This was the second novel Christie wrote, after her unexpected success with The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In the forward to this book, she said she thought she would try a spy novel instead of a detective story.

The novel is set in 1920 – five years after the sinking of the Lusitania, and after the end of The Great War (WW I). Unemployment is high and many young people who had served in some capacity during the war are descending on London to try to find work. Among them are Thomas Beresford (Tommy), who was a soldier in the war, and Miss Prudence Cowley (Tuppence), who was a nurse’s aide in a hospital treating wounded soldiers. The two have been friends since childhood, and come across one another at the train station. Commiserating on their lack of funds and employment they decide to place an ad in the paper offering their services as adventurers. And the story begins …

This one has a lot of twists and turns, and the characters include the usual assortment of good guys and bad guys and those we’re not sure of till the end. I was positive I had it figured out about half-way through, and then about three-fourths of the way I began to doubt my choice. A few pages later I was sure, once again, that I had been correct … or maybe not.

The story line is very obviously dated, but it wasn’t really written as an historical piece, so Christie doesn’t explain a lot of things that would have been relatively fresh and familiar to her readers when this was published. Today’s reader really needs to keep the time and place in mind to fully enjoy the work. Also, spy novels were not Christie’s strong suit. Delaportia’s narration is pretty good, though she has a large cast of characters to try to differentiate and her “foreign” accents (American, French, Russian) are somewhat laughable. All in all … this is an entertaining read, but doesn’t have the genius of Christie’s detective stories.