Book: The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Duke Classics
Publication date: 2012 (originally 1922)
Source: Borrowed ebook from the library
The Mysterious Affair at Styles introduced the beloved Hercule Poirot.
The Secret Adversary began a lesser-known series of books by Agatha Christie - the Tuppence and Tommy books.
The Secret Adversary is less mystery and more adventure novel. In fact, in modern times, it might be considered YA since Tuppence is a young woman and Tommy is her equally young friend. Although, they are both veterans of World War I, so it's mostly that their hare-brained schemes and blithe approach to adventure makes them seem more like teenagers. They must be at least a decade older than their late teens.
In The Secret Adversary, Tuppence and Tommy encounter each other when they are both skint. Together, they hatch a plot to make money by advertising to perform any service, "no unreasonable offer refused."
Thoughts: The bad guys in The Secret Adversary are Bolsheviks.
That annoyed me. As I mentioned in my review of The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn, I've started reading the three-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. In the 1920s, right as this book was written, she and her friends who worked to improve the lives of women were accused of Bolshevism. In The Secret Adversary, the Bolsheviks were said to be aligned with the Labor movement in England. In the last few months, I've been called Marxist or Communist while holding a sign that said Black Lives Matter.
After a hundred years, it seems to me that it's time to change the red-baiting strategy. Instead of fretting about whether feminists, civil rights activists, and union organizers are Communists, how about if we fix the ways that capitalism fails women, people of color, and working people? If capitalism worked better, we wouldn't have to worry about people seeking out an alternative.
Appeal: Agatha Christie kept returning to Tommy and Tuppence, even though that series of books was much less well-known than Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple and had many fewer stories. Given my current fascination with World War II, I might enjoy the next novel, N or M? - it was published in 1941 and involves rooting out German spies on British soil. If you like stories set in the interwar period, The Secret Adversary might appeal to you.
Participants of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge will enjoy the setting of 100 years ago presented in all the authenticity of someone who was writing contemporary novels at that time.
Have you read this book? What did you think?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
