'Tuppence' Cowley is introduced as a young woman with black bobbed hair. Thomas 'Tommy' Beresford is introduced as a young redheaded Englishman who fought in the Great War, wounded twice.

In Postern of Fate the Beresfords also own a small dog named Hannibal. By Postern of Fate he has become the Beresfords' butler and has now been widowed. Throughout the series they employ a man named Albert, who first appears as a lift boy who helps them in The Secret Adversary, their hapless assistant at a private detective agency in Partners in Crime, and subsequently, as a now married pub owner, renders vital assistance to the pair in N or M?. As they age, they are revealed to have raised three children – twins Deborah and Derek and an adopted daughter, Betty.

In their early appearances, they are portrayed as typical young people of the 1920s, and the stories and settings have a more pronounced period-specific flavor than other stories featuring more popular Christie characters.

Unlike many other recurring detective characters, including the better known Christie detectives, Tommy and Tuppence aged in time with the real world, being in their early twenties in The Secret Adversary and in their seventies in Postern of Fate. It is in the first book The Secret Adversary that they meet up after the war, and come to realise that, although they have been friends for most of their lives, they have now fallen in love with each other. Tuppence appears as a charismatic, impulsive, and intuitive person while Tommy is less imaginative and less likely to be diverted from the truth (as their first adversary sums him up: 'he is not clever, but it is hard to blind his eyes to the facts') which is why they are shown to make a good team.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968 novel).

Partners in Crime (1929 short story collection).

They started out their career in search of adventure and money, and the detecting life soon proved profitable and very exciting. Tommy and Tuppence first appeared in Christie's The Secret Adversary (1922). Their full names are Thomas Beresford and his wife Prudence (née Cowley). Tommy and Tuppence are two fictional detectives, recurring characters in the work of Agatha Christie.

Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim (radio).

Tommy and tuppence movie