Hunting the Northern Lights

Although the theme of last week's boat trip up the coast of north Norway was "hunting the lights", the first thing for me to say is that my camera and photographic skills proved not to be up to the challenge of capturing the Northern Lights when, finally, I did see them. Though there were plenty of moments during the trip when the quality of light over the coastline before darkness fell was absolutely mesmerising. The above shot was taken as the sun went down over Vardo. Landing there gave an opportunity to fellow passengers more intrepid than me to bathe in the Arctic Ocean - at least for about thirty seconds...

Well, it takes all sorts, I suppose! During that brief stop in Vardo, (safely encased in many layers of warm clothing!) I visited the most northerly fortress in the world. In the twilight it had an especially eerie charm.

Other ports of call included Hammerfest, one of many small towns in Norway which seems to be benefiting from the exploitation of the country's massive natural resources. I was interested in the lifestyle of people who come to this very cold region from warmer countries - some clearly love it, and there is plenty to love, I can see that, even though personally I'd find the total absence of sunlight between late November and late January very hard to take.

The quality of the light on snowy mountains and sea just below Hammerfest was magical - my photos really don't do it justice. As for the Northern Lights, there were two cloudy and blank nights before the first message came that they were visible. I'd been surprised to learn that many Norwegians, even, have never seen with the naked eye the green lights that are often portrayed in dramatic photographs, and I didn't either, though a charming fellow traveller - a Turkish brain surgeon, yes, it's a cosmopolitan world up there - has captured them in a photograph as stunning as any you see in the books and I[m planning to retweet it..

My own first sighting of the Northern Lights was truly memorable - out on deck in an Arctic gale so powerful it was almost impossible to stand - but there were the legendary lights, a pinkish red glow. Later that evening, there were two further displays - more elaborate and longer-lasting this time, strange shapes in the sky of a ghostly white hue. All in all, it was a remarkable experience. It was only a short break, but I've never had a holiday like this one. I much prefer to be warm rather than cold but I'm really very glad I returned to this fantastic country.

And there's one bonus of life in that part of the world, when it gets dark early. You have plenty of time to read, and I rattled through a number of enjoyable books, by authors as diverse as John Buxton Hilton, Joyce Porter, Winston Graham, and Margaret Millar. I'll be featuring all of them in this blog before long.

The End of the World

My trip to Norway took me to the end of the world, more or less, as the ship docked on an island a forty minute coach ride away from the stunning landscape of the North Cape. This was certainly the coldest place I have ever experienced, and the journey was memorable,not least because the convoy of buses was led by a snow plough. Even the reindeer had deserted the area in search of (relatively) warmer climes.

I've read and enjoyed a number of books by Norwegian writers in recent years. Jo Nesbo and Karin Fossum are immensely successful, but I particularly like Gunnar Staalesen's books about the private eye Varg Veum. He's a quietly accomplished author, and books like Yours Until Death are well worth seeking out. I can't, without checking, recall reading any books set in the most northerly parts of the country, but I'm sure there must be a number, and the Norwegian landscape does play an important part in creating the bleak atmosphere of books like Fossum's He Who Fears the Wolf. I'll have to consult Barry Forshaw, whose expertise on Scandinavian crime fiction is unmatched (his books, such as Nordic Noir, are a mine of information.)

Norway is an affluent country, with very low unemployment levels, yet the population density, especially in the large northern province of Finnmark is very low - the total coastline of Finnmark is almost 7000 km in length, and the province is bigger than Denmark, but it's home to a mere 75,000 people. There is something eerie, as well as compelling, about Finnmark's lonely mountains, lakes and tiny villages. Lots of scope here for closed communities and dark deeds in isolated settings.

The seas around the North Cape look daunting, but saw a good deal of action during the Second World War and stories with their roots in war-time do crop up from time to time in "Nordic Noir" - a Swedish example that sticks in my mind is Henning Mankell's Return of the Dancing Master . And a trip to the border with Russia the following day provided a reminder of Norway's intriguing geographical position, right next to a country which (as the current alarming news from Ukraine reminds us) is not always the cosiest of neighbours.

Recent years have seen a thawing (sorry, couldn't resist that!) of relations between the two countries, and one can only hope that events in the Ukraine don't lead to increased tension elsewhere. Again, I've not read any "Nordic noir" books set in the borderland, but I'm sure there must be some. Borderlands, as Ellis Peters among others has demonstrated, often provide excellent backgrounds for fiction because of the potential for conflict between cultures. And this particular border country is as fascinating as any I've ever visited.

Death in a Cold Climate

I returned last week from a short but amazing trip to the Arctic Circle, of all places, and have now just about thawed out enough to blog about it. The plan was to fly to Tromso in northern Norway, and then take a short cruise on a ship delightfully called the Trollfjord in search of the often elusive Northern Lights and the special character of places like the North Cape.

All I really knew about Tromso before I arrived was that it is home to a major university at which my much-missed friend Bob Barnard was professor of English literature for a number of years. Bob wrote a book set in Tromso, and I dug out the paperback copy of Death in a Cold Climate that he inscribed for me a good many years ago, and re-read it. With great enjoyment, I may add. It's a crisp story, told with the economy of style that I discussed here a couple of weeks ago. The plot, concerning Inspector Fagermo's hunt for the killer of a mysterious young Englishman, is quite different from Nordic noir, but there are a number of scenes, notably the final one, that pack a punch. Bob hit on a very clever way of concealing the culprit. And there is plenty of that trademark Barnard humour, especially in his portrayal of a disreputable English professor...

As for Tromso, it was bathed in sunshine when the plane touched down. The city occupies an island, and I found the landscape quite magical. A windy walk on a long bridge took me to the modern and architecturally dramatic Arctic Cathedral, which is mentioned in Bob's book, and then to the cable car which reaches up to the top of the snowy mountain overlooking the city. Standing outside at the top in a gale did take some doing (but was preferable to the alternative of plunging a few hundred feet) but was made worthwhile by some stunning vistas.

It's more than twenty years since I was last in Norway, and then I kept to the south, places like Bergen, Oslo and some of the fjords. But I was impressed with Tromso and could see why Bob and Louise enjoyed their time there. The atmosphere of the frozen North is quite inspirational, and although unlike Bob I won't be writing a Norwegian novel, I did come up with an idea for a short story influenced by something I came across during my visit to the "gateway to the Arctic". Just need to find time to write it...

Jonathan Creek - The Letters of Septimus Noone - BBC One TV review

Jonathan Creek returned tonight, and joy of joys, The Letters of Septimus Noone is not a one-off, but the first episode of a short series. Jonathan Creek's investigations, devised by the witty and clever David Renwick, revived interest in the locked room/impossible crime story in the nineties, a remarkable as well as welcome feat, at a time when the form seemed long past its sell-by date. It's a marvellous example of how a gifted writer can breathe fresh life into a traditional and apparently old-fashioned form, making it seem topical and great fun all over again.

Renwick has - wisely, I think - decided that he simply could not ignore the passage of time since Jonathan Creek first appeared on our screens. So Alan Davies, as Creek, still has a female "Dr Watson", but this time he's married to her: and the dynamic is very different to the tantalising relationship he had with Caroline Quentin in the early shows. Polly Creek is the most glamorous of Watsons, played by Sarah Alexander. The job as magician's assistant, the duffel coat and the windmill-house have gone too.

Renwick's sharp humour, and love of classic detective fiction, were very much in evidence. So we had a musical based on Gaston Leroux's once-celebrated locked room mystery, The Mystery of the Yellow Room (an excellent choice bearing in mind that Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera was immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber) and there were several neat word games, as well as sly nods to the success of Sherlock, a show written with the same appealing blend of playfulness and intelligence.

It's very, very difficult to write a locked room mystery that translates well to television, a point which I think some of those who have criticised recent one-off Creek stories tend to overlook. Here, Renwick offered a handful of small puzzles, rather than an over-arching mystery. This meant the story felt a little fragmentary, but it didn't matter too much. Jonathan Creek remains a show that has great appeal to all fans of classic detective fiction..

(By the way, there have been some excellent comments on this post but you may wish to avoid them until you have seen the show as they include observations on the plot.)

Forgotten Book - Case with Four Clowns

Leo Bruce was a prolific writer whose career began in, but comfortably outlasted, the Golden Age. I've never got round to reading him, but I heard that his 1939 book Case with 4 Clowns was an interesting "whowasdunin" so I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did. It's almost a very fine book. Unfortunately,it falls short of excellence, because it's rather padded out. But there are some good ingredients, which make me want to read more of Bruce (whose real name was Rupert Croft-Cooke).

This is the fourth of the novels featuring Sergeant Beef, and is narrated by a detective novelist called Townsend. Much of the strength of the book derives from the comedy inherent in the relationship between Townsend and Beef. Townsend is insufferably smug, and constantly patronises the detective whose cases he chronicles. And at the start of the book we are told that Beef recently left the police because of a debacle in his last investigation. But he's a smart guy. All the way through, the reader roots for Beef and is pleased when Townsend gets his come-uppance.

Beef gets word from a relative who is involved with a circus travelling around Yorkshire that a gypsy fortune teller has predicted that a murder will take place in connection with the circus. But who will be the killer and who the victim? On this (rather slender, it must be said) basis, Beef and Townsend journey up North and join the people of the circus - who treat them with remarkable tolerance.

The story struck me as rather thin, although I rather admired the way that Bruce tried to compensate for this, and the finale (which explains the title - which had puzzled me) is very good. The story is really a variant on the idea of a "whowasdunin", and not a bad one, but too protracted, with too many characters whom I didn't find quite as fascinating as Bruce did. This sounds negative, but only because I'm frustrated that an evidently talented writer didn't fully realise the potential of the concept he came up with. Perhaps the problem was that it was a concept better suited to a short story or a novella than a full length novel.

Point Blank - film review

I've mentioned that excellent movie Point Blank a couple of times before on this blog, but only in passing. I first saw it as a student, and I've watched it twice since. Each time,I enjoy it all over again, quite a tribute to director John Boorman and a very good cast led by Lee Marvin, at his very best, and Angie Dickinson, in surely her most appealing film role.

There's a surreal quality about the film, right from the start, and this had sparked continuing debate about how best to interpret the story. I don't want to say too much on this topic, for fear of spoilers - and anyway, I enjoy the film as a gangster movie, as well as a study of character, obsession and revenge. To put it simply, Walker (Marvin) was involved in a heist, but his friend stole both his share of the money and his wife, leaving Walker for dead. Later, Walker seeks revenge - and also the return of his money.

Unusual as it is, the film offers enough conventional excitement to appeal to anyone who is simply looking for a good thriller. Boorman uses Alcatraz as a background for several key scenes, and this is absolutely fascinating. I've never been to San Francisco, far less Alcatraz, but every time I see the city in a film, I am reminded how much I'd like to go there. And every time I watch Point Blank, I wish Angie Dickinson had appeared in more films of similar calibre.

The use of stark, brilliant colours and spare, dramatic settings enhances the strangeness of the film, and helps to make it memorable. No wonder it's a classic. The screenplay is based on a novel by Donald E. Westlake, who was a talented and prolific writer. I've read some of his books, and have seen another film based on his work, but for me, Point Blank is the stand-out. Highly recommended.

The Craft of Writing: Originality

Originality is something to be prized in any form of writing, and certainly in crime fiction. The snag is that it is very, very difficult to be truly original. Even when you firmly believe you've come up with something absolutely fresh and new, all too often it turns out that you've been beaten to it, generally in a work that you weren't even aware of.

This sense that I needed to come up with something absolutely original held me back when, in my teens (yes, I started early) I thought about writing a detective novel. I didn't know how to create something that wasn't likely to be derivative. Inhibitions of this kind are not helpful, and I only got over them properly when I came up with the idea of writing a number of mysteries about a Liverpool lawyer. Something I knew for sure had never been done. Even then, one reviewer of my debut, All the Lonely People, thought she detected the influence of Raymond Chandler (which I wasn't conscious of, I must say, and I'm not sure she had read much Chandler or indeed much crime fiction).

I also imagined that I'd come up with a great idea for my first book that combined plot development with snappy social comment. A body would be discovered in a municipal waste heap, picked over by impoverished scavengers. Very good - except that, many years later, someone told me that G.D.H. and Margaret Cole also wrote a story about a body in a waste heap....Similarly, one of my early short stories about Harry Devlin included a plot device that I discovered, only very recently, to have been used by Gladys Mitchell.

These things can make you despair, believe me - but there's no sense in despairing. The stories by Cole and Mitchell are little known, but that's not really the point, either. The real issue is that I was trying to do something very different in those two Devlin stories than they were trying to do in their books. There have always been similarities between story ideas that appear in different books. There are said to be Russian and Swedish books that anticipate The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and one American mystery anticipated And Then There Were None. These were not, I'm sure, conscious borrowings, but rather ideas that were somehow in the air and which were developed by writers in different countries. Similarly, one of Dorothy L. Sayers' best plot ideas also occurred to Ronald Knox while she was working on her book. Another resembled an idea used (in a similar setting but in a different style of story) by Freeman Wills Crofts.

The same thing applies when there are overlaps between contemporary books. For instance, there was a vogue a few years back, after a drought in England, for crime novels in which bodies were discovered when the waters receded (very different from England 2014 - perhaps we are in for a spate of 'flood' stories...) I remember one Northern writer being rather cross that Reginald Hill had written a book about 'mystery plays' not long after she had done the same. But it was a mistake to be cross, in my opinion. The books were quite distinct, and I could give many other examples of overlaps which seem to me to be not in the least problematic. The real challenge for a writer is to come up with some element - be it voice, or character, or an aspect of setting - that is fresh. Trying to come up with at totally new storyline is wonderful when it happens - but it is rather uncommon, to say the least.

Forgotten Book - Calamity Town

Ellery Queen was one of the great American exponents of the classic whodunit, and Calamity Town, first published in 1942 is a book that marked a departure from his elaborate mysteries of the Thirties. Here he is aiming for a more realistic style, reflected in the setting of Wrightsville, the small town where Ellery arrives incognito one day. He rents a house in order to write in peace and quiet. But of course he becomes involved at once in mysterious goings on.

The Wright family gave their name to Wrightsville,but mystery surrounds Nora Wright, a woman who was mysteriously abandoned by her husband-to-be just before her wedding. Three years later, he turns up again, and they are happily reunited. This time the marriage does take place, and for a while, all seems to be well. But is it? I must say that if I'd been in Wrightsville at the time, I'd have wanted to know more about the reasons for Jim Haight's absence, but even Ellery seems relatively incurious....

The discovery of some rather odd letters seems to suggest that Nora's life is at risk. In due course, murder follows. It appears that the wrong person was killed, but the finger of suspicion points firmly at Jim Haight. There is a lengthy and enjoyable trial scene, and more than one twist. Queen the author manages to juggle suspicion neatly, and the result is a satisfying mystery.

Although this book marked a new direction for Ellery Queen, there is no doubt that he owed quite a debt to the leading British Golden Age writers, whom he much admired. I spotted plot devices used previously by that trio of giants Agatha Christie, Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers. But Queen was clever enough to blend the ingredients in a new and satisfying way. The result is a tasty dish, and I'll be coming back for more Ellery Queen before long.

The Shroud Maker by Kate Ellis - review

The Shroud Maker is the latest in Kate Ellis's long series set in a fictionalised Dartmouth, and featuring DI Wesley Peterson. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a fan of Kate's books, and the first thing to say about this one is that is definitely up to standard. I thought I'd figured out the solution, but although I'd latched on to one element of the plot, much of the ending came as a surprise to me.

The story is complex,and as usual, events in the present have a parallel with a mystery of the past. Although I don't know much about archaeology, Kate's specialist subject, I am very keen on history, and there are events in medieval times and at the end of the nineteenth century that add a level of fascination to the story, as well as plenty of plot complication when old bones are unearthed in a dig.

Quite apart from these echoes of the past, the part of the story set in the present is complicated in itself. It features a curious online game (Kate's fascination with games, which I share, was also evident in the excellent The Cadaver Game) and involves the mystery of a young woman who went missing a year ago, during a local festival with historic roots. Then another young woman disappears. The gripping storyline involves not only Wesley, but also, in a very personal way, his boss Gerry. One of the various sub-plots involves a trip that Wesley takes to Manchester with a young colleague who fancies him. Suffice to say that there is a lot going on in this story, and I'm absolutely confident that I will not be the only reader who fails to figure out how all the different plot strands inter-link.

Kate and I write differently in a number of important ways, but we do share a number of interests, and as mystery fans and writers of the same generation from the north west of England, we naturally have quite a lot in common. I was struck by the fact that one aspect of this story was not a million miles away from a sub-plot in my current work-in-progress (which nobody else, not even my agent, has yet seen), while another was slightly comparable to something that happens in my last book, The Frozen Shroud.(yep, there is, as Margery Allingham would say, a fashion in shrouds!). Yet we never discuss our story ideas with each other, so how does this happen, and should we worry about it? I think it happens because some ideas (and book titles) tend to fit with the mood of a particular time, and appeal especially to writers with similar concerns. Tess Gerritsen, for instance, used the same title, The Bone Garden, that Kate had used previously. I'm sure it's nothing for either of us to worry about, because the books in question are actually very distinct. This sort of thing has always happened - I've come across many examples while researching Golden Age fiction, for instance, and I have no doubt that it always will.

The Craft of Writing: Economy of Style

A book I've just been reading, and a TV show I've just watched, made me think about the value in writing of an economical style. If a writer avoids wasting words and scenes, the material makes so much more of an impact, and this is, I think, true in all forms of fiction. Short stories, certainly, but also novels. Now, a novel's length allows space for some digression, and there are plenty of examples of this working very well. On the whole, though - and certainly for writers who are not very experienced - I think that less is more.

The book in question is a Golden Age mystery by Leo Bruce that I'll cover on this blog shortly. It's actually an interesting and relatively original story, with a memorable setting. There was plenty to like about it. But for me it fell short of the highest standards because there was just too much padding. Too often, I was willing Bruce to get on with it. And that's not a reaction that a writer wants in readers.

I had a very different experience when I watched again an episode of Taggart that I last saw when it was screened, way back in 1987. This was The Killing Philosophy, written by the brilliant Glenn Chandler, and it was a masterclass in how to write economically. From start to finish, the story packed a real punch. There are plenty of thrillers from a quarter of a century or more ago that show their age. But this screenplay was clever and occasionally witty, and included some interesting observations about society and people's behaviour, without labouring them.Chandler was ambitious enough to pack a great deal into his story,and he managed to do so without being cumbersome because his style is lean and he never overdoes things.

The Killing Philosophy is the story of a masked man - "the Bowman" - who terrorises a series of women in Glasgow. When a weird student falls for an attractive married woman, he comes up with a cunning plan to dispose of her husband, and the plot complications come thick and fast. I enjoyed it just as much the second time around. When it was first screened, I was just thinking about the idea that would become my first novel. I like to think that Glenn Chandler's brilliant example reminded me of the need to keep the story driving forward, and it's a lesson I try to keep in mind when writing to this day.