'The butler did it!' Mysterious memes for amateur detectives feeding on Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes

Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer

Aug 27, 2026 7:45 AM EDT

Are you ready to investigate and find out who did it?

For all mystery lovers, solving a case is a lifelong dream. We've seen so many movies and TV shows and read so many books that sometimes we even know the procedure better than the authorities themselves. We grew up with Nancy Drew, and later we found out about the queen of mystery, Agatha Christie. Did you know she disappeared for eleven days and no one could find her anywhere? Her car was abandoned on the side of the road, in the middle of a blizzard, and no one had any clue where she had gone. They even contacted other mystery writers to see if they could figure out what had happened to her. The case went so viral (or as viral as you could get in the 1920s), that her picture was all over the papers, and that's how they found her! She had checked into a hotel under her husband's lover's last name, and was only found out because another guest recognized her face from the papers. Apparently, she was experiencing some serious memory loss. We just call it being an iconic queen.

And what about Sherlock Holmes and his author, Arthur Conan Doyle? He got the inspiration for the character from one of his college professors, who was extremely smart and very good at deductions. Doyle exaggerated the characteristics of this professor for his character, but what a way to create something so interesting and enthralling! Art imitates life, after all.

Anyway, after all the books, novels, and TV shows inspired by them (we're looking at you, Glass Onion, The Mentalist, etcetera etcetera), we got to mystery podcasts. No matter if we're doing laundry, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, or meal prepping for the week, we're always listening to some kind of complex and convoluted story about crazy people who leave clues all over the place. Our heads run at a hundred miles per hour, trying to figure it all out before the narrator gets to the end. It's so fun and so captivating. And do you know what's also fun? Mystery memes! The only thing better than a good mystery story is a good mystery laugh.