Douglas Clark is an author I haven't discussed on this blog before. Until I read his 1978 novel The Libertines, I'd only read one of his books, a very long time ago, and it made little impression on me. I can't even recall the title. But he retains some admirers, mainly because his in-depth knowledge of poisons (gained from working as a copywriter in the pharmaceutical business) informed many of his traditional mysteries featuring the Scotland Yard duo Masters and Green.
The Libertines are an amateur cricket team. Each year they get together for a fortnight's cricket at a farm in a small town in Yorkshire, which I'm pretty sure is a fictional version of Pateley Bridge. The discussion of amateur cricket is authentic and I found it a pleasing feature of the story.
The team members get on well together with one exception. There is a truly odious old guy called Tom Middleton who specialises in antagonising everyone he comes across - I never quite understood why he was so unpleasant. We confidently assume that he will in due course fall victim to murder - but instead another man dies.
There are some nice ingredients in this story. The detail about poison seems highly authentic, as is the description of farm life. I found some of the dialogue oddly stilted and unconvincing while Green's personality is irritating. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that the motive is concealed until the end. So I definitely enjoyed the book, but felt frustrated - because with more work and perhaps stronger editing, it could have been rather better.
8 comments:
A generous review I feel. !! Many of Clarks books have been reissued on kindle over the last few years . The poisons/pharmaceutical aspects are often interesting. The overwhelming reasons I gave up after 8 or so were ludicrously over staffed investigations coupled with chain smoking and extreme sexism taken to a level not often seen even in GAD crime fiction.....the cricket scenes were good in this book though!!!
I've read a few of Clark's novels over the years and I've liked them, but I do find him a frustrating writer. His style is somewhat old-fashioned for a writer of his era--he was born in 1919, five years after WJ Burley and a year before PD James, both writers who feel miles more modern, even in their earlier works. I don't necessarily dislike the old-fashionedness but as you say sometimes the prose is stilted.
The main thing that frustrates me though is that he devotes such swathes of time to boring police procedures and circular discussions by the police characters of what we already learned. Those sections are difficult to get through and leave less room for developing the mystery in an interesting way.
I’ve read all his books including those under his pseudonym James Ditton, some I’ve read twice. I find them compulsive reading but of course like any long running series the quality varies, though at their best they are superb novels of pure detection. Yes Green is a bit annoying in the earlier books and his relationship with Masters gradually changes from very antagonistic in the first books to a perfect team in the later books. I know Curtis Evans of The Passing Tramp blog is a fan as were Barzun & Taylor
Thanks, Alan. Your comparison with GAD books is spot on! I suggest in The Life of Crime that one unintended consequence of the so-called permissive society era was that it unleashed quite a lot of sexist writing.
Good points, Kacper. Yes, I feel that although Clark wrote plenty of books there is a touch of amateurishness (sometimes) in the writing. Tougher editing would have helped, because he certainly had talent.
Thanks, Jamie. Do you have any particular recommendations?
Martin, I wouldn’t read the early ones where he was finding his feet, but titles such as The Longest Pleasure, Heberden’s Seat, Poacher’s Bag, amongst many, are excellent. Ignore the comments re the ‘extreme sexism’, he must have been reading different books to me. Also, about chain smoking, you only need to watch 1970s episodes of Softly Softly Task Force (highly recommended by the way) on YouTube to see how much smoking there was, even during police interviews. In one episode one of the detectives gave a 15 year old girl a cigarette, after she’d been caught in bed with an older man! If you read some Mary Stewart there’s a remarkable amount of smoking by male and females, also in the many Francis Durbridge I’ve read. It is how it was.
Thanks for those tips, Jamie. I'm underwhelmed by Deadly Pattern, but I'll look out for the ones you mention. Smoking - a favourite Youtube clip of mine has Dionne Warwick smoking even as she rehearses I Say a Little Prayer for the very first time....
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