The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

The Book: 

    In her second outing, Agatha Christie wrote a breezy thriller novel centered around Prudence Crowley, aka Tuppence, and her life long friend Tommy Beresford. The book begins with a woman receiving a mysterious bag just as the Lusitania sinks. Tommy and Tuppance meet by chance just after The Great War in London for tea and complain about how they are too broke to continue living in the city Tuppence, who dislikes the drudgery of the work in a hospital she has to date been doing suggests they become professional adventurers. To this end, they decide to form the Young Adventurers and advertise their services. But upon leaving the tea shop, Tuppence is offered a job by a man named Whittaker who has overheard snatches of the conversation and wants Tuppence to impersonate someone in Paris. When asked her name, Tuppence lies easily, giving him instead the name of Jane Finn, the idea of the name having been planted by Tommy because he has overhead the name recently. Whittaker freaks out, asking if Rita has been loose lipped. 

Tuppence relays the little adventure to Tommy and the decide to post an ad in the newspapers for information about Jane Finn. They receive two responses. One from the mysterious Mr. Carter who explains Jane Finn was the woman on the Lusitania. As the ship sank, a spy handed her an important treaty, the viability of which sank with the ship. If the public got wind of the treaty, it is feared the crown will fall and tyrannical socialists, led by the shadowy spy Mr. Brown, will take over the country. Tommy and Tuppence are asked if they will try and find the document. Needing the money, and craving the adventure, they agree. 

Julius Hersheimmer is the other person willing and answer questions about Jane. He explains he is the rich heir of an American tycoon and Jane is his cousin. He wishes to mend fences in the family, if he can find her. He offers to pay Tommy and Tuppence for their help. Being poor, they agree to let him fund it. 

They find Rita, their best lead pretty quickly and from here Tommy and Tuppence each have a separate adventure as they track down Mr. Brown, who quickly kills Rita. Rita's friend, and perhaps lover, Sir James Peel Edgerton, KC, joins the hunt 

More hijinks ensue, including Mr. Hersheimmer buying a Rolls Royce, a French maid named Annette helps first Tommy and then Tuppence, Mr. Carter disavows the Young Adventurers, Sir James reasons beautifully, and so, so many trains. 

My Thoughts

This book is Agatha Christie's first thriller. Like The Mysterious Affair at Styles, this is a breezy read. I can't help but think, since Christie puts so much emphasis on how many coincidences there are in the plot, she is poking gentle fun of the genre, which is just beginning to become popular. There is a slight mystery, that of who murdered Rita, which we know is Mr. Brown, but just who is he? This book shows how new she was to writing novels. She has a major plot mistake in this book, that as to date, nobody has pointed out. 

Tommy ends up being the one to deliver the denouement, but he can't possibly know the plot twist. As the book draws to a close, Tuppence is forced to write Tommy a letter planting a red herring, but she intentionally misspells her own name, so Tommy is not fooled. From this, Tommy deduces who would have known that her name is misspelled, and therefore cannot be Mr. Brown. But though he knows Tuppence sent a letter to one of the suspects, because that person showed him the letter, he cannot possibly know for certain that she did not send one to the other suspect. Early on in the book, Tommy and Tuppence part ways and only cross paths briefly in the climax, with no time to catch up on what has happened between here and there. Although the reader knows, and should be able to work out the identity of Mr. Brown, Tommy cannot know. This is not a mistake I have ever seen in any other book, and was so glaring when I read it, that I thought surely somebody must have remarked upon it before now. 

As a mystery writer, I find it interesting, because mystery plot are so complicated, and as we are matching wits, reader to detective, it is important to write the clues and deductive scenarios in a way that is fair, so the reader has more fun. But it is absolutely essential that the checklist of clues be delivered at the end so that the reader will know either how they got it correct, or why they got it wrong. It is so easy to get caught up in my own internal logic, that getting that denouement is beyond difficult. So it doesn't surprise me that a writer would make a mistake. Usually, writers ask readers to make a deduction too many, or a clue too subtle and as a result the internal logic of the mystery falls apart a little bit. 

Here, we have the opposite. The reader, in a bit of what ought to be dramatic irony, knows more that the detective. And yet, Christie makes him say it. After a hundred years, very few people have figured it out. So all in all, not badly done, Agatha. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

 This book is part of a special edition set bound in leatherette. It, by far, is the oldest book I have checked out my library.  I know that because it still has it's original checkout card sleeve from back in the day when the card was what you used to check out a book. I do not know who purchased this set of books for the library back in the day, but they chose well. And fortunately my community has a bunch of gentle readers. This book is printed on sturdy paper, heavier even than standard printer paper. It has held up to the test of time.  There are no markings saying what date the library put this copy into circulation, but a little bit of research says that the later versions of this book, published in the 1990s are far rarer. I suspect this being both an early Christie and not one of the crown jewels, this was purchased in the mid-1980s.                                                                                                                                         

 While I don't have an exact price printed on the cover, I do have a receipt from the library that says what my total for the check out was.  A little backwards math will get us to the what the library now says this book is worth $20.00. This falls in line with a little bit of online research when I looked up the ISBN. that's the number I will use.

This Book:                 $20.00

This Summer              $88.99