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    Green for Danger
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    Green for Danger
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    Green for Danger
    Ebook303 pages4 hours

    Green for Danger

    By Christianna Brand

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    About this ebook

    In WWII England, a military hospital may hide a murderer: “[Brand] could construct puzzles with the best of them” (Elizabeth George).
     As German V-1 rockets rain down on the English countryside, the men and women of the military hospitals fight to stay calm. The morning after a raid, Doctor Barnes prepares for a routine surgery to repair a postman’s broken leg. But with general anesthesia, there is always danger. Before the first incision is made, the postman turns purple. Barnes and his nurses do what they can, but the patient is dead in minutes.  The coroner calls for an inquest. Barnes has a history of lost patients, and cannot afford more trouble. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Cockrill is unimpressed by the staff at the hospital, which he finds a nest of jealousy, indiscretion, and bitterness. One of them, doctor or nurse, murdered the postman—and it won’t be long before they kill again. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateNov 1, 2011
    ISBN9781453228319
    Author

    Christianna Brand

    Christianna Brand (1907–1988) was one of the most popular authors of the Golden Age of British mystery writing. Born in Malaya and raised in India, Brand used her experience as a salesgirl as inspiration for her first novel, Death in High Heels, which she based on a fantasy of murdering an irritating coworker. The same year, she debuted her most famous character, Inspector Cockrill, whose adventures she followed until 1957. The film version of the second Cockrill mystery, Green for Danger, is considered one of the best-ever screen adaptations of a classic English mystery. Brand also found success writing children’s fiction. Her Nurse Matilda series, about a grotesque nanny who tames ill-behaved children, was adapted for the screen in 2005, as Nanny McPhee. Brand received Edgar Award nominations for the short stories “Twist for Twist” and “Poison in the Cup”, as well as one for her nonfiction work Heaven Knows Who. The author of more than two dozen novels, she died in 1988.

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    Reviews for Green for Danger

    4/5

    96 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. The characters reeled me in and kept me fooled until the end.
    • 4/5
      Unexpectedly good--after a handful of books (by other authors) with unlikely, unlovable, cardboard characters, it was a relief to be in Ms. Brand's hands with her motley crew of lovable, believable, rounded real people.

      She also tricked me--she tricked me good. I was sure I'd figured it out (not the how, but the who and the why), and then she yanked the rug out from under me, and turned out I was wrong on all counts--but wonderfully wrong, and all the clues were there, she played absolutely fair.

      Very good mystery. (Better than her Heads You Lose which is the only other I've read by her).

      (Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      (Fiction, Mystery, Vintage, WWII)This was my second outing with Brand (the first in October 2014) and I found that Green for Danger certainly justified Brand’s place in the pantheon of great Golden Age mystery authors.This second outing of Inspector Cockrill is set in a rural English hospital during WWII. The mystery is extremely well and fairly clued and although I caught on before the reveal, it was just enough before that I wasn’t frustrated by obviousness.Tipped off by Nan from Letters from a Hill Farm, I found the movie version of Green for Danger on YouTube, and greatly enjoyed it. It was true to the book although, perhaps due to film quality, I think you’d get more out of it if you’ve read the book first.Excellent – if you haven’t read Brand, do start here.4½ stars

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Green for Danger by Christianna Brand was published in 1944 and is a clever murder mystery with the unusual setting of a military hospital during World War II. The author’s descriptions of the air raids were realistic and added a sense of impending danger to the characters who were on duty while the bombs fell. A bombing victim is brought into the hospital but unfortunately he dies on the operating table. His death was unusual enough to have the police brought in to investigate. Inspector Cockrill arrives and goes through the motions of questioning the seven people who had access to the victim, but it isn’t until one of those questioned is killed that he fully suspects murder.As the author presents her characters and gives us a small glance at their past, I found myself suspicious of each one at different times. Green for Danger is a true puzzler, it moves along at a fairly quick pace and totally drew me into the story. I had read her previous Inspector Cockrill mystery entitled “Heads You Lose”, and I much preferred this book. The Inspector is determined to unveil the guilty one and while the six suspects are very genteel and don’t point fingers at one another, their witty banter kept the pages turning.Green for Danger is a top-notch mystery and I am glad that I picked it up. I have seen the 1946 British film that was made from the book with Alastair Sim playing the bumbling yet crafty Inspector perfectly. So I heartily recommend both reading the book and watching the film.
    • 4/5
      Last month as one of my Book Challenge selections I read the short story collection English Country House Murders edited by Thomas Godfrey. (See Review in June) The story by Christianna Brand caught my attention and the blurb at the beginning mentioned that she had been a contemporary of the Golden Age mystery writers (i.e. Christie, Marsh, Tey, and Sayers), had written several mystery novels featuring a detective named Cockrell, and was still very popular in England and on the continent. He suggested Green for Danger as her best one. This is definitely a classic mystery although in the way she develops her characters and handles her plot I think her style resembles Josephine Tey more than Agatha Christie. The setting is during the Blitz in a military hospital in a heavily bombed area that is forced to take in civilian casualties. Although it takes place in a hospital it still has the feel of a Country House Mystery because besides the victims we are only concerned with the six suspects, three doctors and three nurses, and the detective, Cockrell. The environs are the hospital, the grounds and the lodge house where the three women reside when not on duty. The motive for 2 of the murders is part of the mystery, for the characters as well as the reader. This mystery has interesting characters, gives an historically accurate picture of what was happening in England during the blitz and also a great description of medical practices at that time, some very suspenseful moments that are psychologically created rather than “chase related”and a very clever puzzle which keeps you guessing. There were two things that made this book particularly appealing to me. I found the historical part of the book interesting because this was written in 1944 when the WWII era would have been fresh in Brand’s mind, up close and personal. I enjoyed comparing her descriptions with Jaqueline Winspear’s account in Maisie Dobbs, which is a 21st century novel cum mystery set during and after the WWI era. I was especially tickled to spot a reference to the feathers that are the crux of Winspear’s second Maisie Dobbs novel, Birds of a Feather. I wonder if they did the same thing during WWII as they did in WWI or is it an anomaly that Brand uses it, too. I will have to research that again. The other appealing aspect of this novel is that Brand fooled me in her solution to the mystery while completely playing fair. This does not happen to me very often. How much fun I had remembering the important clues that I had noticed but ignored because she hid them in plain sight so well. Classic mystery buffs should love this book!

      1 person found this helpful