Last week, I promised that the next mystery to be pried up out of the Classic Mysteries vault would be another Agatha Christie book - one without either Miss Marple or Monsieur Poirot. Instead, I offer you a pair of very likeable and adventuresome detectives, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. In this outing from the 1920s, the Beresfords were quite young indeed, which is part of their charm today, and the couple, being unsure exactly how detectives were supposed to act, chose to look back at other contemporary fictional Great Detectives for guidelines on how to behave. The book, a series of short stories linked within a larger frame, is called Partners in Crime, and here, suitably edited, is what I had to say about it on the Classic Mysteries podcast, nearly a decade ago:
- 0 -
In the London of the late 1920s, a young couple takes over the running of a down-at-the-heels private detective agency. It’s not the kind of job where you can simply walk in and go right to work. It requires some ideas about procedure, about how to begin solving mysteries. Perhaps that’s why the couple decides to go with what they know – and put the techniques of famous fictional criminal detectives to work for them. You’ll know the couple – Agatha Christie’s adventuring young partners, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. And the other fictional detectives? They are the supporting staff of Partners in Crime, by Agatha Christie.
Partners in Crime is a collection of fifteen short stories given a framework and tidied up a bit to look more like a novel. The stories originally appeared between 1923 and 1928, and the book itself appeared in 1930. It was the second book to feature Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, the bright young couple who appeared earlier in the thriller, The Secret Adversary. In Partners in Crime, the Beresfords – with Tommy now a comfortable 32 years old – find themselves somewhat bored with life. They are contacted by Tommy’s old secret service boss, who invites them to help hunt for an elusive master spy by taking over a somewhat shady private detective agency. Tommy and Tuppence agree, of course, and we get into the heart of the stories, as different clients bring them a variety of puzzling cases.
Tommy and Tuppence having little formal detective training between them, decide to turn to popular fiction and model themselves on a variety of different detectives. This is the concept which animates Partners in Crime, and makes it a real joy to read, for all the short stories really are loving parodies of some of the great detectives of the era. And they can be quite funny.
In the story called “The Affair of the Pink Pearl,” for example, Tommy tries his best Sherlock Holmes imitation on a new client, a young woman who has just come into the office. Having observed a Holmesian clue, he says to the young woman – quoting now:
[H]e lay back for a minute, half closed his eyes and remarked in a tired tone: “You must find traveling in a bus very crowded at this time of day.”
“I came in a taxi,” said the girl.
“Oh!” said Tommy aggrieved. His eyes rested reproachfully on a blue bus ticket protruding from her glove. The girl’s eyes followed his glance, and she smiled and drew it out.
“You mean this? I picked it up on the pavement. A little neighbor of ours collects them.”
Tuppence coughed, and Tommy threw a baleful glare at her.
That’s a pretty good example of the kind of humor you can expect to find in these parodies – can you imagine what Sherlock Holmes’s reaction might have been if his observations had led him to make a similar error?
Holmes, of course, is far from the only detective parodied. Each short story features a parody of at least one famous detective and the author who created him. You’ll find some familiar names, particularly if you follow some of the authors we’ve discussed in these reviews. Tommy or Tuppence (or both) will take on the mannerisms, detecting style and personalities of such luminaries as R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke, G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Freeman Wills Croft’s Inspector French and H. C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune. There are also references to authors almost completely forgotten today – Isabel Ostrander and her detectives Tommy McCarty and Dennis Riordan, for example, and Valentine Williams’ detective brothers, Francis and Desmond Okewood.
In addition to the parodies, of course, the stories themselves are mostly worthwhile. Some of them are fairly simple and straightforward, but – this being a book by Agatha Christie – you can always count on things not being quite what they may seem. As for the spy story which forms an outline for the novel, it too will be resolved quite neatly at the end of the book. I suspect you’ll be intrigued and certainly amused by this fine collection of stories.
Oh – I should mention one other detective whose character and style are parodied in Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime. The very last one – satirized in the wrapup to the spy story - is a short little man with a magnificent moustache, a detective who prides himself on using his little grey cells to solve the most mysterious crimes – a Belgian detective named Hercule Poirot. Thank you, Mrs. Christie. Readers, you have been warned.
- 0 -
You can listen to the complete audio review by clicking here.
Next: Before Midnight, by Rex Stout.
Comments