You know that old TV advertisement for a particular brand of potato chips that says, "Bet you can't eat just one"? That's sort of the way I feel about reading Agatha Christie mysteries: I'd bet you can't read just one. Not when Christie wrote so many - and so many different kinds. For example, Christie wrote so many fine series mysteries, with so many different detectives, that it's difficult to decide to follow just one. Hercule Poirot! Parker Pyne! Mr. Satterthwaite and Harley Quin! Miss Marple! You get the idea.
And then there were Tommy and Tuppence. The Beresfords. The young (at the outset) couple whom Christie would put into some appallingly dangerous situations in stories which were far more thrillers than detective stories. The first of those was a delightful little book called The Secret Adversary. Here's what I had to say about it when I reviewed it nearly a decade ago - again, with some minor editing done to update references and so forth.
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When we talk about an Agatha Christie book, we are usually talking about a really clever mystery, with a complicated and twisting plot, some brilliant detective work, and a villain whose identity usually surprises us. We don’t think that often of a straightforward thriller-type book. But Agatha Christie did write thrillers as well as more cerebral mysteries. Consider the case of her second published book, The Secret Adversary.
Agatha Christie’s first novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, starring Hercule Poirot, and it dates back to 1920. It was what we would consider a typical Christie mystery. But her second book, published in 1922, was quite different – much more a thriller, in the style of, say, Edgar Wallace or Sax Rohmer. The Secret Adversary introduces us to a young man named Thomas Beresford and a young woman named Prudence Cowley – whose friends call her Tuppence. Over the course of her career, Christie would write a total of four novels and more than a dozen short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence, most featuring a fair amount of action, with some espionage and, to be sure, a super-villain thrown in.
Certainly, that’s the pattern we find in The Secret Adversary. It begins on board the Lusitania, the liner torpedoed by the Germans in 1916 during what we now call the First World War. Most of the action, however, takes place a few years later, in England. Tommy, who had been a lieutenant during World War I (then called only “The Great War”), and Tuppence, who had worked in an army hospital during the war, meet at a time when neither can find a job. They decide to form a new company, which they will call “The Young Adventurers, Limited” offering themselves up to anyone willing to pay them for some kind of adventure. Or, as their proposed newspaper ad will read, “Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.”
They very quickly find their adventure. Tuppence is hired by someone who wants her to go off to France to impersonate a missing American girl. But it quickly becomes clear that there is a great deal more at stake here than a mere impersonation. Tuppence and Tommy become involved as unofficial investigators for England’s secret service, trying to locate that missing American girl, and to find a document believed to be in her possession which apparently could be catastrophic if it ever became public.
In addition, the young adventurers are told, they must be particularly careful about their chief opponent – a man known only as “Mr. Brown.” Nobody seems to know what this super-criminal looks like, including the people who do his bidding. We encounter Mr. Brown in a series of guises, usually appearing as an apparently minor character in some nefarious plot. It is only when the events of the novel reach their climax that we will discover – in the course of some very Christie-like plot twists – the true nature of the plot and the true identity of Mr. Brown.
I’m probably not doing justice to the plot of this novel, or to Agatha Christie, for that matter. As was usually the case, there are elements of the detective story woven through the thriller material, and a number of remarkable red herrings are used to send the reader – and Tommy and Tuppence, for that matter – off in the wrong direction. As for the master villain, he is truly a fine character, particularly in his various offstage appearances. I’m always a little amazed at these characters who manage to create complex plots to take over the world, and build huge criminal organizations, while leading double lives that one would think would not allow enough time for such complexity.
But “The Secret Adversary” was written in an age when such stories – and such characters – were legion, and it’s worth noting that Christie managed to create a truly excellent cast of characters and enliven the book with enough action, kidnappings, escapes and near-misses to make it very much worth reading. I think it’s also worth quoting the dedication of this book, as Christie wrote it. She says –
To all those who lead monotonous lives, in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.
I think that really does sum up The Secret Adversary quite well. As with many other Agatha Christie novels, there are several different editions of the book, all of them in print; there are even some Kindle editions. For a book that was first published more than 95 years ago, it holds up remarkably well.
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To listen to the original podcast review, please click here.
Next week, a different Christie and completely different kind of book: The Labors of Hercules.
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