Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

This review is a testament to the power of a positive review written by someone whose taste you trust. Before you think I am a massive narcissistic, allow me to explain.

I picked this book up a little over a month ago, and I was so excited. It feels like I reference Christianna Brand’s London Particular just about every time I review a British Library Crime Classic, but it is my favourite book in this collection. Needless to say, when I saw that British Library Publishing were coming out with another Christianna Brand title, I cheered. Expectations were high. Brand’s 1950 novel, Cat and Mouse opens with a dedication to Mary Lewis, one of Brand’s writer friends or perhaps an editor, I assumed. In a letter to this Mary Lewis, which is included at the start of this book, Brand refers to a passage in Northanger Abbey where Catherine Morland, Miss Tilney, and Henry Tilney are all discussing the melodramatic novels of the time. “I thought it would be fun to do a good, old-fashioned mystery melodrama, two tombstones and a lantern and all: and since you told me the true story which has formed the basis of my plot, I hereby dedicate its three duodecimo volumes with all my gratitude, to you.” The joke is, Mary Lewis was Brand’s real name. She has dedicated the book to herself, and clearly gotten quite the kick out of it. In Northanger Abbey, Henry says, “there must be a murder” and so says Brand. Her melodrama is full of the wit any reader of her work has come to expect, and a good dose of murder too.

But there lies the tricky part. For some reason, I read that playful letter and got the impression that the book would be a joke. Not in a derogatory way. I expected Cat and Mouse to be poking fun of melodrama in the same way Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of the romanticised pastoral novels written by authors at the time, like Mary Webb. I’m not sure if anyone, other than myself, would have come to this screwy conclusion, but it is a screwy one. My advice is to read Cat and Mouse as you would any of her other novels, expecting Brand’s sharp wit and panache for plot-y plots and twists galore. My other advice is to get on board with the main character, Katinka Jones. I wasn’t on Katinka’s side when I read this book the first time. Yes, I read this book twice. When I reached the end the first time… Well, frankly, I was relieved the thing was over. I was annoyed with Katinka and it did have a clever ending, but it had not been funny. It had been frustrating. I felt like I had missed something, like I wasn’t smart enough to get it. You can imagine how much I enjoyed that feeling! I certainly had no plan to review it. The book was gifted from British Library, and while when a publisher sends a review copy, it is implied the reviewer is meant to review it. However, a negative review is hardly likely to help with sales. So it was not going to review it then. It was decided.

Then I read Sabine’s glowing review…

Sabine’s favourite British Library Crime Classic is the same as mine, London Particular. Do you want to know what Sabine’s second favourite BLCC is? The same as mine. The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. From reading her reviews over the years, I know that if Sabine likes a book, I will too. If she loves a book, so will I. And she loved Cat and Mouse. So what could I do? I had to give it another shot. I had to read it again.

When I picked it up a second time less than a month after my first reading, I was a bit concerned I was jinxing myself by not leaving long enough between readings. But it felt like this book and I had unfinished business. I wanted to know where I stood with it. I just could not put it off.

And now, after the longest introduction to a review, in the history of introductions, here is my review of Christianna Brand’s Cat and Mouse. 

Katinka Jones, the Miss Friendly-wise agony aunt for Girls Together magazine, is on holiday in Wales in September. She visits her Great Uncle Joseph where he lives by the giant reservoir some miles outside of Swansea. This passage describing Katinka’s uncle reminded me of something out of Cold Comfort Farm, and is probably what solidified the idea that this book was going to be a parody when I read it the first time.

Nobody remained but Great Uncle Joseph, known in the Welsh idiom as Jo Jones the Waterworks, because of the proximity of his home to the giant reservoir— the nearest he’s been to water for a long time, thought Tinka, eyeing with disfavour his unattractive person. (Cat and Mouse 23)

Apparently, Katinka didn’t tone down the colour of her red lips and nails enough for Wales, and finds herself unwelcome in her uncle’s home, so she takes up residence in a “gloomy little hotel” in Swansea (23). At a loose end she decides to pay a visit to Amista, a young woman who is a longtime writer to Girls Together, asking for beauty tips and love advice. Hard to say you’ve ‘dropped in’ when you’ve travelled six miles by bus and boat and climbed up a mountainside to get to the person’s house. But Katinka does just that. Once there she introduces herself, leaving out the Girls Together bit, as it might sound a bit mad, and says she is calling on Mrs. Carlyon. The only problem is, everyone in the house, including Mr. Carlyon claims there is no such person. Not only that, there are only two servants and Carlyon living in the house. Even Mr. Chucky, the man she met in the village who offered to come with her to see Carlyon, who she thought was handsome when you really looked at him, says he has never seen the woman. “I didn’t even know Mr. Carlyon was married,” claims Mr. Chucky (41). 

Stumbling out of the house and into the “silver rain”, Katinka runs down the mountain hoping to catch a ride across the river with the woman who delivers the milk, Miss Evans the Milk as she is referred (41). Apparently high heels are not all weather or all terrain footwear, and she takes a tumble, twisting her ankle. Sitting on a rock, waiting for the pain to subside, Katinka collects herself. That’s when she remembers spotting one of Amista’s letters waiting to be mailed sitting on a table in the front hall when she came in. Now, the letter is gone. The mail taken by Miss Evans the Milk. And Carlyon, who comes after Katinka, is none too pleased to hear that she has injured herself, leaving him obliged to have her stay the night. 

But he would not smile, and she gave herself up to the struggle. Every touch of her foot upon the ground was agony.

She was worn out before they had reached the top of the path: sick with pain, almost sobbing with dejection and weariness. She had no idea what time it was, but the mist was closing in about the mountain, the fine, soft drizzle of rain made grey evening of September afternoon. The mountain rose up, impregnably stern, behind the fretted decoration of the silly peaked roofs of the house; and at sight of the servants standing in the little porch, like two dogs straining at the leash to come to their master for some news that they knew he carried, her heart failed her. I must go into the house again and into that horrible hall... (48)

The first time reading this I thought I was meant to be poking fun of Katinka with the author, but I wasn’t finding the situation, or Katinka, very funny. Actually, I was finding Katinka a bit frustrating. I mean, she kept oscillating between fear and infatuation, which got a bit dizzying after a time. The whole Amista doesn’t exist, but wait no, I just remembered this thing, so she must exist! And, suspecting Carlyon of everything imaginable one minute and being in love with him the next, was exhausting. Katinka is supposed to be “an old, old lady of very nearly thirty, grown tough and cynical in the service of her profession”, but what she appeared to be is a young girl in her teens, like our heroine from Northanger Abbey, 17-year-old Catherine Morland (17).

However, on my second reading I didn’t notice any of this. It’s not just that I glossed over these aspects of Katinka’s character. I did not notice them. Once I decided to take the novel seriously, I was on Katinka’s side and I could see why she was torn between her attraction for this man and her suspicion of him. Part of her wants to forget all about Amista. If she can do that, then there is no mystery. If there is no mystery, Carlyon becomes a sad, handsome man, who keeps giving her signs that he is as interested in her as she is with him. But there’s the other side of that. If she cannot prove Amista’s existence, then Carlyon will continue to believe that Katinka is a journalist, who has butted into his home with an unbelievable story. 

Along with Northanger Abbey, this novel has a dash of Jane Eyre. Katinka even references Charlotte Brontë’s novel. The descriptions of the landscape in Cat and Mouse reminded me of a very different book, Forest Silver by E.M. Ward. Perhaps, I only made the connection between these two, because I have not read many books set in Wales, but when Katinka runs out into the “silver rain”, I immediately thought of my beloved Forest Silver. Brand and Ward are clearly writing about the same landscape and the use of the word silver is uncommon enough in descriptions of nature that I suspect silver light must be a characteristic of the place, or perhaps the grey from the mountains reflects off other surfaces, giving them a silvery cast. I had to include a favourite quotation of mine from Forest Silver.

From the narrow road they looked down through tree branches to the lake, that lay rippled and silver bright behind the dark trunks. Almost at the top of the hill they turned off by a little path that led to a gap in the roadside wall. Through the gap they could see into the solemn wood of Bainriggs, now colourless and vague but so sodden with the day's rain that, except in the black tree shadows, everything was changed to silver. The moonlit rocks, the wet sponge of moss upon the ground, leaves, lit spaces of the beech trunks and the stems of birches, always silver but now brighter than in any noontide, all these shone and glittered with a light so wan and yet so brilliant that it seemed like the phosphorescence of a world long dead. (Forest Silver 10)

Katinka does not romanticise the landscape in the way Richard Blunt does in Forest Silver, but I got the sense that she would be inclined to, if she was not so consumed with the mystery of Amista.

She wandered over to the window and, parting the curtains, leaned her forehead against the chilly glass, staring out across the opposite mountain. But the rainbow was gone. Nothing to be seen but the shaft of thin sunshine across the hump of the hill, the sullen, silver river in the valley and, at a turn of the mountain path, the two tiny specks creeping upward towards the house. (Cat and Mouse 79)

There’s that word silver, again. I don’t know what it means. I don’t even know what the landscape in Wales actually looks like, because I have not been. But I felt like these two authors were writing about the same place, a place I would recognise if I saw it, and so much of my traveling happens on the page. When I visited London for the first time, it felt like home. It felt like a place I knew, could find my way around, and a place I had created an image of in my mind with the help of countless authors. Likewise, Wales is being written on my mind, and in my heart through Ward, and now Brand. If anyone has any recommendations for books set in Wales that can help me continue to fill in the details of the landscape, I would love to hear them. 

In the meantime, I’ll be reading Northanger Abbey, which I picked up on a whim after finishing this one. (Full disclosure, I'm reading an ebook of this. But I have linked one of the many gorgeous editions I would buy if I had the means.) It appears two readings of Cat and Mouse in a month only whetted my appetite for melodrama. I never would have guessed it.

Give this fun and witty, but dark, indeed, very dark, rollercoaster of a novel a try. Believe in Katinka Jones, as she ferrets out the truth about Amista, even if she must first stumble upon every untruth as she trods the uphill path to get to the precipice of this inventive novel. 

I have to close this post by thanking Sabine for her wonderful review of Cat and Mouse. She says more, by saying less, than I ever could. 

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Cat and Mouse for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

***If you got something out of this post, please consider subscribing to my blog. You can find the email sign up on the right hand side at the top of this page (on desktop version only), or click on the link here. You will receive a confirmation email in your inbox (or possibly your junk folder). Once you click to confirm your email address you will receive an email notification whenever a new blog post goes up. And, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. Feel free to email me if you have any trouble subscribing, or if you just want to chat about books. I would love to hear from you! Whether you subscribe or not, I’m thankful you are here.***

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

London Particular by Christianna Brand

London Particular by Christianna Brand may just be my new favourite book among the British Library Crime Classics. While, as Martin Edwards suggests in his introduction, it is up for debate whether Brand strictly follows the rules of a ‘fair play’ puzzle in this book, this was the author’s own favourite among her books for good reason. I do think the murder is solvable for the reader, but it would take someone who is exceptional at discarding the superfluous. And apparently, I do not fit into this category. But I’m fine with that, because this one kept me guessing right to the last sentence.

Dr. Edwin Robert Edwards, lovingly referred to as Tedward, and Rosie Evans, the younger sister of his colleague, are out on a typically foggy November night in London, trying to find their way to a dying man. After receiving a strange phone call from Rosie’s house by Raoul Vernet, a dinner guest visiting from Switzerland, urging the doctor to come quick, he has been hit by a mastoid mallet. They arrive to find Raoul Vernet is dead.

Rosie enlists the help of family friend, Inspector Cockrill, to aid the police in their investigations, because as dear Cockie is soon to find out, there are only seven suspects and all belong to the Evans family or are close friends of theirs.

There are so many things about this book that I enjoyed. Let’s talk about the setting first. As suggested by its title, this novel begins on a night ravaged by the soot laden fog that was typical of London in the 1950s. In December of 1952, the same year this book was published, London experienced severe air pollution from the combination of cold weather, an anticyclone (high pressure air close to a land mass with lower pressure air surrounding), and windless conditions which trapped airborne pollutants, creating a deadly smog, which killed as many as 4,000 people and made thousands more sick. Coal was mainly to blame for the great quantity of pollutants in the air and the Clean Air Act of 1956 came about in direct response to the event that came to be known as the Great Smog of 1952. All of this is to say that the fog described in this book would have been thick yellow, green, or black fog often referred to as a ‘pea-souper’.

It may be hard for today’s readers to imagine how dense London fog would have been during this time period. The title London Particular, is a reference to chapter three in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. A character says, “This is a London particular” in response to a new-comer to London asking if there was a fire, because “the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen”. By referencing a novel published one hundred years earlier, Brand suggests that this is the same dense, pollution-filled, fog that Londoners had been suffering since Dickens’ time, and no doubt even earlier than that. (Here's my short and sweet review of Bleak House.)

Earlier this month I read another book set during the 1950s, Patti Callahan Henry’s The Story She Left Behind. In it the Great Smog of 1952 is well-described from the perspective of an American tourist who is not accustomed to a London particular and is unaware that the London air is not always so toxic. This novel is not entirely set in London, the characters quickly flee to the Lake District for their health, but if you enjoy historical fiction I cannot recommend this one enough. The brief description of London’s landmarks veiled in thick fog were of particular interest to me, as I have not read anything else set during this historical event. (You can find my review of that book on Instagram and Goodreads, if you are interested.)

But back to London Particular… Brand describes the family dynamics with vigour and humour, breathing such life into the house that it seems a shame to sully it with the ugliness of a murder.

Tedward strolled out after her, laughing. ‘Never mind, Til! You cope with the old girl, I'll see myself out.’ Gabriel followed him, barking gaily, under the chronic delusion that anyone in an overcoat was necessarily about to take him walkie-palkies, and Annaran, the Siamese cat, who was very sillily called after the film Annaran the King of Siam, poised ready to dart out to certain death under the traffic wheels of Maida Vale. ‘Gabriel! Annaran!’ shouted Matilda in despair above the din. The telephone rang, Emma reached boiling-point, Rosie screamed out from her attic that if that was Damien on the phone she would come down and speak to him, and out of a first-floor window flew a long-sleeved woollen nightie. A strong smell of burning pastry arose from the basement. ‘My God, what a house!’ said Tilda. From the hall came a last shrill yelp of disappointment as Tedward shut the door in Gabriel’s face; followed by a squall as it closed upon Annaran’s shining tail. The fall of the nightgown had been followed by a heavy silence in Mrs Evans’ room. Today of all days! — Granny was always at her most impossible, after Worse than Death. (45-46)

I had to include that hilarious glimpse into the Evans’ household at its most chaotic. It actually made me laugh out loud while reading, which is something I rarely do.

The other thing I really enjoy about this book is Brand’s writing. The plot is so finely tuned that she continues to play with reader expectation throughout. She even teases the reader by foreshadowing events to come. 

In the long, white firelit drawing-room the victim bowed and smiled and reeled off his devoirs before the serious work of the evening should begin; within the radius of one fog-bound mile, were these seven people, one of whom was very shortly going to murder him. (56)

Again, she teases what is to come when early on in the investigation, Cockie is questioning some suspects for the first time.

A little fish of doubt swam into Cockie's consciousness and hung about there for a moment waggling its fins at him; but he was more interested in Thomas than in Melissa Weeks and so he passed on and never knew how much trouble and tragedy might have been saved if he had noticed it. (77)

Although, I usually find this type of blatant foreshadowing is too heavy-handed for my liking, I think Brand makes the technique work because it is both carefully placed, and used sparingly.

Despite Brand’s skill at creating finely-tuned plots full of twists, this does not feel like a plot-driven novel. Everything that happens in this book is driven by believable decisions made by the characters. Even with a number of characters confessing to the crime, it does not feel like some sort of ploy to confuse the reader. It does of course add confusion, but each of the confessions are believable in the moment because there is some truth behind each confession, and because all of the suspects are so closely linked, there is always someone who is trying to protect someone else. 

Speaking of characters, Cockie appears in six other novels by Brand, five of which have been republished by the British Library, including Green for Danger, Suddenly at His Residence, Death of Jezebel, and Tour de Force. London Particular is the fifth book in the series and Tour de Force, which I read before reading this one, is the sixth. (Here's a link to my review of Tour de Force.) Although, an earlier case is mentioned in this one in which Inspector Cockrill crosses paths with Inspector Charlesworth, the police inspector who is officially working on the case in this book, there are no spoilers for that novel. I had no problem enjoying the books in this series out of order.

While there are some aspects of this novel that date it, there are other aspects that make it feel ahead of its time. We find out early on that Rosie is pregnant and is very open about seeking an abortion. Abortion was not legalised in England until 1967. I’m willing to bet that Rosie referring to her unwanted pregnancy as “a most frightful muddle” and seeking an abortion from the family doctor, while continuing to unashamedly give in to her passion for men, must have shocked some readers when this book was first published. Perhaps all the more so because Rosie is a delightful and charming character, who is living her life unapologetically, and is more intelligent than she makes herself out to be. After all, it was her idea to ask Cockie to investigate, and you cannot help but like and approve of Cockie. 

I cannot recommend this one enough! It has an atmospheric setting, twist, after twist, likeable characters—all of which you will be rooting for, even though one of them has to be the murderer—and some really solid writing. Oh, and no clunky explanation at the end. Thank heavens!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of London Particular for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

Tour de Force by Christianna Brand

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!

*This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell's, which means I will make a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through this link. See Affiliate Disclosure at sidebar for details.