were earlier and the later books were more Cozy, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the Nots are really scattered throughout the series.
As a summary I would say the series appears to be more Traditional than Cozy, as you would expect coming from Agatha Christie. We’re keeping it either way, because it’s Agatha, but I’m pleased to say there is enough cozy in Miss Marple for it to fit nicely into CozyMystery.com.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.