Partners in Crime

Partners in Crime (1929) Agatha Christie (Tommy & Tuppence)

A set of intertwined Tommy & Tuppence short stories.

A Fairy in the Flat
A Pot of Tea
The Affair of the Pink Pearl
The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger
Finessing the King
The Case of the Missing Lady
Blindman’s Buff
The Man in the Mist
The Crackler
The Sunningdale Mystery
The House of Lurking Death
The Unbreakable Alibi
The Clergyman’s Daughter
The Red House
The Ambassador’s Boots
The Man Who Was No. 16

Tommy & Tuppence have been contacted by Mr Carter to take over a somewhat shady private investigation office, in the hopes Carter can eventually catch the Russian spy who had been using the agency through it’s previous owner.

Although the Tommy and Tuppence stories are fun, they tend towards sillier than some of her other stories.

“The position amounts to this,” he said. “Either the pearl is still in the house, or it is not still in the house.”

“Quite so,” said the Colonel with more respect than was, perhaps, quite justified by the nature of the remark.

“Do you know what I’ve been thinking, Tommy?”

“It’s impossible to say,” replied her husband. “You think of so many things, and you think of them all at once.”

Each story name-checks in some way the various fictional detectives (or authors) of the time.

“What fun, a real live fairy in our flat. Shall we write to Conan Doyle about it?”

That took me aback because I forgot that Doyle died in 1930, and so was alive for a decade while Christie was writing.

“You’ll find a difficulty in being a Thorndyke. You’ve no medical experience, and less legal, and I never heard that science was your strong point.”

“Perhaps not,” said Tommy. “But at any rate I’ve bought a very good camera, and I shall photograph footprints and enlarge the negatives and all that sort of thing. Now, mon ami, use your little grey cells— what does this convey to you?”

These are the detectives / series I caught.

Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke series by R. Austin Freeman
The Man with the Clubfoot by Valentine Williams
McCarty & Riordan series by Isabel Ostrander
The Problemist: The Complete Adventures of Thornley Colton, Blind Detective by Clinton H. Stagg
Father Brown series by G. K. Chesterton
Edgar Wallace
Teahouse Detective Series by Emmuska Orczy
Inspector Hanaud Series by A.E.W. Mason
Inspector French Series by Freeman Wills Crofts
Roger Sheringham Cases Series by Anthony Berkeley
Reggie Fortune Series by H.C. Bailey

Publisher: William Morrow

Rating: 7/10

• Browse the archives:
  
• The Dream Thieves, Audio Edition » »
• « « Hide and Seek