History Literature / TheManInTheBrownSuit

* BrainyBrunette: Anne is quite adept at thinking on her feet, and her scientist father allowed her to imbibe some knowledge. Much ado is made of her deep black hair.

* DisguisedInDrag: [[spoiler::Miss Pettigrew, the homely secretary that Sir Eustace complains about being burdened with, turns out to be a man in disguise.]]

"What a delightful husband I have chosen!", I said satirically. "And doesn't he change his mind overnight!"

* AffablyEvil: Sir Eustace is "genial and smiling", a good-natured fellow who is nice to everybody. He's also a murderer and head of an international crime organization. He asks Anne to marry him after she confronts him with his secret identity, and later he waves cheerfully to her as he's taken away.

* ArmsDealer: One of Sir Eustace's criminal businesses; in fact he's in South Africa to sell weapons to revolutionaries. He tells Anne that the revolutionaries are doomed, but he doesn't care because he was already paid.

* ChekhovsGun: The wooden giraffe that Suzanne gets talked into buying by a native, the one that Sir Eustace complains about having to carry around. That's where Suzanne hid the diamonds.

* DisguisedInDrag: Miss Pettigrew, the homely secretary that Sir Eustace complains about being burdened with, turns out to be a man in disguise.
* DistantFinale: Ends two years later, with Harry and Anne living on his island still, raising a small son, while Anne talks about writing the book and the message that she got from Sir Eustace.

* FaceOfAThug: Pagett. Ser Eustace declares he's got the perfect looks for an Italian poisoner in the Quattrocento, but his idea of a crime is sneaking out to visit his sick wife and newborn child.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Harry's true identity is discreetly implied when he's having trouble to explain his backstory to Anne, speaking of himself as another person and being ignorant of his relationship with his father.

* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: Without realizing the implications of what he's saying, Pagett blurts out that he saw Sir Eustace in Marlow at the time of the murder. Sir Eustace says "Have you told this to anyone else?"--and Pagett ''has'' told someone else, namely Anne, which presumably is what saved his life.

* KarmaHoudini: Sir Eustace, international crime kingpin, who strangled Nadina to death, who tried to murder Anne twice, escapes. At the end of the novel he's at large. Anne admits that as bad as he was she likes him and is pleased to hear that he got away.

* RejectingTheInheritance: Harry ultimately decides to not take back his fortune and name as John Harold Eardsley, staying in Rhodesia with Anne instead.
* SecretlyWealthy: Anne's boyfriend Harry isn't really Harry Lucas, he's John Harold Eardsley, heir to a fortune. He exchanged ID tags with the real Harry Lucas back in the war right before Lucas was killed, and he kept the secret from Anne because he wanted her to like him for himself.

* UpperClassTwit: Sir Eustace Pedler, who throughout his diary sequences whines about how people keep bothering him and making him work. Subverted later when he is revealed to be the Colonel.

It is one of Christie's one-off novels, featuring neither Literature/HerculePoirot or Literature/MissMarple. Instead, the heroine is feisty young Anne Beddingfield. Anne has been spending a rather dreary existence as housekeeper to her father, an eccentric archaeologist. When her father dies suddenly and unexpectedly, Anne fends off a job offer at the library and a wedding proposal from the local vicar, and instead hies off to London, in search of adventure.

* LettingHerHairDown: Anne doesn't have hairpins when she's hiding out on Harry's island, so she goes around with her knee-length hair. This is what leads Harry to finally declare his feelings.

* RapunzelHair: Anne has "straight, black" knee-length hair. It's the sight of the hair unpinned that causes Harry to confess his feelings.

She finds it. Anne is waiting to catch a Tube train when the man next to her gets a look of shock and horror on his face, steps backward, and falls off the platform to his death below. A mysterious man in a brown suit who acts like a doctor pronounces the man dead, but Anne finds him suspicious. She sees that he dropped a note on which is written the words "17.1 22 Kilmorden Castle." It turns out the man, one L.B. Carton, was going to see a house in London with the intention of renting it. The next day, a woman is found dead, strangled in that same house. The suspect is a man in a brown suit who was seen leaving minutes after the woman entered.

* UpperClassTwit: Sir Eustace Pedler, who throughout his diary sequences whines about how people keep bothering him and making him work. Subverted later when he is revealed to be the Colonel.