Mostly Murders

To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second-hand the delights and dangers of adventure.

Book review of The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie, book 1 in the Tommy and Tuppence series.

You’ve probably heard of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s two iconic sleuth characters. Tommy and Tuppence are a lesser-known duo who only appear in five books, but they are worth checking out if you are in the mood for something fun, light-hearted and different.

Tommy and Tuppence are two young people who, like many others at the time, find themselves out of work and frightfully low on funds after the First World War. Longing for adventure and in desperate need of income, the two of them rather randomly decide to start a joint venture as adventurers. Unfortunately for them, they have no idea what their venture should entail. But fortune favours the brave, and before long the two of them are deeply entangled in a mysterious affair involving the sinking of the RMS Lusitania ocean liner, secret documents, and a young woman named Jane Finn.

The Secret Adversary is not a murder mystery or whodunnit. If you go into this story expecting Poirot or Miss Marple, you will probably find yourself disappointed. This is, as the opening quote suggests, a story of adventure and danger, and the main characters are young, modern and penniless, and, unlike Poirot and Miss Marple, completely new to sleuthing. There are no high-society family dinners in countryside estates with suspicious heirs and tangled alibies, no missing wills, witness statements or village gossip.

Instead you get lots of witty banter, action, two different POVs as the chapters alternate between Tommy and Tuppence, light romance, betrayal, secret identities, political intrigue, suspicious foreigners, beautiful women, rich men, and a plucky young couple with undeniable chemistry who refuse to give in or give up on each other, even when faced with a secret adversary so dangerous that even his own criminal accomplices fear his every move.

Mystery – Crime classic