Mini Review – The 13 Problems

From Goodreads:

The Tuesday Night Club is the name for a varied group of guests who challenge each other to solve recent, and not so recent, crimes. It begins one evening when the group gathers at Miss Marple’s house and the conversation turns to unsolved crimes. Over the weeks, we learn about the case of the dripping bloodstains, the thief who committed his crime twice over, the message from the death-bed of a poisoned man who talked of a ‘heap of fish’, the strange case of the missing will, and a spiritualist who warned that ‘Blue Geraniums’ meant death.

Pit your wits against the powers of deduction of the ‘Tuesday Night Club’. But don’t forget that Miss Marple is present. Sometime later, many of the same people are present at a dinner given by Colonel and Dolly Bantry. Another set of six problems. Even later there’s a thirteenth. Can you match Miss Marple’s performance?

Recently rebranded "The Tuesday Night Club" due to the success of Osman’s "Thursday Murder Club" this series of linked short stories by Agatha Christie has very similar premise, Octogenarian’s solving cold cases!

I love how each of these thirteen short stories are standalone little mysteries in their own right but that they are all linked by the members of the various dinner parties. I love how there is new person narrating every tale and that everyone else takes a turn of trying to work out the mystery. You find yourself chiming in, making guesses and working out what it what before of course Ms Marple gives her often too correct reasoning to the problem.

I think it is because each of the problems is distinct and they take you in all kinds of different directions from poisonings, to gold heists to plots that haven’t even come to fruition Ms Marple suggests solutions for them all while keeping her knitting count in order. These really make the character of Jane Marple shine.