Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford begin as unemployed young people after the First World War and age in step with the decades through marriage, parenthood, wartime intelligence work and retirement. Their cases mix murder with espionage, coded messages, missing documents and the improvisation of two amateurs who enjoy danger more than either initially admits.

The series is especially responsive to its historical settings. The first book grows from the sinking of the Lusitania and post-war political instability; the 1920s stories parody contemporary detective fiction; N or M? places the middle-aged couple on the British home front during the Second World War; and the later novels use memory, old houses and unresolved wartime secrets to connect an altered post-war Britain with its past.