Customer Reviews

Heads You Lose (Scarlet Dagger Large Print)

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This is a very classic (and british) plot : somebody among a group of six persons killed two or maybe three women by severing their heads with different devices. Two lovely girls, an old lady, and older man, the husband of one of the girls and another one in love with the second girl. Who did it? There appears an english policeman who has known all six for long and who tries to find the culprit, with some unorthodox methods. Maybe he would prefer not to discover him, but he's obliged to by the quick events. You can try your little grey cells, like Hercule Poirot, but it wan't work. Just let yourself by taken by the plot,the author and both lovely girls, and enjoy it till the end. A bit bloody ? Well, not too much, as a matter of fact. And buy other books from C. Brand, with the same policeman and some of the characters of this book, "death of a Jezabel", "green for danger", "death in high heels"... It comes from the 50's, but it's very enjoyable.

I am a big Christianna Brand fan (and that was even before the success of the Nurse Matilda stories), but this book did not do it for me. It started out good - an English country manor mystery with an exclusive list of six suspects, but the denouement just didn't ring true. Brand usually writes wonderful English mysteries in the classical style, and she usually has enough red herrings about to keept the reader on their toes, but in this book, the red herrings are rather obvious, and the actual murderer and the motives behind the murders were hard to believe. I will continue to read Brand's books because I do enjoy her writing and hope that the others are back to her usual standards.