Reviews

Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand

quietjenn's review against another edition

2.0

I thought it was mediocre but serviceable until we got to the end and then I hated it so much that if it were a real book instead of a kindle book I would have thrown it across the room in disgust.

ambergold's review against another edition

4.0

4.5 stars. Brilliant book. I WISH Brand's endings were not always so bittersweet however: Agatha Christie, whom she strongly resembles in style and content, almost always managed to wrap up her books with a sense of justice and completion and even happiness. Brand's always leave for me a bit of a creeping sense of wrongness. Other than that, however, these are pitch-perfect whodunnits.

wordnerdy's review against another edition

3.0

http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2013/04/2013-book-104.html

persey's review against another edition

1.0

The anti-Semitism was bad, the classism worse, but both were of the period. It was the mystery itself, trite and overwrought, with red herrings screaming "Look at me!", that was unforgivable.

nichola's review against another edition

4.0

Points deducted for traditional and contextual racism.

But overall a fun read. I quite understand why next to Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh and Catherine Aird; Brand is closest to Christie.

Will definitely read on!

hcq's review

3.0

A solid classic English country-house mystery. It is slightly marred by the casual bigotry of the time: One character is Jewish, and it gets mentioned, often, in not so nice terms--but, then again, said character has married into the main family, and there are several mentions of how much his wife loves him, so in fairness, it's not a completely evil caricature.

I was curious about this, because I recently saw an old, WWII-era movie featuring her Inspector Cockrill character. The movie was pretty good (with the always delightful Alastair Sim playing the lead), so I went looking for the books he first appeared in. I'm rather impressed with the casting, actually; Sim fits the bill awfully well.

unsweettea's review

3.0

I enjoyed the characters and the writing, but was really dissatisfied with the ending. It presented a picture of mental illness that I found completely unconvincing. Well, I'll have to read some of her other books and see if I like them better.

julieputty's review

2.0

Unlike some other reviewers, I thought the mystery was pretty well done (if absurd), but like so many others, I found the casual anti-Semitism so off-putting, including references to the Jews causing the rise of Mussolini. Bleh.