The Psychopath - 1966 film review

Robert Bloch was a prolific and highly capable writer who made his name by writing Psycho. A few years later he cashed in on the success of that Alfred Hitchcock film by writing the story for a movie made by Amicus, which was a film company ploughing much the same furrow in the horror market as Hammer. This film had the somewhat unoriginal title of The Psychopath, though apparently it's also known as Schizo and it was released in 1966.

It's an odd movie, because it works quite well as a macabre thriller, making good use of that great trope of macabre movies, creepy dolls. Unfortunately, the story does descend into the same sort of barminess that affects the titular serial killer. However, the director, Freddie Francis, was adept at camera work, and some of the visual effects are impressive.

The film opens with the murder of a musician in London. He's run over repeatedly by a car and a doll bearing his likeness is found at the scene. It turns out that he collaborated with a number of other musicians who had a dark secret in their past and - guess what? - one by one, they are eliminated. The daughter of one of them, Louise, is played by the extremely attractive Judy Huxtable, making her film debut. She happens to be involved professionally with doll-making and personally with a rather wooden chap called Loftis (played, not very plausibly I'm afraid, by Don Borisenko).

Soon the trail leads to the home of a strange old woman in a wheelchair ('hysterical paralysis' is diagnosed) called Mrs Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston who succumbs to the urge to act hysterically). She lives with her weird son Mark (John Standing, a very good actor who certainly isn't seen at his best here). All in all, there is some indifferent acting and script-writing, but one of the redeeming features of the film is a strong performance by Patrick Wymark as the investigating detective. I think this film could have done with a better final twist and the latter stages were too over-the-top to be effective. And that's frustrating, because there are some good ingredients here, and a subtler approach could have paid dividends. 

Forgotten Book - The Uncounted Hour

A few years back, I acquired a copy of The Uncounted Hour (1936) by Herbert Warner Allen, inscribed to the wine buff, merchant, and writer Charles Walter Berry, but I've only this year got round to reading it. Warner Allen himself was a wine expert who wrote several books about the subject. He was evidently an interesting character, who seems, among other things, to have developed an interest in mysticism. But our concern is with his contribution to detective fiction.

Part of that contribution was to encourage his friend (and fellow journalist) Edmund Clerihew Bentley to write a belated follow-up novel to Trent's Last Case. Trent's Own Case appeared under their joint names in 1936; my guess is that the bulk of the plotting was done by Allen and the bulk of the writing by Bentley, but I might be mistaken; it just seems a logical assumption. A wine merchant called Mr Clerihew, who featured in Allen's other work, appears in the story. Presumably encouraged by the experience, Warner Allen promptly published The Uncounted Hour, described on the jacket as a 'murder story', although for much of the story the characters debate whether Sir Godric FitzWaren committed suicide.

This is in some ways an odd book, which starts out as a conventional country house mystery, narrated by a doctor called Kenelm Kinglake, and develops into something rather different. There are some interesting ideas in the story and also some excellent turns of phrase: Warner Allen was an intelligent man, of that there is no doubt. But his storytelling methods in this book were a bit clunky, clues to his inexperience as a novelist. To some extent, this results, I think, from the ingenious (if by no means original) plot idea at the heart of the book. But he handles it unevenly.

Indeed, at one point in the story, I found my attention drifting away because of the number of rather self-indulgent digressions. But Warner Allen redeems things, to some extent, in the latter part of the book, as more deaths occur, with some unusual plot twists. I must say that I didn't like his portrayal of one Jewish character, which resorts to some of the tedious stereotypes that were a regrettable feature of some Golden Age fiction. Yet despite the book's flaws, by the end of the story the author had at the very least recaptured my attention. I commend the ambition of the concept, even if I'm a bit lukewarm about the way it was executed.     

Bad Influence - 1990 film review

Curtis Hanson was a highly capable movie director and I belatedly caught up with a film of his from 1990, Bad Influence. Thirty-five years on, it is still a good watch, and one of its incidental pleasures is seeing David Duchovny in a small part before his career took off with The X-Files. The lead actors, Rob Lowe and James Spader, are very good in their respective roles, and the script by David Koepp is strong. Koepp takes a familiar premise and shakes it up very effectively; he has, in the intervening years, developed into a top-class screenwriter and Bad Influence is clearly the work of a young and high-calibre writer.

Spader plays Michael, a highly-paid young man who is expert in high finance. He is engaged to a pretty and rich (if irritating) young woman but there seems to be a void in his life. It doesn't help that his older brother is a clueless guy with a drugs conviction who keeps borrowing money from him. Into Michael's life comes Lowe, playing Alex, a handsome and charismatic guy who introduces him to a life of hedonism.

At first Michael is excited to join in Alex's fun, but it's foreseeable that Bad Things Will Happen, and sure enough they do. What I liked about Koepp's screenplay was what happened as Michael's life begins to unravel. So often a film of this sort begins well and then deteriorates. That's not the case here. I wondered how some of the moral dilemmas Koepp had set up would play out, and I think the way he handled this was first-rate. My one reservation is that I'd have liked a deeper psychological understanding of Alex's character. The final scene in the film, although low-key, struck me as highly effective.

Reviews have often compared this movie to Strangers of a Train, and there's no doubt that the idea of a strong man exerting his will on a weaker associate has enduring appeal. For me, one of the finest examples of this kind of story is a book I've written about more than once - Hugh Walpole's The Killer and the Slain. Bad Influence is a very different story, but it also makes for good, and occasionally though-provoking entertainment.

The House at Devil's Neck by Tom Mead - review

The locked room mystery has played a significant part in the evolution of the detective story. The very first detective story proper (by general consent), 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' was a locked room mystery, and even before that there were a couple of notable tales involving a locked room/impossibility element which I discussed in The Life of Crime.

Locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories have continued to be written ever since, and the late Bob Adey, the supreme expert on the subject, listed over two thousand of them. But the inherent artificiality of the locked room puzzle has meant that at times, it's been in the doldrums, at least so far as critics are concerned. Howard Haycraft, a generally shrewd critic, was advising writers against this type of story way back in the 1940s, even at a time when John Dickson Carr was still at his peak!

Fortunately, despite the vagaries of critical fashion, people have continued to enjoy reading locked room mysteries - and indeed writing them. And now they are very much back in favour - so much so that publishers scramble to label crime novels as 'locked room mysteries' when really they are no such thing! I've written some locked room/impossible crime short stories (a couple of them long ago, before the current vogue for them) and I've also included locked room sub-plots in a couple of the Rachel Savernake novels, Blackstone Fell and Hemlock Bay.  

But I've never written a full-scale locked room mystery novel. One young writer has, however, emerged in the past few years who does just that. This is Tom Mead, author so far of four novels as well as some equally entertaining short stories - I wrote an introduction to his enjoyable collection The Indian Rope Trick, published by Crippen & Landru. He also wrote an excellent story which I included in Midsummer Mysteries.

His latest novel, The House at Devil's Neck, published by Head of Zeus in the UK, is possibly his most accomplished book to date. It's another case for Joseph Spector and again the plot is extremely intricate - but fairly clued, and with cluefinder footnotes, I'm delighted to say. Like John Dickson Carr, Tom achieves many of his most successful effects through the creation of a suitably macabre atmosphere, and the eerie nature of the eponymous house and its setting on an island with a causeway to the mainland is well evoked. He also shows considerable skill in misdirecting the reader's attention away from vital information in the text. I've often thought that the locked room concept works best in the short form, but this novel shows that, as in Carr's day, there are some very agreeable exceptions to the 'rule'. Great fun.

Forgotten Book - Of Unsound Mind

When Harry Carmichael's Of Unsound Mind was published in 1960, the blurb writer for Collins Crime Club didn't stint on the hype: 'This is an original novel of exceptional ingenuity. Seven human documents have been woven into one...It is a story that grips and never lets go, a story which displays Harry Carmichael's rare talent for mystery at its best.'

I found the story highly readable and entertaining. Insurance man Peter Piper comes across a sequence of apparently inexplicable suicides and enlists the help of his friend Quinn, a journalist, to make sense of the puzzles. I did figure out quite a lot of the plot early on, although this didn't detract from enjoyment, as the pace is lightning-fast from start to finish.

One reason I was able to make sense of the puzzle so quickly was that, in some key respects it resembles the central puzzle in a very good novel by John Bingham, NIght's Black Agent - but Bingham's book was published in 1961. Did Carmichael's central idea influence Bingham? It's possible, but it's also fair to emphasise that in other respects the books are totally different. And I enjoyed both of them.

Another thing that the two stories have in common is that the culprit is thinly characterised. I'd have liked a bit more about the murderer's character in both books, but this isn't a major complaint. Carmichael specialised in page-turners and although, when viewed in the cold light of day, his books often have flaws, they make such smooth reading that those weaknesses are easy to forgive and, sometimes, to overlook completely.

The Wasp - 2024 film review

The Wasp is a film with a script by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, who adapted her own stage play. Those theatrical origins are fairly evident, given that there are only three significant characters (and one of those is only lightly sketched) and much of the action takes place in one location. But this is not something that detracted from my enjoyment of a movie that supplies a number of unexpected twists and turns.

Thirty years ago, Heather (Naomie Harris) and Carla (Natalie Dormer) were, for a short time, school friends. However, a shocking incident in which Carla killed a pigeon heralded the collapse of their relationship, with profound consequences. And then, Heather gets in touch with Carla, wanting to meet her urgently.

Since their schooldays, the pair have led contrasting lives. Heather is married to Simon (Dominic Allburn); they are wealthy but childless, and his behaviour is concerning. Heather is also bothered by the presence of a wasps' nest in their posh house. Carla is a mother of four who works on a till in a supermarket and is now pregnant again and very short of money. But Heather has a proposition for her that could change her life forever.

This is a dark film, well directed by the very talented Guillem Morales, and it benefits from a superb performance (in a challenging part) by Naomie Harris; Natalie Dormer is also very good. One slight weakness is that Simon is pretty much a cipher; I'm not sure I believed in him as a collector of obscure and rather unpleasant insects. Malcolm's real interest is in the shifting power dynamics of the relationship of the two women and she handles this very well. I like the way she avoids the obvious in the storyline, and the film is consistently watchable. 

AI, eh?

Artificial intelligence has the potential to change our world for the better in any number of ways. It's here to stay, it can't be uninvented, and governments should make the most of it for the good of their people. That's a point I've made several times recently when asked about it at events (and the fact the question keeps cropping up shows how important it is). But as I've also said, it would be folly to overlook the dangers that AI brings with it. And in particular, it would be crazy to allow the use of AI to damage creativity.

Yet that is what is happening, in all sorts of ways, and in this country as in others. No wonder everyone from Paul McCartney and Elton John to Richard Osman and Val McDermid have spoken very publicly about the threats. None of these famous creative people is a Luddite - far from it - but they recognise the threats, and I'm delighted they (and many others) have spoken up, especially given the UK government's approach to forthcoming legislation - see what the Society of Authors and their members say about it.

Let me give a couple of examples from my own experience of the misuse of AI. Like many authors, my email inbox and various social media platforms are now inundated each day with AI-generated garbage. I get tons of it, mainly because I've written and edited and introduced so many books. A typical example is an email pretending to come from someone who runs a 'book group' and telling me that my book is the best thing since sliced bread. It's a prelude to making dishonest money out of anyone naive enough to be tempted to respond. 

Offers of positive reviews on GoodReads and Amazon are also commonplace. I received one as I was typing this post. Authors are only human and we all want and need good reviews, so I'm sure some people succumb. So if you see deeply obscure books with zillions of five star reviews, it's worth asking yourself whether all those reviews and rankings are genuine (they may be, of course, in some cases). Incidentally, good writers often get more than their share of mysterious one star rankings, no doubt many of them from dodgy sources. So online rankings, especially when anonymous, need to be treated with caution and some scepticism.

Sometimes the message is almost plausible, sometimes it's laughably stupid ('Hi Edgar Wallace', I was greeted in one email, simply because I once wrote an introduction for a Wallace book, of which the email said: "your ability to turn stage drama into gripping narrative fiction while keeping that eerie, suspenseful atmosphere is something rare and powerful. The fact that it launched Collins’ Detective Story Club in 1929 already cements its place as a cornerstone of crime literature. But here’s the challenge: even with its rich legacy and gripping plot, it doesn’t yet have the volume of reader voices that match its importance".). And sometimes it's just horrible. While I was preparing this post, one writer friend of mine posted about a vile blackmailing message she'd received from these criminals, making all kinds of threats. 

I delete all this stuff permanently, but I worry for inexperienced and therefore often vulnerable writers who may not be as cynical about gushing flattery as I am. A common variation on this theme is an approach purporting to be from a famous author, expressing interest in my books. One week, I got no fewer than four emails from James Patterson! It is absurd, but one has to remember always that there are devious and ruthless scammers behind all this rubbish. 

The second point relates to this blog. Pageviews have been rising for a long time, but they have gone through the roof lately. Last month there were over 700,000 pageviews and I suspect that many of these involve AI piracy of posts that I've written. This kind of theft is commonplace. I make the point on the front page of the blog that use of it for AI purposes is not permitted, but this is no doubt ignored. I like to think that in the fullness of time, class actions will mean that litigation destroys at least some of the pirates and that the Anthropic settlement proves to be the first of many. Meanwhile, I am thinking about ways I might be able to protect myself and genuine readers. One option is for an increasing amount of content to appear in my newsletter instead of here, and I'd welcome your thoughts.

As Val McDermid said of AI piracy, 'I am a crime writer. I understand theft'. Me too. And I'd encourage all readers of this blog - the real readers, the ones I treasure - to hold governments throughout the world to account for any failure to do the right thing about the misuse of AI, misuse that can only devastate the creative world. 

 

Forgotten Book - This is the House

I've mentioned the crime fiction of Shelley Smith (the pen-name of Nancy Bodington) admiringly on this blog quite a few times over the years. Yet for some reason I've never got round to reading her third book, which dates from 1945 - even though I must have owned a copy for twenty years or more. This is the House was the first of her novels to be published in the Collins Crime Club, following two which appeared under a less prestigious imprint. The publishers describe her here as an author of 'outstanding merit', and I agree.

This is the House is an ambitious detective novel, full of interesting ingredients, especially by the standards of its time. Yet one has to bear in mind that it is, to an extent, an apprentice work, and I'd be the first to admit that it has several flaws. It has, however, earned rapturous reviews from such good judges as John Norris as well prompting a rather mixed reaction from Kate Jackson and Steve Barge

The title comes from the nursery rhyme 'The House that Jack Built', a rhyme which supplied a title for a very different detective novel, much later, by Eileen Dewhurst. However, I wasn't convinced that the use of the rhyme was much more than a gimmick. There's also a 'sort of' locked room mystery - the second murder in the book - which had a rather unsatisfactory explanation.

There's a pleasing amateur detective, Quentin Seal, who happens to write detective novels, and above all an unusual if fictitious setting in Apostle Island, most southerly of the Windward Islands. The local colour is well done, although now it's extremely dated. One of the characters has a pet gibbon and there's a Ukrainian refugee in the cast of characters. A mixed bag in more ways than one. But Shelley Smith would continue to develop her crime writing skills over the next decade, to considerable effect.

Camels, Cricket, Ian Fleming - and a new series about Q - guest post by Vaseem Khan

Crime writers are a diverse bunch, but over the years I've noticed that friends of mine who enjoy enduring success tend to be not only highly intelligent but also very hard-working. To name but a few, the list includes Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, Andrew Taylor, and the late Peter Lovesey and Peter Robinson. And also Vaseem Khan, whose latest novel will, I'm sure, rocket up the bestseller lists. I'm looking forward to reading it soon. Vas is always good company and someone with lots of interesting ideas. It was great to spend time with him in the Isle of Wight recently (below) and here's a guest post from him:

'I first became friends with Martin Edwards on the back of a camel.

A decade ago, we were both invited to speak at the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai where the organisers took us out into the desert and mounted us atop camels for a photoshoot. I was newly published back then, while Martin was already eminent as the Chair of the UK Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). We became friends, discovering a mutual like of historical mystery fiction and cricket.

Wind the clock forward and, having followed in Martin’s footsteps and completed a stint as Chair of the CWA, we both find ourselves as stalwarts of the genre. The focus of this guest blog – which Martin has been kind enough to allow me to pen – is to entice you with the publication of my latest book, the first in a traditional mystery series featuring Q from the Bond franchise, whilst taking a whistle-stop detour through the annals of espionage fiction.

In Quantum of Menace, Q – aka Major Boothroyd – finds himself unceremoniously booted out of MI6. A man at sea, he decides to return to his small hometown – the fictional Wickstone-on-Water – to reinvestigate the mysterious death of his childhood friend, a quantum computer scientist.

Quantum of Menace is not a spy novel, though Q’s past remains a lurking presence. This is a book about a man who has lost his bearings, contemplating a lonely future where he has become superfluous to requirements. It’s also a book about what modern Britain stands for and what fighting the good fight now means. Q has fought that fight for more years than he cares to remember. Now he must call upon his intellect to solve a more local crime.

Whilst writing the book, I reflected on the history of spy fiction, ever since James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, published in 1821, (arguably) kickstarted the phenomenon. In the late 1800s, several Sherlock Holmes novels involved espionage-heavy plots, giving the genre a shot in the arm. In 1907, Joseph Conrad, of Heart of Darkness fame, penned The Secret Agent, an anarchist spy story heavily cited after the September 11 attacks in New York due to its terrorist theme. John Buchan’s The Thirty-nine Steps (1915) remains an enduring classic.

Spy fiction flowered during, between, and after the world wars. A standout offering: Eric Ambler who introduced gritty realism to his spy fiction, especially in Epitaph for a Spy (1938). The post-war period saw a battle between two giants: Fleming and John Le Carré. Fleming’s Bond was charismatic, ruthless, and more of an assassin than a spy. In the films, he behaves a tad eccentrically for a secret agent, routinely announcing his presence to those hellbent on rooting him out. In contrast, Le Carré’s characters were grounded, subtler in their assessments of self and others, and often struggling with the ethical dilemmas of their actions.

Quantum of Menace combines what we love about the Bond canon – for instance, the prickly relationship between Bond and Q – whilst bringing in everything a sophisticated traditional mystery audience has come to expect i.e. dry wit, quirky personas and an emphasis on the puzzle rather than, say, rocket launchers fired from the tops of speeding trains. We also, at long last, get to see the man behind the myth. The tone of the novel lies somewhere between Mick Herron’s Slow Horses and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. There's real insight into Q's life at - and post - MI6, his messy past, and, yes, Commander Bond puts in an appearance. How could he not!

I would be delighted if you gave the book a go. In the meantime, Martin and I will ponder the future of the genre and England’s chances in this year’s cricket Ashes tour down in Australia…' 

 

 

Fedora - 1978 film review

I don't find it easy to make up my mind about Fedora, the 1978 film that was a late entry in the illustrious career of director Billy Wilder, whose earlier triumphs included Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and - most relevantly to Fedora - Sunset Boulevard, a film about a reclusive actress which stars William Holden. And guess what? Fedora stars William Holden as 'Dutch' Detweiler, who is on the trail of Fedora, a reclusive actress with whom he once had a brief fling.

Fedora displays Wilder's trademark cynicism, and as in Sunset Boulevard, a great deal of that cynicism is aimed at the film business. It's not in the same league, though. Apparently, Wilder wanted Marlene Dietrich to play Fedora and Faye Dunaway to play her daughter. Had he got his way, they might have delivered performances more memorable than those of Hildegarde Knef and Marthe Keller, who are both perfectly competent but not really compelling enough to bring complete conviction to a storyline that really does require disbelief to be suspended.

And yet, there is plenty to enjoy in this film if one's expectations are not too high, and it begins well. I don't want to give away the plot twists, but suffice to say that after the initial, tantalising air of mystery - what is going on at Fedora's hideaway? - dissipates, the story loses its way to some extent, because it's highly melodramatic and far from convincing. And bringing Michael York - playing himself - into the plot really didn't work for me.

So overall, Fedora doesn't come close to matching Wilder's greatest achievements.But if you can forget that it's a Wilder film and just look on it as straightforward, and not too serious, entertainment, then you will probably find it a decent watch, as - on balance - I did.