The Complete Tommy & Tuppence Collection Read Free

and Sherlock Holmes, Chesterton and Father Brown, Bailey and Mr. Fortune, Hornung and Raffles—and in many cases the appearance of a new story by a favorite writer was a selling point, with the name and title emblazoned on the cover. During this decade Christie wrote an enormous number of short stories for this market; most of them would subsequently appear in collections published over the next twenty years. So, the adventures of Tommy and Tuppence continued almost immediately after their first book appearance in short-story format.
    The second Tommy and Tuppence book, Partners in Crime, was published in 1929. Now happily married, the Beresfords at the request of Mr. Carter from The Secret Adversary set up a detective agency and call themselves, with customary modesty, Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives. In fact, the agency is a cover for the dissemination of vital covert information as the previous owner, Mr. Theodore Blunt, was a spy. By taking over his business Tommy and Tuppence are to keep their eyes and ears open and keep Mr. Carter informed. Although this subplot surfaces from time to time in the course of the individual cases that make up the book, it is never a major, or indeed a convincing, reason for their adventures. Most of the cases undertaken by the pair are clever and entertaining but as an added bonus they tackle each case in the manner of a (then) well-known detective.
    Although the collection was published in the United Kingdom in September 1929 the individual stories had appeared up to six years previously, mainly in The Sketch, the same magazine in which one Hercule Poirot first made his short-story appearance. With the exception of “The Unbreakable Alibi,” which appeared in 1928, all of the other stories appeared in 1923–24; in other words, in the year following the appearance of The Secret Adversary. Collecting them necessitated some rewriting and rearrangement before the book was issued. So for example when, in Chapter One, Tuppence says “Tommy and Tuppence were married . . . And six years later they were still living together,” this timeframe tallies with the publication of the book and not with the appearance of the original short story.
    A major feature of Partners in Crime is the parody/pastiche element. This idea is promoted by Tommy who, in an effort to emulate the great detectives of fiction, invests in a collection of detective stories and decides to solve each case in the manner of one of his heroes. Thus “The Affair of the Pink Pearl” is solved in the manner of R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke, a pioneer in the field of scientific investigation. “The Case of the Missing Lady” is a Sherlock Homes case and indeed more than one case for the sleuth of Baker Street involved a search for a missing person. Although it is much lighter in tone it is difficult, when reading “The Case of the Missing Lady,” not to think of Holmes’ very similarly titled investigation of “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax.” Some of the characters pastiched are forgotten by modern audiences but most crime fans will fondly remember Edgar Wallace who is recalled in “The Crackler”; Father Brown in “The Man in the Mist” (one of the most accurate pastiches in the book); and Roger Sheringham, the creation of Anthony Berkeley, in “The Clergyman’s Daughter.” The persistent Inspector French, breaker of alibis, and the creation of Irishman Freeman Wills Crofts, is recalled in “The Unbreakable Alibi”; and Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner, whose modus operandi was to study the account of a crime and to solve it without leaving his ABC teashop, is cleverly captured in “The Sunningdale Mystery.” And in a clever piece of gentle self-mockery the last story of the collection features detection in the style of the great Hercule Poirot in “The Man Who Was No. 16,” a sly