12/9/2023 0 Comments Gentle reader amelia peabody![]() “A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.” As Sergeant Cornish so accurately points out in The 4:50 from Paddington, “Everybody in St Mary Mead knew Miss Marple fluffy and dithery in appearance, but inwardly as sharp and as shrewd as they make them.” And we love her for it. Mary Mead, which, as one reviewer pointed out, is in fact “a hotbed of burglary, impersonation, adultery and ultimately murder.” Nor is Miss Marple exactly what she appears to be. In Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage we are introduced to Miss Jane Marple of the quaint English village of St. What I say is, you really never know, do you?” “I always find it prudent to suspect everybody just a little. As a general rule I don’t think people should get away with killing other people.”īelow in chronological order based on the first book in their series are seven of my favorite female amateur sleuths. ![]() ![]() Because, as my own female amateur sleuth, the disgraced ex-chef and world’s most reluctant YouTube star Sam Barnes (aka the Cape Cod Foodie) puts it, “Here’s the thing. They simply will not stop sleuthing, no matter who or what stands in their way. She ordered her employers’ lives, not the other way around.”īut perhaps the most singular characteristic that female amateur sleuths share is sheer persistence. Here’s Barbara Neely’s Blanche White, a Black cook and housekeeper to wealthy white families in the American South: “For all the chatelaine fantasies of some of the women for whom she worked, she really was her own boss, and her clients knew it. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy.”Īnd perhaps most radically, even when her circumstances would seem to argue the opposite, the female amateur sleuth has agency. As Olivia Yu’s Singaporan Aunty Lee suggests: “People ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads as regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. To read mysteries with female amateur sleuths is to open windows to other cultures (and cuisines!), other times in history, other stages of life, other lived experiences. Third, and perhaps most compelling, the FAS comes in fascinating variety. “But, with your kind permission, I would very much like to.” Who doesn’t feel for Dorothy Sayers’ scholarly Harriet Vane when she cries out in Gaudy Night, “What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?” Or how about this exchange between Sharan Newman’s 12th century novitiate Catherine LeVendeu and her interlocutor: “Catherine Le Vendeur,” he asked sententiously, “have you known this man carnally?” “No father,” Catherine answered. Which is not to say that the female amateur sleuth doesn’t also suffer pangs of the heart and/or have a good hearty sex drive. Just listen to Elizabeth Peters’ archaeologist Amelia Peabody, who says bluntly, “I have been accused of being somewhat abrupt in my actions and decisions, but I never act without thought it is simply that I think more quickly and more intelligently than most people.” Or Alan Brady’s eleven-year-old chemistry prodigy Flavia de Luce, muttering between clenched teeth, “If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as “dearie.” She is also unapologetically smart and will not be condescended to. Do not EVER underestimate the female amateur sleuth. Of the two, Miss Marple is the more dangerous.” Hah. As a character in The Murder at the Vicarage points out: “Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle appealing manner-Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Even when the FAS appears to be conventional, like Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple, that appearance is almost always deceptive. Radical as in, to quote Merriam-Webster, “very different from the usual or traditional.”įirst of all, she consistently upends society’s traditional view of women and girls as essentially harmless, biddable creatures. I would argue that it is because there is something about the female amateur sleuth that is, at heart, radical. What drew you to her? Why did you progress at speed from the gateway drug of Nancy to Miss Jane Marple, to Amelia Peabody, to Blanche White, to… the list goes on and on. ![]() And from that moment on, you were hooked on the female amateur sleuth (aka, the FAS). Honestly, if you are reading this essay, I probably already know one thing about you: You devoured the Nancy Drew mysteries as a child.
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