The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race, #1) in Reading the Detectives

Aug 18, 2016 Christine PNW rated it liked it

Shelves: vintage-women

The Man in the Brown Suit is a very early Christie, published in 1924 on the heels of the second Poirot mystery, Murder on the Links, and right before the first Superintendent Battle mystery, The Secret of Chimneys. In this one, she introduces the enigmatic Colonel Race, who subsequently appears in Cards on the Table, Death on the Nile and Sparkling Cyanide.

This is also the first of her books narrated by one of her charming young women, in this case Anne Beddingfield, impoverished but plucky dau The Man in the Brown Suit is a very early Christie, published in 1924 on the heels of the second Poirot mystery, Murder on the Links, and right before the first Superintendent Battle mystery, The Secret of Chimneys. In this one, she introduces the enigmatic Colonel Race, who subsequently appears in Cards on the Table, Death on the Nile and Sparkling Cyanide.

This is also the first of her books narrated by one of her charming young women, in this case Anne Beddingfield, impoverished but plucky daughter of a well-known archaeologist. Upon the death of her father, Anne takes her 87 pounds to London, where she is on the search for adventure and darkly attractive, taciturn men to fascinate her.

The Man in the Brown Suit is equal parts romance and mystery, with a side of international criminal intrigue, all taking place under the hot African sky. I get the sense, reading it, that Christie put a lot of herself in Anne Beddingfield, and the incident where Anne goes surfing only strengthens that sense. For those of you who don't know, Agatha was an avid surfer as a young woman, and was the first British woman to surf standing up, which occurred in Capetown, South Africa during the writing of this book.

The plot is profoundly silly and entirely unbelievable. Looking at Christie's bibliography, her first ten books are basically equally split between straight mystery and international espionage:

Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) (mystery)
The Secret Adversary (1922) (international espionage)
Murder on the Links (1923) (mystery)
The Man in the Brown Suit (1924) (international espionage)
The Secret of Chimneys (1925) (international espionage)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) (mystery)
The Big Four (1927) (international espionage)
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) (mystery)
The Seven Dials Mystery (1929) (international espionage)
The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) (mystery)

After The Seven Dials Mystery her publishers must have convinced her that she was a much stronger mystery writer than she was a spy novelist, because she largely abandons that form for 22 years, until 1951's They Came To Baghdad.

It is true that Christie's "thrillers" are not as strong as her mysteries. Having said that, with the exception of The Big Four, which I found execrable, and Passenger to Frankfurt, which is likely one of the worst books ever published, I generally enjoy them. They are reliant on coincidence, mostly silly, and have wholly unconvincing villains, but they are fun so long as I refuse to take them seriously.

I am disappointed that with such a worthy start, Colonel Race fizzled as a character, showing up in only three additional books. I would still like to know more about him. ...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Bev rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: vintage-mystery, agatha-christie, british-mystery, was-mine

Anne Beddingfeld has always longed for adventures...and romance. Preferably romantic adventures. She has spent her life with her academic father, a man who was an expert on Primitive Man, but no expert on raising daughters or managing finances. When her father passes away, Anne finds herself set to face the world with 87 pounds and change in her pocket. Her father's well-meaning associates and the townspeople who knew them all aim to help in their suggestions that she take on a nice position as Anne Beddingfeld has always longed for adventures...and romance. Preferably romantic adventures. She has spent her life with her academic father, a man who was an expert on Primitive Man, but no expert on raising daughters or managing finances. When her father passes away, Anne finds herself set to face the world with 87 pounds and change in her pocket. Her father's well-meaning associates and the townspeople who knew them all aim to help in their suggestions that she take on a nice position as a secretary or an assistant librarian or even as wife to the doctor, but Anne is determined to find adventures. And when she watches a scared man back himself off the platform at Hyde Park Underground Station and be pronounced dead by a doctor in a brown suit who promptly disappears while leaving behind a scrap of paper with an odd message scrawled on it, she finds that she's about to get her wish. But you know what they say about being careful what you wish for.....

The Man in the Brown Suit is one of Agatha Christie's early attempts at light-hearted espionage. Yes, there are deaths and mysterious master criminals directing nefarious schemes and hidden diamonds and blackmail, but it's all of the sort that one finds it hard to take sseriously. That doesn't make it any less fun or exciting to read, but it doesn't produce the edge-of-your-seat thrills that some espionage stories will.

Anne uses her last 87 pounds to book passage on a ship bound for South Africa. Her investigations into the slip of paper and the man in the brown suit convince her that something important will happen on that ship. She soon has a wounded man bursting into her cabin the middle of the night, a film canister full of diamonds is slipped throught the ventilator of her new-found friend's cabin, and an attempt is made on Anne's life. There are several suspicious characters on board...two secretaries to Sir Eustace Peldar (both acting rather oddly), a parson who claims to have recently been in Africa yet shows no signs of the African sun, a Colonel Race who everybody says is a government man, and even Sir Eustace himself. Anne is determined to suspect everyone until shown differently. She spends the rest of the story working out who she can trust and who the evil mastermind is.

While it was a bit exasperating to watch Anne fall into the classic heroine trap of being tricked into coming to an isolated home alone and then bound and gagged to wait for the "Colonel" to come, it was refreshing to see her use her resourcefulness to escape her captors. It was also nice to see her learn from the experience and not be caught napping again. Anne is a likeable main character--smart, brave, and willing to learn from her mistakes. I enjoyed Anne very much. And I enjoyed the story--but, be warned, it's lighter than a lot of Christie's and the emphasis is not so much on the mystery. Three and a half stars out five. ...more

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Apr 13, 2019 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: agatha-christie, british-mystery, vintage-mystery, mystery, bought-2015, mount-tbr-2019

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I am currently on a mission to reread Agatha Christie's work in order of publication. Having just started this year, I'm up to The Man in the Brown Suit . I first reviewed this one back during my first full year of blogging (pre- most of my challenges); nearly at the same time of year, in fact--March. If you'd like to see my thoughts at the time or a little more complete synopsis of the plot, then please click on the title. I'm not going to rehash the plot here. Instead, I'm going to look a l I am currently on a mission to reread Agatha Christie's work in order of publication. Having just started this year, I'm up to The Man in the Brown Suit . I first reviewed this one back during my first full year of blogging (pre- most of my challenges); nearly at the same time of year, in fact--March. If you'd like to see my thoughts at the time or a little more complete synopsis of the plot, then please click on the title. I'm not going to rehash the plot here. Instead, I'm going to look a little deeper at a point (that is a major spoiler--and could possibly spoil another Christie title) that struck me during this reading that just passed me by in previous readings. So, if by chance you've not read this particular Christie novel and haven't read all her big titles, by which I mean the highly recognized titles that break/bend the Golden Age rules of detection a bit, then you might want to give this review a miss.

First off, before we get to the spoiling bits, I'd just like to say that I enjoyed the novel much more this time round. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it last time--I did--I just wasn't as enthusiastic about it as say, Yvette over at the In So Many Words blog (who said so in the comments of that previous review). Perhaps I was in a more adventuresome mood this year. But I thoroughly enjoyed Anne's sense of adventure and longing for excitement after being cooped up with her father for so many years.

But on to the spoils of reading....What struck me so forcibly during this reading was Christie's use of the unreliable "narrator" in the extracts from Sir Eustace Pedler's diary. It is an early version of her "breaking" the very first of Father Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments of GAD rules:

The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know. [emphasis mine]

Of course she bent this same rule with even more abandon in one of her most highly recognizable titles--resulting in some criticism from mystery fans (and fellow authors) over her rule-breaking. Dorothy L. Sayers came to her defense, saying that "It is the reader's job to suspect everybody." And much has been made (again, in her defense) that there are clear breaks in the narrative and enough ambiguous language to indicate that we haven't been shown all of the criminal's thoughts.

This happens again with Sir Eustace and his diary. Readers zip along in the narrative, reading the diary excerpts in between Anne's narrative and, generally, accepting the two parallel stories at face value. But Christie (through Sir Eustace) goes out of her way to tell us that he really shouldn't be trusted. He admits to wanting to make up stories in the memoirs that he's writing but his secretary, Guy Pagett, keeps a firm grip on the truth and prevents him. Of course, we should be aware that Pagett probably doesn't oversee the personal diary entries in quite the same way--but it doesn't (or at least it didn't occur to me the first time I read it). He also tells us that while we may learn things (possibly disreputable) about other people, he's certainly not going to be indiscreet and allow readers of his memoirs--or, presumably, his diary--to learn disreputable things about him. Another tip-off that I missed the first time around. But then, as crafty as Christie was, there was nothing to prevent her from playing a double-bluff and creating a totally different, and for purposes of the crime totally innocent secret for Sir Eustace to keep Pagett out of the diary.

Great fun and even more enjoyable because of my sudden epiphany over the diary.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting thanks. ...more

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Apr 13, 2021 Connie Anne Kikta rated it it was ok

Shelves: hoopla, books-2-movies, reading-the-detectives-2021-chris

I really couldn't get into this book. It was super slow. ...more

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May 16, 2011 Abbey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: suspense-thriller, own, reviewed, favorites, myst-cosies, myst-set-andor-auth-uk, myst-fems-project, vintage, sell

BOTTOM LINE: all the expected bells’n’whistles, but everything is done superbly, with a very light hand, especially for the time. Of its type, this is “First Class!”.

After several suspicious occurrences, the recently orphaned Miss Anne Beddingfield winds up on a mysterious boat to South Africa, along with spies and crooks and A Genius of Crime, well, sort of. But this young lady has brains and courage, and is determined to figure out all the angles by herself, despite the help of a bumbling olde ...more

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Mar 06, 2021 Pat rated it liked it

This was a missed Christie for me! It was an interesting enough plot, although I did find some of the discussion about the machinations of the plot a little tiresome and made my mind wander. The characters were interesting, although Anne's views on relationships between men and women are quite dated, to say the least, as are the references to race. ...more

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