By the Pricking of My Thumbs By the Pricking of My Thumbs By The Pricking of My Thumbs is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1968 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at twenty-one shillings (21/-) and the US edition at $4.95. It features her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Tommy and Tuppence were unusual in that they aged from novel to novel unlike Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, whose age remained more or less the same from Christie's
Dead Boy Detectives meet for the first time. The story and characters are clearly a macabre spin on two genres of British children's fiction - boarding school literature and teenage detective stories. Gaiman revived the characters in the "Children's Crusade" Vertigo's first and only crossover event which ran through all that year's Vertigo annuals that were published between December 1993 and January 1994. Gaiman wrote the two "Children's Crusade" bookend annuals which prominently featured both characters and first gave them the official title the "Dead Boy Detectives". The characters also appeared in a "The Books of Magic" short story in "Winter's Edge #3",