The pain in my hands has reduced enough to be able to hold some books, but this does mean that my reading at the moment is dictated by books that I have thin, lightweight paperback editions of!
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie is one that falls into this category. I went through a phase of reading Agatha Christie books when I was doing my finals at university. The main reason was that they were just enough to distract me from what I had been doing during the day if I read a few chapters before going to sleep at night. The fact that the charity shop below the flat where I was living at the time was selling them at 10p each was an added bonus! Most of them were read at the time, but this one seemed to slip through the net for some reason.
The Secret Adversary is slightly unusual for a Christie book in that it is not about either Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, but instead two delightful young characters known as Tommy and Tuppence. I believe that this was Christie's first book about this pair and in it they decide to set themselves up in business as the Young Adventurers Ltd where they are prepared to undertake any kind of adventure in exchange for money. When they agreed to this business plan over a cup of tea I'm not sure they realised just how much danger they were about to find themselves in.
The plot does get a bit confusing in places, although that may be due to my limited attention span at the moment, but the enthusiasm that Tuppence and Tommy have for their adventures really rubs off on the reader and it's hard not to feel excited with them.
A lovely simple read whilst sitting there with my feet up and it's made me realise just how thoroughly nice Agatha Christie books can be after some of the "difficult" book group reads I've been trying lately!
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