Ludwig - BBC TV review

Puzzles are all the rage at present. It's a fashion, and like all fashions it will pass in due course, but as a lifelong puzzle fan, I'm delighted that they are having a moment. And it's a very big moment. I enjoyed meeting G.T. Karber, whose Murdle books have been such a big hit, at CrimeFest, and I've been interested to see the recent flood of murder mysteries with a puzzle element. Of course, like any other type of book (or any other artistic venture, come to that) they vary in quality, from the excellent to the banal. But the best ones are truly enjoyable and offer an opportunity for escapism at a time when escapism seems extremely appealing.

So I was interested to watch the new BBC TV series Ludwig. Some people have compared it to Jonathan Creek, but I think it's closer to Death in Paradise - no great surprise, since the creator and writer of Ludwig, Mark Brotherhood, has worked on the Robert Thorogood show. I don't know Mark Brotherhood personally, but I've read some of his interviews and I find his approach to his craft likeable and intelligent as well as highly professional.

The premise of Ludwig is unlikely in the extreme, and it requires two exceptionally appealing actors - David Mitchell (Ludwig, aka John Taylor) and Anna Maxwell Martin (Lucy, wife of John's twin brother, James) - at their best to persuade us to suspend our disbelief. In a nutshell, James is a policeman who has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Lucy persuades John to impersonate him in order to find out what has happened to him. And when John does this, not only does he get away with his imposture, he solves one baffling mystery after another in very quick succession.

If you can accept that - and after some initial reservations, I managed to do so - this is perfectly enjoyable light entertainment, with a variety of puzzles, including a locked room mystery to solve. The Cambridge setting makes an ideal backdrop, and having watched all six episodes, I'm pleased that another series is said to be highly likely.

 

Back from Bilbao

I've just returned home after a relaxing week-long cruise from Liverpool to northern Spain. It came at exactly the right time for me, as I've been battling with a tough deadline for ages and I finally managed to deliver just 24 hours before the sailaway. Phew! Cruising from Liverpool was a new experience for me, and a good one. I'd definitely like to do it again sometime.

Because I'd been hard at work for what seems like ages with various writing projects, my focus was on getting time to decompress and this worked well. Within an hour or so of getting on board, I'd spotted a copy of one of my novels in the ship's library, heard some great music and watched an exciting finale to a football match. A good start, and things carried on in that vein. I read five crime novels, all of which will feature as Forgotten Books on Fridays in the future. Suffice to say at this stage that they amounted to a mixed bag, but ideal light entertainment. 

The highlight of the trip was a day in Bilbao and a visit to the Guggenheim Museum, which is architecturally stunning, both inside and out. Some of the works of art inside might be regarded as an acquired taste, but it was a fun visit. The local resort of Getxo (lowest photo above) was also worth a visit. Another good trip the following day was to Gijon, a coastal town I'd never even heard of before the trip, but which proved to be quite delightful and certainly photogenic. A hidden gem, I'd say.

After several days of sunshine our luck ran out on Friday with torrential rain coinciding with a stop at La Coruna. So we had to content ourselves with wandering around the puddled streets and waterfront (see below) before retreating to the observatory lounge to view the Pillars of Hercules lighthouse from the dry. The sea was quite wild that day. 

But considering the time of year, this was hardly surprising, and my overall feeling on returning home was that the trip had more than lived up to expectations. During the pandemic, there were moments when I wondered if I'd ever go on another cruise, but the industry seems to have proved more resilient than most people expected and there were plenty of first time passengers. A great week.

Forgotten Book - Death in Shallow Water

Miles Burton's Death in Shallow Water (1948), another Desmond Merrion mystery, contains a number of enjoyable ingredients, even if Merrion only plays a significant part in the closing pages (when he wraps up the case in a trice, naturally). Like many of the books written by John Rhode under that name or as Burton, the murderer's m.o. is cunningly conceived. In this case, no fewer than four people are murdered in shallow water, so the story more than lives up to the promise of its title. One wonders, though, why such a clever villain failed to think up different ways of killing people so as to divert suspicion.

In the first chapter, a rather mysterious chap who introduces himself as John Morston visits Winderport and makes enquires about the former boat business owner Sir William Watkyn and his former colleague Captain Barnham,. Morston evidently knew them years ago. He is an affable chap, but we have the feeling that his enquiries disguise a hidden agenda. He is directed to the lonely village of Windersham, where he is thinking of renting a cottage.

The scene then shifts to the Watkyn household, a week later. Sir William is rich and elderly and Lady Watkyn is younger and rather unpleasant; she treats her niece Hester like a servant. Barnham and his two adult children live nearby, but Barnham is not on the best terms with Sir William. The other major characters are a local vet called O'Brien and an elderly former seaman called Soames.

The small community is rocked by a series of deaths by drowning, so many that Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard is called in. But he can't find any evidence of murder, even though it seems clear that money is a potential motive for some or all of the people connected with the victims. There is plenty to enjoy in this mystery, but its weakness is that Burton/Rhode, as so often, prized ingenuity of murder method over ingenuity of storytelling. So the identity of the culprit is screamingly obvious. Despite that, however, I enjoyed reading the story.

 

The Lady in the Lake by Jeremy Craddock

Jeremy Craddock is a lecturer and former journalist with a genuine talent for narrative. I've known him for a number of years and I was extremely pleased by the success of his first true crime book, The Jigsaw Murders, a readable and long-overdue account of the Buck Ruxton case, which has fascinated me for years - so much so that, at one time, I toyed with the idea of writing it up myself. 

Now he's turned his attention to a more recent mystery. Again it's one in which I've long been very interested, not least because it's a Cumbrian case - and in fact it was a real life cold case, though rather different from those with which Hannah Scarlett has to deal in my novels. Not only is it one of the most extraordinary British murder cases of the past fifty years, it's one with which Jeremy has some personal connections, arising from his time as a reporter working in the Lake District. 

The Lady in the Lake is the story of the case of Carol Park, the teacher whose body was found in Coniston in 1997, long after she disappeared back in 1976. One of the truly shocking and hard-to-believe human details in the story is that, in a completely unrelated scenario, Carol's sister had also been murdered. The agonies her family must have gone through are unimaginable.

Jeremy gives the narrative a personal flavour, and this works well. His incidental observations on the changing nature of journalism are of real interest. He explains that the obvious suspect in the case was Gordon Park. At the time Carol's body was discovered, Park was a retired teacher who had married for the third time. It should also be mentioned that various members of his family believe to this day that he was an innocent man. The police struggled to find compelling evidence of his guilt, even though there were various highly suspicious circumstances. However, seven years after the body was discovered, he was found guilty of Carol's murder, and in 2010 he committed suicide in prison. A recent campaign to secure a posthumous pardon has failed.

The Lady in the Lake tells a gripping story and tells it well. The Jigsaw Murders was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and I expect this book to do at least as well. One minor quibble is the absence of an index. The publishers should not, I think, have skimped on this. There aren't many non-fiction books that don't benefit from an index. Overall, though, this doesn't matter much. The Lady in the Lake is a successful and consistently interesting study of an extraordinary murder case.  

Forgotten Book - The Players and the Game

It is thirty years since the death of Julian Symons, a writer whose fiction and non-fiction had a considerable influence on me, and I've enjoyed going back to several of his novels lately. Today I'd like to talk about The Players and the Game (1972) - I have a vivid memory of reading this when I was supposed to be revising for my A-Levels. But maybe, despite the sometimes shocking story material, it was a good way to have a complete break! I've talked about the book on this blog before but after a gap of thirteen years, I've read it yet again, so it's time to revisit my feelings about the story.

There really is a lot going on in this book. First and foremost, it's a whodunit, and a clever one. Second, the crimes are to some extent based, as Symons acknowledges, on the Moors Murders and the Lonelyheart Killers case. Third, there's an exploration of the philosophising of Nietzsche (not someone to get too keen on, remembering how his own mind disintegrated). Fourth, there are two case studies of mental breakdown experienced by key characters. Fifth, there's an examination of bourgeois English society of the early 70s. Sixth, there's a police investigation, with a range of detectives looking into a case of disappearing women which morphs into a hunt for a serial killer' mistakes are made which have disastrous results. And finally, there's a look at business life, something that Symons touched on several times in his work. 

That's a huge amount of ground to cover in a novel that isn't especially lengthy. Fortunately, Symons writes with such economy that the story doesn't feel cluttered, even though there are a great many characters, some of them only lightly sketched. A while ago I discovered that Symons consulted his friend Alan Eden-Green for details about the world of personnel, and inscribed a copy of the book to Alan and his wife thanking him for 'his help with job enrichment, lavatories and the Jay Burns Lawrence course', all of which play a part in the story.

There's another feature of this book worth noting. Today, fifty-two years after its first appearance, an attempt at a cutting-edge presentation of contemporary mores is actually a document of social history. And in some ways the most shocking aspect to modern readers may be the way that an older man's mistreatment of under-age girls is handled; it certainly isn't glossed over, but nor is it treated in the way it would be today. So many of the attitudes portrayed - often, but by no means always, with a satiric touch - in the story now seem very dated. The Seventies were definitely another country.  

The Dedicatees of Hemlock Bay

Monday was a special day for me. This was because I got to have lunch with three wonderful people who have meant a good deal to me over the years. Their names are Ann Geraghty, Lea Doran, and Jo Wright, and between them they have worked, in succession, as my secretary/PA ever since 1990 (the year before my first novel was published). Without their support in the office, I would have found it difficult to combine twin careers as solicitor and author in the way that I have done for so long.

It's very important - essential, really - to get on well with people you work closely with on a day to day basis. I've been lucky to have three people of the personal and professional calibre of Ann, Lea, and Jo helping me for such a long time. Quite apart from their daily support in the office, they have also not only been very tolerant about my obsession with writing - even though it's quite a strange thing to combine with being a full-time lawyer - but have gone out of their way to make it easier for me to lead this unorthodox double life.

Hemlock Bay is, I feel, one of my strongest novels, perhaps even the best so far - but of course, it's not easy for authors to judge their own work. When the time came for me to decide to whom I should dedicate it, the idea of a joint dedication to Ann, Lea, and Jo seemed very appealing. And on Monday we finally had the chance to get together, at a restaurant in central Liverpool, to celebrate.

The lunch was a lot of fun and there were many reminiscences - especially since I'd not seen either Ann or Lea for quite some time. The time flew by. The only question now is: what will they make of the book?

Death in the Dales

Sedbergh is England's Book Town - not as well-known, perhaps, as Hay-on-Way (Wales's Book Town) but a lovely place and I've just returned from a delightful weekend there, taking part in the town's first crime fiction festival, Death in the Dales, organised by the trustees (including my good friend Jean Briggs, former Vice Chair of the CWA) and supported by a hard-working group of volunteers and Westwood Books, an excellent bookshop in the town, which I always enjoy visiting: they have a large and varied stock and plenty of interesting rarities.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and the opening event was a film show, hosted by Matthew Booth, featuring the classic film noir The Big Heat. On Saturday morning, Kate Ellis and I kicked off the day with a conversation about crime fiction and I was also involved in the afternoon, talking to Jean about collecting crime fiction, a subject which I hope was very suitable for a book town. I brought along various items that I've picked up over the years and also discussed the connections between my research into the genre and collecting.

Matthew concluded the day's events with a one-man show about Sherlock Holmes and then a group of us went off to a delightful dinner to celebrate the birthday of another good friend, Dea Parkin. Among the writers present were Antony Johnston, Fiona Veitch Smith, Marsali Taylor, David Beckler, Harry Navinski, Frances Brody, and Jason Monaghan. A lovely evening.

On Sunday, I took part in the concluding event, moderated by Marsali, a discussion about setting with Frances and Malcolm Hollingdrake. I'm very glad that the hard-working team who put on the festival were rewarded with good audiences who showed a great deal of enthusiasm for all the sessions. It was an absolute pleasure to be part of it.

Forgotten Book - Death of a Train

The more books by Freeman Wills Crofts I have read, the more I have come to appreciate the scale of his ambition as a detective novelist. Of course he had limitations as a writer; his prose was serviceable but unexciting and seldom evocative, while his characterisation straightforward and often unsubtle. But, having established himself early on as a master of the police investigation mystery, he wasn't content to keep turning out the same-old, same-old, and for that he deserves a good deal of credit. His 'inverted' mysteries in particular were often excellent, and his plotting was consistently meticulous.

Death of a Train, written late in his career, shows Crofts trying to do something different while still featuring Chief Inspector French in a central role. The title is, I think, pleasing and tantalising. The book was published in 1946, but is set in the summer of  '42, when victory over Hitler was far from assured. Essentially, this is an espionage thriller with detective elements grafted on. The result is a curious mixture of the interesting and the banal.

We begin with discussions within the War Cabinet. Vital supplies are needed in North Africa, but it's essential that the enemy doesn't get wind of the plan to send them over, for fear of interception. So a detailed plan is formulated to send the supplies by train. My Penguin paperback describes the elaborate set-up as making for 'wholly engrossing reading', but I'm afraid I found it tedious. When, on page 46, Crofts writes that 'the shunting seemed to drag out interminably', he might have been writing about his own method for starting a crime novel. His love of railways led him astray: there's simply too much technical detail. Things only get going once an attempt to derail the train takes place: 'the enemy within' is the obvious suspect.

French is called in to investigate, but because of the need for secrecy, he pretends to be looking into the abduction of a senior officer, a fake plan which complicates the story without adding much to it. Nevertheless, the book has some merits, and it's sobering to get a clear reminder of how desperate and anxious people were when the future of the country was at stake. There's some good detective work, plus action scenes in the closing pages, but the baddies are two-dimensional and again there's a lot of less than exhilarating technical stuff about how their nefarious schemes were carried out. I was, however, fascinated to read of French's admiration for R.Austin Freeman and Dr Thorndyke - we're told that he read the Thorndyke stories 'for what they could teach him'. Quite a tribute. 

A Man Called Harry Brent

As a small boy, I loved the Francis Durbridge TV series which were stand-alone mysteries. I preferred them to the Paul Temple shows which weren't based on Durbridge's original material. One series that sticks in my mind, but which I've never been able to track down is A Man Called Harry Brent. This has now surfaced on YouTube and I've devoured it with enthusiasm.

The set-up is terrific. The eponymous Harry (Edward Brayshaw, an Australian actor) takes a train trip to see his fiancee Carol (Jennifer Daniel). A fellow passenger is a woman who is carrying a bunch of flowers. Harry meets Carol, who is a secretary, and her boss Tom Fielding. Carol is leaving her job to marry Harry, and Fielding is interviewing potential replacements (one is described as having a 'big bust', a line that you wouldn't find in a script today). The latest candidate is the woman from the train. But she has come to shoot Fielding. And it turns out that she'd previously laid those flowers on the grave of Harry's parents.

A dramatic start, to put it mildly. DI Alan Milton investigates the shooting. He is Carol's ex - their relationship broke down because he is a workaholic. He is played, with considerable aplomb, by Gerald Harper, who was a very successful actor at the time (he later took the lead in Adam Adamant!), and is still alive. He soon finds out that Harry's account of events doesn't add up. What is Mr Brent up to?

Brayshaw's performance is rather wooden, it must be said, but there are some very reliable names in the supporting cast, including the estimable Judy Parfitt as a mysterious actress, John Horsley as a sinister caretaker, and Brian Wilde as an enigmatic chap with an equally enigmatic wife. The cliff-hangers that end each episode are brilliantly done. This is a six-part series with barely a wasted word - quite a contrast to so many modern offerings. And each episode is only 25 minutes long. Great nostalgic viewing.   

Shedunnit and The Poisoned Chocolates Case

One of my favourite Golden Age detective novels, a book that to my mind ranks with the very best of Christie, Sayers, and Wade, is Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case.  It was one of the honours of my literary career to be commissioned by the British Library to write a fresh solution to the mystery, and the extremely positive critical response to my coda to this classic novel, from the national press, bloggers, and other readers, has been heartwarming. 

So when I was asked to talk about this book on Shedunnit, you can guess that I needed no second invitation! Over the past few years, Caroline Crampton has steered Shedunnit so ably that it is now one of the most successful of all crime fiction podcasts, and is available on BBC Sounds. Caroline is an intelligent and thoughtful commentator and we agreed that, as she doesn't live too far away from me, she'd record the episode in my home.

Shedunnit is running a series of episodes about old green Penguins, and the collectability of these books is one of the topics that will come up for discussion when I talk with Jean Briggs about collecting crime fiction at Death in the Dales, a festival to be held in Sedbergh, England's book town, next weekend. Jean and her team have organised a great programme and I'll be doing two other panels. Do come along if you're in the area! 

It was great to have the chance of a long conversation with Caroline in addition to our chat during the podcast recording, and to show her my own collection. She also was kind enough to present me with inscribed copies of her two books (not about crime fiction). I've started A Body Made of Glass and it's very well-written. Meanwhile, I did enjoy taking part in Shedunnit and reflecting on the strange brilliance of Anthony Berkeley. 

 

Forgotten Book - Death under Snowdon

Frank Showell Styles was an extremely prolific author and also a noted mountaineer. His two interests coalesced when he wrote detective novels, and most of his work in the crime genre appeared under the name Glyn Carr and featured Sir Abercrombie Lewker (known as 'Filthy' - filthy lucre, geddit?) as a rumbustious amateur detective. The Glyn Carr hardbacks are now quite hard to find and copies in nice condition are highly collectible.

Over the years, I've tended to steer clear of Glyn Carr over the years, since mountaineering holds no great interest as far as I'm concerned. But I thought it was high time that I took a proper look at his work and where better to start than with a novel set in Snowdonia, a part of the world which the author loved, as I do. Death under Snowdon fitted the bill perfectly.

Lewker is about to receive his knighthood, and is contacted by an acquaintance who is due to be similarly honoured. This chap, David Webhouse, is an unappetising politician (aren't they all? some would ask) whose left-wing leanings were not, I suspect, shared by the author. He wants Lewker's help, knowing Filthy's taste for solving puzzles, but is rather mysterious about the precise nature of the problem he faces. Lewker accepts an invitation to a house party in Snowdonia but Webhouse is killed in an explosion, apparently the result of a booby-trap. Was he murdered and, if so, whodunit?

This is a pretty good traditional mystery and the setting is a bonus. There are some technicalities involved in the solution that call to mind the likes of John Rhode and Freeman Wills Crofts; given that this novel was published in 1954, when the Golden Age had lost some of its glitter - certainly so far as publishers and critics were concerned - Carr was swimming against the tide of literary fashion. But this is a well-crafted novel and I enjoyed it enough to want to read more of his work. 

The Isle of Man

After returning from one festival in Richmond last week, I headed straight off to another, on the Isle of Man, somewhere I've visited quite a few times over the years. It's an island I'm very fond of, and I've been remarkably lucky with the weather, which always helps. My last two visits, in 2011 and 2019, saw me hosting murder mystery evenings in the company of Jan Macartney of Douglas Library. This time, I was a guest of the Manx Literary Festival - whose arrangements, by the way, were admirable - and although other commitments meant I couldn't get together with either Jan or Doug Stewart, I did have the chance to catch up with some other friends.

I arrived on Friday and had an enjoyable lunch with Rakie Bennett, a local crime writer and festival committee member, before checking into my hotel. Then it was off to Peel for a meal with Caroline England, whom I've known for some years but not previously had the chance to have a long chat with. We were in conversation at a 'Crime and Rhyme' event with Christy DeHaven, a radio presenter who proved to be an extremely skilled interviewer. During a pleasant book-signing interval, I had the chance for a chat with local resident Alan Bradley. It was great to see Alan again; his first novel about Flavia de Luce is about to be filmed with a glittering cast - very exciting and definitely something to look forward to. After the interval, the Bookshop Band entertained us royally with some highly enjoyable book-related songs.

On Saturday morning, it was off to St Ninian's Church in Douglas, where I conducted a writers' workshop, and then Caroline and I had a conversation with Rakie about the craft of crime writing. I always enjoy these workshop sessions and it was a great pleasure to be part of such a very successful festival. 

After lunch, I met up with my old pal Tony, one of my closest friends from student days, and his wife Dalila. They took me on a tour of the island, followed by a terrific walk along a beach and then through the countryside. Then we had a lovely meal at their fantastic house just outside Douglas. It was a rare treat to be able to spend plenty of time in their company. I'm conscious that I've had a lot of good fortune in my writing career and this past week has been a good example - invited to take part in two splendid festivals, with the chance to meet nice people and explore glorious scenery as well. I often talk about the ups and downs of the writing life but although the downs are certainly not to be under-estimated, I can honestly say that in my experience the ups far outweigh them. And that's why I urged the workshop participants to keep faith in their own work, even when they encounter setbacks.