Partners in Crime (1929)
Blurb:
My review:
This early Christie collection is easily the best book in which
Tommy and Tuppence appear, because, instead of sinister spies
(Bolshevist, Fascist or amorphous entities who operate for some reason
unknown to both author and reader) and hairbreadth escapes, it is
detection. Or, rather, detectives.
Christie's aim in writing the book was to poke fun at the detectives of
other authors: some still celebrated today, such as Dr. Thorndyke in "The Affair of the Pink Pearl," Sherlock
Holmes in "The Case of the Missing
Lady," Father Brown in "The
Man in the Mist," the Old Man in the Corner in "The Sunningdale Mystery," Hanaud
in "The House of Lurking Death,"
Inspector French in "The Unbreakable
Alibi," Roger Sheringham in "The
Clergyman's Daughter," Mr. Fortune in "The Ambassador's Boots," and ...
Hercule Poirot himself, in "The Man
Who Was No. 16," which principally parodies The Big Four (charitable readers
will read this novel as a parody of the thriller rather than as a
convoluted, plotless mess). Other authors, such as Valentine
Williams, Isabel Ostrander and Clinton H .Stagg (an imitator of Ernest
Bramah?), have long since been forgotten, so that these parodies lose
their edge. Some of the tales are principally farce: "The Case of the Missing Lady"
turns Lady Frances Carfax on
her head with a dose of "The Yellow
Face"; and "The Unbreakable
Alibi" is a parody of Crofts as dull as that author at his
all-too-frequent worst, without even the saving grace of a decent
solution. Other parodies bear little resemblance to the original:
"The Clergyman's Daughter" is
intended as an homage to The Silk
Stocking Murders, but the rest of the story bears little
resemblance to anything by A.B. Cox under any name. Several of
these satires, however, are very clever: "Finessing the King" is a more
logical variant on "The Affair at
the Victory Ball"; "The Man
in the Mist" is a delicious parody of Chesterton's "The Invisible Man" and "The Man in the Passage." The
two best tales in the collection are the Orczy satire, "The Sunningdale Mystery," which
shows Christie's versatility at constructing clues and plots, and "The House of Lurking Death," an
effective parody of the melodramatic Mason.