Recently, Kenneth Branagh gave us his second movie featuring his version of the immortal Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile. As part of the press tour, he mentioned how he would love to do something Christie herself never tried, setting up a meeting between Poirot and her other famous creation, Miss Jane Marple. It would lead to an interesting conversation, and I’m certain she would more than hold her own. That led me to reflect. At around the same time, we got the reboot of Sex and the City and lots of talk about how different fifty looks now. The press were all, like, how amazing it is that you can still have new experiences and stages, have interesting lives and something to say past age forty. But why? We have examples everywhere. Right now, 52 year old Queen Latifah is kicking butt every week on The Equalizer and divas on Queens and Girls 5 Ever as well as the ladies on And Just Like That are doing their thing weekly. The thing is, mysteries have always known this. How else to explain the great number of ladies in this age group staring in their own series ever since we met dear Aunt Jane.
Miss Marple wasn’t the first (looking at you Miss Silver) but she’s the most long-lasting and set the mold. Every writer after her had to deal with her long shadow and influence. Christie said that the inspiration for the character came from a favorite aunt. She commented that she always seemed so prim and proper but would shock her when the worldly cynic would come up with a caustic but on point comment, giving her mental whiplash when words conflicted with image. Like her other detectives, she starts out fully formed, sort of. In The Tuesday Murder Club (1932), a collection of short stories, she seems like a fragile old woman. However, in the first full novel, The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), we meet a far more active elderly woman. She never, in either case, escapes the titles of spinster, Victorian and village creature. Christie herself could not land on an age, nor an accurate progression on how she ages. That alone speaks. She’s old. That’s all you need to know. Other authors were more exact while still playing with one simple idea: older women are both wise and ignored, making them experts in human nature and great at solving crime.
Getting Older, Getting Interesting
Within these books women have both agency and personality. Beyond them, they are a great barometer in showing how women’s lives have changed, and how they haven’t, since the first Miss Marple appeared. I’m honing in on five detectives in addition to Marple, some well-known and some who deserve to be. In chronological order we will discuss:
- Emily Pollifax
- Jacqueline Kirby
- Jessica Fletcher
- Susan Melville
- Susan Ryeland
Our Cast of Characters
Mrs. Pollifax: (1966-2000) A bored widowed mother and housewife, we see her going to her doctor in book one, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, complaining of a general malaise. He asks her a crucial question: what did you want to be when you grow up? Her answer? A spy. He laughs. She gets a meeting at the CIA (through a major older woman strength, an extensive network of friends) and, through a series of misunderstandings, gets her wish. We follow her adventures through 14 books. Along the way she gets married again and becomes a surrogate parent/mentor to a young woman.
Jacqueline Kirby (1972-1989) Our first professional woman, she has a career as an academic librarian and as such knows a small amount about a great many things. Her first case happens in Italy, where she has gone, sans kids (they are teens and we find out exactly nothing about their father in the series. Even a fictional character can keep secrets, it seems), to do some research. Most of her cases, in fact, happen when she’s on vacation. After all, the rest of the time, she’s making a living. Wise, witty and with a feminist slant, Jacqueline, or Jake, solves crimes while delivering barbs about life in general. We follow her through 4 books as she switches careers but remains her indefatigable self.
Jessica Fletcher (TV show 1984-1997, books 1985-present): Technically a cheat, since the TV series came before the books (59 of them and counting!), but she is too big and important to overlook. Our third woman and second confirmed widow, without her own kids but with plenty of family to make up for that, Jessica deals with the grief by keeping busy around Cabot Cove and writing a mystery. When nephew Grady discovers it and gives it to a girlfriend who happens to work in publishing, a second career is born. Through her large family, ever growing number of friends and the travel necessary to sell her books puts her in the vicinity of bodies on a weekly basis for twelve seasons and a book series. In control of every situation, Jessica restores order without disturbing her calm, or her hairdo.
Miss Melville (1987-2006): From the same era as Jessica, and a teacher, she treads a different path. Running out of money (trust funder), alone (boyfriend is out of the country) and fired, she dresses, sneaks into a fancy lunch with a goal of suicide. She ends up shooting the keynote speaker instead (by accident) leading to a new job as a contract killer. Of course, she won’t kill just anyone. She has standards. Her marks must really deserve it. And she does it, through 5 books, while taking pot shots at the excesses of New York society and the ‘greed is good’ era. As the series progresses, this leads to an equal amount of detection and death dealing.
Susan Ryeland (2016-present): The most modern example, Susan is a modern single career woman. She’s built a successful career in publishing, mostly by landing and editing the very popular Atticus Pund detective series. When the author of the series, the talented but despicable Alan Conway, gets murdered, Susan gets drawn into playing detective. Unlike any of the above, she also has a long-term romantic partner and all the tensions that relationships bring and this does not get ignored in the first two books of this new series. Susan is as busy trying to figure out her own future as she is to bring a killer to justice. Added bonus: The first book, Magpie Murders was made into a miniseries coming to BritBox and PBS!
So, how do they do it? Why is it that authors return to this age group again and again? I think it comes down to five factors that give them a great edge in the business of crime. Not all of these factors speak well of women, or society, but they make for great fiction.
All That Extra Time
One of the luxuries that older women seem to have is time on their hands. With husbands gone, or never having existed and children out of the house, or, again, non-existent, gives them space in their calendar to detect. From this ‘fact’ the worst assumptions spring. You know, the one where they are gossiping old cats with no lives of their own and nothing better to do with their time. There is a perceived maliciousness in this, that women delight in judging and ruining other women. Literary fiction gives us plenty of examples. Mysteries take a different tact. These heroines understand that gossip is an important source of information and mine it during investigations.
Interestingly, these books showcase a recently discovered truth: that single people tend to be more outward, community focused lives and give their time to them. How else would Miss Marple have her extensive collection of human nature without all that time to observe? Or how else could Jessica Fletcher travel so frequently and, even as the series went on, live part time in New York except as a single woman. Even Susan Ryeland, who works full time, suddenly finds a big hole in her calendar when the main focus of her work life gets himself murdered.
No Men, No Sex, No Distractions
Tying into the notion of vicious old bitties is the lack of a man in their life. Old equals undesirable and the cruelest accusations were hurled at a woman like Miss Marple, the never married. What good were they, after all, if no man ever wanted them? As sexual standards loosened, older women remained stuck in the sad land of the sexless. The message here, you could have independence or a relationship, but not both. As we get closer to our time, you can have both, but not without a lot of bother and annoyance. In all cases, for women, detection and matrimony are incompatible at worst and a task does sans romantic partner at best.
Connected with the time idea is the reality that relationships are greedy. They push our focus inward, as they should. They demand great care to survive. Emily Pollifax, Jacqueline Kirby and Jessica Fletcher all began their detective careers well after their husbands deaths. Having gone through whatever grieving that loss needed, they rebuilt their lives to open up to this new adventure. Oh, Jake and Jessica indulge in a flirtation or two, but they never seriously consider long-term relationships. Emily does remarry, but the author invests situations where she is spying on her own for the most part. And those with romantic partners from the start, Susan Melville and Susan Ryland, when in detective mode, tend to leave that person behind to go and investigate. Authors, characters, and let’s be honest, many of us struggle to balance our commitments to others and self.
Play On Respect
Much as they might annoy you, we all, to this day, at the least (sometimes the very least) tend to respect our elders. We pay them attention when we don’t want to, or don’t agree with them, and give them access to things they maybe shouldn’t have based on their perceived harmlessness. These detectives take advantage of this in ruthless and clever ways. A good deal of the time, they do this without removing the dotty old lady mask until close to the end.
Christie makes it clear in every book, no one really wants to talk to Miss Marple, but good manners force them to. Not only does she take advantage of it, but most of the time she leaves them in a better place for having spoken with her. Oh, but the time between the two can get ugly. Not that she cares, not with the truth at stake. Miss Melville adds the pantia of wealth to the equation. An expert at belonging, as she did for so long, she uses that to access places by simply exerting she has the right to be there. While our most modern example, Susan Ryland’s age, however, plays out differently. Her advantage comes in the form of her advanced place in her career and the network of people she has at her disposal. Age in different forms has its advantages.
Their Everyone’s Friend
Lots of time, good advice, a willing ear and, often, baking skills make these women everyone’s friend. And, often, these offers of friendship come from a genuine place. They see someone in distress and want to help. Often, they can, too. BUT during all this, they never remove the detective hat. They know far too much about human nature to remove anyone from suspicion. Not that they let on, of course.
Mrs. Pollifax survives as an agent in part because no one suspects her. However, an equal reason is her ability to make friends wherever she goes. Always with a smile and an ear to lend. That way, when things go wrong (and they always go wrong) she has allies. Jacqueline, or Jake, finds it annoying that so many people spill their secrets to her, though in reality she revels in it. Still another type of woman, Miss Melville gets away with killing people for the exact same reason. And the new circle of people who come into her life because of her new profession provide her a similar protection.
And, To My, and Sometimes Their, Annoyance, No One Listens
And yet, despite all of this, in the end, too often, the forces of law and order fail to listen unless some man is there confirming all her hard work.
Because Sir Henry Clithering, retired commissioner of Scotland Yard, was so impressed with Miss Marple during the first book, he tells every policeman that contacts him to listen to her. Without that, she’d just be a crazy old lady. Ever the pragmatist, she understands this and always finds a man to contact the authorities on her behalf. In fact, the one thing all of them face is that the official representatives of law enforcement dismiss them. Every time. And though the language may shift, the feelings underneath the words remain the same: stop meddling. And yet, they are always proved right in the end.
Welcome to mystery fiction from the many women over forty who populate it. Through eighty plus years they have used their wisdom, social networks and society’s biases to catch killers. Women’s roles and rights have changed quite a bit during that time, but society hasn’t changed so much that the basic assumptions have gone away. Mysteries have taken them and represented this stage of life throughout it’s history. Unfair for those of us in the real world, they make for some great fiction.
Bibliography of other fabulous detectives:
- The Miss Silver series by Patricia Wentworth
- Amelia Peabody Emmerson series by Elizabeth Peters
- Letitia “Tish” Carberry by Mary Roberts Reinhart
- Miss Hildegard Withers series by Stuart Palmer
- Lady Julia Gray series by Deanna Raybourn
- Mrs. Jeffries series by Emily Brightwell
- Elizabeth and Joyce from the Thursday Mystery Club series by Richard Osman