Ron K. (WhidbeyIslander) -
Brand's Green For Danger is one of my all-time favorite mysteries, so this one is doubly disappointing using the other as a standard.
The March family (whose backgrounds and personalities are laid out in detail in the first fifty or so pages) is a most obnoxious bunch of people. By chapter 5 I was hoping 90% of them would be the victim(s). (You are told before reading that two of the family -- shown in a family tree -- will be victims.) And it appears that in the circles the family ran in, love affairs between two cousins weren't that big a deal.
The whole thing is spent in the company of these jerks, and after the initial killing, we are subjected to endless theories about how the murderer was clever in hiding all the things that pointed to them. The whole thing about fugues and supposed mental illness of one of the family was especially tiresome. The fact that Inspector Cockrill ("Cockie," what an awful nickname) is an intimate with the family clouds the investigation.
Note: Inspector Cockrill is described as "small, brown, and bright-eyed"; but reading I could only picture Alistair Sim as the character, as he so memorably played him in the film version of Green For Danger.
The March family (whose backgrounds and personalities are laid out in detail in the first fifty or so pages) is a most obnoxious bunch of people. By chapter 5 I was hoping 90% of them would be the victim(s). (You are told before reading that two of the family -- shown in a family tree -- will be victims.) And it appears that in the circles the family ran in, love affairs between two cousins weren't that big a deal.
The whole thing is spent in the company of these jerks, and after the initial killing, we are subjected to endless theories about how the murderer was clever in hiding all the things that pointed to them. The whole thing about fugues and supposed mental illness of one of the family was especially tiresome. The fact that Inspector Cockrill ("Cockie," what an awful nickname) is an intimate with the family clouds the investigation.
Note: Inspector Cockrill is described as "small, brown, and bright-eyed"; but reading I could only picture Alistair Sim as the character, as he so memorably played him in the film version of Green For Danger.
