British Library Crime Classics: Tour de Force

First published in 1955, Brand's classic novel skewers the package holiday experience while unravelling one of the most audacious and devilish mysteries in the history of the genre.

Inspector Cockrill has finally booked a holiday, destined for a Mediterranean tour with a motley crew of fellow vacationers. By the time they have reached the island of San Juan el Pirata off the Italian coast, the tour group is a bubbling pot of rivalries and tension between friends and lovers, threatening to boil over into violence in the scorching summer heat.

As six holidaymakers relax at the beach under Cockrill's watch, the seventh of their number is slain in the hotel. Believing that the murderer must have been one of the beachgoers, Cockrill faces what looks like an impossible puzzle - one that must be solved before the island's own police force delivers the wrong suspect to their doom.

"Written with much ingenuity, gaiety of colour and bright, joyful malice... Christianna Brand's readers are also taken on holiday in Tour de Force."

- Julian Symons in the Times Literary Supplement, 1955