Tour de Force (1955) by Christianna Brand

The last two, three years of the reprint renaissance have been especially kind to the legacy of Christianna Brand as Green for Danger (1944), Suddenly at His Residence (1946), Death of Jezebel (1948) and London Particular (1952) appeared back in print – reissued in the British Library Crime Classics series. Death of Jezebel came in as an incredibly close second in the 2022 Reprint of the Year Award, before going on to unseat Green for Danger as Brand's definitive novel and currently trying to topple John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins (1935) as the Golden Age locked room mystery. I noted in "The Hit List: Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance" it would be a genuine, posthumous accomplishment if Death of Jezebel dethrones The Three Coffins. In addition to several rarely reprinted or previously unpublished short stories and a short serialized novel, Shadowed Sunlight (1945), reprinted for the first time in Bodies from the Library 4 (2021).

So not only is Brand finally getting the proper reprints her work deserves, but her frustratingly small body of work has been actually been expanding. There's enough in cold storage, so to speak, to continue this trend for a few more years. Such as the unpublished novella "The Dead Hold Fast" featuring Inspector Charlesworth, the mouthwatering Inspector Cockrill impossible crime novel The Chinese Puzzle and an unfinished manuscript titled Cat Among the Pigeons. And, of course, the reprints!

The latest offering from the British Library in Brand reprints is the modestly titled, absolute fan favorite Tour de Force (1955). I planned to reread Death of Jezebel and London Particular first or try one of her often overlooked Inspector Chucky novels, but got my arm twisted to give Tour de Force an immediate reevaluation. The book got nominated for the "New Locked Room Library," but didn't remember it being an impossible crime novel and voted no without a comment. Only no-vote cast for Tour de Force. So was strongarmed into a dimly-lit room, planted on a chair and asked to urgently explain my conduct – brass knucks and clubs were pulled out as encouragement. No, I didn't see any of their faces. I promised to reread Tour de Force to see if my previous held opinions needed editing. Well...

Tour de Force finds Detective Inspector Cockrill, the Terror of Kent, on a conducted tour of Italy, but has come to regret it and eyes the company with his fellow British tourists with "ever-increasing gloom." Cockrill becomes entangled with seven of them at a hotel on the island of San Juan el Pirata in a tricky murder case involving a tangle of apparently incontestable alibis.

A group of holidaymakers comprising of a successful novelist, Louvaine "Louli" Barker. An ex-pianist, Leo Rodd, who lost his right arm and career in a bicycle accident. Helen Rodd is his "patient, considerate, silently sympathetic, relentlessly kind" wife. Vanda Lane is a young woman who keeps herself to herself, but has fallen in love with the ugly, angry looking one-armed man ("after all the years of existing upon vicarious romanticism"). Miss Trapp is another lonely woman ("rich and lonely") who has caught the roving eye of the tour guide, Fernando Gomez. Last, but not least, Mr. Cecil, of Christophe et Cie, who previously appeared in the Inspector Charlesworth novel Death in High Heels (1941). That case is briefly mentioned in passing ("years ago, in Christophe's, one of the girls, you can't think how horrid").

Cockrill wisely decides to bury himself in "deep in the latest adventure of his favourite Detective Inspector Carstairs" ("...engaged upon The Case of the Leaping Blonde"), but then Vanda Lane is found stabbed to death in her hotel room. And her body almost ceremonially laid out on the bed. This unexpected murder presents two the holidaying Cockrill with a pair of pressing problems.

 

 

Firstly, everyone with a hint of a motive possesses a practically watertight alibi as Cockrill had them under observation, nobody could have sneaked away long enough to commit murder and it not being noticed, which comes with a detailed map of the beachfront scene – showing where everyone was on the beach and terrace. I can't remember a map being used (in a Western mystery) to illustrate an alibi problem rather than a locked room puzzle or simply giving a clearer picture of the story's setting. Secondly, the police force of San Juan el Pirata is not, exactly, a modern one who are mainly occupied with smuggling coffee, tobacco, hashish and taking bribes from other smugglers. They have no time for a long, drawn out investigation or unsolved murder to scare away the tourists and they settle on anyone who fits in order to have "the whole thing wiped over and forgotten." Cockrill is even briefly imprisoned as a suspect and returns to the hotel to tell the six suspects he "was not going back to that dungeon to save the neck of any murderer" and going to find the murderer. Not ignoring the fact that it was his own testimony that handed out alibis to everyone.

Tour de Force becomes a showpiece of Brand's talent and specialty, the multiple false-solutions. Death of Jezebel famously overwhelms the reader with a dizzying number of false-solutions, but, perhaps better put to use in London Particular in which a closely-knit family create dummy cases implicating themselves to protect each other. Suddenly at His Residence, on the other hand, has a family creating dummy cases as ammunition to be used against each other. Tour de Force mixes things up starting with Cockrill showing how some could have escaped his attention or line of sight, before accusations begin to fly and false-solutions start coming out of the ranks of the suspects.

This continues building up, and knocking down again, of false-solutions is truly impressive and the highlight of the book. More impressive than the actual solution. A very clever, immaculately clued solution and remembering broad outline of the final twist made me enjoy it slightly more the second time around. I pointed out before that the truly greats of the genre have great reread value as not only do you get to admire their skills in laying out a plot, planting clues and dropping red herrings, but their boldness in pointing out the truth and simultaneously pushing you in the wrong direction is what separates the masters from the rest. That certainly was on full display in Tour de Force and loved (SPOILER/ROT13) Pbpxevyy'f pbzzrag nobhg bar bs gur punenpgref pregnvayl orvat bhg nf n cbgragvny fhfcrpg, which technically correct. A blatant, highly suspicious observation that's too obvious as both a clue or red herring. Love it when mystery writers lie through their teeth without uttering a single untrue word.

So no complaints there, however, I think this is going to be point where most of you'll start shouting at me. Angrily. The actual solution coming right after the final, twisty false-solution is both clever and immaculately clued, but nothing more, or less, than a plot-technical achievement. I think most (seasoned) readers will either pick up enough clues and hints or instinctively guess (see ROT13 comment) from which direction to expect the solution to come. And to give that expectation an unexpected form is, once again, a plot-technical achievement. Such an achievement would have been enough to elevate the work of a lesser writer to a five-star mystery novel, but Brand has written legitimate masterpieces. Tour de Force is simply not one of them.

Neither is it any way, shape or form an impossible crime nor is it an example of the impossible alibi. I explained before in the past that a manufactured alibi can only be considered an impossible problem under one very simple, but uncompromising, condition: the alibi solely relies on the murderer appearing to have been physically incapable of having carried out the crime. For example, the murderer is bound to a wheelchair and the victim is discovered in a place inaccessible to wheelchairs or someone is suspected of having broken somebody's neck after breaking both his arms. I exaggerate to clarify to show the impossible alibi is easily identified by the apparent impossibility of the murderer's physical circumstances to have killed the victim. So alibis depending on witnesses, documentation or tinkering with clocks are out as witnesses can be misled, mistaken or outright lie and documents can be faked or misinterpreted – similar objections for alibis depending on clocks and time stamps. More importantly, they're not needed for an impossible alibi. A gray area is admittedly murderer's who appear to have been in a different country or continent. I'll probably dedicate a post to the subject.

I didn't want to end this review by nitpicking small details, but people were being wrong on the internet and I couldn't let that stand (probably at the cost of a couple of broken fingers). Tour de Force is still an excellent, late-period Golden Age mystery and a plot-technical marvel in how it uses to the multiple false-solutions to rip through half a dozen alibis – dunking and flexing on Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn. However, the brand-name Brand's name demands something more than a technically-sound plot and knocking down alibis. So the book, for me, paled in comparison to the likes of Green for Danger, Death of Jezebel and London Particular. But feel free to disagree!

Frame of Mind: "The Scapegoat" (1970) by Christianna Brand

Christianna Brand's "The Scapegoat" originally appeared in the August, 1970, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the then editor-in-chief, Frederic Dannay, called Brand's late-period short stories and novellas renaissance detective fiction – half a century before renaissance detective fiction became a thing. But not everyone agrees. Jim, of The Invisible Event, discussed "The Scapegoat" in his review of Brand's short story collection A Buffet for Unwelcome Guests (1983) summed up his opinion about this story as follows, "hoover up every single word of this, and then vow never to repeat its abominations upon the world." So my take is going to be a game of gem or sham, on difficulty mode, because it's Brand story with Jim's opinion likely tipping the odds even further in her favor. Let's find out!

"The Scapegoat" is a combination of armchair detection and parlor psychology, which examines a fifteen year old, unsolved murder case haunting the son of a policeman.

Fifteen years previously, the crippled magician Mr. Mysterioso had been invited to place the cornerstone of the new wing of the local hospital and the police is present to safeguard the magicians. Mysterioso had received a flurry of angry, abusive and anonymous letters evidently from the same person ("they were all signed 'Her Husband'"). The magician is helped by his loyal servant, Tom, going up the steps to the platform in front of the cornerstone when the crack of a rifle shot is heard. Mysterioso and a dying Tom fall the ground. And, as Tom died in his arms, the magician defiantly roared at the building opposite, "you fools, you murderers, you've got the wrong man." A great, dramatic opening scene to an unsolved drama that continues to haunt the son of the policeman who was dismissed for negligence on duty.

In one of the top floor windows of the building, the police find a rifle propped up, "its sights aligned on the cornerstone," with one spent bullet and "nobody there." Up on the roof, directly above the window, a press photographer was making pictures of the charity event, but couldn't have come down as the police locked the door behind him for security reasons and down at the main entrance P.C. Robbins stood guard – seen by a dozen witnesses "tearing up the stairs toward the murder room." The large, open and easily searched building is searched from top to bottom without finding the assassin. So the young police constable is dismissed and that not only destroyed him, but is terribly close to destroying his son who believes his father didn't neglect his duty. And was unfairly dismissed. He also believes the press photographer, "Mr. Photoze," is the real killer and "wanted to be avenged on Mr. Photoze who had committed a crime and got off scot-free."

Mysterioso organizes a domestic court "to talk it all over, to try to excise the scar that had formed in the mind of the young man whose father had been dismissed from the force." Robbins is to represent his father, Mr. Photoze is in the dock with him to defend himself and Inspector Block ("who as a young constable had been on the scene of the crime") presents the evidence of the police. Mysterioso presides as judge and several witnesses from fifteen years ago serve as jury. Old Baily at Home.

If you know your classical detective fiction, the situation surrounding the shooting and murder of the magician's servant is open to multiple interpretations and false-solutions. Brand even goes so far as ending the story with a double-twist. So all good and fine, on paper, but Jim has a point that the story "feels like Brand consciously writing A Christianna Brand Story." Brand was going back to the well and the result certainly is not one of her best (locked room) mystery stories, however, calling it an abomination is putting it on a little thick. The problem with "The Scapegoat" is that it's simultaneously too long and not long enough. Brand came up with an ambitious premise and idea for a first-class detective story, but everything from the impossible shooting, the multiple interpretations and the characters themselves to the double-twist ending needed more room to develop in order to be truly convincing and effective – which it simply wasn't. Strangely enough, in spite of its short length, "The Scapegoat" feels like it was too long and dragged out in parts. So not at all a good or efficient use of the short story format, which came at the cost of the plotting-and storytelling clarity characterizing Brand's best work.

Something better could have been done with "The Scapegoat." Maybe it could have been trimmed down or expanded into a novel, but this just isn't it. It's still an ok-ish detective story, but, when measured against the standards of Brand's earlier work, it suddenly looks very mediocre.

Sorry for having to end this trio of Brand reviews on a sour note, but genuinely expected to find a really good impossible crime story in "The Scapegoat." I mean, what are the odds of Jim actually not being that far off the mark? It looked like a safe bet!

Shadowed Sunlight (1945) by Christianna Brand

Last time, I discussed Christianna Brand's Death in High Heels (1941), very much an apprentice work full with undeveloped potential and promise, but for a detective story from the forties, it has aged remarkably well – closer a police procedural from the 1980s or '90s than a Golden Age mystery. So even when she's not pulling a Carr or Christie, Brand's can deliver a detective story not devoid of merit of interest. However, it didn't quite scratch that itch and decided to go right back to Brand. And with good reason.

I rambled on about lost manuscripts and other extraordinarily obscure detective fiction not so long ago, but what I neglected to mention in those laments is that efforts are being made to salvage what has been lost. In the past, I recounted Philip Harbottle's Herculean labors to restore the works of John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner to print, which include some superb, previously unpublished, novels (e.g. Fearn's Pattern of Murder, 2006). Three years ago, the British Library published E.C.R. Lorac's Two-Way Murder (c. 1958), originally written shortly before she died, but not published until 2021. Then there's Tony Medawar's Bodies from the Library anthology series dedicated to "bring into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown" from the Golden Age of Detection.

An annual series collecting obscure, rarely reprinted short stories, previously unpublished work and even plays from a who's who of classic mystery writers – covering both American and British writers. So you get rare or unpublished stories from the likes of Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Boucher and Clayton Rawson. The Bodies from the Library series has proven to be a small treasure trove of previous unpublished work for fans of Christianna Brand. A big regret of her fans is that "she didn't write enough," but "new" material has been added in recent years to Brand's bibliography.

"Cyanide in the Sun" (1958) and "Bank Holiday Murder" (19??) had not been reprinted since their original appearance in The Daily Sketch ("a British newspaper which folded fifty years ago"), but respectively reprinted in The Realm of the Impossible (2017) and the Sept/Oct, 2017, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. The never before published "The Rum Punch" appeared in the first Bodies from the Library (2018) anthology ("the highlight of the collection and an impossible mystery at that") and Bodies from the Library 4 (2021) contains an entire, long overlooked and nearly forgotten (short-ish) novel! There's still that planned Crippen & Landru collection (The Dead Hold Fast and Other Stories) and the unpublished impossible crime novel The Chinese Puzzle. Someone, like James Scott Byrnside, could complete the unfinished Cat Among the Pigeons. Anyway...

The subject of today's review is Shadowed Sunlight, originally serialized in Woman from July to August 1945, but was somehow forgotten about until it returned to print in Bodies from the Libraries 4. I don't remember ever hearing or reading about Shadowed Sunlight, before it was finally reprinted a few years ago. I was aware the unpublished The Chinese Puzzle and "The Dead Hold Fast," but never noticed even the briefest of mentions of this small, typical Brandian gem completely with a tight-drawn cast of characters and a seemingly impossible murder – only Cockrill and Charlesworth are absent. More on that in a moment.

Shadowed Sunlight takes place as the Second World War came to an end and "it was 'Britain is Grateful Week' for returning heroes," which means charity events to collect donations, war bonds and to welcome back the boys. Edgar "Thom-Thom" Thom is a successful ex-businessman who had his retirement cut short by the war to serve his country, as Director of Anthracite Production, but now intends to combine charity work with pleasure. Thom has taken his beloved racing cutter Cariad out of storage to "give those kids up at the naval school a run for their money" and to collect some money for the savings campaign. So brings together a small group of friends and young people to celebrate and enjoy the sailing.

Firstly, there's Gloria and her second husband, Geoffrey Winson, and their 7-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who's simply called "Tiggy." Jenny Sendall is Gloria's 19-year-old daughter from her first marriage. She brought along her boyfriend, Roy Silver, who's the "Silver Voice of Radio." Tiggy is looked after by the overworked, underpaid nursemaid, Miss Pye. She's not always on the best of term with her employers. Truda Dean and her boyfriend, Julian Messenger, get invited on their way to Trudy's grandmother, Lady Audian, to tell her of their intention to get married. Lastly, there's Thom's personal secretary, Evan Stone, who helped to arrange the boating party. But then things begin to get awkward really fast.

Julian Messenger used to be engaged to Jenny Sendall, but, when returning home from war, Julian asked Jenny to release him from his promise to marry her – because he wanted to marry Trudy. Jenny agreed to his request, "she was awfully sweet and nice about breaking off our engagement," but not her cash-strapped parents. Gloria and Geoffrey learn about this right before a day before the boating party. So they force her to promise to take action against Julian for breach of promise. Things don't end there. A day before the race, the group attends Miss Templeton's dance party ending with the mysterious theft of their host's emerald pendant in platinum setting. An ill-omen, indeed, but nothing compared to what awaits them the next day.

Midday, the next day, they have a picnic aboard, "just a rough, homely picnic," where everyone handles, eats and drinks the same things, but only one of them dies from cyanide poisoning. Somehow, or other, the murderer had poisoned something the victim ate or drink, mere minutes before, which appears to be an utter impossibility. Nobody could have administered the poison. An impossible poisoning aboard a racing yacht with a small, intimate circle of potential suspects.

I mentioned in the review of Death in High Heels that the book ends with Charlesworth getting assigned to a new case, "a murder in a racing yacht," wondering whether it could be the story told in the so far unpublished novella The Dead Hold Fast. Well, Shadowed Sunlight certainly ticks the murder-in-a-racing-yacht box, but Charlesworth is not the one who Scotland Yard sends to clear up the murder. Detective Inspector Dickinson, "a university pup with very little experience," because "a straightforward poisoning in a yacht, where, of necessity, the suspects must be few and the solution merely a matter of motive and opportunity, had seemed, to the simple hearts of his superiors, a cinch" – putting him on his first solo case. However, the murder proves far from straightforward from the apparent impossibility of administrating the poison, a mass drugging on the previous evening and stolen poison to the theft of the emerald and the death of Gloria's first husband. All tied up in a complicated tangle of relationships, emotions and possible motives with Tiggy both helping and hampering Dickinson's investigation. I agree with Jim when he said Tiggy can be added "alongside the Carstairs clan to the pantheon of Perfectly Realised Young People in GAD fiction." The characters, their interactions and complicated relationships really is the story's strong point.

Shadowed Sunlight is very much a character-driven mystery novel in the tradition of the Golden Age Crime Queen with twisty, psychological touches rather than a John Dickson Carr-style impossible crime tale. Brand's skillful hand at measuring out emotions is on full display, which she always beautifully balanced and seldom done in shades of a single color. For example (Minor SPOILERS/ROT13), gur Jvafbaf ner gehyl n cnve bs ercryyrag punenpgref, ohg Gvttl frrvat ure sngure nyy bs n fhqqra qvr sebz cbvfbavat naq pelvat bhg (“qnqql, jnxr hc, jnxr hc—!”) znxrf vg ernyyl harnfl gb purre fbzrbar ba jub, ol gur raq, vf cebira gb or bar bs gubfr qrfreivat ivpgvzf bs qrgrpgvir svpgvba. Be gur jrqtr bs fhfcvpvba guerngravat gb qevir n, huz, jrqtr orgjrra Whyvna naq Gehql.

Brand wasn't half-bad when it came to creating an engaging set of characters and knew how to insert genuine drama or an emotional monkey into a detective story without turning it into a cheap, gaudy melodrama. She often knew how to exploit it to deliver an emotional gut punch ending that made genre classics out of so many of her novels. Shadowed Sunlight certainly has a somewhat mixed ending, where the fates of the characters are concerned and you can't help feeling a little sorry for the murderer, but not the wrenching conclusion of a Green for Danger (1944) or London Particular (1952). However, it would be a unfair to hold this shorter, originally serialized and character-driven, novel up against those towering examples of Golden Age ingenuity and plotting. Brand evidently intended Shadowed Sunlight to be on a lighter note than something like Green for Danger and is to Brand's work what Peril at End House (1932) is to Christie. An excellent detective novel in its own right, but one that will always be overshadowed by its author's even better and more popular works.

So what about the actual meat of the plot? And, more specifically, the impossible poisoning? The plot is lighter and more character-oriented than Brand's other novels, but, on a whole, not bad with the only disappointing plot-thread being the stolen emerald pendant. I figured that part out pretty quickly and not up to Brand usual standards, but everything else was simply solid. Particularly the neat poisoning-trick that explained the impossible murder. I have come to associate this kind of impossible poisoning and solution with Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series, which often feature similar impossibly poisoned food/drink in public/open places. So coming across one every now and then in a Golden Age detective story only adds interest. If there's anything to complain about is that Shadowed Sunlight was reprinted as part of an anthology instead of published as a separate novel. It would need a lengthy introduction, bibliography and extra short story ("Cyanide in the Sun") to pad out the page-count, but a “new” Brand novel deserves nothing less, especially when it's as good as Shadowed Sunlight.

Cutting this long, rambling and quasi-coherent shitty scribbling short, I really, really enjoyed Shadowed Sunlight. It was exactly what I was hoping to find when I picked up Death in High Heels: a lighter-plotted, but still unmistakably, Brandian detective story. While the story nor characters and plot soared to the same heights as Green for Danger or London Particular, it's restoration to print is cause for celebration. The fulfillment of a seemingly impossible wish of seeing Brand's all-too-small body of work miraculously expand. I suspect James got hold of a Monkey's Paw. Next up is probably going to be a review of one of Brand's short stories to complete the hat trick.

Death in High Heels (1941) by Christianna Brand

Last month, I revisited Christianna Brand's pièce de résistance, Green for Danger (1944), which is set in a World War II hospital under cover of the Blitz and considered not only to be her crowning achievement, but one of the dozen best Golden Age detective novels – a five-star whodunit genuinely worthy of Agatha Christie. Green for Danger more than stood up to a second reading and wanted to return to Brand sooner rather than later. I considered taking another look at Heads, You Lose (1941), Death of Jezebel (1948) or London Particular (1952), but opted for one of the titles on the to-be-read pile. There were still some interesting titles left to pick, Cat and Mouse (1950) or The Rose in Darkness (1979), but decided to go with Brand's debut novel.

Death in High Heels (1941) takes place in a posh dress shop, Christophe et Cie, where we find the small, tightly-drawn cast of characters comprising of a dozen women and two men.

The two men are Frank Bevan, proprietor and manager, and his dress designer, Mr. Cecil. Miss Gregory and Miss Doon act as Bevan's right and left hand in running the dress shop with "Macaroni" ("so christened for reasons obscure enough in the beginning but now lost in the mists of time") doing secretarial duties for Miss Doon. Mrs. Irene Best, Mrs. Rachel Gay and Mrs. Victoria David were the sales staff at Christophe et Cie, while the two mannequins Miss Carol and Miss Wheeler "just walk around in the models and show the customers what they are going to look like in the dresses" – "perhaps." Lastly, Mrs. 'Arris, the charlady. If you know your Brand, you know there's a cat among the pigeons who's about to strike. Even though the opening chapters show little more than the daily routine with its petty work floor rivalries and romances. Only thing somewhat outside the daily routine is Rachel and Victoria dashing off to the chemist for oxalic acid to clean a straw hat, which ends up all over the shop. Miss Doon dies that night in hospital from the effects of corrosive poisoning, but was it an accident, suicide or perhaps an opportunistic murder?

Suspecting "something fishy" about Miss Doon's death, Inspector Charlesworth and Sergeant Bedd are dispatched to the dress shop to sort it out. Charlesworth is able to rule out an accident or suicide, boiling the list of potential suspects down to the people in the dress shop and "gone a long way towards establishing motives." However, the investigation eventually grinds to a halt and Charlesworth's superior decides to assign his long-time rival, Inspector Smithers, as a co-investigator to help him out ("...unaware of the mutual detestation between these young men"). That's not only complication as there's a second poisoning attempt, a hunt for a potential trunk murderer and Charlesworth falling in love with one of his primary suspects.

Death in High Heels possesses nearly all the ingredients of a classic Brand mystery, except for Inspector Cockrill and some kind of impossible crime, but the book is very much an apprentice work – similar to Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916/20). They're promising first stabs bubbling with promise and playing with certain ideas that would be worked out and take on more definite shapes in their later works. Same holds true for Death in High Heels and particularly in the way she draws a small, tightly-knit cast of characters, but in every other way it's an a-typical Brand novel showing she had not found her footing in her first novel. Most notably, the ending lacks that emotional gut punch characterizing so many of best detective novels like Green for Danger and London Particular. One of Brand's many strengths as both a writer and plotter is that she knew how to effectively end a story. Something she would not get a hang of until several years later with her superb WWII whodunit, which proved to be the first in a string of Golden Age classics.

While her apprentice detective novel is a sound, competently plotted affair with a well-realized setting, Death in High Heels is obviously not one of Brand's greatest triumphs. It simply doesn't measure up to Brand's later work. That being said, Death in High Heels has a quality all of its own that makes it stand out even as one of Brand's lesser novels.

Death in High Heels reads like a British police procedural published in the 1980s or '90s instead of a Golden Age detective story from the '40s. On the GADWiki, Curt Evans notes "the dumb stereotype of British Golden mystery certainly is belied by Brand's first novel" with its "light badinage about sex" ("the ladies are breezily and pleasantly irreverent on this subject") and the gay Mr. Cecil – whose missing boyfriend is one of the story's subplots. Another interesting scene, for the time, is when Brand's shows one of the woman going through an ugly divorce with a child caught in the middle ("...he was unkind and unfriendly to Mummy so he couldn't be your Daddy any more") or Charlesworth going to the morgue to look over the sewed up corpse of Miss Doon. Not to mention Charlesworth being everything but your typical Golden Age detective. Smart and competent enough, but no Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, who's prone to falling in love at the drop of a dime ("Mr. Charlesworth's susceptible heart did three somersaults and landed at Victoria's feet") and a big fan of himself. And that can make him a bit of a dick at times. So more in line with the imperfect characters of the modern police procedural than the Great Detectives who were still around in the '40s.

All done very openly without an attempt to doll it all up and make it presentable to a 1940s audience, which must have raised some eyebrows at the time. A daring approach for the time and Brand returned to her own period in succeeding novels, which adhered more to conventions of the time (e.g. Suddenly at His Residence, 1946). Like she remembered it was 1941, not 1981 or 1991, which is why she wisely relegated Charlesworth to the ranks of secondary/supporting character in favor of Inspector Cockrill. A much better series-character to carry her novels and short stories.

So, while Death on High Heels is far from Brand's best detective novel, it has aged remarkably well to the point where it feels like it was published only thirty, forty years ago – instead of more than eighty years. It speaks volumes how good Brand really was when even her weakest detective novel has something to make it noteworthy simply as Golden Age mystery. She truly was one of the very best!

On a final, somewhat related note: Death in High Heels ends with Charlesworth getting assigned to a new case, "a murder in a racing yacht" ("...sounds rich and glamorous, sir"), which just might possibly be the case told in the unpublished Charlesworth novella The Dead Hold Fast. I'm still waiting for The Dead Hold Fast and Other Stories, C&L!

Green for Danger (1944) by Christianna Brand

Green for Danger (1944) is Christianna Brand's second novel about her series-detective, Inspector Cockrill, which is not only regarded as her crowning achievement as a mystery novelist, but considered to be one of the best, Golden Age whodunits ever written – comparable only to the best from John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. Last year, I listed Green for Danger in the "Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels" and revisited Suddenly at His Residence (1946). A somewhat conventional country house mystery, but brilliant and daringly plotted. And infinitely better than I remembered from my first read. But, as pointed out in the comments, Suddenly at His Residence is not even Brand's third, fourth or even fifth best detective novel. To quote James Scott Byrnside, "she was the best." So wanted to take another look at Brand's masterpiece to see if stands up. It did!

The backdrop of Green for Danger is Heron's Park, a former children's sanitarium "hurriedly scrambled into shape as a military hospital," situated three miles out of Heronsford in Kent. Brand introduced the primary characters in the first chapter through Joseph Higgins, a postman, who pushes his old, battered bicycle up hill to deliver seven letters at the hospital. Seven letters addressed to the seven principle players.

Firstly, there are the two surgeons, Gervase Eden of Harley Street fame and the long-time Heronsford physician Major Moon, backed by Sister Marion Bates and the local anesthetist, Dr. Barnes. Rounding out this little, tightly-knit group are three VADs (Voluntary Aid Detachments), Frederica Linley, Esther Sanson and Jane Woods. A varied group of people, all with their own backstories, brought together at Heron's Park under wartime conditions and Brand ends the first chapter with the following line, "he could not know that, just a year later, one of the writers would die, self-confessed a murderer" – drawing a tightly "closed circle" before the murder has taken place. Another thing Higgins could not have imagined is that he would be the first victim of this murderer.

A year later, Heronsford suffers a heavy, nighttime air-raid, "A.R.P. centre has been hit, among other places, and there are a lot of casualties," which begins to fill up the hospital beds ("...now it’s time for work!"). Joseph Higgins is brought in with a fractured femur and scheduled for surgery the following morning. Higgins spends a long, restless night muttering in his bed ("where have I heard that voice?") before being brought to the operating theater. They ensure Higgins that the procedure is not dangerous, "hardly an operation at all," but something did go wrong. And the patient dies on the operating table. There's no apparent reason why he died before they even made an incision, "they pip off for no rhyme or reason and you never know exactly why," but the authorities have to be notified. Detective Inspector Cockrill arrives at Heron's Park two days later under the assumption he's handling "just another anæsthetic death” (“you doctors slay 'em off in their thousands"). However, the case doesn't end with that single fatal incident in the operating theater.

If Death of Jezebel (1948) is Brand trying her hands at a Carr-style locked room mystery, Green for Danger is her take on Christie's conversational-style whodunits like Murder on the Orient Express (1934).

Green for Danger takes the "mainly conversation" approach as it tells its story, fleshes out the characters and setting the scenes mostly through dialogue. So no wonder the 1947 movie adaptation, starring Alastair Sim, is commonly regarded as one of the best adaptations of a Golden Age mystery novel as the book itself almost reads like a movie script. Not even the alterations to the original story could diminish the brilliance of the novel with perhaps the biggest difference between the two is that the movie has a slightly more light-hearted, comedic tone. What should not be overlooked about the original novel is why Green for Danger is considered to be the best of the British World War II mysteries. The descriptions of its wartime surroundings act as punctuations in the narrative flow with the incessant "droning of aero-planes overhead," the hospital shaking with "the thundering of the guns in the neighbouring fields" or "now and again with the sickening thud of a bomb" – occasional glimpses of the patients who fill the hospital beds after every air-raid. From bandaged people lying in their beds or wandering around the place to the hospital comedians cracking jokes every time a bomb falls ("they've 'eard about the pudding we 'ad today, nurse, and they're trying to kill the cook").

So, all of that being said, Brand did dabble in a little bit of physical clueing in such an original and brilliant way, it deserves to be highlighted. This inspired piece of physical clueing comes in the form of a murdered nurse, "laid out ceremonially on the operating table, rigged up elaborately in a surgical gown and mask and gloves, with huge white rubber boots on her feet," who had been brutally stabbed to death. A macabre detail is that one of the stab wounds was delivered after the victim was already dead. It's always tricky to do additional murders without making them come across as mere page padding, but Green for Danger demonstrates how to make a second murder count and milk it for all it's worth. A lesson Byrnside, a devout Brandian, took to heart when he started writing his own detective novels (e.g. The Opening Night Murders, 2019).

When cobbling together "The Hit List: Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels," I feared Green for Danger was perhaps too well-known for the list and considered replacing it. I'm glad I decided to keep it on the list, because Green for Danger lives up to its reputation as the best and most famous of all British WWII mystery novels. And because of how it exploited it's wartime setting, it becomes so much more than just another, very well-done whodunit from one of the Golden Age greats. Green for Danger is simply one of the dozen, or so, best detective novels from Golden Age and can't heap more praise on it.

A Tip for the Curious: Green for Danger is Brand's best-known novel and generally accepted as her masterpiece, but there are some contrarians out there claiming London Particular (1952) is her finest piece of detective fiction. British Library is going to publish a long overdue reprint of London Particular later this month. So you can soon judge for yourself.

Suddenly at His Residence (1946) by Christianna Brand

The past ten years have been a deluge of reprints, translations and even some newer, classically-styled works that turned into a flood of Noah-like proportions ushering in the current period of rediscovery – a renaissance age I predicted in the late 2000s and again towards the end of 2014. Coincidentally, or exactly according to my prediction, the reprint renaissance really began to gain momentum in 2015 as more publishers and imprints appeared. The downside to this success that it's hard sometimes to keep pace with all the new releases. So, usually, I'm trailing behind the new reprints and releases, except this time.

Two months from now, the British Library Crime Classics is going to publish a reprint of Christianna Brand's third novel, Suddenly at His Residence (1946), which was published in the US as The Crooked Wreath and serialized in The Chicago Tribune under the title One of the Family. Suddenly at His Residence has been on the to-be-reread list for a while now. And not without a reason.

I wrote in my reviews of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins (1935) that the current reprint renaissance coincided with some very famous, time-honored classics having their status reevaluated and sometimes downgraded – which also went the other way round. For example, Carr's Till Death Do Us Part (1944) once had the profile of a decent, mid-tier title from the Dr. Gideon Fell series, but today, it's looked upon as one of Carr's finest detective novels. During the 2000s, Brand's Suddenly at His Residence tended to be dismissed as an inferior, mid-tier work dragged down by melodramatic sentimentality and not anywhere near the same league as Green for Danger (1944), Death of Jezebel (1948) and London Particular (1952). But that began to chance towards the end of the decade. Just compare Nick Fuller's 2001 and John Norris' 2011 reviews. Nowadays, Suddenly at His Residence is highly regarded and some even consider the book to be among the best impossible crime novels the genre has produced.

I've only read Suddenly at His Residence in a Dutch translation, ages ago, remember very little beside the spectacular, unforgettable ending and those final lines. So why not take a second look in anticipation of the British Library reprint to see if its recent status upgrade is justified.

Once upon a time, Sir Richard March was married to a ballerina, Serafita, who gave him three sons, but he also kept a mistress, Bella, with an illegitimate child in a bijou house at Yarmouth. Somewhat of an open secret. Serafita predicted she would die young and Sir Richard would bring Bella to the house where she would "listen to nothing but 'Serafita,' 'Serafita,' 'Serafita,' till she is sick of the very sound of my name," which is exactly what happened. Sir Richard turned Swanswater into a shrine to his first wife full of "ancestor worship and ballet-dancing and rose-wreaths and coloured gloves." But the family has changed since the days of Serafita. The three sons had been killed in the First World War, their wives were gone and only the grandchildren were left. You can say they form the typical, dysfunctional family that tend to inhabit these type of country house mysteries.

Philip Marsh, "returned from that heathen America where in his childhood his mother had taken him," to settle down into a promising medical practice with a wife, Ellen, and a newborn child. Only they have quickly grown apart as Philip began an affair with his cousin, Claire, who "insisted upon working in some dreadful newspaper office" and raised her grandfather's ire with her ideas about "independence and a career." Peta is the darling of Sir Richard and heir to his fortune, which the family lawyer, Stephen Garde, had fought for and won – "and in so doing, himself had lost." A quiet country lawyer does not secure "a hearty fortune" for a young lady and then ask her to marry him. Edward Treviss is their half-cousin and the only grandson of Sir Richard and Bella. Edward had lost his parents in a boating accident, which everyone assumed he had witnessed and discovered as a child he could exploit his assumed trauma ("the next time he was due for a spanking, therefore, he had put his little hand to his forehead and declared that it felt queer"). Something he continues to do as an 18-year-old to get attention and have people "express anxiety about him."

They are all coming down to Swanswater, two miles out of the small town of Heronsford, in Kent, to take part in the ceremony that Sir Richard always held on the anniversary of Serafita's death. It goes without saying they test their grandfather's patience and ends with him banging the table, "I'll cut you all out of my will, the whole ungrateful pack of you," instructs Stephen to draft a new will. Sir Richard also announces his intention, despite being in poor health, to spent the night alone in the lodge where Serafita had died. What you expect to happen is discovered next morning.

Apparently, Sir Richard died from over stimulation of his "dickey heart," but Philip concludes somebody killed him when he notices that Sir Richard's medication and a phial of strychnine missing from his bag. But how could someone have been possibly poisoned him? There were three, narrow paths running up through the rose beds to the lodge, "one to the back door, and one to the French window of the sitting-room," which were freshly sanded and smoothed over shortly after Sir Richard retreated into the lodge – two of the paths were innocent of footprints. The third path only showed Clair's footprints as she walked up the path with a breakfast tray and spotted Sir Richard's body sitting at his desk through the French window. Nobody could possibly have pushed a way through the roses without bringing "down a shower of petals." The doors and windows were all closed and locked. A pretty little puzzle!

Inspector Cockrill, "a dusty little old sparrow arrayed in a startlingly clean white panama hat," makes his third appearance, but largely acts as a spectator as he rolls cigarettes, observes and occasionally stirring the pot to keep everyone talking (“he liked to get his suspects talking”). So the focus remains firmly on the family and with a very good reason. Suddenly at His Residence pretty much plays out like one, very big and long family row during which various members accuse each other of murder complete with a false-solution to explain how they could have done it. Some of these false-solutions are not without ingenuity and form an impressive whole considering how many different possibilities Brand came up that needed to fit as many different characters as well as the unchanging facts of the murder. Outsiders also get in on the fun. A personal favorite comes during the inquest when one of the jurors proposes a false-solution, which barely holds up on a second glance, but his fellow jurors liked it so much, they brought in a verdict of murder against one of the family members. And that forced an arrest.

Fortunately, the body of the gruff, unlikable gardener, Brough, is found not long thereafter in the sitting room of the lodge with a poisonous needle in his arm. On the dusty tiles in the hallway, near his right hand, was written "I KILLED SIR R." Everything was "locked and sealed from the inside" and "there was no possible way of getting there except across the hall,” but “there were simply acres of untrodden dust between him and the door." So when evidence is found that pulls the rug from under the suicide theory, Cockrill suddenly has two impossible crimes on his hands and a family of whom one is now twice a murderer.

The strength of Suddenly at His Residence is not in the pair of no-footprints puzzles. Judging the book solely on the impossible crimes, the tricks are good enough with the second, dusty murder finding a clever new way to do that trick, but, by themselves, would hardly justify a classical status. Nor is the strength in the clues and red herrings or the who-and why. But the pure craftsmanship of the plot construction. And the pure showmanship in telling an otherwise fairly cliched country house mystery. What sets the well intended amateur apart from the masters is how much they'll allow the reader to know. An amateur closely guards clues and important information in fear of giving away too much, too early, while a master simply shows them or parades them around in front of the reader – hoping you either missed or misinterpreted those clues. What separates the masters from true legends like Brand, Carr and Christie is an unrivaled ability to rub the truth in your face or casually refer to an important clue and simultaneously pull the wool over your eyes. A talent that made lesser-known Carr and Christie novels, like Death in the Clouds (1935), The Crooked Hinge (1938), The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) and Evil Under the Sun (1941), tower above the best works of their contemporaries. Brand had that talent as well and she went all in with it here. 

Suddenly at His Residence is already fairly clued to the point where you can call it immaculate with (HUGE SPOILER/ROT13) gur pevzr fprar orvat n fuevar gb n qrnq onyyrevan, ohg Oenaq gbbx vg n srj fgrcf shegure ol qrcvpgvat Pynver fgnaqvat “irel fgenvtug naq ybiryl” orarngu gur cbegenvg bs Frensvgn cbfvat ba cvax gbr-cbvagf nf fur snprq Pbpxevyy. Be abapunynagyl ersrerapvat gur inphhz pyrnare fgnaqvat va gur unyyjnl zbzragf nsgre gur frpbaq ivpgvz vf sbhaq. This kind of brazen confidence and command of the plot elevated everything from the impossible murders to the multiple, false-solutions to the solution and bombshell ending. An amazing, completely fair and acceptable dues ex machina plot-device to help resolve everything that happened at Swanswater and none of it would have landed without the sound structure erected underneath it all. A lesser writer and plotted would not have been able pull it off and raise an essentially thoroughly cliched detective story to something that can stand with the best from the best.

Only thing Suddenly at His Residence has going against itself is Brand wrote much better, superior detective novels and suspect its once poor reputation came from comparisons to London Particular. A painfully human detective story in which a tightly-knit, caring family construct false-solution to implicate themselves in order to protect the others. When you compare that to the family row here with relatives accusing each other of murder, even an excellently constructed and executed detective story like Suddenly at His Residence can appear cheap and gaudy. I'm sure the premise of a patriarch getting murdered after announcing he's going to change his will didn't do its reputation any favors at the time, which is why its recent reevaluation based solely on its own merits is more than deserved. I only wish I had an eye back then to see and appreciate how skillfully and audaciously everything had been put together, but those very skills is what makes the best detective stories stand up to a second read. Another thing Brand apparently has in common with Carr and Christie. So, cutting another long, rambling review short, Suddenly at His Residence is an excellent Golden Age mystery that comes highly recommended!

On a final, somewhat unrelated note: I got my hands all over a really obscure, long out-of-print, but supposedly very good, locked room mystery in even more obscure, never reprinted Dutch translation. So stay tuned!

A Swarm of Villainy

"Rouse yourself, my friend, rouse yourself. And look – look where I am pointing. There on the bank, close by that tree root. See you, the wasps returning home, placid at the end of the day? In a little hour, there will be destruction, and they know it not."

- Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's "Wasps' Nest," from Poirot's Early Cases, 1974)

One of my first blog-posts was a review of a once rare and coveted locked room mystery, Death of Jezebel (1948), which came from the hands of a criminally underrated mystery novelist who deserves a place among the "Crime Queen" – namely the very talented Christianna Brand.

Brand was a late arrival on the scene, debuting with Death in High Heels (1941) during the Second World War, but I consider her to be on equal footing with Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. She had a similar fondness for seemingly impossible situations as the latter and was as apt with the closed-circle of suspects as the former, e.g. Green for Danger (1944) and London Particular (1952).

However, in spite of my opinion of Brand, I seem to have grossly neglected her after that initial review, but began to crave good writing, interesting characterization and solid plotting after struggling through Mavis Doriel Hay's mind-numbingly boring The Santa Klaus Murder (1936) – which led me back to Brand. So I decided to treat myself to one of her collections of short stories: What Dread Hand? (1968). Because a single, novel-length detective story simply wasn't enough to wash away the bad taste the previous one had left behind. 

The first story from the collection is "The Hornets' Nest," perhaps better known under its original title, "Twist for Twist," which is a promise that’s delivered on in spades and shows Brand was in the same league as Christie!

It's an ingeniously complex story centering on the poisoning of Cyrus Caxton: a "horrid old man" who "had been horrid to his first wife" and "was quite evidently going to be horrid to his second" – who had been the late Mrs. Caxton's nurse. There were a number of men in her life willing to protect her, but were they willing enough to fool around with a tin of cyanide? Inspector Cockrill is at hand to straighten out the tangled, twisted mess and even constructs a false solution reminiscent of The Murder on the Orient Express (1934). One of the best stories from the collection!

"Aren't Our Police Wonderful?" is what's known in the genre as a "Hoist-On-Their-Own-Petard," in which a brother tries secure his inheritance by bumping off his brother and was inspired by "a case that happened a hundred years ago or more." However, as Mark Twain observed: history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes and that becomes the murderers undoing. A quick, fun story.

The third story from this collection, "The Merry-Go-Round," has something to offer to both readers of classical detective stories and modern crime stories: a recently widowed woman is being blackmailed with a collection of lurid photographs found in a private drawer at the office of her late husband. A revolver stashed away in his bedside drawer provides relief for his widow. However, the blackmail angle does not stop there, but simply continues from a different angle. I loved the wonderfully sardonic ending and wished more modern crime fiction were in this mold.

The titular "Blood Brothers" from the fourth story are named David and Jonathan, who are actually twins from a small village, but even the locals are unable to tell them apart, which is cleverly exploited when they in a hit-and-run that killed a child – setting the stage for a premeditated murder. Inspector Cockrill tries to piece everything together, but whether or not he was successful is debatable. A splendid demonstration how twins can be properly used in a fair-play detective story. Even when said story is structured as an inverted mystery.

"Dear Mr. Editor..." begins with a short letter from Christianna Brand to her editor, in which she apologizes for having been unable to provide him with a freshly written story for his anthology. However, Brand did include a copy of a document written by "a poor creature," who "was quite mad," and was addressed to her editor. It's a thriller-ish suspense story with a twist, but one most readers will probably spot well before the ending.

"The Rose" is a short-short story and a postscript reveals it as an early endeavor of the author, which kind of shows. A loving husband is planning to dispose of his wife by hoisting and shoving her from the balcony, but these seemingly perfect schemes seldom pan out as planned. You’ll probably guess it as well.

The following story, "Akin to Love," is an odd inclusion, because it combines the romance story with the ghost yarn, in which a young woman spends the night in a room haunted by the ghost of a young man – who had "joined one of the Hell Fire Clubs" and "sold his soul to the devil." The man had sinned against "womankind" and can only be set free if a woman forgave and loved him. Sort of like Beauty and The Beast, but not really my kind of stuff.

I wanted to enjoy "The Death of Don Juan," but ended up not caring for it: Vicomte Coqauvin, "Don Juan," is going to settle down and breaks up a pendant, known as the "Collar of Tears," to give all of his mistresses a diamond drop as a memento. The entire undertaking had "been a nightmare of threatened suicides," but the final woman on his list was angry enough to empty a pistol on him. A Duchess sets out to reassemble the pendant and by the end it's revealed she had an unexpected role in the murder. It's not a bad story and some will like it, but I'm not one of them.

The quality picks up again with "Double Cross," which is a story fans of classic Ellery Queen will appreciate: Sir Thomas Cross had been "an unaccommodating relative to his heirs" by living too long, spending too much money and extracting revenge for his murder with an "equally unaccommodating will" – condemning his three cousins and potential murderers to live together in the "gloomy glories of Halberd Hall." A failure to comply excluded the absentee from further interest in the estate and basically amounted to a Tontine scheme, which is at the heart of several short EQ stories and radio plays. The solution is a good play on the least-likely-suspect and most-likely-suspect gambit. I liked it.

"The Sins of the Father" is a pure horror story and is about sin-eaters, who "flourished in Wales" up "to the end of the seventeenth century," but might have been around as recent as a hundred years ago. They eat the sins of men and send the dead with a clean slate into the afterworld, but are treated abominably for taking "sins upon them" – being cast out for being "doomed for all eternity" and "heavy with the load of other men's transgressions." In this story a young sin-eater is called upon to relief a dead man of his sins and "eat from the breast of a corpse." It's not a mystery, but very intriguing nonetheless.

"After the Event" is one of the longer stories from the collection, in which the "Grand Old Man of Detection" gives an expose of the Othello case. A case in which he collared the murderer by building up "a water-tight case against him" and "triumphantly brought to trial," but the jury failed to convict. However, Inspector Cockrill is present as well and found himself in "the position of the small boy at a party who knows how the conjurer does his tricks," which the observant and seasoned armchair detective can largely follow. And that's the most attractive part of this elaborate and theatrical story: rival detectives butting heads.

Note: I'm refraining from giving any details about the Othello case, because it really is an elaborate story. Read if for yourself.

"Death of a Ghost" is a story-within-story: a family secret is being divulged about a cousin who took deadly tumble down a flight of stairs and the ghost of a "Wicked Earl" from the eighteenth-century, which are closely tied-together. I kind of liked the story except for the feeling more could've been done with it.

"The Kite" is another minor, stand-alone story, but one I did not care about or remember anything about it. Skippable at best.

"Hic Jacet..." is another inverted mystery playing on the "Hoist-On-Their-Own-Petard," in which Mr. Fletcher-Store is plotting the murder of his wife by drowning, but his plan horrendously backfired and the R.A.F. jacket he purchased in the pub is part to blame. I really enjoy these type of stories, but I rare come across them and only found a small selection of them in two collection of short stories: Murderous Schemes: An Anthology of Classic Detective Stories (1998), which has a selection of such stories containing the brilliant "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson, and Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2008), which has the amusing "You Have a Friend at Fengrove National."

Finally, there's "Murder Game," which is better known among locked room enthusiasts as "The Gemminy Cricket Case," and has an impossible crime plot as complicated as it's classical.

It's another one of those story-within-a-story structured story, in which Giles Carberry tells "the old man" about the Gemminy case. Thomas Gemminy is a London-based solicitor "dealing largely in criminal cases," but was "kind and compassionate" with a trust fund for those "who had passed through his hand" and "might turn for help in time of need." His home had also been open to the pitiful children who usually had no idea what their parents had been up to. So not really your typical story-book victim, but Gemminy is brutally murdered inside his office: tied to a chair with a cord and handkerchief knotted tightly around his neck, but the finishing blow came from knife-thrust between the shoulder blades – and the wound was still bleeding when the door was broken down. A door that was locked and bolted from the inside. On top of that, the office was set on fire and the victim was heard screaming something "vanishing into thin air" and "the long arms."

It's an extremely knotty, twisted affair and the solution is clever, but, it has to be said, a composite of some time-honored tricks. However, Brand found a way to twist it in a new direction and came up with a logical and clever answer why the second victim suffered a similar fate as the bleeding heart lawyer. But the best part is the final revelation, which makes this a very, very dark story and explained where the murderer found the guts for such to pull off such a locked room trick.

Well, that were the tales murder and horror collected in What Dread Hand? and, hopefully, I have done them some measure justice, because I enjoyed the vast majority of them and were exactly what I needed after the previous disappointment.

So, if you've never read Christianna Brand before, I have only thing to say to you: stop being a filthy heretic and find a copy of Green for Danger!