By the Pricking of My Thumbs (novel)
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By The Pricking of My Thumbs (published in 1968) is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie featuring her detectives Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. The title of the book comes from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. (See By the Pricking of My Thumbs).
[edit] Plot
Now in their '60s, aging detectives Tommy and Tuppence visit Tommy's Aunt Ada in her nursing home, where Tuppence has a strange run-in with the elderly Mrs. Lancaster who talks about 'your poor child', and 'something behind the fireplace'. When Aunt Ada leaves the couple a painting, featuring a familiar house, the couple become involved in a dangerous mission revolving around diamond smuggling and forces of magic that suggest Mrs. Lancaster was not quite so crazy after all.
[edit] Trivia
Having appeared in earlier Christie novels in the 1920s, the return of Tommy and Tuppence was unusual in that they had aged according to real time, unlike Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, whose age remained more or less the same from their first novels in the 1920s, to their last novels in the 1970s.
[edit] TV film
The novel was adapted into a television movie in 2006 as part of the Miss Marple series starring Geraldine McEwan. In order to insert the character of Marple into the story, the plot was altered with Tommy away on military intelligence business abroad, and Tommy's part of the story was re-written for Miss Marple.
