[Next project] Partners in Crime, by Agatha Christie

[David]

Tommy and Tuppence #2 showed up recently on PG, so while I'm working my way through my current proof-reading, I thought I'd prep this for something light when my current project is done.

PG: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/78342

IA: https://archive.org/details/bwb_C0-BNY-672

GH: https://github.com/dajare/agatha-christie-partners-in-crime (soon to be populated)

It looks like there's a few more "1930" PD books showing up on PG, and I've got my eye on another one. But this will do for now! :)

Hope this looks okay.

David / Fife, UK

[David]

Oops! Wrong repo link. Should have been: https://github.com/dajare/agatha-christie_partners-in-crime

(And it has the initial commit.) Sorry about that!

(And also to correct: this is from 1929, not 1930.)

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Vince will manage with Lukas reviewing.

On 4/4/26 11:40 AM, David wrote:
> Oops! Wrong repo link. Should have been: https://github.com/dajare/
> agatha-christie_partners-in-crime
> (And it has the initial commit.) Sorry about that!
>
> (And also to correct: this is from 1929, not 1930.)
>
> On Saturday, 4 April 2026 at 10:29:38 UTC+1 David wrote:
>

> Tommy and Tuppence #2 <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-
> christie/partners-in-crime> showed up recently on PG, so while I'm

> working my way through my current proof-reading, I thought I'd prep
> this for something light when my current project is done.
>

> PG: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/78342 <https://gutenberg.org/
> ebooks/78342>
> IA: https://archive.org/details/bwb_C0-BNY-672 <https://archive.org/
> details/bwb_C0-BNY-672>
> GH: https://github.com/dajare/agatha-christie-partners-in-crime

> <https://github.com/dajare/agatha-christie-partners-in-crime> (soon
> to be populated)
>
> It looks like there's a few more "1930" PD books showing up on PG,
> and I've got my eye on another one. But this will do for now! :)
>
> Hope this looks okay.
>
> David / Fife, UK
>

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[David]

A question for you Vince: this is a bit of an odd "shorts" collection, in that it also has an overarching frame narrartive: "a group of short detective stories within a detective novel", as a contemporary review put it.

As such, editions whether first edition or modern reprints use chapter numbers. I'm thinking it would be justifiable, then, to split into `chapter-1.xhtml`, etc., as usual, rather than by the name (`a-fairy-in-the-flat.xhtml`).

Thoughts? Thanks!

[Vince]

It’s not common, but it’s not unusual, either. :) Even so, they’re still short stories—they stand by themselves. You can read any one of the stories without knowing anything about the framing device and still get everything out of that particular story. As such, I would say they should be “articles,” and should use the name of the story as the title.

[David]

Okay - that makes sense!

Would this be another edge-case? There are six of the stories that are split into two parts, with the second part always called: "... (continued)", like this:

Do those get any special treatment? The only precedents I've found in the corpus aren't good analogies for this. It's the two "chapters" together that (it seems to me as I type) constitute the "article". So should they be combined into a single file and sectioned? or some other option? or just leave each to be an "article"?

Thanks!

[Vince]

Edge cases everywhere. :)

This is one of the (relatively few) Christie’s I don’t personally own, so I haven’t seen or or read it. My understanding is that the stories themselves were originally published in a magazine, and then she rearranged the order and modified the stories a bit to make them fit and flow better into the framing device. So, originally, those “two-chapter” stories were one story, and were just broken up into chapters for the sake of the book. So combining them back into a single file makes sense to me; the question would be whether it even needs the “continued” section at that point.  You’re the best judge of that, since you’ve read (or are reading) the stories; if the breaks are needed, then I would make them sections in the file, and then just use CSS to force a page break at the section break.

On Apr 8, 2026, at 5:13 AM, David <djre...@gmail.com> wrote:

Okay - that makes sense!

Would this be another edge-case? There are six of the stories that are split into two parts, with the second part always called: "... (continued)", like this:

[David]

Right you are - I see that now in the book's Wikipedia page (with references). That helps a lot as I work through this one. Thanks!

On Wednesday, 8 April 2026 at 21:42:11 UTC+1 Vince wrote:

Edge cases everywhere. :)

This is one of the (relatively few) Christie’s I don’t personally own, so I haven’t seen or or read it. My understanding is that the stories themselves were originally published in a magazine, and then she rearranged the order and modified the stories a bit to make them fit and flow better into the framing device. So, originally, those “two-chapter” stories were one story, and were just broken up into chapters for the sake of the book. So combining them back into a single file makes sense to me; the question would be whether it even needs the “continued” section at that point.  You’re the best judge of that, since you’ve read (or are reading) the stories; if the breaks are needed, then I would make them sections in the file, and then just use CSS to force a page break at the section break.