The Secret Adversary (Tommy and Tuppence Book One) by Agatha Christie

 

The Secret Adversary (Tommy ad Tuppence Book One) by Agatha Christie.

The edition published 1st January 2015 by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

Agatha Christie’s first Tommy & Tuppence book is a thrill-packed novel of international intrigue, murder and suspense.

Tommy and Tuppence, two young people short of money and restless for excitement, embark on a daring business scheme – Young Adventurers Ltd.

Their advertisement says they are ‘willing to do anything, go anywhere’.

But their first assignment, for the sinister Mr Whittington, plunges them into more danger than they ever imagined…

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London, 1922: Old friends Tommy Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley meet by accident on a London street, after not having seen each other since the Great War. Both are struggling to find work in even in the most boring and menial jobs available to them in these straightened times. Over tea and buns at a Lyons Corner House they decide that the only way left open to them to make some money is to strike out on their own, and so a new business venture The Young Adventurers, Ltd is born - with the advertising slogan ‘willing to do anything, go anywhere’.

Their first client, the rather dodgy Mr Whittington, finds them tied up in an adventure that brings rather more than the financial gain they bargained for. Their attempts to trace a missing young woman called Jane Finn, who is in possession of some documents vital to the British government following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, leads them into danger. Can Tommy and Tuppence save the day... and their own skins?

The Secret Adversary is the first book in the Tommy and Tuppence series by Agatha Christie, and my first one featuring this young couple of thrill-seeking adventurers. I was not too sure about this one to start with, as it begins in a rather left of centre Enid Blyton does Agatha Christie sort of way with the young childhood friends mostly concerned with dreams of adventure, and consuming lashings of tea and buns, but the story gets menacing quite rapidly, and the sinister characters come thick and fast.

There is certainly plenty of adventure on the cards for Tommy and Tuppence as they get to work to find Jane Finn, with shady shenanigans, abductions, false identities, and a mysterious character called Mr Brown who is at the centre of it all. The action is quite reminiscent of the kind of underhand goings on in The Man in the Brown Suit, and the dynamic between Tommy and Tuppence is like that between Bobby and Frankie in Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, with their complimentary styles adding up into something more than the sum of its parts. I absolutely loved both of those stories, so this was a bonus for me.

Surprisingly, for a book that starts out in quite an unsophisticated way, Christie does a sterling job in developing complexity in the story, and the way she misdirects you is delicious. As the threads twist about, you find yourself not knowing who to trust, especially when it comes to the identity of the criminal mastermind Mr Brown, and Christie touches on some quite deep political and social themes among all the daring melodrama. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole tale, and the unconventional romance that brings Tommy and Tuppence together at the end is lovely. I cannot wait to read the rest of the them working on more exciting adventures as a married couple.

This book was my September choice for #ReadChristie2022, as a story 'with a female adventurer'. I read the book, and listened to the excellent audio book narrated by Hugh Fraser (aka Captain Hastings). 

The Secret Adversary is available to buy now in multiple formats.

About the author:

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.