The Secret Adversary: Tommy and Tuppence’s First Adventure and the Hunt for Jane Finn
Tommy Beresford and Prudence Cowley, known as Tuppence, are two young friends... and they are broke. Just after the Great War there are few jobs to be had, and the pair are desperately short of money. Restless for excitement, they embark on a daring business venture: The Young Adventurers, Ltd, "willing to do anything, go anywhere".
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: The Secret Adversary (1922)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 336 pages
Series: First Tommy and Tuppence novel
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0007590598 (ASIN 0007590598)
A Job in Paris
On their first assignment, from the mysterious Mr Whittington, all Tuppence has to do is take an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris and pose as an American girl called Jane Finn. But with the job come a bribe to keep quiet, a threat to her life and the disappearance of the man who hired them. From then on, their job is detective work.
Where Is Jane Finn?
The mere mention of her name produces a very strange reaction all over London, so strange that the two finally decide to find the mysterious missing lady. She has been missing for five years, and neither her body nor the secret documents she was carrying when the Lusitania sank have ever been found. Now the recovery of post-war England depends on finding her and recovering the papers.
The Lusitania and the Treaty
The novel opens with a prologue aboard the Lusitania as she sinks after being torpedoed in May 1915. An American agent hands secret papers to a young girl, Jane Finn, reasoning that women and children will be saved first. The papers contain a draft agreement whose publication could cause chaos in Britain, and five years later a shadowy master criminal known only as Mr Brown wants them, intending to use them to provoke revolution in a country shaken by strikes and unemployment after the war.
Helpers and Suspects
Tommy and Tuppence gather an entertaining group of allies: Mr Carter, a quiet intelligence chief who hires them; Julius P. Hersheimmer, Jane’s brash millionaire cousin, who proposes marriage to Tuppence almost on sight; the brilliant lawyer Sir James Peel Edgerton; and Albert, a lift-boy who reads too many American detective stories and is thrilled to help. Mr Brown could be any of the people around them, and Christie keeps the reader guessing until the last chapters.
Christie’s Second Novel
Published in 1922, two years after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, this was Christie’s second novel and her first thriller. She dedicated it to all those who lead monotonous lives, in the hope that they might experience the delights and dangers of adventure at second hand. Its energy and humour come partly from her own post-war London, a world of demobilised soldiers, young women who had worked during the war and too few jobs for either.
Growing Old Together
Unusually, Tommy and Tuppence age with their readers. After Partners in Crime (1929) they reappear as a middle-aged couple in wartime in N or M? (1941), as grandparents in By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) and finally in Postern of Fate (1973), the last novel Christie wrote. The pair have been adapted for television several times, most recently by the BBC in 2015.
Mr Brown
Working undercover for the British government, the two young people know only her name, and that the only photograph of her is in the hands of her rich American cousin, Hersheimmer. Before long they are plunged into greater danger than they ever imagined, danger that could bring an abrupt end to their business... and to their lives. Behind it all is the shadowy Mr Brown, whom nobody has ever seen. It is Christie at her lightest and most playful, and a great start to a series.
As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
Part of the reading recommendations featured on books.sapiensverbum.com.
