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The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents
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The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents
Unavailable
The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents
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The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Secret Adversary introduced the world to Tommy and Tuppence. This intricate novel revolutionized the mystery form and launched Agatha Christie's career.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 10, 2015
ISBN9781633849327
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The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents
Author

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

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Reviews for The Secret Adversary (Rediscovered Books)

Rating: 3.6365599431009956 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My first Agatha Christie book, and what a proper introduction it was!Thoroughly enjoyed this book. A definite page turner with characters to easily love.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What a great mystery by a great mystery writer. And this is only her second book. I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out who the guilty party was. If you like Kinsey Milhone, you'll love Tupence (pronounced Twopence).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It was a great read. I had narrowed down the identity of the villain to two people but could not determine who it was until the identity was revealed in the end. All the characters were likable as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    my copy, only a few years old, is falling apart from use
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Secret Adversary is cleverly written, with a lot of suspense, but it drags on if you have early figured out whothe mysterious Mr. Brown actually is. It also offers a fairy tale ending with little to suggest a sequel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this Nadia May narration much enhanced my enjoyment of this first Tommy and Tuppence book. Also, my admiration for Christie's writing is greater with this reread as she managed to keep me guessing even though I thought I remembered the solution. Her red herrings were so plausible I kept second-guessing myself thinking I had mis-remembered it!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's been a long time since I last read Agatha Christie, but I enjoyed this book as much as I did the ones I've read before. It's a fun, fast-paced adventure that is quick and easy to read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is different from my usual Agatha Christie fare, I've read plenty of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple but none of the Tommy and Tuppence which are more spy novels than detective stories. After the war when London had more people than jobs two old friend meet by chance and form a company “Young Adventurers Ltd.” ‘willing to do anything, go anywhere’, and it lands them in all sorts of trouble.

    The action is fast paced with plenty of twists, if you decide to read this remember it was written in 1922 and the expressions and settings are from that time period so some things may seem weird to you. I enjoyed it, the same style that Miss Christie had for mysteries works well with political intrigue.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    *SPOILERS* Let me get this out of the way - I think Mr Brown should have been Julius and not Sir James. The writer, bless her, should not have tried for a last twist in the tale and should have stuck to Julius as the villain. I don't like it much when the super villain as in here, is revealed to be an unimportant character on whom the spotlight is never shined for an adequate time. However I gave this book four stars because despite its faults it delivers a quality pacing rhythm. It's a shame Agatha Christie neglected her less popular characters, instead being bent on milking Poirot dry. These adventuresome spy novels of hers are a delight to read. I had no problem with Tommy and Tuppence, they were fine too. I remember quite a few Christie novels to which I gave 5 stars and they weren't perfect, so I'm sticking to my guns.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little bit too complicated for poor old me, but the Tuppence protagonist is a dear.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've never liked the Tommy and Tuppence books as much as the Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries. I tend to prefer cozy mysteries; all the big, vague political conspiracies in mystery fiction fall a bit flat. I generally dislike Christie's political thrillers (Passenger to Frankfurt is a case in point; didn't even finish it)—so I was surprised at how much I enjoyed The Secret Adversary. It's the suspense, the fun characters, and (let's be honest) the exhilaration of giving oneself up to a less-than-highbrow novel that did it. World War I is over and Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley find themselves out of work and with no prospects. The two friends hit upon a scheme that is sure to pay off, advertising themselves as adventurers willing to undertake any task for appropriate pecuniary remuneration. And suddenly they land in an international intrigue involving a stolen treaty that could start a war, a missing woman, an American millionaire, and a bland, elusive criminal mastermind. It is, in short, rather more than they expected. Christie is much wittier than I remembered, and shows off her knack for humor especially in Tuppence's dialogue. And though she uses stereotypes to quickly delineate her characters, somehow they aren't flat. Or at least, the story is engaging enough that any flatness is well disguised. Okay, it's true that Tommy and Tuppence call themselves the "Young Adventurers" (a bit cutesy), and the plot hinges on several highly unlikely coincidences. As a mystery it really doesn't shine, but that needn't interfere with the sheer fun of the story. And there are certainly creative elements that Christie pulls together to draw the reader in. The mysterious "Mr Brown" is a master villain, and though I did eventually suspect the solution, there were enough red herrings along the way to throw me off the scent for quite awhile.Though The Secret Adversary is no heavyweight in mystery fiction, sometimes a fluffy read is just the thing. Quick moving and fun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the second Agatha Christie book I've ever read. And for being first written in 1922 it felt like a book that could have been written today. This is the first book in her Tommy & Tupence series. Tommy & Tupence are two poor english people that want to make money and fast. So they advertise in a local paper stating they're adventurers for hire. Someone overhears there plan and hires them to find a missing girl, who by the way is in care of some very important documents that could really do some damage if they end up in the wrong hands. It's a fun mystery that has some great characters and good twists to the story. It'll have you wondering whodunit yourself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Recently, I decided to take a break from Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple and get acquainted with Agatha Christie’s other beloved creations: Tommy and Tuppence. The Secret Adversary, her first T & T adventure written in 1922, seemed as good a place to start as any.This was my first encounter with the pair, though not with their type. Anyone raised on a diet of “McMillan and Wife,” “Hart to Hart,” “Moonlighting” and the “Thin Man” movies (like I was) will recognize Tommy and Tuppence almost as soon as the first words of repartee have fallen from their lips. I’m not sure how the other T & T novels (which include Partners in Crime, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate) stack up, but The Secret Adversary is a breezy romp with spies, double-crossings and perilous derring-do—not to mention cloaks and daggers. It bears small resemblance to Dame Agatha’s classic mystery novels, and leans more toward a screwball movie with snappy dialogue—one that might have starred Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers back in the day.This was only Christie’s second published book, written almost as a whim after the surprising success of The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). It’s far from a polished plot—coincidences strain the reader’s incredulity almost to the snapping point—but it certainly zips along with trademark Christie efficiency.The Secret Adversary opens aboard the sinking Lusitania in 1915. On the deck, a man approaches a young girl of about eighteen, and asks her to take a packet of papers since, per “women and children first,” she stands a better chance of surviving the shipwreck than he does. The girl takes the papers and climbs into the lifeboat.Next, we jump to a scene on a busy London street where two old acquaintances, Tommy and Tuppence, run into each other. They haven’t seen each other in several years and each is feeling a bit desperate and penniless in the postwar depression. Agatha’s description of the pair is priceless:(Tommy’s) face was pleasantly ugly—nondescript, yet unmistakably the face of a gentleman and a sportsman. His brown suit was well cut, but perilously near the end of its tether. They were an essentially modern-looking couple as they sat there. Tuppence had no claim to beauty, but there was character and charm in the elfin lines of her little face, with its determined chin and large, wide-apart eyes that looked mistily out from under straight, black brows. She wore a small bright green toque over her black bobbed hair, and her extremely short and rather shabby skirt revealed a pair of uncommonly dainty ankles. Her appearance presented a valiant attempt at smartness.They decide to pool their resources for a bite to eat and over lunch they devise a harebrained money-making scheme: The Young Adventurers, Ltd. They plan to put an ad in the newspaper—“Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.”Before they can get too far, however, adventures come their way. Tommy and Tuppence attract escapades like a light draws a moth. The plot tangles are too complex for me to explain here—and, besides, I wouldn’t want to rob you of the delicious delights of discovering them for yourself—but in a nutshell, they involve Tommy and Tuppence trying to track down a missing girl by the name of Jane Finn who, the British government believes, is carrying the packet of papers from the Lusitania. The papers contain embarrassing contents for the government and could be used by revolutionaries to stir unrest in the country. Joining T & T in their quest are an American millionaire, Julius P. Hersheimmer, and a distinguished British chap, Sir James Peel Edgerton. Vying against them is the mysterious, but ultra-nefarious “Mr. Brown,” the puppet master of a villainous criminal gang.Tommy and Tuppence get into and out of scrapes with head-spinning frequency. Nearly every chapter sees them either falling into the clutches of Mr. Brown’s men or being rescued by the “good guys.” Agatha keeps the pace spinning even faster as she splits up Tommy and Tuppence early in the book, thus broadening the series of adventures in which they find themselves.Agatha obviously had a lot of fun creating these non-Poirot, non-Marple characters, and the reader definitely reaps the benefits of her enjoyment. Though they’re still in the developmental stages in The Secret Adversary, Tommy and Tuppence show distinct signs of becoming the classic husband-and-wife spy team (yes, I’m giving away the fact that they get married in a later book). One British government official describes them thusly:Outwardly, he’s an ordinary, clean-limbed, rather block-headed young Englishman. Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it’s quite impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn’t got any—so he’s difficult to deceive. He worries things out slowly, and once he’s got hold of anything he doesn’t let go. The little lady’s quite different. More intuition and less common sense. They make a pretty pair working together. Pace and stamina.“Pace and stamina” is an accurate description of the novel’s qualities, too. Yes, the book has some pretty big leaps of logic and jaded readers will find their eyes soon becoming sore from all their rolling at all the heaps and heaps of coincidences; but setting those beginning-writer errors aside, The Secret Adversary can be an enjoyable read. It moves along from page to page with a light touch and nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, which demands that you read “just one more chapter” before turning in for bed. Those who can’t resist will find themselves staying up way past their bedtime.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I came close to giving this 4 stars but there are a few things that let me down in the plot. First, the identity of Mr. Brown was obvious from the moment he appears (or maybe it was just that way for me) despite repeated attempts to cast another character for the part. Second, the thrust of the plot is very much a product of its time and seems slightly trivial roughly a century later. Still, it was enjoyable and Agatha Christie here shows all the early signs of what she, at the time, was yet to be... the Queen of Mystery!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am a huge fan of Agatha Christie - both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot but had never read her Tommy and Tuppence series.Even though this series is set back in the earlier part of the 20th century, it was still entertaining and the characters were totally what you expect from Dame Agatha Christie. I am glad that I finally started this classic series and look forward to getting to know these characters as well as Christie's others.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not Agatha Christie's best book, but Tommy and Tuppence are very interesting characters. It's a spy thriller rather than a detective story, and it is very suspenseful. I suspected the right person right from the very beginning, something I don't usually do, so I'm proud of myself!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Though Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple were Agatha Christie’s best-known detectives, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were perhaps her most dynamic. The only pair of Christie’s detectives to hold equal standing, the two were well matched: While not the cleverest, Tommy kept a tenacious hold on the facts, and was complemented by the more intellectually nimble Tuppence. They are also the only of Christie’s characters to age and change over time--from fresh-faced and full of excitement in The Secret Adversary (1922) to elderly and doddering in Postern of Fate (1973). We’re offering all four novels and the collection of stories (Partners in Crime) that feature the charismatic couple.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What do you do when you are in need of money? You set yourself up as an investigator who will do anything. Then you land yourself in a situation that offers you plenty of reward for you effort, even though you don't know what you are doing. That's the story of two people in need of money following the first world war. An adventurous book with lots happening and very little time spent on describing how wonderful the clouds look. An enjoyable read that gets you in and drags you along.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was the second novel Christie wrote, after her unexpected success with The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In the forward to this book, she said she thought she would try a spy novel instead of a detective story. The novel is set in 1920 – five years after the sinking of the Lusitania, and after the end of The Great War (WW I). Unemployment is high and many young people who had served in some capacity during the war are descending on London to try to find work. Among them are Thomas Beresford (Tommy), who was a soldier in the war, and Miss Prudence Cowley (Tuppence), who was a nurse’s aide in a hospital treating wounded soldiers. The two have been friends since childhood, and come across one another at the train station. Commiserating on their lack of funds and employment they decide to place an ad in the paper offering their services as adventurers. And the story begins …This one has a lot of twists and turns, and the characters include the usual assortment of good guys and bad guys and those we’re not sure of till the end. I was positive I had it figured out about half-way through, and then about three-fourths of the way I began to doubt my choice. A few pages later I was sure, once again, that I had been correct … or maybe not. The story line is very obviously dated, but it wasn’t really written as an historical piece, so Christie doesn’t explain a lot of things that would have been relatively fresh and familiar to her readers when this was published. Today’s reader really needs to keep the time and place in mind to fully enjoy the work. Also, spy novels were not Christie’s strong suit. Delaportia’s narration is pretty good, though she has a large cast of characters to try to differentiate and her “foreign” accents (American, French, Russian) are somewhat laughable. All in all … this is an entertaining read, but doesn’t have the genius of Christie’s detective stories.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Quite poor. There are some clues...but all the characters are so feckless and portentous. It's an interesting artifact of its time, 1922. Agatha Christie is staunchly conservative and very anti-communist."Whose Body" by Dorothy Sayers came out just a year later and was a good deal smarter. Of course, it was an actual mystery, not a suspense-cum-mystery novel.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is the first “Tommy and Tuppence” book written by Christie. My mind wandered too much to really get the gist of the plot. I do know that multiple people went missing at various points throughout the book. Christie's books really vary for me, and it seems audio may not be the way to go (I listened to this one). I know some people love Tommy and Tuppence, but I'm thinking I won't try anymore with these characters. I will likely only read one or two more books by Christie (any that are already on my tbr), but then leave it at that. There have only been a couple by her that really stood out for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The plot may be unrealistic, the mystery transparent, and the characters stereotyped, but I love this book. To me, it succeeds perfectly, if unintentionally, at capturing the mood of the post-WWI period, including its ugly underside: poverty, uncertainty, newfound cynicism, xenophobia, and fear of social upheaval. Tommy and Tuppence, two bright young things recently demobbed from WWI activities, meet by chance and sit down to discuss their lives over a cup of tea. Neither have fared well in the post-war world, but that hasn't dimmed Tuppence's sangfroid. Prodded by Tuppence, the two decide to start list themselves as "Young Adventurers, Ltd:" and put a notice in the Times:

    Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.

    And thus their fantastic, enjoyable adventure into the (totally unrealistically portrayed) world of espionage begins.

    I think Tommy and Tuppence make an adorable detective duo: Tommy is the steady, solid, unimaginative one while Tuppence adds spice and verve. I positively adore Tuppence. When you consider some of the other portrayals of women of the time period, the enthusiastic, outspoken Tuppence is fresh and fun.

    However, I think what I really love about the book is how well the narrator's voice captures the atmosphere of the times, and how this mood strongly influences the plot of the story. After fighting "The War to End All Wars", people have come back home to find that all's still not right with the world. They begin to realize that their sacrifices haven't routed out all evils and that the world will never return to the way it was before the War. During the War, the strict class system and gender roles were shaken, and now there is tension between those who see the new world as an opportunity to gain equality and reactionaries who cling to the past. Yet the king-and-country idealism is not yet dead, and the propaganda that drove a nation to war not yet fully disproved. It seems to me that the idealism is breaking up, but many people, including Agatha Christie herself, are still in vociferous denial. The book portrays an uprising of the lower classes as the ultimate evil, engineered by Bad Men (aka non-English) who have evil designs upon the noble upright British hover for spoiler--a classic reactionary perspective and phobia. Agatha Christie has an interesting voice here. She was herself of middle to lower class and was the earner of her family, but she still seeks a return to the status quo of a rigid class system and gender roles, and this nostalgia is tangible in the story.

    The Secret Adversary is a light-hearted and entertaining romp on one level, and on another, a fascinating glimpse of the mood and fears of the postwar era. Altogether, it's a very interesting book, to be contrasted with contemporary works such as Whose Body?(more jaded) and Rilla of Ingleside(depressingly idealistic).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie is the first in her Tommy and Tuppence series that follows this young couple’s adventures. In this book, World War I is over and both Tommy, who has returned from the fighting, and Tuppence, who left her quiet home in a country vicarage and spent the war in various jobs, are finding peace time a little boring. They need to work but as members of the lost generation, they are also looking for something beyond the daily ho-hum life of the upper class. Craving excitement, they decide to set themselves up as paid adventurer’s, willing to take on just about anything, little knowing that their first case will involve international espionage, kidnapping and murder.An altogether fun book to read, the two main characters are delightful, and make excellent foils for each other. If you are a fan of Agatha Christie, I think you would enjoy reading about this young couple as they battle Bolsheviks and revolutionists, and come to realize how important they are to each other.Originally published in 1922, The Secret Adversary is a light, short read, a little dated to be sure, but I enjoyed the concept, timing and setting immensely. High in entertainment value, this is an enjoyable book to curl up with for a few hours and escape to a different time and place.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A bit lighter version of Agatha Christie's mysteries centering on Tommy and Tuppence who advertise themselves as detectives and end up in an adventure they could not have imagined. Good entertainment.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm used to my favorite Poirot novels, so this was a bit dry and confusing in the beginning, but I really got into it a third of the way through.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Book #2 of Agatha Christie's mysteries is completed. I like Tommy and Tuppence and I think it's a shame that they don't appear in more of her books. That said, the plot of this one is so ludicrous, I couldn't stop laughing... but I guess in 1922 it was what passed as literature for the masses.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    More of a spy thriller than a traditional cozy whodunit from Christie, this is the first of the short Tommy and Tuppence series and deals with efforts to recover some diplomatic papers that were lost during WWI and which could cause all sorts of problems for England if they fall into the wrong hands in 1919 (when the story takes place). Not a bad effort, but a major table-setting plot point pushes suspension of disbelief to its limits, and the main red herring here was so obvious that it almost served as an anti-herring. Unless one was willing to believe that the person involved was beyond stupid, which I was not inclined to do.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The first Tommy and Tuppence book. Fun and whimsical.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I imagine that this book would have disappeared from memory had it not been the second Agatha Christie. It would probably have been categorized as a romp, or the equivalent term in the early 1920s, when first published. The story is completely unbelievable and yet it finely captures a moment in time. The men and women who went off to the First World War have returned home, changed, to an England that has also changed. The book captures the dislocation of life at the time and the nervous feeling that England was on the edge of monumental change. There is an overarching sense that the existing class system was under siege and that threats that once lay in foreign countries have now come to the homeland itself. A good read for anyone who wants to understand how much times have changed in the last century but not for some who wants a well-plotted mystery. Indeed the greatest mystery to this reader was the question as to whether Christie thought that any of her readers would be surprised by the various twists and turns of story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tommy & Tuppance were so delightful to watch on PBS Mystery Series.
    Nice book to carry around in my purse for awhile for fill in reading.
    It's Agatha - I Love it !