I picked up Christianna Brand’s 1955 novel, Tour de Force, hot on the heels of finishing another British Library Crime Classic, Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins. It crossed my mind as I was trying to decide what to read after finishing The Wheel Spins that whatever book I landed on was going to have a tough act to follow. I was a bit wary of starting another Crime Classic, if I’m being honest, because it couldn’t possibly be as good as The Wheel Spins, or so I thought.
I could not have prepared myself for Christianna Brand’s quality of writing, plotting, and character development. Of course, I had heard positive reviews about her books, but as we all know, taste is subjective and what one person loves, another might loath. But in my opinion, the hype around Christianna Brand’s writing is well deserved. Now, in some ways this one is a very different book from The Wheel Spins, so I hesitate to pit these two against each other. The Wheel Spins is atmospheric and tense. There is a lot of imagery and fine writing in that book. The other thing that makes it special is that no murder takes place on the page. On the other hand, Tour de Force follows the traditional trajectory of a body being found a quarter of the way through the book, which is not a bad thing. There is a reason mystery novels tend to follow this progression, because it works well as it both provides the author with enough time to set up the world of the novel, and then on the other side of that there is ample time remaining to solve the murder.
Another feature of the book that I recognised and was both intrigued by and a bit worried about is that the premise of Tour de Force reminded me of an Agatha Christie. Not necessarily a bad sign, as there are many books by her that I love. But Evil Under the Sun isn’t an absolute favourite. It is a fine book and I will likely find myself reading it again in the future, but it didn’t blow me away. (Christie fans, please don’t come for me.) Similar to Evil Under the Sun, Tour de Force is about a detective going on holiday to the seaside. Instead of Hercule Poirot, our detective is Inspector Cockrill or Cockie, as he is so endearingly referred. Brand even has her detective refer to Poirot, so perhaps she was aware that her readers might make the connection.
It was exasperating to be able to do so little, to feel so hamstrung without his little black bag, the graphite and the foot-rule and the magnifying-glass and all the rest of it, backed up by the vast departments of Scotalanda Yarda. All one could do was to emulate M. Poirot, use the little grey cells and observe the psychological behaviour pattern of those concerned. (158)
Cockrill also refers to Norbert Davis’s Detective Inspector Carstairs on more than one occasion and Cockrill has brought one of his detective books along with him on holiday to read on the beach. The Case of the Leaping Blonde is the title of that detective novel, which I suspect Brand had a giggle over when inserting it into her book. Although, Cockrill does not seem to align himself with that fictitious hardboiled detective.
And on the terrace above them, Inspector Cockill stired restlessly in his deck-chair and tried to get back to Carstairs and could not concentrate. Carstairs never fell in love: perhaps because his eyes were so constantly narrowed that he was unable to recognize a pretty girl when he saw one. Inspector Cockrill, on the other hand, recognized a pretty girl only too easily and nowadays sometimes worried in case he should grow into a dirty old man; and he could not help being fond of this particular girl — and sorry to see her making such a mess of things. (48)
Cockrill has flown from Britain to Italy on a package tour. After a bit of touring around, taking in the sights with a night here, a day there, the group ends up on a small island off the Italian coast, where they will spend the duration of the holiday. And what a holiday they have!
One of the group is murdered, and Cockrill believes it must be one of his fellow beachgoers that has done it. But as he spent the afternoon reading with a view of all of the suspects from his spot on the clifftop, it seems virtually impossible that any of them could have snuck away unnoticed to commit the crime.
So much for lying all day in the sun and reading his detective novel, like he had planned. He could just wait around for the local police force to find the murderer, only they aren’t so particular about who they charge with the crime, just so long as justice is seen to be done. After a brief stay inside the damp underground tomb they call a jail, Cockrill is determined that none of his fellow compatriots will be wrongfully committed. Did I mention that not even Cockrill is safe from wrongful arrest?
I hesitate to share too much about this book, because there are a few twists that are really very well done and I would hate to spoil. But I do want to give you a sample of Brand’s really wonderful writing.
It was half past four. In the sky the sun was high, glittering down upon the curly blue-green tiles of the hotel roofs, on the long lines of the walls, studded like a dovecot with rounded arches of windows and doorways, facing out over the sea. Behind the white buildings, the chill pines whispered together; mourning their lack of the colour and scent of the rose and geranium, the jasmine and myrtle, massed on the many-coloured, pebble-patterned terraces below: and it seemed to Inspector Cockrill, who on the whole is not given to fancies, that something of its cold breath struck through the windless heat of the afternoon. Despite his mistrust of the forthcoming performance, he found he could not stifle a rising excitement oddly at war with a sense of foreboding and dread. (190-191)
Isn’t that wonderful? Brand’s descriptions throughout the book of the setting and characters are so well-drawn. From the start, I never needed to remind myself of where the action was taking place and there was no confusion over the characters. From the start, I had a clear picture of what each of them looked like. We even get descriptions of the clothing characters are wearing, but without it dragging down the narrative, because the descriptions we get always have a purpose. No extemporaneous writing here!
And I think that ease of narrative is what makes this book particularly good. I appreciated the writing as I was reading, of course. But it is not until the very end that I fully realised just how brilliantly this story is woven. When you get to the end you will start to remember little throwaway tidbits that were actually breadcrumbs Brand left for us to find our way to the murderer.
Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Tour de Force for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.
And I have to thank my lovely friend, Gina (@babsbelovedbooks on Instagram), for sending me two John Dickson Carr books for Christmas, which you can see in the image below. I cannot wait to read them! Thank you, Gina!
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