Little Old Lady Investigates: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"Miss Marple. She's not going to frighten [[The Yardies]] is she? 'Leroy, give her the gun, she have a hat!'"''|'''[[Lenny Henry]]'''}}
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This trope makes a perverse sort of sense. Old women are '''supposed''' to be nosy, and attract little attention when they are. A grandmotherly type may be a lot better at prying relevant but embarrassing details from suspects than the gruff policeman. Finally, she is frequently protected by [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: who would dare to off the nice old lady?
More realistic takes on the concept have her solving minor misdemeanors and crimes which the police are too busy to solve. The most famous
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{{examples}}
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Agatha Christie]]'s [[Miss Marple]] is the [[Trope Codifier]]. In one book she explains her success like this: "Policemen asking questions are being policemen, but little old ladies asking questions are just being little old ladies."
** Dame Agatha's Tuppence Beresford of the [[Tommy and Tuppence]] books uses many aspects of the
* [[Dorothy Gilman]]'s Mrs. Pollifax is a little old lady investigative ''[[CIA]] agent''. It's a bit more believable when you learn that she was originally hired by the CIA as a decoy courier by accident when her file was inadvertently placed in the "people we can use for this decoy run" stack instead of the "people we've reviewed and rejected" stack, but her [[Nosy Neighbor]] and [[Weirdness Magnet]] tendencies, combined with a very no-nonsense common-sense approach to whatever trouble she landed in, led her into more and more active
** There's been two movies made featuring Mrs. Pollifax, the second was a made-for-TV movie in 1999 starring... you guessed it... Angela Lansbury.
** Mrs. Pollifax isn't quite the normal little old lady either, as witnessed by the not more closely described "karate chop", which she delivers to many a foe, who is [[Tap on the Head|invariably rendered unconscious]].
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** And ''yes'', [[Bold Inflation|THIS]] is how the '''character''' ''talks and writes''!
* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld/Maskerade|Maskerade]]'' mixes this and ''Phantom of the Opera'', parodying the heck out of both along the way.
* [[Deconstructed]] brutally in the short story "Granny Gumption Solves a Murder" from ''100 Dastardly Little Detective Stories''. The titular Granny Gumption does indeed solve a murder, and confronts the murderer [[Idiot Ball|in his own home]], [[What an Idiot!|without any witnesses]]
** You can read this vicious little story [http://www.cjhenderson.com/docs/GRANNY.pdf here] if you like. (Note: link goes to PDF file.)
* ''[[The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency]]'': Precious Ramotswe falls squarely into this category, despite the fact that she rarely solves murders, isn't all that old and is hardly little in the waist department.
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* The ''[[Miss Seeton]]'' series written by Hamilton Crane and Heron Carvic and I think one other H.C. She is a retired art teacher and has an knack of drawing cartoons that see beneath the surface of character or event.
* Patricia Wentworth wrote 32 novels featuring retired governess turned private investigator Miss Maud Silver.
* Marion Mainwaring wrote a comic novel called ''Murder in Pastiche: or Nine Detectives All at Sea'' featuring pastiches of famous detectives. Miss Fan Sliver was an [[Expy]] of Miss Silver (with touches of Miss Marple) representing the whole school of
* Simon Brett's Mrs. Pargeter is indeed a little old lady. On the other hand, she's the widow of a professional career criminal, and so has access to inside knowledge & contacts, which isn't so little-old-lady-like.
* Ellen [[Mac Gregor]]'s Miss Pickerell.
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