Reading Agatha Christie in Order Book 11: Partners in Crime

 

First published: 1929. Christie's eleventh book overall and second short story collection. This is the second outing, following 1922´s The Secret Adversary, for those young adventurers Tommy and Tuppence - now Mr and Mrs Beresford.

Title: Quite dynamic. Taken with this vintage cover, it kind of looks like they're the ones committing the crimes, which isn't generally the case. Actually, I'm not at all sure what's going on in this cover picture. Why is the dog there? Why is there some kind of shadow monster involved? Mysterious.

Plot: Tommy is "more or less in the Secret Service now, but it's pure office work", according to his wife. Tuppence, meanwhile, unsuited to the role of housewife, yearns for something exciting to happen. ("This craving for vulgar sensation alarms me," observes Tommy reprovingly.) Something exciting does indeed happen, when they more or less accidentally take over a detective agency, Blunt's Brilliant Detectives. (Really it's at the behest of Tommy's boss at MI5 or wherever, and there's an overarching plot which is something to do with Russians and the number 16. I'm still not entirely sure what that was all about.)

Anyway, the T's, together with Albert as office boy, are soon installed in "a somewhat dilapidated building in Bloomsbury", ready to undertake any private detective business that comes through the door while waiting for the number 16 thing to happen. 

Tommy decides, for amusement, to model himself on a succession of famous fictional detectives; most of these are long forgotten (Thornley Colton? the Okewood brothers? anyone?), although both Sherlock Holmes and a certain M. Hercule Poirot (and his little grey cells) get a mention. I've definitely heard of them.

The investigations range from murder to the rather less lethal - a man trying to track down his fiancée, another trying to solve his girlfriend's challenge of figuring out how she could have been in two places at one time. (The solution is... disappointing.)  Ultimately the number 16 stuff comes to fruition, with danger on all sides. And it ends with the promise of a new chapter in the life of Mr and Mrs Beresford.

Americans with silly names: Mrs Cortlandt Van Snyder of Detroit. (Russians with silly names: Prince Vladiroffsky.)

Acceptable in the 20s? I didn't notice any issues - at least, not in the cheap modern e-book edition I have. It's always possible it's been bowdlerised, though. 

Verdict: I was looking forward to this - short stories make a change, and I know they're not everyone's cup of tea but personally I find Tommy and Tuppence quite fun. I like their sparky dialogue. However, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would - the stories are very inconsequential, and nothing that happened really stuck in my mind. 

There is some fun dialogue, though - I liked this exchange between Tuppence and a young woman, Monica, who the agency helps- I'm not sure Tuppence is entirely correct, but it does seem to happen a lot in the fiction of the time!

 "Well - there are two men who - who - want to marry me." [said Monica]

"The usual story, I suppose? One rich, one poor, and the poor one is the one you like!" 

"I don't know how you know all these things," murmured the girl. 

"That's a sort of law of Nature," explained Tuppence. "It happens to everybody. It happened to me."

Next up: The Mysterious Mr Quin. This should be intriguing...

Reading Agatha Christie in Order Book 2: The Secret Adversary

Preceded by: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Secret Adversary (a snappy title, thankfully not called The Mysterious Affair of the Missing Treaty or similar) is Agatha Christie's second published novel (in 1922) and the first to feature those bright young adventurers Tommy and Tuppence. Not everyone's cup of tea, I know - indeed, Robert Barnard in his book on Christie described them as "everyone's least favourite Christie sleuths". A little harsh.

They are swiftly introduced, both stony broke in the aftermath of the First World War - ex-V.A.D. Tuppence (aka Miss Prudence Cowley), the fifth daughter of an Archdeacon, desperate to avoid returning home to a world of "housework and mothers' meetings"; Tommy, a former soldier, now lacking both work and family after the death of his mother. I'm sure I must have read this before at some point, but I didn't remember it at all.

    "'Money, money, money!" [Tuppence bursts out, foreshadowing ABBA] "I think about money morning, noon and night! I dare say it's mercenary of me, but there it is!"

    "Same here," agreed Tommy with feeling.'

Relatable, for anyone who's ever experienced financial struggles.

In pursuit of the much needed cash, T&T decide to set themselves up as adventurers for hire, “no unreasonable offer refused”, possibly not a path down which most of us would choose to go, but I daresay it seemed like a good idea at the time. Sure enough, they’re soon mixed up in a frenetic plot involving secret government papers handed over for safekeeping to a mysterious American girl (Jane Finn, a name which everyone seems to regard as most peculiar, which is especially inexplicable given that one of the characters calls herself "Tuppence") during the sinking of the Lusitania.

Agatha's natural conservatism filters through, with some nonsense about "Bolshevists" fomenting red revolution in Britain ("Bolshevist gold pouring into the country" to this end, no less) and behind it all - behind literally everything in the world - a shadowy Mr Big, a mysterious master criminal of astounding power but unknown motive. The looming threats of a general strike and a Labour government hover darkly in the background as T&T set out in pursuit of the secret papers and the vanished Jane Finn.

All "good reactionary fun, if you're in the mood for that kind of thing", as Robert Barnard describes it.

Christie Xenophobia Watch: There are quite a few dodgy foreigners - a man described as a "Russian or a Pole" is unattractive, "fair, with a weak, unpleasant face" (and is amusingly called Boris). Germans get a poor press too, although that’s probably not surprising given the immediately post-war era. Americans, of course - the men, anyway - are rich and brash and called things like Julius P. Hersheimmer.

Curiously, given the unlikely explanation which would be offered a few years later for Agatha’s famous disappearance in 1926, a plot point here is that one character apparently suffers from amnesia...

Anyway, the plot is obviously preposterous and definitely intended as a fun romp of a thriller rather than the brilliantly plotted mysteries for which she became best known. (Agatha would return periodically to this type of story throughout her career.) That said, she keeps her secrets and misleads her readers well, and when the identity of “Mr Brown” is finally disclosed, out of all the possible suspects it wasn’t the one I’d expected. A talent to deceive, indeed - she led me right up the garden path.

T&T are widely regarded as being irritating, but I found their light-hearted, sparky dialogue fun, although as they’re apart for much of the story - both getting into separate lots of trouble - there’s less of it than there might be. And although allegedly just friends (from childhood), it will surprise no readers that they're engaged by the end of the story, set to embark on a married life which both confidently expect to be "a damned good sport!".

A story which is inevitably of its era -  a hundred years ago! - in many ways, betraying several of the attitudes one might expect. Nevertheless, Tuppence is definitely a modern young woman who brooks no nonsense, so I'll end by just leaving this here:

    '"I'll look after her, sir," said Tommy.

    "And I'll look after you," retorted Tuppence, resenting the manly assertion.'

Next up: #3 The Murder on the Links. Back to Poirot!