The Man in the Brown Suit

The Man in the Brown Suit is my favorite Agatha Christie novel so far (granted I’m only a few books into her vast collection)! And what a pleasant surprise to find the chief sleuth is not Miss Marple (who has yet to be introduced) or Hercule Poirot, but Anne Beddingfeld – a beautiful, young woman whose father recently died leaving her nearly penniless, but with a bountiful sense of adventure.

Anne finds herself in the Hyde Park Corner tube station looking for excitement when it literally falls in front of her. A thin, bearded man, who reeks of mothballs, falls to his death on the tracks, and it’s a man in a brown suit, purporting to be a doctor, who examines the body and ends up swiping a note from the dead man’s pocket. The man in the brown suit drops it on his way out and Anne picks up the note, which reads “17.122 Kilmorden Castle,” and so her adventure begins.

She soon discovers that Kilmorden Castle is actually a cruise ship set to sail to Cape Town, Africa, on Jan. 17, 1922 (1/17/22). Anne spends the last of her money on booking passage. Once she overcomes seasickness, Anne is startled to see the man in the brown suit, Harry Rayburn, is a fellow passenger. He is suspected in the murder of a woman who at one time worked as an agent for the Colonel, carrying out all types of international crime, including the theft of £100,000 in DeBeers diamonds. The location of those diamonds and the identity of the Colonel become Anne’s mystery to solve as the ship docks in Cape Town and the prime suspects continue on a train journey through Africa.

The list of suspects includes socialite Suzanne Blair, who befriends Anne on the ship; Colonel Race, who is rumored to be a Secret Service agent; Sir Eustace Pedler, a wealthy and well-respected character whose home was the site of the murder of the female spy; Guy Padgett, Pedler’s secretary, who appears to be harboring a guilty secret; Rev. Edward Chichester, a missionary with a dubious story; and of course, Harry Rayburn, the man in the brown suit.

I loved Anne’s spunky and fearless character as told in the first person in The Man in the Brown Suit. Her adventures, multiple marriage proposals, and attempts at her life as she gets closer to unmasking the Colonel, made for a rollicking ride that is far removed from the parlors of an English country house. You’ll be guessing until the end as to who will be revealed as the Colonel in this thrilling case.

I give The Man in the Brown Suit five out of five stars! And I do hope Anne Beddingfeld returns to a future Agatha Christie mystery, although where the novel leaves her at the end might rule that out.