Miss Marple Morton adapted the novel for the stage, he replaced the character of Caroline with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice: Miss Marple was born. Christie may have taken the name from Marple railway station, through which she passed, or from Marple Hall, near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall. The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, "The Murder at the Vicarage", is markedly different from how she appears in later books. This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially
Agatha Christie the house; the English were of all kinds". Christie published relatively few non-fiction works: Often referred to as the "Queen of Crime" or "Queen of Mystery", Agatha Christie is the world's best-selling mystery writer and is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation. Some critics, however, have regarded Christie's plotting as superior to her skill with other literary elements. Novelist Raymond Chandler criticised her in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder", and American literary critic Edmund Wilson was dismissive of Christie and the detective fiction genre generally in his "New Yorker" essay, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?"