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Little Old Lady Investigates
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There's a subgenre of Mystery Fiction called "Cozy Mysteries", a prevalent trope of which is the little old lady investigator. She is an older lady, usually retired, usually a Cool Old Lady, who has a knack for solving mysteries and who is always solving murders wherever she goes. She's usually an Amateur Sleuth, but occasionally she works for an agency or is a registered PI. The fact that people seem to keep dropping dead around her often makes her a Mystery Magnet. This sub-genre is also known as the "tea cozy mystery". 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. They're easy to underestimate; who suspects that the doddering old local gossip is capable of unraveling their cunning master-plan? Finally, she is frequently protected by Even Evil Has Standards: who would dare to off the nice old lady? Not that the perp thinks she's nice... More realistic takes on the concept have her solving minor misdemeanors and crimes which the police are too busy to solve. The most famous Little Old Lady Investigates character, and the Trope Codifier, is probably Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Where family is present, she's usually why you should Never Mess with Granny. Compare Kid Detective, which could be considered the other extreme of this trope (but unlike it, is not Always Female). Examples |
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The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is about a group of retirees who have a club in their retirement home where they discuss "cold cases", until an actual murder happens on their doorstep. The main investigator, Elizabeth, is a former intelligence operative, the others also have relevant skills. | |
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The Brenda and Effie Mysteries by Paul Magrs follow the adventures of two older ladies- a bed and breakfast hostess and a junk shop owner, respectively, solving supernatural mysteries in Whitby, Yorkshire. The twist? Effie is a witch- though she doesn't realize it at first- and Brenda is the Bride of Frankenstein! | |
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Angel: In the ti-in novel Solitary Man, Mildred Finster is a seventy-one-year-old mystery reader and bored retiree who tries to become an apprentice detective at Angel Investigations. Mildred is good at exploring clues and helps the regular cast stop an Evil Sorcerer. | |
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Riget takes this trope and combines it with Occult Detective in the character of Miss Sigrid Drusse, an elderly spiritist and medium, who takes it upon herself to investigate the supernatural events and stories behind the ghosts haunting the titular hospital. Series creator, Lars von Trier, outright compares her to Miss Marple in his closing monologues. | |
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Granny (from Looney Tunes) in The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries; as this is a kids show, she doesn't solve murders, but gets caught up in terrorist plots or huge international jewel heists instead. | |
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April O'Neil's aunt in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987). | |
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Dave Stone parodied this trope in his 1997 Bernice Summerfield novel Ship of Fools with the character of Agatha Magpole. The inexplicably high rate of murders that occur when this little old lady is around turn out to be caused by her extremely powerful, yet subconscious, psychic abilities, which drive people to homicide. | |
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Charlotte Dickens-Johnson, one of the playable characters from Guilty Party. She's a crime-solving maverick, a serious kung-fu threat, and one half of a crazy Battle Couple with her husband Butch. | |
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In the Discworld, Miss Joan Sanderson-Reeves is a spinster schoolmistress in her probable fifties. She teaches Domestic Science. Clever and prudent observers will register that she teaches Domestic Science at the Assassins' School. In the tale Murder Most 'Orrible, she is tasked with tracking down a serial killer operating in Ankh-Morpork and signing the killer up as an Assassin.note The mode of killing has shown originality and creative excellence in inhumation Before the City Watch get to her first. | |
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Part of Saki's backstory in Hayate the Combat Butler is that her grandmother is the "legendary housemaid" Kijima Rei, who, among other things, has been known to solve mysteries and prevent assassinations. | |
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In the Columbo episode "Murder by the Book," Jack Cassidy and Martin Milner portray the co-authors of the Mrs. Melville mysteries. Columbo creators Levinson and Link would later create Jessica Fletcher. | |
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To a degree, The Sarah Jane Adventures ports the concept over into a sci-fi setting, since it featured beloved Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen, who was in her early sixties when she show began,) as a journalist investigating various alien threats (often smaller-scale than those featured in Doctor Who, but still quite dangerous) around her home in the quaint London suburb of Ealing. One place it doesn't quite match the trope is the typical Beneath Suspicion most examples utilize, pretty much everybody that crosses Sarah Jane's path knows she's incredibly astute and a credible threat to their plans, and try to avoid her or get rid of her when they can. | |
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An episode of the 1998 anime series Master Keaton, "A Case for Ladies", has the titular hero team up with an elderly English woman to solve a murder. The elderly woman displays quite a bit of genre savviness, as she unfavorably compares Keaton to Humphrey Bogart and Steve McQueen. | |
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The mystery movie spoof Murder by Death has many parodies of famous fictional sleuths. Miss Marple is parodied with Miss Jessica Marbles. In a subversion, Miss Marbles isn't the wheelchair-bound old lady who first appears with a triumphant fanfare, but the merely middle-aged ladynote Surprisingly, Elsa Lanchester was about 74 when this movie came out. pushing the wheelchair. The old lady is her former nurse. | |
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Miss Climpson, the chatty, knitting, deeply religious old lady who works for Lord Peter Wimsey, gathering information in places he can't go without arousing suspicion!! And yes, THIS is how the character talks and writes! |
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The Mrs. Hawking play series: Played With in that primary investigator Mrs. Hawking is forty years old and a widow when the story begins, considered outwardly by her Victorian society to be something of a strange old lady. But she is dangerous and physically honed, as much a warrior as she is a detective. | |
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Nastily turned on its head in We Happy Few, which features the "Nosy Old Lady" as an enemy that the player has to avoid, especially if they use stealth since in this game they're a Downer (someone who refuses to take their Joy), which is something that the people of Wellington Wells frown upon... | |
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Wheel Squad: Elderly actress Rosaly did this in one episode. | |
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Rosemary & Thyme, though they are more middle-aged than elderly. One of them, Laura Thyme (played by Pam "the Trunchbull" "Sister Evangelina" Ferris) is an ex-cop; the other, Rosemary Boxer (played, perhaps fittingly, by Felicity "Barbara Good" Kendal), is an ex-biology professor. | |
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Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple has Miss Marple as one of the two eponymous Great Detectives. | |
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Case Closed has one episode where Kogoro is invited to a gathering of other famous detectives in the adult category as opposed to Shinichi's teen detective peers. Numbered among them is a little old lady detective who seems to have worked frequently with the two-fisted man of action private detective perhaps because their opposite strengths combine effectively. This ends up becoming a Subverted Trope since the little old lady uses her status as being Beneath Suspicion to murder her partner, and plans to do the same to everyone else. | |
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Retired Witches Mysteries: The titular characters, who are in their late fifties (or early seventies, in Elsie's case) and wind up investigating murder mysteries. | |
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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. The same goes for another of Alexander McCall Smith's heroines, Isabel Dalhousie of The Sunday Philosophy Club. Isabel is only in her forties, though, but is definitely nosy enough. One review has even described it in terms of tea and coziness. |
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Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity has its own twist: Dimity is dead. She communicates with Lori, the daughter of her oldest friend, by way of a magical journal. Lori and her husband Bill (a attorney specializing in estate planning) are among those who do the legwork in the material realm. | |
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In Pound Puppies, McLeash's favorite show features a character. | |
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Arnold's Granny in Hey Arnold! does this sometimes. Except one wonders whether she's not senile... | |
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Dame Agatha's Tuppence Beresford of the Tommy and Tuppence books uses many aspects of the Little Old Lady Investigates (in the later books - the Beresfords age in real time), but isn't a pure version because she prefers to work on instinct, has a partner in her husband Tommy, and often works under the auspices of an official branch of the government. In N or M?, though, she essentially plays this straight while undercover as a doddering housewife and acting essentially as an independent agent. | |
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