Inspector Cockrill is called in to solve the murder of a most unpopular
Belgian Few were disappointed when Raoul Vernet was found with his head
bashed in, dead in a pool of his own blood. On vacation in England, the
Belgian seducer comes to visit Matilda, an old flame from a few years
before. She agrees despite suspicions that Vernet has been deploying his
legendary charm on another member of the family: young Rosie, who has
returned from her Swiss boarding school carrying a child. None of the
family members were in the house when Raoul was killed, but all were
within a fog-choked London mile. Rosie calls in the brilliant Inspector
Cockrill to clear the family's name, but what he finds is a twisted clan
of seven people, each as likely to laugh at a murder as commit one. "A
mystery in the classic Christie-Carr-Queen manner . . . an outstanding
tour de force." -The New York Times "Fog of Doubt is superbly tricky and
meticulously deceptive; it is a classic suspense tale to be read slowly
and reread often." -The Guardian "[Brand] was ready to jig endlessly
with her pieces, to reject and replace until there was not a single gap
that her reader would detect." -H.R.F. Keating, author of Crime &
Mystery: The 100 Best Books 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.
