Review: The Secret Adversary

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm reasonably sure this was a re-read, but only because I remembered one plot point (the spelling of Tuppence's name in a note). If I had read it before, it was many years ago, probably in a copy belonging to my grandmother. It's the first in a series about a pair of adventurers/detectives who, in this book unemployed after WWI (they'd been a soldier and a nurse), decide to become more or less mercenaries taking on anything that comes along. What coincidentally comes along is a search for a missing young woman who may know the whereabouts of a secret document which could precipitate terrible political chaos if made public.

The plot, while doing the usual "red scare/conspiracy theory" thing of the time, is a complicated and exciting one, full of red herrings. There's sustained tension about which of two apparently helpful characters is leaking information to the antagonists. There are plenty of sinister opponents, though it remains cozy, and nobody we're meant to like is seriously harmed. The detective duo are likeable, and, as the spymaster comments, complement each other: Tuppence is the smart-but-headstrong one, Tommy the solidly reliable but not too clever one.

The thing is, though, for most of the book they are not working together, since first one and then the other goes off and gets captured by the adversaries. Absence works to make the heart grow fonder, and since they had known each other for years before the story starts I'm not going to call it a thin romance, even though they spend so little time together during the plot. I will ding the other romance as thin, though.

There's an American character who speaks, I suspect, stereotypically rather than typically for an actual American of the time (and refers to the second story of a building as "the first floor," which is what British but not American people call it). Still, his hustle and do-it-now approach moves the plot along and provides amusement. The various characters are all distinct, and there's plenty of courage involved in bringing the whole business to a conclusion.

Tommy and Tuppence are not rated as highly as Poirot and Miss Marple among Christie's detectives, but their adventures here are enjoyable. Unusually, Christie aged them in real time for their subsequent appearances, which makes me want to read the other books.

View all my reviews