Special Guest Sergio Angelini, Host of Tipping My Fedora

Special guest Sergio Angelini joined Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger, published in 1943.

Green for Danger is a Golden Age masterclass of red herrings and twists. The story, set during World War II, features a tense and claustrophobic investigation with a close-knit circle of suspects.

It’s 1942, and struggling up the hill to the new Kent military hospital, Heron’s Park, postman Joseph Higgins is soon to deliver seven acceptance letters for roles at the infirmary. He has no idea that the sender of one of the letters will be the cause of his death in just one year’s time.

When Higgins returns to Heron’s Park with injuries from a bombing raid in 1943, his death by asphyxiation in the operating theatre casts four nurses and three doctors under suspicion. When a second death occurs in quick succession, the moody, yet shrewd, Inspector Cockrill arrives on the scene. The stage is set for a tense and claustrophobic investigation. One of the doctors and nurses in this close-knit group must be the murderer. But who did it? And why?

Christianna Brand was the pseudonym of Mary Christianna Milne, a British crime writer born in 1907 in British Malaya (now Malaysia). She’s best known for her mystery novels featuring detective Inspector Cockrill. She also wrote several acclaimed short story collections and wrote the Nurse Matilda book series for children. She served as chair of the Crime Writers’ Assoc. from 1972-1973 and was nominated three times for Edgar Awards. She died in 1988. About Christianna Brand, Anthony Boucher wrote, “You have to reach for the greatest of the Great Names (Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen) to find Christianna Brand’s rivals in the subtleties of the trade.” Kirkus Reviews wrote that Green for Danger is “Hands down one of the best formal detective stories ever written.”