St. Mary Mead St. Mary Mead St. Mary Mead was the fictional village created by popular crime fiction author Dame Agatha Christie. The quaint, sleepy village was home to the renowned detective spinster Miss Marple. However, Christie first described a village of that name prior to Marple's introduction, in the 1928 Hercule Poirot novel "The Mystery of the Blue Train". In that novel, St. Mary Mead is home to the book's protagonist Katherine Grey. The village was first mentioned in a Miss Marple book in 1930, when it was the setting for the first Marple novel, "The Murder at the Vicarage". Miss Marple's
Miss Marple of Miss Marple, this one smoked cigarettes. In 1983, Estonian stage and film actress Ita Ever starred in the Russian language film adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel "A Pocket Full of Rye" (using the Russian edition's translated title, "The Secret of the Blackbirds") as the character of Miss Marple. American TV was the setting for the first dramatic portrayal of Miss Marple with Gracie Fields, the legendary British actress, playing her in a 1956 episode of "Goodyear TV Playhouse" based on "A Murder Is Announced", the 1950 Christie novel. In 1970, the character of Miss Marple was portrayed by Inge