The Secret Adversary is a thriller/mystery novel by Agatha Christie first published in 1922. The story started when Jane Finn, a passenger of a sinking ship, was given a secret document by a mysterious man. The document was said to be very important for Britain and Jane was entrusted to keep it safe from foreign enemies. Five years passed after the incident and two young fellows, Thomas Beresford and Prudence "Tuppence" Cowley were just starting their adventuring career when they accidentally got involved in the dangerous search of Jane Finn, whose whereabout is still unknown. With only youth spirit and brain as a weapon, they must risk their lives against the most dangerous and powerful people in the world in order to find Jane Finn and the lost document.

First of all, this book is very very different from the other books I've read from the author. Mainly because the stake of the story was significantly bigger than what I used to see in her stories. Usually it was just a murder of a person in some quite neighborhood or something similar, but here we were given the security of a whole nation as the stake instead. I must admit that this change threw me off a bit at the start. There are also a lot of actions involved, which makes it feel more like a James Bond story rather than the usually more peaceful Poirot or Miss Mapple stories.

That said, I think the main appeal of this book is the two main characters of the story, Tommy and Tuppence. They're charming and very likeable, and the dynamics between their two opposing characters make for a good variation as to how each of them interacts with other characters and tries their own method to solve the mysteries that lies in front of them. Although I must say that Tuppence was kind of wasted near the end. But overall, I think this series have some promising potentials and I definitely want to check out more of these two young adventurers' stories.