to name the author they love most or the author they read when they were young and you will be sure to be given the one name on everybody’s list: Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller Christie (1890–1976), the most popular writer of detective fiction who ever lived (her sales in all languages are reported to have surpassed four billion copies).
Christie’s remarkably proficient first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), is generally credited as the volume that initiated what is known as the Golden Age of mystery fiction. This era, bracketed by the two world wars, saw the rise of the fair-play puzzle story and the series detective, whether an official member of the police department (such as Freeman Wills Crofts’s Inspector French), a private detective (like Christie’s Hercule Poirot, who made his debut in her first novel), or an amateur sleuth (like Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey).
But it was Christie who towered above the others, outselling, outproducing, and outliving the rest. The manuscript of her first novel had been rejected by several publishing houses, and John Lane, the eventual publisher, held it for more than a year before offering only £25 for it. Encouraged by the sale, Christie went on to write more than a hundred books and plays, including the longest continuously running play of all time, The Mousetrap (since it opened in 1952, there have been more than 27,000 performances—with no closing in sight), as well as one of the best, Witness for the Prosecution (1953).
Less famous than Poirot and Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence (actually Prudence) were described in the London Telegraph as Christie’s greatest creation. They meet in this book, Christie’s second novel, as longtime friends who fall in love and (not to give away too much) marry. Seeking a life of fun and excitement, they become detectives when they start their own business, The Young Adventurers. Tuppence is the brains of the team while Tommy is the realist. They also appeared in a short story collection, Partners in Crime (1929), and four novels, including Postern of Fate (1973), the last novel Christie ever wrote, though not the last published, which was Sleeping Murder (1976).
The Secret Adversary was originally published in London by The Bodley Head in 1922.