Pamela Branchwas "the funniest lady you ever knew," according to well-known mystery writer Christianna Brand. Born in 1920 on her father's tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she was educated in England and dabbled in both art and acting before returning to Asia-first to her family in Ceylon and then on to India; for three years her home was a houseboat in Kashmir. She trekked in the Himalayas, trained racehorses, learned falconry, and became fluent in Urdu. Could there be better training for a mystery writer? Back in England for...five minutes(?), she married barrister Newton Branch, and the two moved to Cyprus, where they lived in a 12th-century monastery on the edge of a cliff. He wrote adventure stories, she wroteThe Wooden Overcoat(1951), and then they moved on again. She produced her remaining three novels in Ireland, France, and London, respectively. Why, oh why, weren't there more? Branch died of cancer in 1967. Death, it seems, had the last laugh.