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A thirty-four-year old murder is solved. Olof Palme, Sweden’s Prime Minister assassinated in 1986, was killed by Stig Engstrom. As he took his own life two decades ago, the case which puzzled the country for a generation is finally closed. Our pulse quickened when we heard police might have a breakthrough over the abduction of Madeleine McCann. Our own daughter was born a fortnight after Madeleine and as a small child, knowing the story, wouldn’t sleep alone upstairs. I can barely imagine the family’s agony, awaiting closure. This week the three-part Salisbury Poisonings will be shown on �鶹�� 1. MyAnna Buring who plays Dawn Sturgiss, mother-of-three killed collaterally by Novichok, talks in the Radio Times of the need to remember “the real human beings affected by” unsolved cases that grip our imagination. Some striking detective novelists – GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, PD James – have been writers of deep personal faith. Jane Marple, like her creator, kept a copy of the Imitation of Christ by her bedside. In The Christian World of Agatha Christie, Nick Baldock describes detective fiction as a “distinctively moral… distinctively theological genre… Questions of guilt and judgement are inherent within even the most implausible… whodunnit.” The Bible describes a number of perplexing cases. Eglon, enormously obese king of Moab, was receiving tribute from the Israelite ambassador Ehud. His staff later returned to find his door locked, and assumed he was relieving himself… until they waited so long they forced the door, found the king dead and the murder weapon hidden in his folds of fat. How was it done? Ehud, being left-handed, had strapped his sword to his right thigh, where royal friskers wouldn’t look, did the dreaded deed then locked the door behind him and had long escaped by the time the corpse was found. There is an even deeper reason why mystery and its resolution are close to the mind of God. Who killed Abel? Only God, it seems, knew Cain’s secret: no one can hide from the Almighty. So what do Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Dalgliesh and Miss Marple have in common? Here’s a clue… God asked Solomon to pick one gift. Wisdom, the king chose, to administer true justice. God was so pleased he threw in longevity and riches for free. And then presented Solomon with his first mystery. Two single mothers came to the king for help. One had woken to find a dead baby at her breast… then realised her child had been stolen and swapped. But the other said the same: the living child was hers. With brutal but brilliant insight the king called for a sword to cut the baby in half and make it fair. Immediately the true mother cried out that she’d rather give her child away. God had indeed imparted His wisdom to Solomon. Most of us judge by appearances, and are easily deceived. But the detective, like God Himself, sees right into the human heart.