Book: Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie
Krishna
We have reviewed many of Augatha Christie’s books. For example, The Secret Adversary dealt with the same detective duo – Tommy and Tuppence – as this one.
Tommy and Tuppence are getting bored with life again. They are married, they now have money but life has become bland! (Yes, this is our Tuppence after all, in a Christie story). They long for adventure when their old police friend asks them to mind a detective agency. The real Mr Blunt of the Blunt Detective Agency were found to be Russian spies and rounded up. In order not to arouse the suspicions of the upper levels which may come to inspect how this is going, Tommy is asked to impersonate Mr Blunt and run the agency. Tuppence being his secretary and his real assistant Albert being the gatekeeper who lets (real) clients in.
Tuppence is resolved to make something of it and bring adventure into it. Not for her the usual ‘trail my spouse’ kind of work; she needs danger, adventure. (Yes, Christie story; yes Tuppence in it).
They get a client. One young man, Lawrence St Vincent is the client and he is upset that a girl he admires, Janet, has suddenly disappeared. Soon you realize that this is just a string of short cases threaded together as a story. The first one with Lawrence ends really stupidly if you ask me. The girl is found but how it was achieved is really weird. The second case is about a pink pearl lost by a guest in the house and the lady who was sent to them, Miss Kingston Bruce, seems somehow reluctant to engage them and seems to have been forced into coming to them by her mother, the hostess.
The solution turns out to be, again, less inspiring. I suspect that my lack of delight in reading this is partly because I did not expect this to be a string of short stories threaded together to be a pretend novel.
And while I am in a whiny mood, here is another. The title of the book should have been ‘Partners in Crime Solving’, right? I know that this does not have quite the ring that the present title but would have been more honest.
The next case happens when Tommy gets the blue letter which they are supposed to pass to Scotland Yard. A ‘client’ comes in – a huge man with a clubfoot – and introduces himself as Dr Bower. He Tommy to come to his place which is out of the way because he realizes that it was ransacked twice when he was away and luckily the precious research papers regarding obscure poison did not get stolen, being cleverly hidden. But he suspects another attempt and wants to hire Blunt’s Detective Agency (Tommy and Tuppence cover story company).
. Tuppence guesses he is a fraud and is after the blue letter. Meanwhile Scotland Yard inspector Dymchurch comes there and confirms it. So they decide to lay a trap for Dr Bower. However, it turns out that the good inspector Dymchurch is the real culprit after the letter. How they outwit him is the rest of the story.
I will not even bother describing the next two as each is a clever puzzle masquerading as a story.
A sidetrack on all this is Tommy plays a different (old) detective every time. I could only recognize the style of Hercule Poirot and, of course, Sherlock Holmes but everything else went over my head.
Then there is the scene where both Tommy and Tuppence are kidnapped by nefarious people (yes, it is that kind of a story) who concoct an elaborate scheme to kill Tommy. The parody suggests itself, but will refrain. How? Seeing that he is blindfolded, he is left in the middle of a room with spikes all around. Asked to go to the door and freedom if he can but if he even touches one of those spikes, he will be fried to death because there is electricity in each. To ensure his good behaviour, the said villain will stand watch with a loaded pistol in his hands. (They never shoot them when they have the heroes in their power, do they?). Tommy ingeniously escapes.
There is that story of a policeman appearing in the mist, just like legends talked about a policeman who was murdered appearing. The story’s resolution is definitely cute but it is improbable that Tommy would have hit on the solution just by thinking about it.
Then there is a story of a man who was playing golf with his business partner and after talking to a tall skinny girl went to pieces; much later in the evening, he was found dead on the links. An ingenious puzzle solved through reasoning alone by Tommy and Tuppence. (The thing about Agatha Christie is that most things are solved by using the brains – not much of sleuthing or data compiling there, normally. Even the action scenes are when the dastardly villains manage to put one or two of our intrepid heroes in danger!)
There is a lady who inherits a castle but not much else. One person seems to want to try buying it off her repeatedly and suspicious, she seeks out Mr Blunt. Tommy and Tuppence figure out that there is a large treasure buried there and the servant and the buyer (a distant relative) know this. How they secure the treasure for the deserving lady is the rest of the story.
The last adventure has to do with the Russian man who is multilingual and can easily pass for an Englishman comes in and Tommy pretends to be Blunt. When the man takes away Tuppence for a visit, things get murky. The police are eavesdropping and following them to a hotel but from there they simply disappear. The double twist of the story is interesting.
I did complain about a short story collection masquerading as a novel. I have nothing against short stories and I have read several that I enjoyed. I only am annoyed by false pretenses – and yes, I did not read the reviews first, which would have let the cat out of the bag.
All in all, not bad 6/10
— Krishna