The Secret Adversary

Front Cover
HarperCollins, 1922 - Fiction - 352 pages

Now the Major TV Series Partners in Crime

From the brilliant pen of Agatha Christie comes the first novel in her Tommy and Tuppence mystery series featuring the beloved sleuthing duo.

Tommy and Tuppence are young, in love . . . and flat broke. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme:  Young Adventurers Ltd.—“willing to do anything, go anywhere.” But they get more than they bargained for when their first assignment for the sinister Mr. Whittington draws them into a diabolical conspiracy.

It isn’t long before they find themselves plunged into more danger than they ever could have imagined—a danger that could put an abrupt end to their business . . . and their lives.

“Agatha Christie proves that if you really are good enough, you can break all the ‘rules’ and still come up with a winner.” —Anne Perry, New York Times bestselling author of the Thomas Pitt and William Monk series of Victorian mysteries

 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 241 - Outwardly, he's an ordinary clean-limbed, rather block-headed young Englishman. Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it's quite impossible to lead him astray through his imagination. He hasn't got any — so he's difficult to deceive.
Page 13 - Two young adventurers for hire. Willing to do anything, go anywhere. Pay must be good. No unreasonable offer refused.' How would that strike you if you read it?" "It would strike me as either being a hoax, or else written by a lunatic.
Page 44 - That is the truth. Bolshevist gold is pouring into this country for the specific purpose of procuring a Revolution. And there is a certain man, a man whose real name is unknown to us, who is working in the dark for his own ends. The Bolshevists are behind the Labour unrest — but this man is behind the bolshevists. Who is he? We do not know. He is always spoken of by the unassuming title of 'Mr. Brown.
Page 286 - It seemed utterly impossible that he and Mr. Brown could be one and the same.
Page 48 - I think not. My experts, working in stereotyped ways, have failed. You will bring imagination and an open mind to the task.
Page 46 - The Revolutionary element as good as declare that it's in their hands, and that they intend to produce it at a given moment. On the other hand, they are clearly at fault about many of its provisions.

About the author (1922)

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.