Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence
Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence
Great Detectives Gumshoe Gallery #1
My guess is that a fair amount of you have heard of Agatha Christie. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that even those who do not consider themselves connoisseurs of crime fiction wouldn’t have at least heard the name.
I would argue that for quite a few Agatha Christie is almost a synonym for detective fiction, but I prefer not to assume.
In the interest of being as inclusionary as possible, allow me to introduce you to this remarkable writer who garnered many fitting epitaphs during her several-decades long career, such as the “Duchess of Death”, the “Mistress of Mystery”, and the “Queen of Crime”.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie was an English writer known for her almost eighty novels, most of which were of the detective variety.
In addition to her long-form work, the Christie bibliography includes nearly twenty short story collections and almost an equal number of plays.
To this date, her works have sold about two billion copies, and she remains as one of the most-translated individual authors in the entire world.
Agatha Christie, meet Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie was born Agatha Miller on 15 September 1890 into a well-to-do upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon.
Her writing career started in 1920 when, after several rejections, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published and favourably reviewed by the majority of contemporary critics.
This volume did not only kick Agatha Christie’s writing career into gear, but it also introduced her most famous creation, the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot to the reading public.
Between 1920 and 1975 Agatha Christie wrote thirty-three novels and 50 short stories featuring her meticulous Belgian sleuth. However, Poirot le Belge isn’t the only noteworthy gumshoe featured in Christie’s body of work.
In addition to her hugely popular stand-alone works in the mystery genre, like “And Then There Were None”, Agatha Christie is responsible for such beloved characters as Superintendent Battle and Miss Marple.
And of course, the subject of today’s discussion, the two amateur detectives, Thomas Beresford and his wife, Prudence “Tuppence” née Cowley.
Tommy and Tuppence
Tommy and Tuppence are a pair of fictional detectives, who first appeared in print in 1922, in Agatha Christie’s second published novel, “The Secret Adversary”.
The setting of their emergence is England after the first world war, where they start as old acquaintances coming together in search of some much needed money and, you guessed it, a little bit of excitement and adventure.
And wouldn’t you know it, it is the detecting life that soon swoops them up and provides thrills and chills to last a whole lifetime.
Here’s a quick taste of Tommy and Tuppences’s first encounter in “The Secret Adversary” from 1922:
“TOMMY, old thing!”
“Tuppence, old bean!”
The two young people greeted each other affectionately, and momentarily blocked the Dover Street Tube exit in doing so. The adjective “old” was misleading. Their united ages would certainly not have totalled forty-five.
“Not seen you for simply centuries,” continued the young man. “Where are you off to? Come and chew a bun with me. We’re getting a bit unpopular here--blocking the gangway as it were. Let’s get out of it.”
The girl assenting, they started walking down Dover Street towards Piccadilly.
“Now then,” said Tommy, “where shall we go?”
The very faint anxiety which underlay his tone did not escape the astute ears of Miss Prudence Cowley, known to her intimate friends for some mysterious reason as “Tuppence.” She pounced at once.
Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary (1922)
Partners in Crime
When discussing the works of such a giant of the crime genre as Agatha Christie, it’s hard not to make comparisons to her most prolific works and characters.
As a series, the Tommy and Tuppence continuum is undoubtedly dwarfed by the more prominent characters in the Christie canon.
Agatha Christie wrote only four novels and one short story collection featuring this plucky pair, but personally I consider that more a boon than a demerit against this sleuthing enterprise.
The total number of volumes is only one metric to assess works of fiction and in my opinion a rather uninteresting one at that.
While it is true that when one finds one’s poison among the crime-solver candidates, as it were, it is better that there is enough there to keep you committed and entertained, but conversely, it should be mentioned that an extensive back catalogue can work as a deterrent as well.
In that regard, the Tommy and Tuppence book list is definitely more approachable than some.
Anything for a quiet life?
Agatha Christie dedicated the first instalment of the Tommy and Tuppence series, The Secret Adversary:
To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.
In general I tend to overlook the author’s dedications in favour of getting to the good parts a little quicker, even so, I do see how they can provide a neat little window to what the writer aims to achieve with their work.
You don’t need the detective prowess of Sherlock Holmes or even Nancy Drew to suss out the meaning behind this helpful clue.
In the case of “The Secret Adversary” and the Tommy and Tuppence series at large, the message couldn’t be clearer.
Making no qualms about it, Christie invites the reader to join this dynamic twosome on their thrilling escapade as a means to escape the drudgery of their daily lot.
However, living vicariously through this arguably first ever husband and wife duo of detectives is not the only thing I count in favour of Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence.
There isn’t anything that remarkable in the dynamic created by introducing two fundamentally different characters to each other and giving them a shared goal, be it alleviating boredom or something else.
Opposites attract and create tension, tension carries the story forward - all basic principles of storytelling.
But if you take into account that Christie created this series at a time when the most well-worn and, at the same time enjoyable, tropes of detective fiction and mystery writing were arguably still in their infancy, I consider these narrative choices worth mentioning.
What I find interesting about Tommy and Tuppence is that unlike so many detective pairings, neither one of them can honestly be called a subordinate to the other.
In that sense, Tommy and Tuppence are much more equal partners than many other fictional detective pairings as it is quite clear what they contribute to the general effort.
Tuppence is the primary mover of the duo. She is the wild card, more impulsive and intuitive than Tommy, making her responsible for the wittier lines as well.
She is charismatic and she gets stuff done, even if that can prove quite hazardous from time to time.
But what about Tommy then?
Well, where Tuppence is insightful, I wouldn’t describe Tommy as particularly clever, which is why he tends to fall short on the imagination and ingenuity department of their investigations.
Admittedly, this isn’t exactly the kindest description imaginable, but I’m not trying to sway you to believe that Tommy Beresford is anyone’s fool.
As the yin to Tuppence’s yang, Tommy is more practical and pragmatic than his business partner-cum-fiance-cum-spouse and hese natural talents mean that he is less likely to be diverted from the truth.
All in all, Tommy and Tuppence are forged by adversity into a damn good team, both in their personal lives as in their professional dealings.
Natural Born Detectives?
A key ingredient in quite a few long-running detective series is what I would describe as a somewhat complicated relationship with the concept of time.
Of course, as part of the actual plot of any given crime novel, time plays a vital role, providing alibis and clues, but to accommodate the often formula-adherent demand of the readership many a crime writer has been pushed to steal their sleuths from time.
If we take it as read, as I’m going to do at least for the purposes of this article, that in more ways than one, the role of a fictional detective, private or otherwise, is to bring some semblance of order or stability to a situation that has gotten out of hand, it is out of the question that the detective could change in some noteworthy way.
Their trials can push them into a corner, of course, cause them to suspect the rightness of their cause, their sanity or the very ground they stand upon, but for the series to continue all such doubts must be cast by the wayside by the next instalment of the series.
As an example I can mention Rex Stout’s brilliant Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin who began their life in print in 1934 and continued it all the way until 1975, not ageing a day in the process even though current events in the world around them were often mentioned during the series’ run.
Sure, a modern mystery novel or a crime series can have arcs that carry on from book to book and cases that take their toll on the investigators, but something like that is by and large a recent development, more fitting for our times and contemporary tastes.
Such was not the case in the 1920s and 30s when Agatha Christie came up with Tommy and Tuppence, which I think noteworthy to bring up that Tommy and Tuppence do something so few fictional detectives do - they grow old.
When Tommy and Tuppence come together in “The Secret Adversary”, they are both in their early twenties.
In the short-story collection “Partners in Crime” from 1929 Tommy and Tuppence return to their detective duties in their thirties while in “N or M?” from 1941, the Beresfords have matured comfortably into their middle years.
By the “Pricking of My Thumbs” from 1968 and eventually “Postern of Fate” from 1975 finally see Tommy and Tuppence to their twilight years, but still at it, looking for adventure to break off the mundanity of everyday life.
Final Words - Are Tommy and Tuppence Great Detectives?
Genre-wise the whole Tommy and Tuppence arrangement fits quite nicely under the broad and forgiving umbrella of crime fiction.
Call them what you want, detective stories, mystery novels or just plain crime fiction, they are built from the same blocks - they all depict a narrative that centres around some kind of criminal or suspicious act and feature an investigation.
The reason why I bring this up is that during its run, the Tommy and Tuppence series switched genres.
Not in an overtly drastic manner, but just enough to be pointed out.
I wouldn’t go as far to call “The Secret Adversary” from 1922 a whodunnit, but in all it’s lightheartedness it only flirted with the tropes of the thriller genre.
The later instalments of the Tommy and Tuppence series from 1941 and onwards took this thrill-curiosity considerably further even to a degree that by the end of it all Tommy and Tuppence had truly taken the second hand delights of adventure as far as it was possible and matured into a venue where Agatha Christie could experiment with the thriller genre.
When considering the point where the series started, this shift isn’t all that surprising.
I see this slight realignment of the series to be well within its initial promise.
After all, Tommy and Tuppence are a perfect example of a pair of amateur detectives. They did not embark on this particular route in search of justice or to right some particular wrong. Neither did they seek glory.
The fact that they got swept away by the world of international intrigue is merely a symptom of their aptitude for such an undertaking.
I don’t know and I’m hesitant to guess how much of a conscious decision this development was, but I would like to entertain the idea that the second instalment of the series had more than its fair share to do with that.
The short story collection, “Partners in Crime” was a well-received venture in its time.
But in addition to developing the pairing of Tommy and Tuppence further, it has a theme connecting the stories together, while at the same time working as a group of short detective stories within a detective novel.
What might not be obvious to the uninitiated is that the deliberate alterations in style between different stories of the collection were meant to parody the styles of other contemporary well-known crime writers, like R. Austin Freeman, Herbert George Jenkins and even Christie herself.
For a modern crime reader, who is not all that familiar with the tropes and styles of Golden Age crime fiction, Tommy and Tuppence might come across a little bit naive.
However, I would like to argue that the inherent light-heartedness, this sort of a romp and a hoot approach to espionage and conspiracy Christie delivers in Tommy and Tuppence is definitely a worthy endeavour to dip your toes into.
Even though the trouble they willingly, and perhaps a little fool-heartedly invite into their lives is serious business, bordering on ruthlessness, Tommy and Tuppence are not weighed down by the world around them like the modern crime reader often expects their greatest detectives to be.
Now, Agatha Christie is known and praised for her brain-teasing plots, and rightfully so. However, the same can not always be said for her character work. When compared to some more recent examples of fictional detectives with their fully developed neurosis and deep-rooted emotional issues and unhealthy ways of dealing with said issues, Tommy and Tuppence are not as multi-dimensional and tragic.
That, of course, has much to do with Christie’s chosen genre and the time these works were created.
Their struggle is more universal, and as such, more easily overcome. But at the same time, however, they also speak to people on a different, yet valid level.
I understand this critique sometimes levelled towards Agatha Christie’s work, but I would be hard-pressed to agree with anyone who called Tommy and Tuppence anything but delightful characters.
They are great detectives, through and through.
Tommy and Tuppence book series by Agatha Christie
