Tommy Beresford, an unimaginative but charming young man, encounters a childhood friend, Tuppence Cowley, after he is released from service in WWI. Jobless, they decide to start 'Young Adventurers Ltd.' promising potential clients that they are : "Willing to do anything. Go anywhere...No unreasonable offer refused." The Jazz Age duo marry at the end of their first adventure, The Secret Adversary (1922).

In the short story collection, Partners in Crime, we meet Tommy and Tuppence after six years of marriage, bored and in need of a new challenge they take over the nearly-bankrupt detective agency 'Blunt's International Detective Agency' and solve cases in the manner of assorted great detectives including Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Hercule Poirot. Ten years later in their next novel they have a set of twins, Deborah and Derek Beresford, and later they also adopt a daughter, Betty Beresford.

The Beresfords age gracefully in the course of their last three books: N Or M?, By The Pricking of My Thumbs and Postern of Fate, where they are seen as retired grandparents who still love a good mystery. To the end, Tommy remains the slower thinker whose natural caution serves as the perfect foil to Tuppence's impetuous nature.

Tommy and Tuppence on TV & Film

The Secret Adversary was the first Christie feature film ever made, adapted by the Fox Film Corporation in 1928 as a silent movie for Germany titled 'Die Abenteuer G.m.b.H', which translates as ‘Adventure inc’.

'The Case of the Missing Lady', taken from the short story collection Partners in Crime was first adapted for television in 1950. The first adaptation of the whole book was made by BBC radio in 1953, produced as a thirteen part series starring Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim in the title roles.

In 1984, 'The Partners in Crime TV series' aired on LWT starring James Warwick and Francesca Annis as Tommy and Tuppence. It featured ten of the fifteen short stories from the book of the same name. The two actors made a convincing couple and the lavish sets and costumes from the 1920s made this a popular series. They appeared again in 1985 with the LWT full length TV film of The Secret Adversary.

The other three Tommy and Tuppence novels have yet to be dramatized!

Partners in Crime Series (1983)
Starring James Warwick and Francesca Annis, produced by LWT in England

The Affair of the Pink Pearl
The House of Lurking Death
Finessing the King
The Clergyman's Daughter
The Sunningdale Mystery
The Ambassador's Boots
The Man in the Mist
In Case of the Missing Lady
The Unbreakable Alibi
The Crackler

The Secret Adversary, 1985