The White Cockatoo (novel)
Murder mystery novel
The White Cockatoo is a murder mystery novel written by Mignon G. Eberhart. It was published by Doubleday, Doran & Co. in 1933. It was later released in December, 1993, by Thorndike Press. The novel served as the basis of the 1935 film of the same name directed by Alan Crosland.
Plot summary
Americans Sue Talley and Jim Sundean find themselves at the same large, off-season hotel in the south of France. Amidst a constant spooky, atmospheric wind, a series of murders occur; Sue begins to suspect that the deaths are connected to her arrival.
Composition
Eberhart drew on her experiences traveling in the Maritime Alps and staying in just such a hotel in the winter of 1931–32. The name of the town in the book is left intentionally obscure by Eberhart, with the implication that it may be Avignon.
Reception
The White Cockatoo received mixed-to-positive reviews.
“The White Cockatoo (novel)” enters the record as murder mystery novel. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what White, Cockatoo and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55635630. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1993, 1935 and 1931.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The White Cockatoo (novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.