“The Case of the Missing Lady” (October 15, 1924, The Sketch).

“Finessing the King” (October 8, 1924, The Sketch).

“The Affair of the Pink Pearl” (October 1, 1924, The Sketch aka “Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives”).

“Publicity” (September 24, 1924, The Sketch).

“The Red House” (December 1923, The Grand Magazine).

“The Clergyman’s Daughter” (December 1923, The Grand Magazine).

She is the author of over eighty crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best known for creating two of the world’s most popular sleuths, amateur sleuth Miss Marple and finnicky Belgian private investigator Hercule Poirot.

They ended up appearing in four full length novels as well as a Partners in Crime (1929), a collection of their short stories. Several of the stories notably spoofed various popular detectives of the day.Įven more intriguing, though, was that as the series developed, Christie allowed them to age, going from the “bright young things” of the 1920s to downright mature sleuths in their seventies by the end of the run in The Postern of Fate in 1973, a miraculous run of over a half century.Īgatha Christie is, of course, the Queen of Crime, arguably the most widely published novelist of all time. After inadvertently stumbling into an espionage case in their debut - which they resolve successfully, they decide to get married, and by the second novel N or M (1941, which followed a rash of short stories), they’re the proud proprietors of the London-based Blunt’s Brilliant Detectives Agency. They joke about placing an ad in the newspaper for “Young Adventurers Ltd” (it never made it) but those crazy kids soon develop some real detective chops.

Pragmatic, methodical Tommy, recently returned from the Great War, and his old pal, brash and often impulsive Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley, hook up after the war, and decide - over tea, of course - to become “adventurers,” almost as a lark. TOMMY and TUPPENCE BERESFORD are a married couple who run a small detective agency in post-WWI Britain, and appeared in a string of novellas and novels, starting in 1922 with the publication of The Secret Adversary. Okay, it’s not exactly the mean streets, but arguably the first-ever husband-and-wife sleuthing duo was created by the Queen of Crime herself, a decade before anyone had ever heard of Nick and Nora. From the December 1923 issue of The Grand Magazine the ad that was never placed First known illustration of Tommy and Tuppence. “Two young adventurers for hire Willing to do anything, go anywhere.

Francesca annis partners in crime