So I just finished reading The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. From late childhood, I’d read a smattering of Hercule Poirot mysteries; in young adulthood, the odd Miss Marple story or two. Until relatively recently — the past four or five months or so — I’d missed the Tommy and Tuppence novels altogether.
Now, there are all kinds of problems with Agatha Christie’s writing, but in this one novel, Tuppence is delightful. She’s adventurous, clever, and confident. Without giving away any significant spoilers, a lot of the events in the book happen because of her deliberate choices and actions — such as, for example, the decision to form an “adventurers” business in the first place.
Certainly, this does not mean that she gets to have all of the brilliant insights, or that she and Tommy are equally matched in every way. But they approached the case and each other as equals, and I like that.
