The Thirteen Problems / Agatha Christie

3 out of 5 stars

A series of short stories, strung together by the concept of the Tuesday Club, a group of people who get together on (you guessed it) Tuesday nights to discuss mysterious crimes that they have encountered. Miss Marple just happens to be one of those people and gets to demonstrate her uncanny knowledge of human nature repeatedly.

I have to think that Charlaine Harris must have read this collection before she wrote her first Aurora Teagarden mystery story Real Murders which features the Real Murders Club. Members of this club get together once a month to analyze famous murder cases. (Harris takes things one step further when a member of the club is murdered.)

This is a compact little volume—I read it in one sitting. That, perhaps, is not the best way to approach it, as Miss Marple’s superiority in deducing what actually went on gets a trifle repetitive (although we readers would expect nothing less). Still, I enjoyed my evening’s reading.