Poirot vs Miss Marple

I love detective stories. I always have. When I was young, my brother used to race windsurfers and whilst my family were there supporting him, I'd always be in the car with an Agatha Christie novel.

Yes, fuck you Sir Arthur Conan Dolye fans. Agatha Christie is the best mystery writer and I'll tell you why. In every single Sherlock Holmes book, he explains why the antagonist killed someone or stole something or slept in baby bears bed or whatever. The antagonist then breaks down and confesses despite the fact that there's NO CUNTING EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM and that if they'd just not said anything they'd still be free to this day.

CSI use a very similar trick, incidentally.

That's not my biggest problem with Holmes, either. My biggest problem is he always takes a few pieces of information and constructs a huge picture out of them. It's bullshit. One piece of information can mean so many things you can't possibly do that.

Anyway, the whole Poirot vs Miss Marple thing is a debate precisely no-one has had and for good reason, because the very best murder mystery thing every written is And Then There Were None, which has precisely neither of them in it.

Never mind.

So who would win in a fight between Poirot and Marple?

Well Poirot is younger... he could probably punch harder than Marple... The thing is, though- Poirot is a peacock... he is honourable and chivalrous. The great thing about Miss Marple - especially when played by Geraldine McEwan is that she's really quite sinister. I get the feeling that if she ever couldn't prove a crime, she'd wait until the murderer was asleep and insert a knitting needle into their carotid artery.

So, to answer that question, Marple would probably win because she'd piss Poirot off, Poirot would punch her, she'd fall over and break her leg. Six months later when she could walk again, she'd slip into Poirot's room when he was asleep and kill him.

The reason why I'm on Marple's side, by the way (you could so have argued that "who would beat who" thing the other way) is: She admits when she doesn't have enough evidence. She sets out to trap people into admitting their crimes.

No other detective I know of does that.

My reasons are a bit spurious here: I like Marple because she's as lame as every other detective but at least she admits she's being lame...

It's true, though. Other detectives claim to be geniuses and make up these really conveluted plots (what's that mental illness when you see connections between seperate events?) and are magically right. Marple has some reality to her.

That's what I think anyway.