Tommy & Tuppence….

Lately I’ve been rereading Agatha Christie’s series featuring Tommy & Tuppence.  Christie always did have a way with an easily readable & yet still interesting mystery and these books are no exception.  The series begins shortly after WWI in The Secret Adversary.  Here we find Tommy & Tuppence looking for mislaid papers of state that are vital to England’s future.  We then move forward in time 6 years to find the couple married and running a detective agency as a front for certain espionage activities in Partners in Crime.  In N or M? we find them at the beginning of WWII seeking to thwart plans by German sympathizers.  The final two books are By the Pricking of My Thumbs and Postern of Fate, both set well after WWII.

One thing that is interesting about the series is that it plays out in real time so we watch Tommy & Tuppence age normally through the 5 books and see how things work out in their lives.  It’s a bit harder to take Christie’s casual racism and her tendency to favor authoritarianism.  It’s possible to read this as a product of the times & find interest in how things have changed.  I’ve yet to reread the last two titles of the series, both written in the sixties.  It will be interesting to see if her attitudes changed any in the intervening years.