Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

First published in 1955, Christianna Brand's classic novel skewers the package holiday experience while unravelling one of the most audacious and devilish mysteries in the history of the genre. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger and Edgar® Award-winning author Martin Edwards.

"Written with much ingenuity, gaiety of colour and bright, joyful malice... Christianna Brand's readers are also taken on holiday in Tour de Force." 

--Julian Symons in the Times Literary Supplement, 1955

Inspector Cockrill has finally booked a holiday, destined for a Mediterranean tour with a motley crew of fellow vacationers. By the time they have reached the island of San Juan el Pirata off the Italian coast, the tour group is a bubbling pot of rivalries and tension between friends and lovers, threatening to boil over into violence in the scorching summer heat.

As six holidaymakers relax at the beach under Cockrill's watch, the seventh of their number is slain in the hotel. Believing that the murderer must have been one of the beachgoers, Cockrill faces what looks like an impossible puzzle--one that must be solved before the island's own police force delivers the wrong suspect to their doom.

Brand, Christianna: - Christianna Brand (1907-1988) was one of the most popular authors of the Golden Age of British mystery writing. Born in Malaya and raised in India, Brand used her experience as a salesgirl as inspiration for her first novel, Death in High Heels, which she based on a fantasy of murdering an irritating coworker. The same year, she debuted her most famous character, Inspector Cockrill, whose adventures she followed until 1957. The film version of the second Cockrill mystery, Green for Danger, is considered one of the best-ever screen adaptations of a classic English mystery. Brand also found success writing children's fiction. Her Nurse Matilda series, about a grotesque nanny who tames ill-behaved children, was adapted for the screen in 2005, as Nanny McPhee. Brand received Edgar Award nominations for the short stories Twist for Twist and Poison in the Cup, as well as one for her nonfiction work Heaven Knows Who. The author of more than two dozen novels, she died in 1988.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781464237676
ISBN 10	1464237670
Title	Tour de Force
Author	Christianna Brand
Series	British Library Crime Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Poisoned Pen Press
Year published	2025-09-09
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.