Thwarting Tommy (James Warwick) and Tuppence (Francesca Annis) every step of the way is the mysterious Mr.

The Secret Adversary finds the couple embroiled in a search for the mysterious Jane Finn who is carrying secret documents which would prove an embarrassment to Britain were they to fall in the wrong hands and which might lead to a general strike and even to civil war. Nevertheless, even her thrillers contain elements of mystery within them, usually concerning the identity of the evil mastermind out to either take over the world or bring down England and the West, but there is a sameness to her means of disguising her evildoers which makes it fairly easy to figure out these identities once you’ve read (or seen) one or two of them. Christie enjoyed writing thrillers because they gave her a break from the heavily plotted and intricately designed puzzles for which she was known. The 1982 ITV series Partners in Crime and the 1983 follow-up TV-movie The Secret Adversary feature Tommy and Tuppence in their first literary adventures.Īgatha Christie’s Partners in Crime: The Tommy & Tuppence Mysteries Christie actually wrote was a Tommy and Tuppence adventure Postern of Fate though several other manuscripts written earlier were published after that book.) In 1929, she published a book of short stories called Partners in Crime featuring the sprightly duo who were asked by Scotland Yard to run a detective agency and investigate mysteries, most of which scholars consider minor Christie at best.

Christie would intermittently pop in on Tommy and Tuppence as they aged into parents and then grandparents but always harboring a lingering sense of adventure and write about their latest caper. The Secret Adversary introduced Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley, former school chums who get tangled up in post-World War I espionage and fall in love. Rather, she plotted the first of what turned out to be occasional thrillers she enjoyed writing and featured two young madcaps who longed for adventure. After Agatha Christie made her first big splash in the literary world with The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, she decided her next book would not feature Hercule Poirot and would not be an old school mystery.

Tommy and tuppence movie