Agatha Christie in the context of "The Murder at the Vicarage"

Hampstead (/ˈhæmpstɪd, -stɛd/) is an area in London, England, which lies 4 miles (6.4 km) northwest of Charing Cross, located mainly in the London Borough of Camden, with a small part in the London Borough of Barnet. It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsize Park to the south and is surrounded from the northeast by Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland.

Hampstead is known for its intellectual, artistic, liberal, and literary associations. It contains a number of listed buildings, such as Burgh House, Kenwood House, the Spaniard's Inn, and the Everyman cinema. With some of the most expensive housing in London, Hampstead has had many notable residents, both past and present, including King Constantine II of Greece and his wife Queen Anne Marie, Helena Bonham Carter, Agatha Christie, T. S. Eliot, Jon English, Sigmund Freud, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Jim Henson, George Orwell, Harry Styles, Jedward, Tim Burton, Martin Freeman and Elizabeth Taylor. As of 2004, Hampstead has been home to more Prime Ministers, and contains more millionaires within its boundaries, than any other area of the United Kingdom.

Jane Marple, better known as Miss Marple, is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the fictional English village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930 and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.

Hercule Poirot (UK: /ˈɛərkjuːl ˈpwɑːroʊ/ , US: /hɜːrˈkjuːl pwɑːˈroʊ/ ) is a fictional Belgian detective created by the English writer Agatha Christie. Poirot is Christie's most famous and longest-running character, appearing in 33 novels, two plays (Black Coffee and Alibi) and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975.

Poirot is noted for his distinctive appearance, including his waxed moustache and fastidious dress, as well as for his reliance on logic, psychology, and what he terms his “little grey cells” to solve cases.

Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov (/ustinɒv/ OO-sti-nov; 16 April 1921 – 28 March 2004) was a British actor and humanitarian. An internationally known raconteur, he was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits for much of his career. Ustinov received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Silver Bear, and a Grammy Award as well as was nominated for three BAFTA Awards, two Tony Awards, and two Laurence Olivier Awards. In 1992, Ustinov was awarded with the British Academy Britannia Award.

Ustinov received two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Spartacus (1960), and Topkapi (1964). He also starred in notable films such as Quo Vadis (1951), The Sundowners (1960), Billy Budd (1962), and Hot Millions (1968). He voiced Prince John and King Richard in the Walt Disney Animated film Robin Hood (1973), and portrayed Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot six times for both film and television.

St Mary Mead is a fictional village created by popular crime fiction author Dame Agatha Christie.

The quaint, sleepy village was home to the renowned detective spinster Miss Marple. However, Christie first described a village of that name prior to Marple's introduction, in the 1928 Hercule Poirot novel The Mystery of the Blue Train. In that novel, St Mary Mead is home to the book's protagonist Katherine Grey. It is not the same village as Miss Marple's home, being in a different county. The village was first mentioned in a Miss Marple book in 1930, when it was the setting for the first Marple novel, The Murder at the Vicarage.

The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club on 18 June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The thirteen stories feature the amateur detective Miss Marple, her nephew Raymond West, and her friend Sir Henry Clithering. They are the earliest stories Christie wrote about Miss Marple. The main setting for the frame story is the fictional village of St Mary Mead.

Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1976 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £3.50 and the US edition for $7.95.

The book features Miss Marple. Released posthumously, it was the last published Christie novel, although not the last Miss Marple novel in order of writing. The story is explicitly set in 1944 but the first draft of the novel was possibly written during the Blitz in 1940. Miss Marple aids a young couple who choose to uncover events in the wife's past life, and not let sleeping murder lie.