A Fairy in the Flat/A Pot of Tea 

This worked as an introduction, re-establishing Tommy and Tuppence as a couple and getting them set up in a bogus detective agency. The trick that Tuppence played on Tommy was surprising and mildly amusing and helped to set out the terms of engagement of their relationship but didn’t make for much of a story..

The Affair of the Pink Pearl 

I’ve never read the Dr. Thorndyke mysteries so much of the fooling around with cameras and looking for ways of using science didn’t have the context that Christie was expecting her readers to have. The ‘mystery’ was weak although I liked the simplicity of solving a crime with a single photograph

.The Adventure of the Sinister Stranger

This devolved into pantomime fairly quickly. Again, I’ve never read the Okewood brothers stories so I didn’t know the roles that Tommy and Tuppence were choosing between. The characterisation, such as it was, was done in thick crayon and the ending felt more like a collapse than a resolution. 

The Man In The Mist

I enjoyed this but that may be because I’m familiar with at least the TV version of Father Brown. The Father Brown link was tenuous but the fancy dress aspect of it was fun. I thought the scene in the pub worked well although the Irish stereotypes might find themselves being edited out at some point in the future. The solution was really quite clever but the delivery was so rushed that it felt as though Christie had lost interest. 

Finessing the King/The Gentleman Dressed in Newspaper

This waa a clever idea but the denouement felt rushed. 

I’ve no idea if the stuff with the dots in newspaper headlines was a real thing or just a joke that Christie played on her readers to get them to check it out for themselves.

I liked the description of the Ace OF Spades club. It felt like the 1920s version of a Pleasure Garden – a seedy place for Toffs to go slumming in. 

The Case of the Missing Lady

As Tommy was channelling Sherlock Holmes in this one, I finally had the context fully to appreciate what Christie was doing. I thought the mimicry was spot on. This was a weak, insubstantial story with the characters spicing up a dull mystery rather like a pepper sauce on an indifferent steak. Still, I’ve read a few of Doyle’s shorter Holmes stories that are as insubstantial as this one.

I liked Tuppence’s reaction to Tommy’s attempt at playing the violin.

Blindman’s Buff flamboyant 

Oh dear, did someone really write a series about a blind ‘Problemist’?

Still, if Marvel Comics can have Daredevil leaping between buildings and practising mixed martial arts while unable to see a thing, then a blind detective should be a run-of-the-mill thing to stretch my imagination around.

This one was pure pantomime. Sadly, I’ve never enjoyed pantomime.

The Crackler

This one didn’t do anything for me, which could be a sign that it was faithful to the detective stories it was imitating. I grew up with ‘The Edgar Wallace Mysteries’ as an apparently endless series of B feature movies and I hated pretty much everything about them, from the graphics, through the music to the stuffy, corny storytelling. Christie poked some fun at how prolific Wallace was and implied that this was because his quality level was low. That was about the only thing in the story that held my attention, although I was amused at just how awful Tommy was at naming villains – ‘The Crackler’ just doesn’t work as a label for a criminal mastermind.

The Sunningdale Mystery

I had no point of reference here so all the stuff with the string and knots and the man in the corner went over my head. I also had to look up what an A.B.C. café was.

The plot here was quite a good one, I can see it making an interesting TV episode but the exposition felt rushed and the ‘detecting at a distance’ approach with no contact with any of the people involved in the crime, made it a slightly dry read.

The House Of Lurking Death

Agatha Christie loves her poisons and that was the most interesting part of this story. The rest just slipped past me. 

The Unbreakable Alibi

I’m surprised that Agatha Christie didn’t save the twins idea for a novel. She could have done ‘Prestige’ decades earlier. Unfortunately, the writing was thin and the storytelling felt rushed.

The Clergyman’s Daughter / The Red House

This is probably my favourite story in the collection so far. I liked the chemistry between Tommy and Tuppence and I realise that I prefer the stories where Tuppence takes charge – she’s better at this than Tommy and sees the humour more easily. There was a nice ‘Christmas Special’ feel to the story. 

The mystery was fairly transparent, which worked because it meant more energy went into the humour and the dialogue. I liked the old fashioned cryptogram. It reminded me how young Tommy and Tuppence still are at this point. I loved the idea of the two of them digging in the dark on Christmas Eve.

I wondered whether Christie would add an extra twist and sell the house to the bad guys without letting on that the treasure had been recovered. It turned out that Tommy and Tuppence were too nice for that. Or perhaps ending the story at midnight on Christmas Eve just worked better.

The Ambassador’s Boots

A clever idea, the kind of thing that I think Conan Doyle would have been happy enough to publish in The Strand Magazine, but there was nothing much to this one except the idea

The Man Who Was No. 16

This was a good story to end on. There was some substance to the plot and a couple of moments of excitement. It was even nice to see that this time it wasn’t Tommy who needed to be rescued. I also enjoyed Tommy’s impersonation of Poirot and how Hugh Fraser managed to come up with a voice that was both Poirot and Tommy.

The ending was,,, well, very much of its time. I was happy and exuberant but it feels odd to hear a woman say, in effect, I can stop playing at being a detective now because I’m about to become a mother.

Still, I wonder how long it took Tommy to realise that Tuppence already knew this when she said, at the start of the story, that this would be their last case and then went ahead and put herself in danger anyway?