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
Partners in Crime (short story collection) too easily. By having two detectives who are usually alternately successful she has always a foil, less obtuse than 'my dear Watson'. The "Daily Express" issue of 10 October 1929 gave the book a review of a couple of lines which concluded that the stories were "not quite up to her level, although they are entertaining enough". Robert Barnard described this as: "Tommy and Tuppence in a series of short stories which parody detective writers and their methods. Many of these are long forgotten, but the parodies are not sharp enough for this to matter very much. "The House of