Brand New Horizons

 As I alluded in my last post, I overcame a reading slump with a new-to-me author:  Christianna Brand. I read the first in her rather short Inspector Cockrill series, Heads You Lose (1941). Gosh, I loved it! What a joy it is to fall for a new author! 

Christianna Brand and friend

It’s astounding that this was Brand’s second novel:  it is so confident and witty, so full of voice and character, shining with a sense of not only self-assuredness, but also just plain self. As I alluded to in my
post on A.A. Milne and his mystery series that never was, I give a lot of grace to first novels. It takes some authors a few tries to find their footing, and that’s fine with me. Apparently not Brand:  Heads You Lose
excels at many of the qualities I value in a mystery. It has strong characters and a pretty decent setting! The voice is strong, it’s witty and even often funny, and it has a sharp observational edge for character that is one of the things I adore most in Christie.. While it had a small main cast, I liked that the omniscient third person took us into the heads of side characters, because they were interesting and added to the sense of place, as well as provided perspective on the upper-class circle of suspects that I always appreciate. That there’s also a very sweetly written dog is a cherry on top of a delight of a read. I wasn’t at all surprised that one of the first author photos I found of Brand features a dachshund–the beloved little dog, equally terrible and charming, is as character-forward as the humans. The little dog in this book is obviously written by someone who knows and loves dogs.

I won’t wax too much more about the characters, which were good but rather unevenly characterized. But I do want to pause to emphasize that this book does one of my favorite things, something that is often lacking in the modern cozy:  humanized victims. The first victim is Grace Morland, a trope of a pathetic spinster…. Only there is something very heart-wrenching and human about both her and the second victim that elevate them above their tropes and save them from being mere plot devices to get the murder investigation a-rolling. We spend time in Grace’s head in the book’s opening through the third-person-omniscient narrator, and what a difference this choice makes:  living with her hope and disappointment and embarrassment, seeing the careless way the more socially secure treat her, casts a shadow over the closed-circle suspects. Yes, they are charming, yes, they love each other, but I kept returning to poor Grace’s searing humiliation and particularly brutal end, and it reminded me to doubt the tight-knit upper class crew. Starting outside the group encouraged me to sense something sinister in their deep love for each other and the way it mirrored into profound carelessness about others. I think that this was intentional and not just me doing literary analysis, and I found it very interesting and fine. 

Other than the fine character writing, one of my favorite things about Heads You Lose is how it’s set not only in place but in time. Some contemporaneous mystery authors left World War II off the page (though it usually creeps through in themes and anxieties). Heads You Lose isn’t about the war, but it is textually present in some very interesting ways. Yes, it’s set in a classic country house–but Pigeonsford village is harboring Blitz refugees who have none of the traditional fealty to the country squire. Multiple character make judgmental comments about the German origins of the dachshund:  a recurring joke, but also revealing deep anxiety about foreign bodies infecting the homes of the upper class. One of the characters in the close-knit circle of potential murderers and victims is Jewish, and while the portrayal is marred by typical tropes of anti-Semitism of the time, Brand is still intelligent enough to understand how his heritage makes him more precarious than others in his social circle, more likely to be accused of a crime. After the discovery of the first on-page crime, the characters’ first impulse as they’re woken is to ask if it’s an air raid. Small details, but not only do they ground the book in time in a marvelous way, they add to a sense of anxiety and themes of an upper class besieged from the outside and (potentially) harboring violence within.

Obviously, there was a lot I liked in this book, and my enjoyment is my overriding takeaway. But it isn’t perfect. I’ve written paragraphs and said nothing about “Cocky”, the detective, because what is there to even say? He’s underwhelming. There are elements to his character that could prove interesting in later books, like an intriguing cynicism, but they’re more told than shown. I got almost no sense of him as a detective, or a character:  for all Brand jumps around different points-of-view, we spend little if any time in the mind of her detective. It didn’t hurt the book for me, really; I don't need a detective as main character to enjoy a book. I’m curious to see what happens with the character. The other weaker element is the plot itself. From my survey of mystery blogs, it seems like the ending of this book is particularly unpopular. I didn’t find it all that bad. I wasn’t disappointed by the identity of the culprit, which makes perfect sense (perhaps too much sense for it to be much of a mystery as much as a thriller), but I didn’t like the way other characters reacted to the revelation. I am willing to read a layer of critique into it, because class solidarity is one of the only explanations for how nonplussed the circle of suspects are when the murderer is discovered. For me, the plot is fine. If this is one of Brand’s worst, I am buzzing with excitement to see what comes next!