Celebrating Miss Marple

There’s a big difference between being a fan and being a super-fan. Not all fans would be able to differentiate between the two, but every super-fan understands, at a bone-deep level, the difference between themselves and those of their ilk (fellow super-fans) on the one hand and regular fans on the other.

For example, I am a big fan of Richard Curtis’s 2013 movie About Time. I love it, recommend it to people and think it’s one of the best stories of both romantic and familial love that I’ve ever come across, as well as thoroughly inspiring from a ‘How to live a better life’ point of view. However, since I am merely a fan rather than a super-fan, I don’t feel I need to know what kind of cameras were used to film it or which actors were originally cast in different roles. Only super-fans crave that level of detail, and –like most of us, I hope, given the time and obsession levels involved – I am a super-fan of very little.

It’s a very special ‘very little’ (I would say that, of course) and top of the list is the work of Agatha Christie – which means that whenever another member of the Agatha super-fans gang publishes a book, I rush to read it.

Dr Mark Aldridge, the author of Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness is a fully fledged, 24ct, top-tier Agatha super-fan, too. Can I prove this? Well, his two previous books were called Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World and Agatha Christie on Screen. Each of them is wonderful, but I enjoyed his exhaustive investigation into all things Marple most.

When I first settled down to it, I didn’t know Miss Marple quite as well as I’ve come to know Hercule Poirot.