Week three, book three

A mystery or thriller - The Secret Adversary

Wow. I'm really bad at posting these each week.

I'm an absolute sucker for crime dramas, and especially period crime dramas. So when the BBC commissioned an adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary (broadcast last summer) I was interested to see these new characters, as I'd not come across Tommy and Tuppence before.

The two private detectives are not, perhaps, her most likeable creations, although they are at least a good deal more so than Poirot. Tommy can come across as rather pompous and a little slow, but he's mostly reliable and can be a quick thinker in tight situations. I found Tuppence really quite endearing, although I did get the impression that Christie didn't like her all that much.

(Is this just me? I find this with so many of Christie's female characters, especially young women.)

What marks The Secret Adversary out, too, is its setting. Beginning shortly after the end of World War I, it follows the now-unemployed Tommy and Tuppence setting up a detective agency and quickly becoming embroiled in the delicate international politics of the 1920s. It can get a little overcomplicated at times, and isn't always successful in building and sustaining tension, but at its heart there is a good thriller and the beginnings of a great writer.

This novel is more overtly political than some of Christie's later work, but still with the twists and turns you'd expect from her writing - I had no idea who the criminal mastermind, Mr Brown, might be until he revealed himself - and the lightly humourous dialogue Christie came to master is there almost from the start.

The Secret Adversary is available for free here. Here's the reading guide I'm following this year.