There's something about Tommy and Tuppence that makes you want to be in their company time and time again. Agatha Christie must have loved them too because she wrote quite a few books with them.
We are introduced to them right at the beginning in Book #2, The Secret Adversary and are given a hint at what the content is going to be like with Agatha's dedication:
"To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure".
The Secret Adversary is a classic adventure mystery story with intrigue, spies, conspiracy theories, abductions, koshings on the head and mysterious notes, all wrapped up into one book. I feel as though it is an indulgent book by Agatha Christie, not so serious as her Hercule Poirot books or Miss Marple books, but one that she has had fun with, while also exploring some more serious themes, such as the sinking of the Lusitania, which in it's day was as cataclysmic as the sinking of the Titanic, except it happened in wartime and was torpedoed by a German submarine, but many innocent lives were lost.
I read that the passengers were warned before buying tickets for the voyage that sailing during wartime was an extremely dangerous thing to do and there was always the chance they could get hit. The Captain was warned about German submarine activity in the area that day and advised to take evasive action, such as zig-zagging, but the captain chose to ignore the warning. 1,198 people died.
This is the first book of Christie's that used a real-life event to form her plot. She does this a few more times throughout her writing career.
What I love about The Secret Adversary is the introduction to Mr Carter and to Albert who are both recurring characters in the Tommy and Tuppence books.
The Secret Adversary was published in 1922. This was the original cover;
raw by Ernest Akers, published by The Bodley Head
You can watch the full 1983 adaptation of the movie version (which is very close to the original story) on YouTube for free. I do not recommend the modern version, it is a travesty!
Because of the nature of it, I'm finding I'm being drawn back to old arts centred around home and family. It's more of a challenge now to focus on home, because I work 4 days a week and I'm studying, but there must be something in the air that is making me turn my focus back onto this.
I find as I get older that I take comfort in old, familiar things and old, familiar faces. It is probably because we as a family have been through so much in the past 10 years and I reach for peace and safety and familiar. It is possible to crave that and yet still have ambitions, as I do with my study and future. A check list, if you like, for the second half of my life. The things I want to do are things that I have chosen for myself and even at my age I still have dreams.
I think I know what precipitated this shift.
At the beginning of the year we visited my home province in Marlborough for a summer holiday. It was one of the loveliest holidays filled with warm, sunny days walking through old familiar streets and haunts in Picton, the seaside town and Blenheim, my hometown, where old friends I've known all my life still live, and a remnant of relatives. Once it was full of my grandparents and cousins and parents and great aunts and uncles, but we grew up and moved away and grandparents passed away, but the area holds so many dear memories for me, still full of atmosphere and fragrance and textures and sounds and somehow this year I felt like I wanted to hold onto that forever.
I'm writing a book about this very special part of New Zealand and my memories of growing up as a Marlborough girl. A collection of recipes and stories and connection with the people and places of this province. It is a nostalgic project and I'll be invoking the food of the 1970s and 1980s that left indelible an imprint on our collective family history as well as generational food passed down from the matriarchs.
As part of the writing and creative process, I have decided to incorporate weekly videos for my youtube channel. I plan on doing this every Sunday. Food is such an intrinsic part of who we are and is intertwined with the stories of our lives, so while I am more of a writer than I am an orator or camera person, I felt it was important to record the process of creating a book about life and memories and connection. These videos will reflect the person I am - the introvert and lover of quiet in a world that clamours for attention and noise. It's a place for other introverts - to slow life down and enjoy the beauty around us and to remember and reflect on what is important - connection with people and with places.
I would be interested to know what you think and your own thoughts around this subject.
Agatha Christie's 1st book in the series of 66 murder mysteries that she wrote.
I've chosen a sampling of some of my favourite covers from over the decades of this book. My favourite is the middle one on the bottom row. Which is yours?
The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published in 1920. The first of the 66 murder mysteries that would make Agatha Christie famous and give her the title of the Queen of Crime. The original cover wasn't, in my opinion, terribly inspiring. I'm not even sure what scene from the book inspired the art.
The cover of the first UK edition by Alfred James Dewey
The latest edition, celebrating 100 years of Agatha Christie.
This is also the first Hercule Poirot book, and (spoiler alert) Styles is the chosen setting for not just her first HP book, but also her last when Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is published very shortly before her own death.
Agatha Christie's signature really is stately old homes, posh people and English villages and The Mysterious Affair at Styles sets the scene nicely with this theme, harking back to a time when well-to-do families had live-in, loyal servants. It's the golden age of modern society, when the world thought they'd seen the war to end all wars and had come through the depression. There is reference to this in The Mysterious Affair at Styles when we first meet Captain Arthur Hastings who happens to mention to his old friend John Cavendish about this amazing little Belgian policeman he once met.
So we come to Styles, a stately home set in the village of Styles St. Mary, in Sussex, UK. Hastings has come to stay with his old friend John Cavendish and his family, whom he has known all his life. They were at school together. John and his brother Lawrence were adopted by the now Mrs Inglethorpe, the matriarch of the family and full of wealth and influence. She has recently married Alfred Inglethorpe, who nobody seems to like, including Evelyn Howard, the brusque but loyal member of the household.
Agatha Christie wrote the book during the First World War, and Hercule Poirot is said to be inspired by the Belgian refugee soldiers that she helped to nurse. It is said that she was dared by her sister Madge to write a book where nobody would guess the killer. Her first manuscript was rejected by Hodder and Stougton (wow, that just shows you how publishers often get it wrong)! It was finally accepted by the publisher Bodley Head on the condition that she changed the last scene from the court room to the library at Styles Court. What a brilliant suggestion, because this becomes a signature of Poirot - his grand reveals in the private houses of the people he is investigating.
The book is dedicated "to my mother." It was first published as a serial in The Times newspaper and became quite popular with its readers. It made Agatha Christie £25, but it launched her career and she and her husband named their own house 'Styles.'
Agatha Christie named her own house 'Styles'
Personal Opinion
The Mysterious Affair at Styles is not my most favourite Agatha Christie. I find it quite boring actually. I think, as she continued to write, she got better and better and Hercule Poirot and Hastings are developed well over the course of her career. She introduces these two characters to us nicely in this book and in my opinion they overshadow the story, but that could be because I am very familiar with her stories now, and have read most of them multiple times (huge fan since a child)! I still remember the shock of learning who the murderer(s) were when I first read it, and the murderer in this first book even gets a mention in the last book Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. But, for my taste, there are too many 'red herring' clues in this book, too much running around by Poirot instead of using his 'little grey cells' that we will become so fond of over the course of these books.
What I found quite a cool addition to the book, is the plan of the house and where all the characters slept and then the plan of the bedroom of Mrs Inglethorpe. It draws the reader in to have an attempt at being an armchair sleuth. It allows your own brain to join Poirot and help solve the crime. This is a genius streak on the part of the publisher/author and is characteristic of all her books, never revealing the killer until the very end, but as Poirot says to Hastings in this book, giving all the same clues that he has. But can anyone beat the brain of the masterful Hercule Poirot? He would say it is 'impossible.'
For a movie adaptation that is fairly faithful to the original story, you can see it here.
