Holmes, Marple & Poe: The Greatest Crime-Solving Team of the Twenty-First Century

Poe is one of the protagonists of Holmes, Marple & Poe. He is named after American author Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings in multiple genres include some of the first detective stories ever written. Patterson and Sitts’s Poe, like his historical antecedent, uses alcohol as a coping mechanism.

Poe is flirtatious and charming, though he keeps his sexual partners at an emotional distance, as he continues to grieve over a woman named Annie, who died under circumstances not disclosed in the book but for which Poe blames himself. Her name is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s elegiac poem “Annabel Lee,” the speaker of which grieves a young woman’s death. Over the course of the novel, Poe begins a romantic relationship with NYPD Detective Helene Grey, which, unlike his previous sexual encounters, contains an emotional connection. Though this emotional intimacy is significant for Poe, he still keeps Grey at arm’s length, frequently ending their romantic or sexual encounters with formal communication. This keeps their professional relationship the primary means of interaction between them.

Poe seeks thrills, frequently through fast driving. He collects sports cars, a hobby that he shared with Annie. He purchases cars produced in the year she was born as a form of commemoration. Poe is more physically engaged than the other two detectives; in altercations during their investigations, Poe is most likely to be the one chasing or fighting a suspect (as when he and Holmes pursue the Siglik brothers), emphasizing the novel’s theme of The Thrill of the Chase. Poe’s character is relatively static in the novel, though references to his continued anguish over Annie’s death and his burgeoning relationship with Grey suggest that he will face personal growth in subsequent volumes in the series.

Marple is one of the protagonists in Holmes, Marple & Poe. She is loosely based on Agatha Christie’s character Miss Jane Marple and has several qualities in common with the elderly detective of Christie’s stories. Marple’s similarities to her literary antecedent are less pronounced and less significant to the plot than those of her colleagues; while Holmes’s heroin use (a parallel to Sherlock Holmes’s cocaine use), for example, recurs in the novel, Marple’s penchant for sherry functions more as an “Easter egg” for readers who know Christie than as any significant plot element.

Marple, like Christie’s Miss Marple, loves to study human nature. Marple is accordingly the member of the investigative firm with the most finely tuned social skills. She uses these talents both to aid clients and to target suspects. When Addilyn Charles is afraid of going on the ransom drop-off alone, as demanded by Zozi’s supposed kidnappers, she requests Marple’s soothing presence to bolster her courage. Similarly, when the private investigators need to get information on art thief Luca Franke, Marple puts on a false persona to fool Franke into believing that she’s a potential customer for his ill-gotten masterpieces.

Marple is, moreover, the most empathetic of the three detectives, reflecting the theme of Gender and Detective Styles. She dwells on the victims of violent crime (particularly, she notes, when these victims are women) and shows considerable care to their families. In the final chapters of the novel, Marple personally returns Lucy Ferry’s remains to her parents in Texas and listens to them talk about their deceased daughter, reflecting how sharing these memories may provide some comfort to the young woman’s parents.

When the three detectives are falsely apprehended by the police at the novel’s climax, Marple reveals her considerable legal knowledge, which she jokingly attests comes from either watching television or attending law school. Like those of the other two members of her investigative firm, Marple’s identity is unclear; in the novel’s final pages, she alludes to the fact that “Margaret Marple” is an assumed identity.

Grey is an ally to the three protagonists of the novel, a love interest for Poe, and a member of the NYPD. Grey is initially skeptical of the private investigators, though (unlike Police Commissioner Boolin, for example) her mistrust does not seem to arise from a broad dislike of police consultants. Rather, Grey rightfully assumes that the link between the names of the three investigators and those of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and Edgar Allan Poe means that Marple, Holmes, and Poe are living under assumed identities. Grey initially looks into the true identities of the trio but backs off when her pursuit of information turns up nothing concrete—and as she begins to develop greater respect for the three detectives.

Though sometimes frustrated by Marple, Holmes, and Poe’s unorthodox detecting methods, Grey is also willing to bend the rules for the greater good. For Grey, this usually means failing to report or prevent illegal activity rather than committing illegal acts herself, though she does threaten the handyman of a building with brutality after he pulls a gun on her and Marple toward the end of the novel. This indicates that Grey will perhaps, in later installments in the series, be pulled further away from her strict interpretation of the rules of policing and become more involved in the relativistic morality of Marple, Holmes, and Poe, which does not necessarily align with what is legal or police procedure.

Police Commissioner Boolin is a minor antagonist in the novel. He is introduced when the three private investigators insist on seeing him to present evidence in the Sloane Stone case. Boolin, who dislikes private investigators, is suspicious; his antipathy to the trio becomes more pointed when they embarrass him at a press conference announcing that Sloane’s killer has been apprehended.

Boolin’s status as an antagonist is characterized less by his desire for personal gain and more by an overly strong faith in structures of policing and political power. Boolin is not framed as inherently inflexible; when he discovers that Poe has hacked the NYPD database, he does not arrest the private eye for the transgression—though he does use the knowledge as leverage to force Marple, Poe, and Holmes to collaborate with the NYPD on the Siglik case.

At the end of the novel, Boolin allies with Mayor Rollins, even after the mayor faces disgrace for accepting illegal campaign contributions from Bain. Boolin is suggested as a potential recurring antagonist in subsequent installments in the series.