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A review by thaurisil
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
4.0
While I read through Agatha Christie's novels with the Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration group, I'm putting a templated synopsis of each novel in my review. It has spoilers!
Book: 2 of Christie's novels, 1 of Tommy and Tuppence novels
Setting: London
Detective and Companions: Tommy and Tuppence, Julius Hersheimmer, Mr Carter, Sir James Peel Edgerton
Crime: At the start of WWI, a peace treaty was drawn up by the Americans. The man holding the treaty was on board the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German submarine, and he gave it to a teenage girl Jane Finn to deliver to Britain. Jane and the treaty disappeared. Now post-war, the discovery of the document would mean disaster for the British government. Tommy and Tuppence are tasked to find Jane and the document.
Enemy: The mysterious Mr Brown and his international team of high-ranking men
Twists and Turns:
- I initially thought Mr Brown was an unknown enemy, but he turns out to be Sir James Peel Edgerton, one of the novel's major characters who poses as an ally to Tommy and Tuppence. Mr Brown is described as a common-looking man, which threw me off the scent that he is Sir James, who emanates a powerful enigma.
- Just when Rita Vandemeyer is about to reveal her secrets to Tuppence, Sir James and Julius appear, and Rita is mysteriously and unexpectedly poisoned and killed shortly after.
- Jane Finn pretends to have lost her memory, but she has actually been using that as a guise to avoid the document falling into the enemy's hands.
- There seems to be multiple girls, but there are actually only two, Annette, a French girl, and a nurse. The nurse pretends to be Jane Finn, but Annette is actually Jane Finn.
- The document was actually in a room that Tommy was kidnapped in, in the back of a painting that he used as a weapon. He was so close to it but didn’t realise till Jane revealed the truth at the end.
“Tommy, old thing!”
“Tuppence, old bean!”
So the book begins, and we are introduced to the delightful pairing of Tommy and Tuppence. Whenever the two of them are together, they banter light-heartedly, and their humour and chemistry lends a tone and vigour to the book that is very different from the more serious Poirot and Marple books. Tuppence is impulsive and intuitive, and she loves casually provoking Tommy. Tommy is more serious and ponders on things, and though his decisions come slowly, they are rarely wrong. I love their pairing, and I wish Christie wrote more Tommy and Tuppence books.
I’ve read that this book is a thriller rather than a classic Christie whodunnit. I don’t think it’s a thriller, but it’s something in between. The plot is certainly different from her usual. Instead of finding who the murderer is, our protagonists are finding out where Jane Finn is and who Mr Brown is. The mystery isn’t as strong as some of the other books either. In particular there were quite a few coincidences – people just happen to be at the right place at the right time, and they just happen to meet the right people who would help them. But where the plot is lacking in solid mystery-solving, it makes up for it in adventure and good clean fun dialogue. And although Christie’s books tend to focus solely on the mystery, this one spent quite a bit of time developing the romance between Tommy and Tuppence, and towards the end focused on the romance between Julius and Jane too.
Book: 2 of Christie's novels, 1 of Tommy and Tuppence novels
Setting: London
Detective and Companions: Tommy and Tuppence, Julius Hersheimmer, Mr Carter, Sir James Peel Edgerton
Crime: At the start of WWI, a peace treaty was drawn up by the Americans. The man holding the treaty was on board the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German submarine, and he gave it to a teenage girl Jane Finn to deliver to Britain. Jane and the treaty disappeared. Now post-war, the discovery of the document would mean disaster for the British government. Tommy and Tuppence are tasked to find Jane and the document.
Enemy: The mysterious Mr Brown and his international team of high-ranking men
Twists and Turns:
- I initially thought Mr Brown was an unknown enemy, but he turns out to be Sir James Peel Edgerton, one of the novel's major characters who poses as an ally to Tommy and Tuppence. Mr Brown is described as a common-looking man, which threw me off the scent that he is Sir James, who emanates a powerful enigma.
- Just when Rita Vandemeyer is about to reveal her secrets to Tuppence, Sir James and Julius appear, and Rita is mysteriously and unexpectedly poisoned and killed shortly after.
- Jane Finn pretends to have lost her memory, but she has actually been using that as a guise to avoid the document falling into the enemy's hands.
- There seems to be multiple girls, but there are actually only two, Annette, a French girl, and a nurse. The nurse pretends to be Jane Finn, but Annette is actually Jane Finn.
- The document was actually in a room that Tommy was kidnapped in, in the back of a painting that he used as a weapon. He was so close to it but didn’t realise till Jane revealed the truth at the end.
“Tommy, old thing!”
“Tuppence, old bean!”
So the book begins, and we are introduced to the delightful pairing of Tommy and Tuppence. Whenever the two of them are together, they banter light-heartedly, and their humour and chemistry lends a tone and vigour to the book that is very different from the more serious Poirot and Marple books. Tuppence is impulsive and intuitive, and she loves casually provoking Tommy. Tommy is more serious and ponders on things, and though his decisions come slowly, they are rarely wrong. I love their pairing, and I wish Christie wrote more Tommy and Tuppence books.
I’ve read that this book is a thriller rather than a classic Christie whodunnit. I don’t think it’s a thriller, but it’s something in between. The plot is certainly different from her usual. Instead of finding who the murderer is, our protagonists are finding out where Jane Finn is and who Mr Brown is. The mystery isn’t as strong as some of the other books either. In particular there were quite a few coincidences – people just happen to be at the right place at the right time, and they just happen to meet the right people who would help them. But where the plot is lacking in solid mystery-solving, it makes up for it in adventure and good clean fun dialogue. And although Christie’s books tend to focus solely on the mystery, this one spent quite a bit of time developing the romance between Tommy and Tuppence, and towards the end focused on the romance between Julius and Jane too.