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.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It's probably part of the supergenre of detective novels where the detective is physically weaker than the usual 'bad guys' and so relies almost exclusively on brainpower. The other end of the spectrum is the kid-detective novels. There's also the disabled detective and the wimpy/unwilling detective (Jonathan Creek etc), all of whom get much more drama out of being captured or attacked.

This is somewhat separate from the more well-known detective genres (hard-boiled, noir, cop/ex-cop), where the protagonists can (and usually do) go hand-to-hand with miscreants, kick in doors, engage in car chases and back-alley pursuits, fire guns and so forth.