The Man in the Brown Suit

The Man in the Brown Suit is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, first published in Britain in August 1924. It introduces the character Colonel Race, who appears in several of her later books.

Anne Beddingfeld is the daughter of an anthropologist and has been brought up on his notes rather than on society. When he dies she finds herself alone in London with very little money and a strong appetite for something to happen, and what happens is that she witnesses a death at Hyde Park Corner station.

The scrap of paper she picks up carries a message that seems to point to a house in South Africa, and she uses what remains of her money to travel there, which puts her on a ship where somebody searches her cabin and then tries to strangle her. The mystery involves a murdered woman, a missing parcel of diamonds and a man in a brown suit who is not what he appears to be. Anne's account of her own investigation, and her determination to be the one who solves the case, is most of the pleasure of the book.