Description
The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie’s second novel, introduces Tommy and Tuppence, the two much-loved mystery-solving adventurers.
The novel centers around a mysterious young girl, suffering from amnesia, who was present on the sinking of the Lusitania. As Tommy and Tuppence try to unravel the mystery, they find themselves embroiled with mysterious millionaires and the dangerous politics of nation-states.
Contemporary reviews of The Secret Adversary were positive, and the success of the novel paved the way not just for future Tommy and Tuppence adventures, but for a long, storied career of literary success for Christie.
Description
The Murder on the Links is Agatha Christie’s second Poirot novel, featuring the brilliant Belgian detective and his sidekick, Captain Hastings.
In this characteristic whodunit, Poirot is summoned to a seaside town in northern France by a desperate letter from a rich businessman, who fears that he is being stalked. Poirot arrives to find the businessman already dead, his body lying facedown in an open grave on a golf course, a knife in his back—the victim of a mysterious murder. Over the coming days Poirot clashes wits with an arrogant Parisian detective, Giraud, while Hastings finds himself pining after a beautiful but shadowy American expatriate known to him only as “Cinderella.” Together, Poirot and Hastings unravel the intricate web of mystery and deceit behind the murder.
Christie based this mystery after a real-life French murder case, and it’s believed that this is the first detective novel to use the phrase “the scene of the crime.”
Description
Poirot Investigates is a classic collection of Agatha Christie’s short stories first published in 1924. It follows the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and his companion Arthur Hastings as they solve a series of mysteries. From threatening letters to Egyptian curses to missing wills, Poirot’s little grey cells never falter. While Hastings and the reader are lost in the minutiae of the case, Poirot sees it all—and with impeccable attention to detail, finds the culprit.
Description
After her father’s death, young Anne Beddingfeld moves to London with her meagre inheritance, hopeful and ready to meet adventure. She witnesses a fatal accident at a Tube station and picks up a cryptic note dropped by the anonymous doctor who appeared on the scene. When Anne learns of a murder at the estate that the dead man was on his way to visit, it confirms her suspicion that the man in the brown suit who lost the note was not a real doctor.
With her clue in hand she gains a commission from the newspaper leading the search for the “man in the brown suit,” and her investigation leads her to take passage on a South Africa–bound ocean liner. On board, she meets a famous socialite, a fake missionary, a possible secret service agent, and the M.P. at whose estate the second murder occurred. She learns about a secretive criminal mastermind known only as the Colonel and of stolen diamonds connected to it all.
During the voyage, she evades an attempt on her life, and in South Africa she escapes from a kidnapping and barely survives another attack on her at Victoria Falls. She falls in love, finds the diamonds, and discovers the truth about the two deaths in London that started it all. Finally, she confronts the mysterious criminal mastermind, the Colonel.
Published in 1924 by the Bodley Head, The Man in the Brown Suit is Agatha Christie’s fourth novel. Unlike the classic murder mysteries that made her famous, The Man in the Brown Suit, like her second novel The Secret Adversary, is an international crime thriller.
