Born in Malaya, Mary Christianna Lewis (a.k.a. Christianna Brand, China Thomson, Mary Ann Ashe) is considered to be one of the last writers of the golden age of fiction. Her work showed a love of the language, excellent plotting and a great sense of humor. Raised in her birth place as well as India, she arrived to be educated in a Franciscan convent only to leave it in her teens due to family financial problems. She worked in a variety of jobs, from governess to professional ballroom dancer. While working as a salesgirl, she wrote her first book, Death in High Heels, as means to fantasize killing a co-worker she was not particularly keen on. The book was finished after her marriage to Ronald S. Lewis. The first Inspector Cockrill case - a character inspired by her father-in-law - was Heads You Lose (1941), her next novel, and it is with this series character that she wrote her masterpiece Green is for Danger. She dropped the series in the late 1950s and concentrated on various genres as well as short stories. She died in 1985.
ChristiannaBrand is one of the lesser-known lights of Golden Age detective fiction, which is a shame, because she has enough talent to be far better-known.
Brand knew her stuff when it came to military hospitals, and the details really serve to ground the plot; she knows exactly how the wards would have been laid out, how much medicine the patients would have been given, who did what, who went where...
Brand has a very similar style to Agatha Christie, she is a very accomplished writer in the genre in her own right and does not suffer in comparison with such elevated company.
Feeds |
Contact