The Thirteen Problems

The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The thirteen stories feature the amateur detective Miss Marple, her nephew Raymond West, and her friend Sir Henry Clithering. They are the earliest stories Christie wrote about Miss Marple. The main setting for the frame story is the fictional village of St Mary Mead.

As in her short story collection Partners in Crime, Christie employs an overarching narrative, making the book more like an episodic novel. There are three sets of narratives, though they themselves interrelate. The first set of six are stories told by the Tuesday Night Club, a random gathering of people at the house of Miss Marple. Each week the group tell tales of mystery, always solved by the female amateur detective from the comfort of her armchair. One of the guests is Sir Henry Clithering, an ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard, and this allows Christie to resolve the story, with him usually pointing out that the criminals were caught.

Sir Henry Clithering invites Miss Marple to a dinner party, where the next set of six stories are told. The group of guests employ a similar guessing game, and once more Miss Marple triumphs. The thirteenth story, Death by Drowning, takes place some time after the dinner party when Miss Marple finds out that Clithering is staying in St Mary Mead and asks him to help in the investigation surrounding the death of a local village girl. At the start of the story Miss Marple secretly works out who the murderer is and her solution proves correct.