"Does a Woman's Instinct Make Her a Good Detective?" is the title of a short article by Agatha Christie which was published in The Star on 14 May 1928. This was to promote her short story The Thumb Mark of St. Peter which was being published in The Royal Magazine. This article was reprinted as an addendum in Murder, She Said: The Quotable Miss Marple published by HarperCollins in 2019.
In her article Christie considers the question of whether there is such a thing as a "woman's instinct"--or as she says one hears a woman saying "I couldn't say; I just knew". Here she suggests that there is a difference between the way men and women approach a problem. Men prefer to do it methodically and steadily: "It may be slow, but it usually gets there in the end, and if it does not get there, it still gets somewhere not very far away." As for the proverbial Mrs Smith, she may be "magnificently right – but if not she is wildly wrong." Here she says that "Women are not methodical; they are tidy quite often, but methodical – no. Very few women are good housekeepers even while they have nothing else to do." (The reader must wonder if she really believed it, considering how carefully she plotted her stories before writing them). Nonetheless, "in a private or personal capacity", women do make good detectives because they notice things which men do not notice, provided the subject matters to them or interests them. They know, for example what is going on with their neighbours. "There is no deceiving them. They just know! Because, you see, they are interested. The Whites live next door, and the Robinsons just over the way. And that is what matters in this life."