The Secret Adversary (1922)

Plot: Can our heroes stop the evil Mr Brown from forming a Labour Government?

Crikey, has ever a book seemed more timely than The Secret Adversary, Christie's second work, which introduces Tommy and Tuppence and is her first mystery-thriller. It's a rip-roaring riot, full of much unintentional humour as our solid duo fight on behalf of the Conservative Party to unmask the sinister Mr Brown and save Great Britain from economic collapse.

Tommy and Tuppence are briliant, and this book is purely, wonderfully "Wodehousian" (an easy phrase for when two bright young things banter joyously throughout). When we first meet Tuppence she's wistfully trying to marry money and is gutted when she discovers her wartime general "keeps a bicycle shop in times of peace". "I'm so very fond of money," she says frequently.

Underneath all the froth, this is a reaction to the horrors of the First World War. Christie was inspired by the number of out-of-work soldiers who knocked at her door, and she composed a book about two such people cast adrift after the war, with a lot of breeding and no money. She rewards them for their charm with lots of nice meals and a stay at the Ritz as well as much excitement, as a contrast to a dull and meagre living as a door-to-door salesmen.

Instead she gives us two lovely people who call each other "old thing" and "old bean" and who have fun, all in a good cause. Their boss, the mysterious Mr Carter may call Tuppence "little lady" but she's a thoroughly emancipated woman, while Tommy reads the Daily Mail and actually applauds the good bits. SIGH. He's not all awful, though. Christie gifts him with a fine line in wit. He greets a grubby villain with "Someone's not been using Pears soap," and bubbles merrily along - in later books he becomes much smarter, but here he's like a lump of wood with manners.

There's a contrast between two American lovers, who are sprightly and open-hearted, and Tommy and Tuppence, who very awkwardly declare their love on the final page ("They sat very straight and forbore to look at each other").

The actual plot is merry enough, and instantly familiar to readers of "Why Didn't They Ask Evans?", only better. Why that isn't a Tommy and Tuppence book is baffling, although perhaps her readers would have cried foul, as so many of the tropes (mental homes and clifftops and photographs and mysterious impostors) reoccur in that book. This is like a template for much later Christie - we even see elements of it spoofed in The Seven Dials mystery.

Sadly, this familiarity breeds an early suspicion. If you've read a lot of Christie recently you'll start twiddling your thumbs fairly early on. How was Marguerite murdered without any of Tommy and Tuppence's band of friends noticing? How does Mr Brown keep discovering their whereabouts when only the four of them know? How, tell us, how? It's a technique that Christie perfects in later books, but here the reader will have spotted a good hundred pages before our heroes do that All Is Not Right in their camp.

But this is a minor flaw - this is really a magnificent early work, breezing along with an almost improvisational joy at the twists and turns of the narrative. It's also refreshingly naive - a lot of elements are just woven in from John Buchan and Sapper without the later filtering and caution that Christie exhibits (Mr Brown is very like the multi-faced villain of 39 Steps). An exception is Tuppence's lovely relationship with Albert, the page boy addicted to pulp crime - and, as we'll see when we hit Partners In Crime, the next time we meet Tommy and Tuppence they've become a smarter vehicle for literary pastische. But hooray old thing.

It may not be

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1934)

Plot: Bobby and Frankie looks for clues and find love

Such is the way of blogs. I wrote a post for this and lost it somewhere. If this were a clue in Why Didn't They Ask Evans, Bobby would probably stumble upon it in the shrubbery, or plucky Lady Frankie would charm it out of my laptop with good manners.

There are people who will tell you that this book is a marvellously Wodehousian frivolity, a confection as light and charming as a meringue. Personally, I've always found meringue cloying.

This isn't to say that I hated this book - just that it's an inferior go at somemthing like The Secret Of Chimneys or early Tommy and Tuppence (indeed Francesca Annis has played both Tuppence and Frankie). Oddly enough it's the kind of plot that somehow feels more suitable to early Allingham, Mrs Bradley or Ngaio Marsh. Christie does good stuff with it, but it's all a bit... oh, I'm being unfair on it. But, for every lovely sinister touch (like the victim's sinister relatives, the creepy sanatorium or Bobby's early poisoning) there's a lot of things that feel quite thin.

For instance, Frankie's main idea for solving the crime is to literally crash a houseparty and become fast friends with everyone in the neighbourhood. Which is genius, but does mean that she spends an awful long time having tea. This is not Wodehousian - his Jeeves books have quite a lot going on in them while appearing untroubled on the surface.

Similarly, the book has a curious approach to suspects. It sets out its stall early and sticks to it, announcing that you can take your pick from
- The Creepy Creepy Doctor
- The Good-For-Nothing Dashing Young Man
- Someone picked out almost at random and who is the Last Person You'd Suspect

Without laying out the details, Christie manages to have all three slices of cake, to a greater or lesser degree. For instant, there is a Surprise Villain. When they're revealed you don't clutch your pearls and think "that is a surprise", you cry foul. And then have to think about it carefully and decide "Actually, yes, that's very clever", but by that point the Surprise Villain has abandoned all former subtlety and is behaving with gay abandon. So it's not surprising that our heroes spot them.

That's the other thing - Frankie and Bobby really are either lucky or cursed. In While The Light Lasts there's a lovely romantic couple on a treasure hunt and they're ingenious and adorable... and then there's Frankie and Bobbie. Oh, they're fine, they're just a bit thin. Intellectually, you just don't quite feel they deserve the prize they get. Frankie we'll give a pass to because she's fabulous, but Bobbie succeeds simply because he's nice. Which is initially sweet, but after a while does make you wonder how we ever won a war.

But I should stop grousing - even thin Christie is a great read, whizzing past, full of madcap situations and events.

NEXT: The ABC Murders

At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

Plot: Can Miss Marple go on holiday without packing murder? Well, no.


At Bertram's Hotel is an unlikely companion piece to Passenger To Frankfurt. You expect certain things from a Miss Marple - murder, gossip and tea - and this book has all of those. But it's also UTTERLY BATTY.

You think it's going to be a sedate crime story and then you realise this is Christie pulling off one of her bizarre thriller capers. There are vast criminal conspiracies, counterfeit clergymen, money-laundering syndicates and even an entire hotel that isn't what it seems to be.

The central conceit of At Bertram's Hotel is that it is too good to be true - rather like a set from a bygone era ("Nne of this place seemed real at all"). This doesn't quite come across in either TV adaptation - after all how do you make a period drama look even more stylised?

It dominates the book as a character, represented through various mouthpieces, such as the glacially perfect receptionist and the far too brilliant maitre'd. The joy though is realising that almost the entire staff of the hotel and a good many of the guests are actors hired to play the part - an idea so wonderfully batty it turns up in a couple of episodes of The Avengers (one of them made before this was published).

Talking of The Avengers, say hello to Bess Sedgwick "she had been a member of the French Resistance... had once saved two children from a bruning house... was said to be the second-best dressed woman in Europe... she had successfuly smuggled herself aboard a nuclear submarine". If the book doesn't exactly feel authentically 60s, the rip-roading Bess is really something new, like the Plucky Young Gals of 20s Christie, but somehow brighter and colder - there's a lovely moment when Miss Marple and her friend look carefully at Bess, wonder if she's happy and decide "no."

Miss Marple observes all of this from an easy chair "Everyone's universal great-aunt" - and she's a perfect central character for this book, sitting there like the events are a play staged just for her. She doesn't miss a thing.

There's a lovely scene where she goes for a walk through a changed London. "She visited no picture galleries and no museums... What she did visit were the glass and china departments of the large stores" and remarks on everything that has changed. "There must be progress I suppose" she laments, quietly. Later on she comments "Life is really a One Way Street, isn't it?" - which is both the solution to the crime and also slight hint that Miss Marple's not so out-of-touch (I've wikipedia'd the phrase and it seems to have been invented in 1909, but I'm wagering only really caught on in England during the great 60s expansion in town planning).

This is then followed by a coincidence (remarkable in real life but fitting in this book) of having two characters play out a scene just when Miss Marple sits down to tea, and Christie has great fun in playing up Miss Marple's desperate attempts to eavesdrop.

The book has a remarkable heroine in the figure of Bridget, a sort of orhpan who plods through the book tracking down her parents. While not as straight down-the- line as other heroines such as Lady Bundle Brent, she's plucky, inventive and daring. She's the hare to Miss Marple's tortoise.

What is curious about having a parentless child is that the book's detective is nicknamed "Father" throughout, resulting in a remarkable scene where he stands in loco parentis for Bridget.

From a gender point, this is a very curious book. All the women in it are independent, strong willed and display various degrees of cunning, and are pretty skilled at deception (whether it's mere politeness or grand larceny).

With the exception of Father, the men are quite lacking. They're mostly well-meaning, but often baffled, or not seeing the full picture. Even the book's male villans are limp. This includes the obvious gigolo racing-car driver Ladislaus, who is oddly intangible despite clearly shagging a mother and her daughter. Which would be shocking if he were more of a character.

Father is a triumph - a roly-poly avuncular menace he's like Sgt Battle in some ways. He pretends to be the junior policeman, he potters around in plain clothes, he plays the fool ever-so-slightly, but he takes Miss Marple seriously in a quite remarkable moment when he says: "I'm not going to arrest you Miss Marple. You have an alibi". The old lady is quite put out - and this is the first policeman to get one over on the love.

There are a few interesting traces of modernity. The delightful Canon Pennyfather may have wandered in from Anthony Trollope, but he goes for a curry. Sexual liberation is everywhere - when Bridget proclaims her romantic adventures in an Italian Convent her mother sighs "Every girl your age has a Guido in her life." There's the villainous Ladislaus with his sexual appetites, and there's even mention of a dodgy doctor who got struck off "helping a lot of girls who were no better than they should be".

Another sign of this being late Christie is the freewheeling plot. At the same time as reading this I was trying a Ngaio Marsh. She's very good - but nearly all her books follow the classic "Crime / Interrogation of all the Suspects / Revelation" structure, which is somtimes incredibly tiresome (and may explain why I don't care for Five Little Pigs although everyone else loves it). At Bertram's Hotel has no such structural limitations - it's all over the shop, but in a way that's constantly engrossing and surprising. True, the denoument is a mixture of masterclass and magic, but it's never ever dull. Which is quite a surprise when you consider that there isn't a murder until two-thirds in.


"I am not really fond of interfering. Though well meant it can cause a great deal of harm."

There's a real sadness at the heart of the book. Frequently when Miss Marple brings someone to justice we feel only pleasure. But this time she's pitted herself against a building, and she feels real regret at having to bring it down. "She felt sad - for Bertram's Hotel and for herself."

Passenger To Frankfurt (1970)

Plot: Hitler's Lost Son and some Hippies take over the world!

“Where do you get your ideas from?” Agatha Christie ponders in the introduction. This bold, mad romp is isn't so much inspired as improvised, changing tack, plot and characters from page to page.

This would matter more if it wasn't so bloody entertaining from moment to moment. It's only as you approach the end that you think “No, now, hang on a minute, this isn't fair...”

We start with Sir Stafford Nye – a diplomat who, we are assured, would go far except for his addiction to jokes. This is surprising as he tells Not One Joke throughout the entire book. He's a game old bird and enters into an intrigue with the mysterious Passenger To Frankfurt, becoming involved in an international conspiracy which is thrillingly described and then.... peters out oddly.

We switch several times to the rooms of some high-powered diplomats, some of them vividly described in clouds of cigar smoke, some of them utterly faceless (one of them's a villain, by the way, but when they're unmasked you'll have a great moment of “uh, who is that again?”).

We then switch away to Stafford's marvellous octogenarian Aunt Matilda. She's a wily old bird and has realised that there's a conspiracy afoot To Destroy Civilisation. So she promptly goes on holiday to Bavaria, where she encounters the conspirators, among them a very fat lady, Hitler's Son, and what appears to be the SS who are taking over the young of the world by organising some nice concerts with decent catering. Crikey.

Poor Sir Stafford wanders back in and then potters out like he's forgotten his keys. At one moment he laments that “Fiction was infinitely superior to real life”, which all depends on your point of view. He's frequently either clutching an enigmatic stuffed panda or a glamorous young woman/princess. Who he may or may not be in love with, who may or may not be related to him, who may or may not be about to destroy the world. Occasionally he plays Wagner on the recorder and who can blame him?

That this all makes sense as you're reading it (but not immediately afterwards) is quite a tribute to Christie. She's an utter poppet for wonderful diversions, such as Aunt Matilda remembering that as a child she wasn't allowed to read novels in the morning, and who hints thickly (and entirely erroneously) that the mystery hinges on The Prisoner Of Zenda.

Occasionally we'll hear that Washington has been destroyed by rioting children, or that planes are being hijacked and taken to Africa. A figure somewhat like General de Gaul will take to the streets of Paris in an attempt to quell the uprising, but it's all too complicated and sometimes has a bit to do with biological warfare and sometimes to do with the destruction of all the airports across Europe. There's even a diagram of the conspiracy, which really doesn't help at all, but looks a bit like a flower. Which is pretty.

There's a remarkable scene recalled in an insane asylum featuring Hitler talking to some Hitler impersonators, which may go some way towards explaining the diabolical schemes of a large woman called Charlotte. Then again, it may not, as contradictory explanations are given – frequently and bafflingly.

It ends in a remote house in Scotland where the solution is... well, only possible to wor out if you've been paying very close attention. And even then, it's quite remarkably odd, like late Margery Allingham doing battle with GK Chesterton sieved through a worn sock. But there's a wedding, although quite why that happens isn't explained.

It's a lovely, maddening pudding of a book. That you'll love a bit despite yourself. Notice the interesting cover of the current edition – the book itself is like the 1920s trying to engage with a world of punk and flower power. But the book cover tuts and goes for some nice frocks. And bless it for that.

We also never find out the significance of the stuffed panda.

NEXT: Why didn't they ask Evans?

Destination Unknown 1955

PLOT: Missing scientists, plucky suicide, and The Prisoner in Casablanca.



Almost pure plot, Destination Unknown rattles along triumphantly, trumpeting its difference - No drawing rooms! No detectives! No death! I'm betting this sheer unChristie-ness contributes to its rather low reputation, which is thoroughly undeserved.

The first half is the standard world of the Christie thriller - there are mysterious government agents behind closed doors, luxurious hotels and enigmatic passengers on planes. There are the vividly convincing touches of local detail ("You come with me. We have very fine toilet! Oh very fine! Just like the Ritz Hotel.").

But there is a crucial difference - that of a mysterious women in a hotel who assumes a false name, a wife abandoned by her cheating husband and contemplating suicide in luxurious surroundings. Is this an Agatha Christie figure? *shrugs* What's more important is what Hilary Craven offers the plot - she's able to go on a remarkable mission because she's very willing to die.


This mission takes up the second half of the book, and it is The Prisoner. Hilary finds herself in a mysterious society which could be in Africa or behind the Iron Curtain. There are enigmatic leaders, assumed identities, brainwashers, peculiar rules, surveillance, and all the luxurious comforts of home including shops and cinemas... but it is still a prison, a prison designed to extract knowledge from people the world thinks dead. Frankly, blimey. To take against this book because there aren't corpses in the library is short-sighted - all Christie is missing is a giant killer balloon and some repressed homosexuality and we're there.

There's some intriguing political musings going on here. Christie appears to be saying that communist and fascist and anarchist are all easily swayed. Her Number One isn't a Nightmare Soul, but a cunning capitalist spider sucking knowledge from everyone.

In amongst a shower of riches we're presented with a character called Andy Peters, the veiled awkwardness of two people pretending to be married while under observation, and an uneasy disguise which includes "full Negroid lips".

One of the big shames is that the book peters out. In some ways it's been driving towards this ending, and it ticks a lot of boxes - showdown, secrets, arrests etc, but there's also the queasy sense that diplomatic pragmatism has prevailed over justice and that Christie is hurrying back to familiar ground without having fully explored her amazing alternative society.

They Came To Baghdad (1951)

PLOT: Bridget Jones does James Bond in a ripping thriller of intrigue, murder and bad typing.


Victoria Jones is bored of being a very bad typist and on a whim follows a dashing stranger to Iraq where she gets involved in an international conspiracy. Along the way she's kidnapped, betrayed, and goes undercover as an archaeologist with no idea that she alone is the last living key to a global disaster.

Crikey! This is thumpingly good stuff. Just when I was getting tired of murder cocktail with a twist, here comes a charming thriller starring plucky Victoria Jones. By her own admission she's neither intelligent nor smart, but she has bucketloads of pluck and cunning which sees her through a world of lethal murder and secret revolutions admirably.

Victoria is a great heroine and proves how even more fun a Bridget Jones book would be if the guest cast dropped like flies. She's endearingly at home at an ambassador's reception and totally out of place infiltrating a sinister society. It's knuckle-gasp time as she trots into work, surrounded by obviously Villainous Sorts, making a hash of typing up the lethal plans of the Olive Branch.

With her wounded pride and her "Some of the cleverest people can't spell" attitude she sticks out like a sore thumb against the ice cool Catherine who you just know is a bad 'un. After Poirot's perfections, Victoria is a breath of fresh air, armed only with her niceness and determination.

Christie pulls off 1950s Iraq with aplomb and not a whiff of racism, peopling it with vivid locals, arrogant Englishers, and offices with secret doors and hidden agendas. We get the super-super spy Fakir Carmichael who is so noble he'd make Biggles blub, we've the secretly efficient Mr Dakin, we've a wonderfully decent hotelier who doesn't mind that Victoria's broke, and diplomats with a love of good furniture.

It's splendid, splendid stuff - and just when you think it can't get better, comes Victoria's visit to the archaeological dig, and a spot of clear autobiography for Christie as she faithfully explains her Mesopotamian labours and the wonders of Max Mallowan. As charming as the reality was, the real Christie wasn't on the tun from a death cult. But there we are.

NEXT: Big bad momma in Petra - it's Appointment With Death!

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

PLOT: Divorse! Diamonds! and Dead Heiresses on the Blue Train to Nice.



James: Written when Christie was going through her divorce, this book suffers as a consequence. It's not that it's bad, but that the events were perhaps preying on her mind.

On the one hand it's a dry run for Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile - glamourous setting, a background of intrigue, a doomed millionaire, suspicious supporting artists... and yet...

At heart it's a tale of two heiresses. There's Ruth Van Alden the tough woman of the world. And then there's Katherine Grey (note the name) - the dull one. Is Christie working out her complicated feelings towards her first husband through these two women?

Poor Ruth has been trapped in a messy marriage with a philandering husband and is trying to escape for a little happiness. Of course, she is one of Christie's doomed heiresses, and she won't trouble us for longer than to convince us of her flaws.

By contrast, Katherine has come into some money and is learning how to live. She's almost impossibly saintly and forms an instant rapport with Poirot over romans policier, as he calls them. She's striving to fit into international society but her heart belongs in... St Mary Mead!

St Mary Mead is another strange trace element in the book, which takes a while to get going and then goes all over the place. We open with mysterious jewel thieves and international assassins. Then we've Ruth's domestic drama, then St Mary Mead and the questions over Katherine's inheritance, then the Blue Train and then it's villas and hotels and police stations and beaches and Moonbase Alpha.

Murder on the Orient Express makes much more use of the single setting of the train and the restrained approach makes it a claustrophobic book, whereas Mystery Of The Blue Train plays out rather like a holiday novel with a bit of crime nibbling at the edges.

Similarly, Death On The Nile does all its set up in the first chapter and dumps us straight in Egypt, compared to Blue Train's hundred pages of set up before "And then the train started."

It's full of loose ends, or ideas that will be made more of in later books. The double-whammy of jewel theft and heiress slaying will reoccur in Death On The Nile, but this time as part of a triple twist.

When we next see St Mary Mead, there will be no mention of inquistive Katherine Grey, nor of her old lady friend Amelia Viner, who has a sharp understanding of human nature and a wicked intelligence... but we can see where this one is going. We'll even see Poirot taking on another female sidekick who is an Agatha Christie figure, but we'll have to wait a while for that.

This is nowhere near as bad a book as Christie makes out. Written at a time when she was having understandable trouble trusting men, it does have a strangely dual approach to them. The main suspect is a no-good toy boy who is undeniably attractive - and he's by no means the worst man in the book.

Poirot himself does all right here (even getting the attentions of a lady). He is on fine form, but sadly missing the narrative skills of Hastings, all pomposity without the leavening that Hastings provieds. He's really just there to solve the mystery. He doesn't feel like a super brain with the wings of fate beating at his shoulder. He's simply the world's greatest detective.

NEXT: Shall we have another go at that? It's Murder On The Orient Express

The Seven Dials Mystery (1929)

Plot: A man is found dead surrounded by seven alarm clocks. Lady Bundle Brent hunts down a sinister international conspiracy.


James: The sequel to The Secret of Chimneys may not be quite the same perfect trifle, but it's doing some interesting things. There are still the Bright Young Things, but they're in it up to their necks. In the first few pages they start dropping dead, and soon it is plucky Lady Bundle Brent against the world, with only a clutch of wise friends aiding her in her mission to stay one step ahead of the machinations of the Club of Seven Dials.

Yet another deft blend of country house murder mystery with John Buchan and PG Wodehouse, this book finds time to fold in an Arnolod Bennett pop at the ex-bicycle salesman Sir Oswald Coote and his wife who just can't handle the servant problem - unlike the capable Bundle and her father, the foggy Lord Caterham. There's also a bit more restrained racism, such as when one character protests at an alias "Short of being described as Rothschild I don't mind" and there's much puzzling of the ways foreigners spell their names - but there's little to trouble the horses.

This is archly self-aware. Bundle frequently says about the sinister Seven Dials things like "They're the sort of crowd I always imagined... only existed in books" - and, as the book ticks on, the sinister club of masked adventurers seems both more menacing and more bizarre, with the theories about who these sinsister schemers could be seeming more and more improbable.

It all leads to a denouement that is both baffling and remarkable. There's no "You may be wondering why I called you here today" scene - instead, the twist is so good we hear "Get a chair for her! It's all been a bit of a shock, I can see." And then... well, what happens next is quite remarkable.

If we are cheated of the "Damn your meddling, Poirot!" unveiling, there's still a lot of unmasking, as Christie explains to us, tactfully and carefully how thoroughly she has deceived us for a couple of hundred pages. It's not unusual to arrive at the end of a Christie mystery with no idea of the villain(s), to have missed most of the clues, and to be pleasantly thrilled at our own stupidity. But this is rather like the Birmingham ferris wheel that gave a merry narration of the Paris skyline. While Christie does not lie to us, we arrive at the end having been constantly misinformed and misdirected, but having had a thoroughly pleasant journey - and with an odd yearning to go round again just to make sure.

The Secret of Chimneys (1925)

The Plot: Much to the alarm of Lord Caterham, the family seat of Chimneys finds itself the centre of an international conspiracy, with dead royalty, stolen treasure, and master criminals wandering the grounds.

James: This is PG Wodehouse's James Bond novel. Possibly the most rewarding book ever written, this is a giddy whirl of crown princes, foreign locations, hotels, sinister assassins, secret passages, dead foreigners, impassive detectives and blundering young things.

Let's quickly turn to the marvellously dry Superintendent Battle, who is basically Jeeves:

"Detective stories are mostly bunkum... but they amuse people... and they're useful, sometimes."

The entire cast are beautifully depicted - this is a leap on from The Mysterious Affair At Styles. The story has a firm centre with implacable Battle, plucky gal "Bundle" Brent, twinkling adventuress Mrs Revel and international rogue Tony Cade. But beyond that are a wonderfully-depicted collection of baffled gentry and bumbling foreigners.

The Well-To-Do English get both barrels from Christie, especially stuffed shirt politico George Lomax (forever on the point of a fine speech) and his assistant, the lovelorn dimwit Bill Eversleigh. A lot of Christie's casual racism actually emanates from these kind of people - the thoughtless and the pompous, who are conviced the world is off to rack-and-ruin all thanks to Johnny Foreigner. These are lazy, arrogant, wasteful people who deserve everything that's coming to them, yet somehow avoid it.

The true class of the book rests with Lord Caterham and his daughter - the Lord too wisely indolent to care, and dear Bundle crammed full of pluck and stamina and shrewd character judgment.

It is people like this who can take one look at Anthony Cade and decide that, for all his outward roguery, he's got a heart of gold and deserves a stiff cocktail. Cade may be devious and cunning, but he's a good egg - and it's a measure of all the other characters in this book how they react to him. Women adore him, both the wily Battle and the eccentric Baron Lollipop are impressed by him, and there's something about him that turns quiet waiters into cat burglars.

Cade is Christie's first Action Hero. He's full of thoughtful vim in a story where every other man is reserved. Even Supintendent Battle is practically asleep, leaving all leaping to the quasi-comical Surete Expert. Compare Cade's rugged candour to Poirot, and the contrast is remarkable - this is a man with brains and more than two gears.

His only match in the story are the gals, who are all spirited things, quite prepared, if absolutely necessary, to marry a dimwit if it's for the good of their country. But they'd rather do something ripping. Constantly coming over as much smarter than the men, they're all about quick thinking and fast cars and fun. It's what helps makes the book so giddy and clever. How perfectly screaming, as Bundle would say.

In contrast, Inspector Battle is a splendidly self-effacing non-entity. Like Jeeves he is classily classless. He's always there to say just the right thing, or offer a discrete word. His purpose is to save the day, with the minimum of fuss, and then to quietly disappear, the proprieties observed.

The foreigners are mostly there for fun and misdirection. "Talking to foreigners always makes me so thirsty" sighs Lord Caterham at one point. They may carry guns or knives, but they're always the butt of a cheap joke - with their silly names (Mr Hiram Fish), their conversational inelegance, and even their smoky rooms full of sinister plots. It's all good clean fun, and the portraits are pure Wodehouse - grandly-done sketches rather than calculated racism.

This isn't to say that the book gets off without the occasional wince. A comical Baron at one point remarks "Something wrong I knew there would be... He has married a black woman in Africa!" which is regrettable pidgin, to say the least. But, I suppose, it fits with the times.

Christie is actually at her most blistering when she looks at the English lower-middle-classes. Here's her description of daytrippers to Chimneys:

"Bert, the humorist of the party, nudges his girl and says 'Eh! Gladys, they've got two pennyworth of pictures here right enough.' And then they go and look at more pictures and yawn and shuffle their feet and wish it was time to go home."

She's also at her bleakest (understandably) when describing Public Transport: "My belief in the brotherhood of man died the day I arrived in London last week, when I observed people standing in a Tube train resolutely refuse to move up and make room."

As a sentiment it seems to sit oddly in what looks like such a creamy froth of a book - but then, when you step back, you realise this is a dark subversion of Wodehouse: If these upper class fools really are running the country, then who is to save us? That this book manages to offer its own, quietly subversive solution is the real Secret of Chimneys.

And yes - if you're planning on reading just one Christie, please let it be this.

The Big Four (1927)

Plot: Can Hercule Poirot defeat the Big Four, a mysterious conspiracy with a magnetic death ray and plans for global domination? Blimey.

James: Prepostorous, magnificent tosh. The Big Four is the very last Agatha Christie book you'd expect. It's like Poirot written by a 9 year old. And yet it's also the accomplished work of someone well-read in her field.

This came out in 1927, the same year as the final Casebook of Sherlock Holmes. And here Poirot and Hastings are as close to Holmes and Watson as possible. They even have a long-suffering landlady, a fireplace, and I'm fairly convinced Poirot smokes a pipe.

But if this is a Holmes pastische, then it's Professor Moriarty's sinister conspiracy of The Final Problem, as Poirot must try and elude an enemy as cunning as he is, with eyes everywhere. The book is similarly full of fake notes, plausible messengers and impostors.

It's more than a Holmes pastische, though. The global conspirators come from John Buchan's The Power House and the 39 Steps, which also gives us The Destroyer, the charming master of disguise. There are also elements from Fu Man Chu in the unseen Li Chang Yen who operates through sinister East End Tongs. And then there's an air of Guy Barlow's Dr Nikola - Master Criminal, a master of international kidnap and murder, who is always one step ahead of the game, with his eyes on the prize of Tibetan immortality.

But to go from reading the archetypal country house murder of The Mysterious Affair At Styles to this is eye watering. Originally conceived as a short-story collection, stuff just happens. And keeps happening at a relentless pace that leaves poor Hastings dizzy.

Poirot may solve the individual cases but he frequently loses his opponent. The actual cases are a mixed bag - for every fiendish puzzle that relies on a tiny hole in a rug or a partially defrosted leg of lamb, there are stories that are lame coincidence disguised with sheer dash.

Thus we bump into Poirot's villainous old flame, Countess Rossakoff. Before we can even think it's not the smartest move of The Big Four to employ her, luckily, she tries to drop a tree on our heroes (Brilliant described by Poirot as "Hercule Poirot might now be crushed out of existence - a terrible calamity for the world. You too, mon ami - though that would not be such a national catastrophe.")

Similarly, when our adventurers try and track down that Master of Disguise, Number Four, aka "The Destroyer", Poirot unmasks him through a classified advert as a failed actor called Claude. We would be reeling from the bathos of all this, were it not that Christie introduces Claude's old girlfriend, the splendidly down-at-heel Flossie Monroe. Christie shows a surprising flair for the tart-with-the-heart-of-gold. Flossie is a great creation ("'Ah, you Frenchmen! Naughty, naughty!' she wagged her finger at him in an excess of archness."), and it is a shame that she's an all-too brief cameo.

The rest of the book is given over to dazzling events in dizzying locations. Poor Hastings gets to yell "My god! You fiend! Not that!" to sinister foreigners, is gassed several times, tied up frequently, bamboozled, dangled over rivers and generally treated like Penelope Pitstop. It is a sad oversight that he is not fastened to a railway track.

Oddly for such an unreal book, his relationship to Poirot is at its most fond. Poirot is as dismissive and manipulative as ever of his friend's mental powers, but deeply fond of him. "I hope they will not succeed in masssacring Hastings," he muses, "That would annoy me greatly."

You have to wonder why a genius would go around with such a bumbler. I guess it's similar to the way that pretty people have a plain friend, just to make sure they stand out.

But the relationship also allows the book's greatest coup - that of the introduction of the marvellously named Achille Poirot. Yes, Poirot has a twin brother. As he admits archly, all detectives have a cleverer brother.

Spoilers:

And it is to Achille that the last third of the book belongs. With Hercule dead, we find ourselves in a rerun of The Empty House, only with Mycroft Holmes making a reluctant appearance. Of course, Achille turns out to be a trick. Then he doesn't. Then he does again, in a switch of events that's breathless and cunning but also a bit of a cheat. Poor Hastings.

The resolution is disappointing. Naturally it takes place in the villains' secret lair, but after all of the build up, it is rather brief, no matter how explosive.

But overall, this is is a thrilling book, not short on incident, although oddly impersonal. It's refreshing, if disconcerting, to see Poirot so out of his normal setting. As the dastardly Number Four comments at one point: "Return to your former avocations, and solve the problems of London society ladies."

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Kate:I shall start by ‘fessing up that I remember very little about this one and get it confused with The Seven Dials Mystery (which we’ll be covering in the not too distant future).

But passing over that for a moment….it’s almost impossible not to read Poirot and Hastings as a response to Holmes and Watson, albeit with the dashing man of action transformed into a neat little man with tisanes and moustache wax. The travel sick Poirot is ill-equipped for the sort of jet-setting international thrillers demand, and it does seem like a strange segue for the Christie of country house mysteries and village gossip. But she’d obviously done her research among the works of other crime writers; this definitely has the air of Conan Doyle about it and later short story collection “Partners in Crime” sees Tommy and Tuppence very much playing detectives in a series of affectionate parodies of other authors.

“The Big Four” has a sheer adventurous bonkerness that isn’t common in Christie; Poirot’s known for solving mysteries sitting in his chair, moustaches in perfect order, but in this story he’s a much more active detective. Trains and escapes from them feature heavily, in a very Sherlockian fashion, with Poirot and Hastings leaping off a train in the opening chapter and using the emergency cord to sneak away in “Radium Thieves”.

There’s a definite note of melodrama; any novel in which Hastings can describe the villain (with no irony whatsoever) as “Mad – mad - with the madness of genius!” is clearly to be taken with a pinch of salt. Christie uses the clichés of mystery fiction with great verve, from a dying victim leaving a clue to their killer, to a curare blowpipe and transparent disguises. Hastings as a proxy for the slow-witted reader is a common theme in the series, and here he is repeatedly lead right up the garden path by Poirot, on the excuse that he has “a nature so beautiful and so honest….unless you are yourself deceived, impossible for you to deceive others!”.

When the book was written in 1927, genuine international conspiracies and espionage must have been a fairly recent memory, but these sinister Chinamen and mysterious Russians inhabit a completely different fictional universe. Either Christie or her readers must have been quite fond of the colourful Countess Rossakoff, since she reappears in “Poirot’s Early Cases” and “The Seven Labours of Hercules”, and is the closest eternal bachelor Poirot ever comes to romance.

The book’s origins as a short story collection are evident in the sheer number of different problems and villains presented to us, and the speed at which they’re dealt with. “Radium Thieves” is a prime example of this, wit Poirot detecting a dastardly plot, the real plot behind the fake plot, being captured, discovering the villain and moving swiftly on – all within 40 pages. In the bigger picture of saving the world from A Fate Worse Than Death, none of this seems to achieve much, but it’s certainly a fun way to pass the time.

Next book: following the theme of international intrigue, I offer you The Secret Of Chimneys (almost certainly to be followed by The Seven Dials Mystery.