Begun during Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon and finished some days ago, Tour-de-Force is my favorite Christianna Brand book so far and the best of the eight I’m reading to find out what gambits they illustrate. I was a little worried because on Amazon it only gets 3 stars whereas Heads You Lose and Fog of Doubt are both higher rated. I will never understand people. Inspector Cockrill is on a package tour of Italy and a tiny, fictional Spanish-Italian island nation which is run by a dictator and is far more interested in smuggling than justice. They don’t have fingerprint kits or medical examiners or any of that guff. They just pick the person they want to be guilty and trump up a case against them. They go through a number of people in the tour group this way. Inspector Cockrill and the group also go through a number of suspects. The trouble with books is you know it’s not the right solution when you’re only halfway through.
The tourists are an amusing bunch a former concert pianist who lost an arm, his long suffering wife, a famous writer, a fashion designer, Mr. Cecil, who desires the Spanish tour guide who desires an apparently rich single woman who clings to her purse as though it’s a security blanket, and the inspector. We get to know them a bit on their mad dash through Italy, but then the inevitable happens. Murder takes place on the island and they are stuck there for days trying to figure out the culprit and prevent any of them spending the rest of their lives in a medieval island prison.
It’s a bit corny sometimes with Cockrill believing he can get his thoughts across to the natives by adding -a to English words. But if you can ignore that, it is nice to know Americans are not the only bumptious travelers. I really enjoyed this one all the way through. I don’t remember any moments of what the characters did making no sense like many times in Fog of Doubt. And while this sort of ending usually drives me crazy, I think she actually wrote it well enough I ought to have guessed.
This is not my cover. I bought a weird copy which is just sort of blue-green paint and white. It’s quite nicely done as far as typesetting goes. I think I found one obvious error. But there’s no one claiming credit, no company, and no page numbers. Kind of annoying. But clean, easy to read type and there aren’t many books being put out these days with so few errors. It isn’t really a kennel murder case though the dog is important, but I guess it sounded more exciting than the Chinese Ceramics Case. There is a sergeant whose never met a stereotype he didn’t like. He can hardly choose between blaming the Chinese cook or the Italian visitor. At least no one seems to be encouraging his biases. I was drawn into this one from the get-go. I will definitely read more of them even though it didn’t seem strictly fair. Some of the actions of various people are rather difficult to believe in the end, but still, entertaining overall.
This is the cover I have. Striking, but inaccurate. The only cat is found dead. This is a great read for atmosphere. The crumbling mansion, the mysterious psychic researcher, the history of plague and violence, the seances. Chock full of entertaining creepiness. And really, I’d be amazed if you figure this one out, because in my opinion Dickson totally cheats. I expect the cheat will turn out to be the ‘gambit,’ but maybe not. I did figure out part of it, but I had significant things wrong. I was trying to find out if one of the things he talks about is even possible, but the internet has let me down. I had all kinds of little problems with this, too. The behavior of one of the people just seemed too far-fetched to me. But go ahead and read it because it’s creepy fun, not because it’s a good mystery.
