The Secret Adversary

More of a 2.5 rounded down.

Look, to be fair, I can see why I loved this book when I was younger. (The copy I own was first printed when I was 13 years old, so I would have been about 13-15 when I read it.) Basically, Tommy and Tuppence were who I wanted to be; they were young and savvy and had exciting adventures and saved the country.

Now that I'm somewhat older...

I find this book high in melodrama, featuring another unneeded marriage proposal (three Christie rereads, three unneeded marriage proposals) and with just a touch of internalized misogyny. And, I think what's even worse than that, is that I'm either not smart enough to pick up the actual clues from the red-herrings - or two of my three rereads haven't had actual clues and are just loaded up with red-herrings. (...Actually, that might be all three.)

The only clue that I think actually pointed to the right person (literally, the only clue,) you won't understand unless you know British slang terms from before 1970. (So, that's another aspect of these books that hasn't aged well.)

Finally, I want to say that I read some but also listened to this audio version: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45994519-the-secret-adversary
Not only was the audio painful to listen to at times - hello melodrama! - but, at one point I was listening and reading along and they changed wordings. In the handful of pages I did this with, they changed a ‘five' on the clock to a ‘six' and they changed ‘unofficial' to ‘official'. I don't know why and that last one is especially egregious as it changes the whole theme about that subject.