Spy Drama at the Four Corners

 During the evening we spent in the Retro Inn in Cortez, I decided to launch into my next Agatha Christie novel. As I mentioned, I had anticipated that I would read only the Hercule Poirot books for now, and even then only a sampling of them. But as usual my completionist tendencies were taking over. I had already decided to read the early Poirot short stories. Now I decided that I would also read the Christie novels featuring her other famous detectives.

I decided to loop back and read her second overall novel, The Secret Adversary, where she introduces her fictional detective couple, Tommy and Tuppence, the spunky young folks who bill themselves as the Young Adventurers. 

After a little research determining the correct Kindle volume, I purchased a copy for a small amount, although more than a tuppence. My computer devices already knew the wifi password from the Retro Inn from the last four times we had stayed there. There is something comforting in the fact that one's favorite motel has the same wifi password as before, and that it is stored in one's device.

The Secret Adversary was a fun read. I read a goof portion of it in the motel room that night, and sipped it while riding shotgun the next day and Ginger drove us across the Navajo Reservation, as I could get no other reception there, and the book was already downloaded on my phone.

Unlike the Poirot stories, the Tommy and Tuppence stories are, as I learned, not so much murder whodunnits, but more in the lines of amateur spy adventurers. The story was fun, although I easily knew who the secret villain was. It was rather obvious, but it was still fun to discover the solution. This is stark contrast to the murder mysteries, where Christie famously loved to make it difficult to determine the killer, to the point of making the murderer "the least likely person." In this case, the villain was the most likely person, and really only one of two possible choices.

One thing that came through was the Christie theme of her being a romance writer in disguise. In this case, the two young folks, who were childhood friends, team up at the beginning of the story, and by the end they are married. So it is another case where Christie uses a tense crime story to bring two lovers together into a conjugal relationship. In Christie's world, for love to flourish, the world has to be surmounted.