Anthony Price R.I.P.

I was very sorry to learn, earlier today, of the death of Anthony Price, a crime writer of distinction, at the age of 91. Anthony was an interesting and unusual writer, not just in terms of the books that he wrote, but also as regards the arc of his career in the world of fiction. A journalist with the Oxford Times, of which he became editor, he stumbled into crime writing as a result of encouragement from Livia Gollancz, and all his novels were published by Gollancz.

He first book, The Labyrinth Makers (1970), won the CWA Silver Dagger, while Other Paths to Glory (1974) won a CWA Gold Dagger. I first came across his work as a teenager, and was impressed.

There were nineteen novels in all, and each of them featured Dr David Audley, sometimes in a central role, sometimes only in passing. Anthony Price combined mystery with espionage in a sophisticated way, and his books were widely appreciated by connoisseurs. There was a TV series featuring Terence Stamp as Audley, and other screen adaptations of his work, but they lacked the flavour of the books, and he felt that Stamp, although a fine actor, was miscast.

His final novel appeared in 1989, and he could never be persuaded to publish another, much to the regret of his fans. However, he remained a loyal member of the CWA and of the Detection Club. I never met him in person, but corresponded with him, and received a charming letter from him last year. I wish I'd been able to get to know him better.

On his excellent Existential Ennui blog, Nick Jones carried two very informative interviews with Anthony Price back in 2011,  and they are well worth reading

The Art of the Whodunit - part two

The second phase of The Art of the Whodunit tour was very different from the first, on board the Queen Mary 2, but equally appealing. After landing at Southampton, we travelled to Oxford (well, some way outside the city, to a replacement hotel after the first one let us down) and I kicked off proceedings with a talk about Balliol's crime writers as a follow-up to an onboard lecture on Oxford mysteries.

The next few days were a hugely enjoyable whirl, as we packed in a great many sights. An orienteering walk in the city centre was followed by a drive through north Oxford, during which I had my first go as a tour guide, with the microphone at the front of the coach. A quick visit to the Ashmolean was followed by lunch in the King's Arms, and then a brilliant tour around my old college. I even saw aspects of Balliol that I'd never seen in my years of a student. Then in the evening I gave a talk about collecting detective fiction: I'd taken along on the trip various items from my own collection of books and crime fiction memorabilia. I find that a lot of people prefer to see and handle real items than simply gaze at Powerpoint slides.

Thankfully if rather unexpectedly, the weather was fantastic. This was a real bonus, not least on the river cruise (something I'd never done in Oxford, oddly enough; punting was the thing in my student days) when again I did my tour guide bit with the mic. A tour of Christ Church's gardens, dining room, and cathedral was another highlight.

A trip to the Sheldonian Theatre came next. I've been there for various ceremonies, but never before had I climbed right to the top and looked out from the cupola over the city of dreaming spires. Then we had a guided tour of one of the great bookshops, Blackwell's. We were admitted to the "Gaffer's Office", once occupied by Basil Blackwell himself, where I sat in his chair and did a book signing. It was terrific fun. And finally there was a walk along the Oxford canal, again surprisingly unfamiliar to me, and dinner at Blanc's Brasserie to round off a memorable few days.

The camaraderie amongst the group was fantastic. The doubts I'd had before the trip started soon evaporated, as they responded so positively to the early lectures, and I really enjoyed myself. And guess what? I'm doing it all over again later in the summer...

The Art of the Whodunit - part one

A couple of years ago, quite out of the blue, I was contacted by someone I'd worked with about a decade ago. At that time, I gave talks to a group of American crime fans in Oxford and Harrogate, and enjoyed the experience. She wanted to know if I'd be interested in cruise lecturing - specifically on the Queen Mary 2, and in Oxford. Her company, Road Scholar (deliberate pun in the name!) specialises in educational tours for US customers, and has an outstanding reputation in that field.

The whole adventure was called "The Art of the Whodunit". I put my name down, and was delighted, if a bit over-awed, to hear a bit later that the first trip sold out quickly; there was even a waiting list, and more trips were thought very desirable. Yet although I've done a lot of public speaking, I'm not a natural front of stage person, and I wasn't sure how it would all go.

To cut a long story short, though, in the end the trip went wonderfully well, despite a series of bizarre incidents (such as our hotel in Oxford closing down a day or so before we arrived) which created quite a bond among the group. The guests were a marvellous bunch of folk, and the group leader, Chris Ball, handled all the logistical nightmares with aplomb.

We arrived in New York City with enough time to spare to enable a little sight-seeing, including a trip on the ferry to Staten Island, an experience I enjoyed (especially sailing past the Statue of Liberty in the sunshine), and a visit to Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop. This is close by our hotel, which overlooked Ground Zero - the whole site has been developed into an impressive memorial to a terrible tragedy.

Embarkation on the ship was complicated by a bike race, which closed all the surrounding streets. So instead of a leisurely departure, everyone had to get up before 5 a.m. in order to get to the cruise terminal. Deeply frustrating, but again, members of the group showed great fortitude and good humour, and proved very good company.

Although I've done quite a lot of cruising, it's never been on a ship anything like as magnificent as the Queen Mary 2. There is an impressive planetarium on board, and a marvellous library, among much else. The Atlantic crossing was a memorable experience, and I found the group were attentive and enthusiastic listeners as I talked about a whole variety of whodunit-related topics each morning. Great fun. And then came Oxford...

Forgotten Book - Night's Black Agent

John Bingham's seventh novel, Night's Black Agent, was published in 1961. In Michael Jago's excellent biography of Bingham, it doesn't get a particularly warm write-up, as Jago focuses on aspects of the story that test the suspension of disbelief. There are indeed some coincidences and unlikely incidents. Julian Symons, however, greatly admired the novel, and I think that it's my favourite of all the Binghams I've read.

We're told right from the start who wishes to kill whom and (at least in part) why. The would-be killer is a journalist (as Bingham once was) and the proposed victim, a man known as Green, is not only a blackmailer who ruins lives, but also a sociopathic sex killer. In other words, it's a book in the tradition of Francis Iles' Malice Aforethought. But the story follows an unusual path, effectively with two major digressions to explain the background before a climax in Norway. It's a relatively short book, and I found it compelling.

I was lucky enough to acquire a copy that Bingham had inscribed to Joe Gaute, a publisher and expert on true crime. The dust jacket bears a laudatory quote from none other than Francis Iles, in respect of one of Bingham's earlier novels, and I'm sure Iles must have been impressed with this one too, since Bingham tackles a favourite Iles theme - how can we do justice, when the legal system proves inadequate to meet the task?

The title of the book is taken from Macbeth, but it's also a punning reference to Bingham's secret service work - he was a member of Maxwell Knight's team of spies, known as Knight's Black Agents. But this isn't a spy novel. It's a study of crime and character, and even if the Bad Guy is thinly characterised, the portrayal of his victims is done with considerable skill. I really enjoyed this book, and I recommend it warmly, coincidences and all.

The CWA Daggers

I've touched down briefly at home, just before setting off for an event in Cockermouth in Cumbria later today. This has been as hectic a three-week period as any I can remember in my career as a crime writer, since during that time I've visited New York City, conducted a lecturing course on Queen Mary 2, accompanied a party of American crime fans around Oxford (including a trip to Balliol, seen in the photo above from the cupola at the top of the Sheldonian Theatre), and finally taken part in a festival in the north east of England with my friends in Murder Squad.

Before long, I'll be telling you a bit more about this fantastic sequence of events, as I draw breath prior to a further round of events in June. But whilst I was on the Queen Mary, I received some lovely news that made an unforgettable trip even more memorable.

I'm thrilled to say that Gallows Court has been longlisted for the CWA Sapere Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year. The novel is in very good company, alongside titles by such fine writers as Abir Mukherjee, Jim Kelly, and C.J. Sansom. The fact that this novel, in which I invested so much hope and energy, writing it without any contract or publisher, as an attempt to do something "completely different" as a writer, has now been nominated for two separate awards is a source of great joy. It was a gamble, to say the very least, and I'm very happy that it's paid off.

But there is more. I'm equally delighted that "Strangers in a Pub", a short story featuring a new pair of characters, which I contributed to Ten Year Stretch, the CrimeFest anthology that I edited with Adrian Muller, has also been longlisted for a CWA Dagger, the Short Short Dagger. It's the fourth time I've been nominated for that particular Dagger, and the second time in three years that I've been longlisted for two Daggers in the same year. I really have to pinch myself to believe that this has happened. I feel very fortunate.

Because of my commitments on the Queen Mary, I wasn't able to attend CrimeFest (where the Dagger announcements were made) this year, the first time I've ever missed it. But when I heard the news on board the ship, I was quite overcome. It made a very special trip even more special.

Forgotten Book - The Name of Annabel Lee

Julian Symons' books are an eclectic mix, and this is as true of his novels as of his non-fiction. The Name of Annabel Lee, first published in 1983, is one of his later works, and I've enjoyed it on each of the three occasions that I've read it over the past thirty years. As the title suggests, there's a Poe connection, and indeed Symons wrote a biography of Poe. The story also draws upon a year that Symons spent teaching in the US, where the early scenes are set.

Dudley Potter is a pleasant British academic who has relocated to the US for reasons which are at first not clear. He's an introverted character, but when he meets a beautiful young woman who introduces herself as Annabel Lee, he is instantly hooked. They enjoy a passionate affair, but then she leaves suddenly, and he determines to find out what has happened to her.

His quest takes him back to England, where he stays with an old friend and his wife. The pal is a lawyer who, by a striking coincidence (or is it?) acted for Annabel Lee, who is due to inherit a large sum of money. Dudley's search takes him to the Yorkshire coast, although I found these scenes less convincing than the rest of the book; I'm not convinced Symons really "got" Yorkshire. There's also a plot issue that seemed to me not to be in keeping with the fair play tradition.

However, it's a good story. Not up there with the best of Symons, but a highly readable example of his second-tier work. The experienced detective fiction fan will, I think, figure out what is going on, but I enjoyed studying Symons' technique for pulling the wool over the reader's eyes. And Dudley's obsessive search for the girl of his dreams is in itself intriguing.

The Third Alibi - 1961 film review

I didn't have especially high hopes of The Third Alibi, a 1961 crime film directed by Montgomery Tully, but I found myself enjoying a tautly directed and neatly written "inverted mystery" that surprised me more than once with the turns taken by the plot. The storyline contains several familiar ingredients, but here they are blended with a good deal of skill to produce a film that is distinctly superior to most British B-movies of its time.

The story was actually based on a play called "Moment of Blindness" by the husband and wife duo Pip and Jane Baker. Whether the play was actually performed before being filmed, I don't know, but as yet I haven't found a trace of it. The Bakers, incidentally, became much better known for their TV work, most notably on Doctor Who.

Laurence Payne, an actor best known for his TV appearances as Sexton Blake, and a man who became a reasonably successful crime novelist, plays a selfish and weak-willed composer called Norman Martell. He is married to Helen (Patricia Dainton) but having an affair with her half-sister Peggy (Jane Griffiths). Life gets more complicated when Peggy announces that she is pregnant. Helen refuses him a divorce and also keeps secret the fact that she is suffering from a serious heart condition. The plot potters around for a while, and the young Cleo Laine sings a ditty supposedly composed by Martell. (There's an uncredited appearance by Dudley Moore,  no less, as a pianist!) It is not a memorable song; suffice to say that Norman is no Burt Bacharach. Nor, when he begins to plan an ingenious murder, does he prove to be one of the more successful killers.

From the moment that his murder plot begins to unravel, the story gathers real momentum, and John Arnatt gives a nice performance as an affable but shrewd superintendent, while Arthur Hewlett makes his presence felt at the end of the film. In researching the film, I found a negative review by David Parkinson on the Radio Times site which struck me as excessively harsh. Much more thoughtful and perceptive is the review on the Classic Movie Ramblings blog, which describes the film as "a lot more special than one would expect". CMR recommends this film, and so do I.

The Anderson Tapes - 1971 film review

Over the years, I've somehow managed to miss The Anderson Tapes, a 1971 film directed by the gifted Sidney Lumet, and based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders. It's a heist movie starring Sean Connery at the peak of his powers, and I've long been familiar with the excellent theme tune by Quincy Jones. Finally, I managed to catch up with it, thanks to the admirable Talking Pictures TV.

It's apparent that Lumet was trying to do something more than direct a straightforward film about a robbery. This is a story, in part, about covert surveillance, and it pre-dates The Conversation, which is my favourite movie about surveillance, a genuine masterpiece. At the start of the film, Connery is released from prison. He is an angry man, who immediately reunites with his girlfriend, Dyan Cannon, who is being maintained by another lover in a posh apartment block. Connery decides to rob her fellow residents.

The trouble is that this is a two-hour film with barely ninety minutes of material. Lumet's approach may have been cutting-edge in its day, but it seems to me to have dated, and this film is much less effective, in my opinion, than some of his other work. I am a Connery fan, but I never warmed to his character, and the heist seemed to me to be hopelessly protracted, and so obviously doomed to failure that tension faded.

Even Quincy Jones' soundtrack seems, to a modern ear, to be intrusive and occasionally a bit irksome, despite the quality of that theme. The ending is meant to be ironic, but I'm afraid that by that stage, I didn't really care too much. You'll have gathered that I was disappointed by this one. Maybe it's a case of having had expectations that were too high. But in my opinion, it's nothing like as good as The Conversation.

Forgotten Book - The Accident of Robert Luman

The Accident of Robert Luman was published in 1988. The author, David Fletcher (a pen-name for Dulan Barber) died in the same year. He was only 48. Fletcher's tragically early death probably explains why his work has been neglected in recent years. Another reason for that neglect is that he didn't create a major series character (although this novel introduces a cop called DS Jolley, who appeared in Fletcher's last two novels). He was a well-regarded novelist in his day, but I'm pretty sure that he'd have developed further had he lived, and he might well have become a doyen of the genre.

This novel is interesting on several levels. First, it's a "whowasdunin". An introductory section reveals that a murder of extraordinary savagery has been committed - but we don't know the identity of the victim. This aspect of the story is intriguing, though it's not Fletcher's main focus - and I think it's fair to say that the victim isn't characterised in great depth, a weakness of the story.

Second, it's a novel of psychological suspense, a gripping tale which reads in some respects like an updating for the 80s of the work that John Bingham and Julian Symons were doing twenty or thirty years earlier. Fletcher builds the tension as he shows a young man being trapped in a web of suspicion. In fact, in some respects, this book is a development from his previous novel, On Suspicion - but it's a superior work.

And one of the reasons why it's superior is that Fletcher presents a very interesting picture of a brain-damaged character, Robert Luman himself. I'm not sure that I can think of an earlier, more convincing portrayal of a character with a severe mental disability - if you can, please let me know! In recent years, several authors have tackled a comparable challenge with great success: one thinks of books like Elizabeth is Missing and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Fletcher's novel is not quite as impressive as either of those two books, but I thought it a highly readable piece of work. 

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye - 1950 film review

I confess that I've never been much of a James Cagney fan, but I'm having to revise my views now that I've watched Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, in which he stars as the ruthless gangster Ralph Cotter. The film dates from 1950 and was based on a novel of the same name by Horace McCoy, who is best known as the author of the superb They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

The film opens with a trial scene in which a hammy prosecution lawyer rants about the evil of the accused men (and one woman) who are in the dock. But Cotter, we learn, is there "in spirit" only. We then flash back to a time when Cotter was in prison. He is sprung from jail, but shoots his accomplice, only to be rescued by the accomplice's sister, Holiday Carleton. She's played by Barbara Payton, a glamorous blonde in the finest film noir tradition whose real life story (including four husbands, drink and drug addiction, prostitution, and death at the age of 39) was utterly tragic. This performance shows that she really could act, and what happened to her afterwards is so very sad.

Cotter seduces Holiday, and soon outsmarts a pair of crooked cops with the aid of a dodgy lawyer. Complications ensue when he meets another woman, Margaret Dobson (Helena Carter) whose father is as rich as he is ruthless. Cotter, needless to say, finds temptation impossible to resist. Carter's performance is also a good one, and it's interesting to contrast her fate with Payton's; she quit the movie business after marrying for the second time, in 1953. The world lost a good actor, but she seems to have had a happy life; unlike Payton's, it wasn't a life in the merciless public spotlight.

The screenplay is by Harry Brown, and it includes some very snappy dialogue. The action zings along, although I'm not sure why he bothered with the courtroom framing scenes; I'm not convinced they were necessary or helpful. The film was criticised in some quarters for glamorising crime, but I don't think it does. Cagney is, I must say, very convincing; it's a great performance from him. And the film as a whole is well worth watching.

Domino Island by Desmond Bagley

Domino Island is the new Desmond Bagley novel, with official publication this week. But wait! I hear you exclaim. Didn't Desmond die way back in 1983? Well, yes, he did. But this book has never been published before. It was found in his archived papers not long ago, and Harper Collins have hastened to bring it into the public domain.

I have to say that I love the idea of discovering unpublished novels by authors of repute. I've read one or two, and I've found them absolutely fascinating. So generally speaking, I'm all in favour of their being published. But of course, just as sometimes there is a good reason why forgotten books have been forgotten, so there is sometimes a very good reason why an unpublished book has never seen the light of day. The quality may well be inferior, though sometimes there are major compensations in the way that the story casts light on the author's work or life.

In this case, Bagley fans shouldn't be worried. Domino Island is an interesting and lively story, well worth reading. A note in the book explains the background to its non-appearance - Bagley became involved with writing another novel, and this one seems to have fallen by the wayside. A bit mysterious, but there you are. The story dates from 1972, but has been "curated" by a Bagley fan and writer, Michael Davies, who has smoothed out the various rough edges you might find in a first draft. He deserves congratulation, as he seems to have done a very good job.

The story is set on a fictitious Caribbean island, and the key question for Bill Kemp, a consultant contracted to a big insurance company, is how wealthy David Salton came to die. Is there something suspicious about it? Bagley set about constructing a whodunit in the classic tradition. but as he admitted to his publisher, his instinct for action and adventure kept breaking in. He called it Because Salton Died: I think Domino Island is a much better title. The hybrid of mystery and thriller works pretty well, in my opinion. I found the revelation of the culprit a genuine surprise (though I'm not sure there were many clues) although the final section, devoted to thrills rather than a mystery, seems to me to be over-long.

Overall, I enjoyed this story as a fast-paced entertainment. I inherited my enthusiasm for Bagley's writing from my father, who was a big fan, and although I never met Bagley, I did meet his widow Joan, a very likeable woman. I am sure that both my Dad and Joan would be delighted to see this book surface at long last, and I hope it will please not only Bagley's existing fans, but perhaps also younger readers who may not be familiar with his work.

Forgotten Book - Shock!

Shock!, a novel by Virgil Markham, was first published by Collins Crime Club in 1930. The title is exuberantly melodramatic; in the US, the book was called The Black Door. But the splendid sub-title is as prolix as the title is concise, and reads: "The Mystery of the Fate of Sir Anthony Veryan's Heirs in Kestrel's Eyrie Castle near the Coast of Wales".  A sub-sub title adds: "Now set down from information supplied by the principal surviving actors, and witnesses". Wow!

One delightful feature of my copy is that it contains a massive pull-out folded family tree of the descendants of Horace Veryan. Some addenda to the tree, although printed, appear to be handwritten, bringing the toll of fatalities in the family up to date. And there is more! A map of the local area, featuring St David's and Ramsey Island, is included. And there are plans of the ground and first floors of Kestrel's Eyrie.

The viewpoint character is Tom Stapleton, an American (as was Markham) who is a member of the seemingly cursed Veryan family, and who is in Wales, hoping to see Sir Anthony Veryan, recently incapacitated following a murderous attack. He finds himself embroiled in a complicated mystery in the finest Golden Age tradition. Markham has a nice plot twist up his sleeve, although I anticipated what he was planning to reveal, despite finding myself bogged down by the minutiae of the story.

This is an enjoyable vintage mystery, not as good as Markham's first book (also set in Wales), Death in the Dusk, but quite entertaining as long as one reads it quickly, and doesn't pause to quibble about details. My copy once belonged to Dorothy L. Sayers, who obligingly signed it. It came from the late Bob Adey's collection, and although it's by no means a masterpiece, it has fired my interest in Ramsey Island. I've visited St David's, long ago, but not Ramsey. It's an omission I really must repair.