New Agatha Christie novel: author sends Miss Marple to the Alps

Fifty years after Sleeping Murder was published posthumously in October 1976, a writer has been commissioned by Agatha Christie's family to write the first new full-length novel featuring detective Jane Marple. Previously, only Hercule Poirot had received such treatment — in 2013 author Sophie Hannah was authorised to continue the Poirot series — but no one had ever been asked to continue Miss Marple's story.

The author explains that her first encounter with Christie's world came through her grandmother, whom she describes as a rather Marple-like figure: sharp-minded, keen on gardening and knitting, and highly perceptive about human nature. She first read the Poirot novels as a preteen, starting with Murder on the Orient Express, and only came to appreciate Miss Marple's brilliance when rereading the books as an adult. She notes how radical it was for Christie to make her master detective an elderly, socially overlooked spinster who turns her supposed "invisibility" into an advantage — breaking a Detection Club rule against using "feminine intuition" to solve crimes.

In writing the new novel, the author decided not to imitate Christie's style directly but to create a book in conversation with the originals. Her starting point came from learning that Death on the Nile was originally conceived as a Miss Marple story rather than a Poirot one. This inspired her to send Marple to the fictional Grand Alpine Hotel high in the Swiss Alps, a glamorous setting more typically associated with Poirot's adventures. The novel uses multiple first-person narrators to show how different characters react to Marple.

The author also says the book engages with contemporary concerns, including society's fear of ageing and the continued invisibility of older people, as well as toxic male figures in culture and politics who attempt to rewrite their pasts without consequence.