"Real-life meets fiction on stage and screen, on both sides of the Atlantic, in a dazzlingly entertaining Golden Age murder mystery."
Shot with Crimson, the latest novel in Nicola Upson’s brilliant Josephine Tey series (for context, Tey was a real-life crime novelist), sees the writer head to Hollywood. Taking in the glamour of the Golden Age, along with the tension of a brilliantly plotted murder mystery and the threat of WWII, it’s an utterly immersive, un-put-down-able delight.
It’s September 1939, and crime novelist Josephine is crossing the Atlantic aboard the opulent Queen Mary. She’s en route to meet her lover, Marta, who’s currently working with Alfred Hitchcock on an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
Meanwhile, back in England there’s a murder at Milton Hall — the inspiration for Daphne du Maurier’s fictional Manderley, where some of Hitchcock’s crew have just finished filming. As a succession of crises and revelations unfold on the Hollywood set, Daphne du Maurier herself is called upon to aid the Milton Hall murder investigation while working on a London theatre production of Rebecca.
Exquisitely entertaining, with an ingenious ending, Shot with Crimson also shows up the era’s disdain for same-sex relationships, and presents intriguing portraits of Hitchcock and Du Maurier.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
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