A question for internet-land

[forsyth]

Okay, so. Why exactly are there so many different series about old ladies solving mysteries? Books and TV shows, the whole nine yards. Is it just because there's a large market of old ladies who like to read mysteries (and like gardening, or anything British)? Or did it start out with like Murder: She Wrote, and then the rest of the knockoffs spawned a genre around it, kinda like superheroes did with Superman?

Comments

[frustratedpilot]

It probably started with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series of novels in the 1920s (or so), tho' it might not have been the actual first.

[frustratedpilot]

Just looked up Christie's bio in the house's dead-tree encyclopedia. Miss Marple first appeared in print in 1930. There was another writer who started the genre back around the turn of the previous Century, but Miss Marple was the first "star" of the housewife detectives.