By The Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie was a nail-biter with some fun humor and banter mixed in between a husband and wife sleuthing team.
This was my first time reading a Tommy and Tuppence book by Christie and wow, what an introduction. I am glad I started with this one, even though the husband and wife team are now older than they were in the first books.
There are five books in the series: The Secret Adversary (1922), Partners in Crime (1929), N or M? (1941), By The Pricking of My Thumbs (1968), and a collection of short stories Postern of Fate (1978).
Before I start talking about the book, I will share a description from the official Agatha Christie site.
Although now considered ‘old’ by fellow society, this novel opens with the couple considering the sad fate of Tommy’s elderly Aunt Ada… now residing in an equipped facility named Sunny Ridge. Neither Beresford is particularly looking forward to the trip, but duty bound, they arrive to find Ada in a disagreeable mood. Banished to the communal lounge, Tuppence meets a troubled Mrs Lancaster with a secret to tell. Just weeks later, Tommy’s aunt has died, and a mysterious pronouncement is still troubling Tuppence…
I truly loved both Tuppence and Tommy and their hilarious butler Arthur. They are such fun characters. I just had to laugh at times because after all their years of espionage, both Tommy and Tuppence seemed very laid back about situations that were clearly going to become dangerous.
Maybe it is because they are upper-class British or just British in genera. I’m kidding, of course. It’s just how their characters are written and I love it.
It’s very clear that Tuppence and Tommy love each other and since I didn’t look up this book before I read it or know the history of the series, I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to Tuppence at one point.
What I really liked about this book was how we were taken on a journey with just Tuppence for most of the book while she tried to get to the bottom of whether or not any crime had really taken place.
I enjoyed learning about Tuppence and her tenacity because if I had been her, I would have stopped searching for answers long before she did.
I’ve read some reviews that this book was slow or had too many “boring and mundane” conversations, and while I can see that in some places, I also thought it added some charm to the book to have some everyday conversations.
When I read reviews that the plot was complicated I think….well, yeah, it’s a mystery and a Christie so it will be but I can also understand the complaint some. Complication and even some plot holes can be normal in her books, but, to me, the storytelling overall is still brilliant.
Personally, I enjoyed this book, even the parts that were more easy going or dragged just a bit. It was all worth it to read one of the creepier endings I have read in a Christie book.
If I was going to have one criticism, though, it would be the weird thing Agatha did through part of the book when she kept switching between the titles Mrs. Beresford and Tuppence or Mr. Beresford and Tommy. I needed her to pick one title for her main characters and then leave it.
The humor was well placed in this book. When Tommy and Tuppence go to visit Tommy’s aunt, that aunt decides she doesn’t like Tuppence.
“I seem to have a bad effect on her, don’t I?” said Tuppence. “Rather cheering in a way.”
“Why cheering?”
“Well, at my age,” said Tuppence. “and what with my neat and respectable and slightly boring appearance, it’s nice to think that you might be taken for a depraved woman of fatal sexual charm.”
“Idiot,” said Tommy, pinching her arm affectionately. “Who were you hobnobbing with? She looked a very nice fluffy old lady.”
“She was very nice,” said Tuppence. “A dear old think, I think. But unfortunately bats.”
The nursing home staff apologizes to Tuppence for the aunt’s rudeness.
“Well, it’s been very kind of you to come, I’m sure,” said Miss Packard. Turning to Tommy, she said, “And I know Miss Fanshawe has enjoyed your visit very much. I’m sorry she was rude to your wife.”
“I think that gave her a lot of pleasure too,” said Tuppence.
“Yes, you’re quite right. She does like being rude to people. She’s unfortunately rather good at it.”
A couple of other quotes I enjoyed:
“I hate mourning,” she said. “It always smells of moth balls because it’s been laid up somewhere.”
“You don’t need to go on wearing mourning. It’s only to go to the funeral in,” said Tommy.
“Oh no, I know that. In a minute or two I’m going to go up and put on a scarlet jersey just to cheer things up. You can make me another White Lady.”
“Really, Tuppence, I had no idea that funerals would bring out this party feeling.
***
“You don’t stop being in love with anyone because you get old. People like Derek and Deborah think you do. They can’t imagine anyone who isn’t young being in love.”
***
“They were in the time of life when they thought of themselves as old. And they had no idea that they and many others were automatically pronounced deadly dull solely on that account. Only by the young of course, but then, they would have thought indulgently, young people knew nothing about life. Poor dears, they were always worrying about examinations, or their sex life, or buying some extraordinary clothes, or doing extraordinary things to their hair to make them more noticeable. Mr. and Mrs. Beresford from their own point of view were just past the prime of life. They liked themselves and liked each other and day succeeded day in a quiet but enjoyable fashion.”
Have you read this one? What did you think of it?
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