Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our March/April 25 buddy read of N or M? by Agatha Christie (The third book in the Tommy and Tuppence series was published during wartime in 1941.

It is World War II, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces an even more sinister threat from ‘the enemy within’ – Nazis posing as ordinary citizens. With pressure mounting, the Intelligence service appoints two unlikely spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colourful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is no stroll along the promenade. After all, N and M have just murdered Britain’s finest agent.

https://www.agathachristie.com/en/sto...

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

I listened to this, read by "Hastings", and, as it was a re-read, I paid less attention than normal. My original rating was three stars, and I am going to reduce it to two. I find Christie's spy stories much less satisfying than her standard murders. I thought this plot was too convoluted with spies popping up everywhere. I do like Tommy and Tuppence as characters.

The final blow was the good German, that everyone liked, turned out to be English. I suppose it was the temper of the times, but that was a step too far for me.

I wasn't enthusiastic about this the first time I read it, not sure how many years ago, but this time I really enjoyed it. Tommy and Tuppence feel like old friends, and I found all the secondary characters interesting.

I easily remembered who the master spy was, when I usually am mislead by red herrings in Christie's murder mysteries, so possibly it wasn't as skillfully done but I liked it anyway.

I was annoyed by their grown children certain Tommy & Tuppence are past doing anything important for the war effort; what ageism!

I realized I did remember the Prussian masked as a Patriotic British Officer was the master spy, I totally missed that Mrs. Sprot was also a spy so I was misled! She couldn't possibly be evil, she's a mother! So that was skillful, and also my memory isn't the best, LOL.

I think the scenes with little Betty - the daily life, not so much the kidnapping - were very well done. Her play and toddler talk - what a devious way for her supposed mother to hide!

I quite enjoyed this one-did guess that Mrs Sprot was somehow involved but missed the Master Spy. I do enjoy seeing Tommy and Tuppence age, and agree with Jackie that her children couldn’t be that dense about their parents, could they? I love how Tommy and tuppence understand each other so well that they can get into scrapes and rescue each other!

My library never had any of the Tommy and Tuppence books, so I was reading this for the first time. I like Christie's spy novels, and I like that the characters age between the books, even though everyone insisting they were old was annoying.

The mystery worked good enough for me. I did figure it out, but that was mostly because my main suspect (Mrs. O'Rourke) became too obvious of a red herring when she was walking around with a hammer.

I was reading this at the same time as two other books, so I didn't really get to experience how fast-paced it is. I think my rating probably would have been a four if I read it at my normal pace.

I agree with Jackie that the scenes with little Betty are well done, and was pleased to see T & T adopting her at the end. I suspected Mrs Sprot of being somehow involved, but only because she was the least likely person!

I thought it was clever how Tuppence checked that the colleague of her daughter's was dodgy - definitely showing that she is still several steps ahead of her children, despite their rather patronising attitude, which I agree is infuriating.