#the thirteen problems

[princessofbookaholics]

borrowed from the library 🔍

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read The Thirteen Problems (or: The Tuesday Club Murders) by Agatha Christie (1932)?

yes

no

I've read parts of it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onNov 12, 2025

[a-ramblinrose]

“I mean,” said Miss Marple, puckering her brow a little as she counted the stitches in her knitting, “that so many people seem to me not to be either bad or good, but simply, you know, very silly.”

― Agatha Christie, The Thirteen Problems

[readingoals]

The Thirteen Problems was a fun Miss Marple short story collection!

The loose narrative of the collection is that Marple's dinner companions (the first set a collection of characters who call themselves the Tuesday Night Club, the second a dinner party hosted by one of the TNC members) take turns telling crime stories that only they know the answer to, testing the group's ability to come up with a solution. Of course Marple is an absolute whizz at solving crimes and blows everyone away with her answers. I believe the first story in this collection was actually the first time Miss Marple ever appeared in print.

To me, I think this was maybe the most consistent Christie short story collection that I've read. I enjoyed them all as I read it, though none have really stuck with me since. I do love the premise of the Tuesday Night Club though. Definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of Miss Marple!

[my-52-weeks-with-christie]

Cooking With Christie!

This Weeks Recipe: Chicken Gyro In my quest to make my own chicken gyros at home, I researched several recipes and landed on this one from The Mediterranean Dish – which turned out beautifully! Despite my changes…as I marinated it overnight, added a bit of sumac (because I couldn’t resist), and had to substitute white vinegar rather than red wine vinegar (of which I’d run out of). I used…

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[spaceorphanssecondbreakfastclub]

Reading Agatha Christie: The Thirteen Problems

The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection featuring Miss Marple.  And, I believe, while Murder at the Vicarage was published as volume first - these short stories were released before that - and date back to Christie’s hard core short story days of the twenties.  

You know, I used to avoid the short stories as a kid - for whatever reason, I found them just not to hold my attention the same way the novels did - but I have to say that I’ve been enjoying them a lot more than I had expected.  This particular set has a bit of a framing device -- the first six stories were part of the Tuesday Night Club - where a group of people would gather and tell a mystery that they know of while the others would have to guess who did it.  The second set of stories is set at a single dinner party where they go around and do somewhat of the same thing.  The final story is a bit different - one where there’s a live murder to solve, but puts a nice button on the set.  

All the stories are of pretty solid quality.  There are a couple of silly things here and there - but Agatha Christie remains as clever as usual.  I think what is helping this collection is the unique way that each of the stories is narrated in a different way - and we have a fun collection of characterizations going on with the story being told.  It adds a lot of atmosphere to the whole thing. 

While I’m not a biggest Miss Marple fan (though I do enjoy her) - but she works really well here -- especially since everyone seems to take her for granted.  I think there’s some interesting commentary to be had about how society treats women - especially older women throughout the stories.  Not just Miss Marple - who gets a brunt of it due to her seemingly fragile and elderly ways - but man of the other stories feature women who maybe are looked past or assumptions are made of because they are women.  

Meanwhile, I do think there’s a lively set of side characters that really made this collection the fun that it is.  There’s Henry Clithering - the ex-Scotland Yard Commissioner who kind of pioneers the whole thing.  Miss Marple’s delightfully idiotic and boastful nephew Raymond West.  The somewhat bumbling and yet endlessly entertaining Dolly Bantry.  And the completely daft actress Jane Helier.  Among plenty of others.  It’s really these characters and the change in style of the stories that makes them as fun as they are.  

The collection is charming - but as I said before, Christie really presents life as it was back in the late-20s/early-30s, with British society changing, people trying to figure out what their roles, and how women were treated at that time.  It’s kind of fascinating to look at through a modern lens - and while Christie was really more so going for some fun detective stories, I do think it’s fair that there is an added layer of society commentary (though undoubtedly unintentionally) that allows this collection to go deeper than one might expect.  

Overall, it’s a fairly easy read.  And it’s one that I solidly recommend.  

[lesserjoke]

Book #219 of 2020:

The Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie (Miss Marple #2)

This second Miss Marple book (published as The Tuesday Club Murders in the U.S.) is a fun collection of short mystery stories, presented in the loose framework of a group of friends trying to stump one another with puzzling cases each has come across. It’s a type of detective fiction with very little detecting, just armchair deductions and a few pointed questions. The problems are not all solvable by a reader — especially one an ocean and almost a century away from their initial context — but the answers are generally clever, and author Agatha Christie livens up the proceedings by giving each member of the club a distinctive manner of laying out their contribution. And it’s neat to see the heroine of the hour, old Miss Marple herself, grow in estimation in everyone’s eyes as her insights and small-town observations on human nature lead her to the truth again and again.

★★★★☆

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[pinkheichou]

[…] this isn’t a serial story. This is real life; and real life stops just where it chooses.

The Thirteen Problems, Agatha Christie