Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert in Wickedness

Mark Aldridge is one of a group of people, with John Curran to the fore, who are academic experts with a specialism in Agatha Christie. He's also one of a growing band of academic writers who is able to write accessibly in a way that will inform and also entertain a wide readership. His recent book about Hercule Poirot was a case in point, and now he's followed it up with Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert in Wickedness.

I've been a fan of Miss Marple ever since I discovered her at the age of eight thanks to the film Murder Most Foul (which I enjoyed) and The Murder at the Vicarage (the first adult novel I ever read, and one that I absolutely loved). So I fell on this book with enthusiasm, and I was not disappointed. It's a wide-ranging study, although not quite wide-ranging enough to include mention of the premiere of Murder Most Foul in a marquee in Great Budworth!

I'm the first to admit that - overall - the quality of the Poirot novels in terms of plotting is generally higher, but there are several very strong Marple novels. As well as The Murder at the Vicarage, I'm a big fan of The Body in the Library and A Murder is Announced, while I have a soft spot for 4.50 from Paddington, A Caribbean Mystery, and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. 

The approach of the book is basically chronological, and quite rightly the emphasis is on the novels and short stories featuring Jane Marple. However, there is also more than adequate discussion of the character's appearances on stage (in two plays based on the books), radio, film, and television. Personally I go along with the majority view that Joan Hickson was by far the best screen Miss Marple, but Mark Aldridge is quite generous to her successors, while pointing out gently that some screenplays based on books in which the character did not appear were not well-suited to having the old lady parachuted in. He includes some anecdotes related to the character and her creator with which I wasn't familiar. Overall, then, an enjoyable and worthwhile read. 

 

The Best UK Crime Fiction Blogs and Websites in 2024

Yesterday I received an unexpected message from some people called Feedspot. They have created a Top Thirty of UK crime fiction blogs and websites. The details are here and if you take a look, you'll see that this blog ranks fourth. In fact, of the blogs created by a single person, it is top of the chart. So I'm duly gratified.

The list is said to rank the best blogs 'from thousands of book blogs on the web and ranked by traffic, social media followers and freshness'. When I enquired further, I learned that Feedspot's editorial team searches for relevant blogs and measures them against various criteria. I must confess that I don't really understand how such things are evaluated, since I've always been remiss in figuring out the technical side of things when it comes to my website and blog. I'm well aware that there are various techniques to improve search engine ratings, but I simply don't have the time or expertise to attend to these things as efficiently as would be ideal. Given the need to prioritise, my energies are focused on the actual writing of material rather than tech stuff. I'm pleasantly surprised that, on objectively assessed measures, the blog is doing so well.

Having said that, I should repeat what I've said before. I write these blog posts for one simple reason - because I enjoy doing so. There are all sorts of benefits to running a blog like this, most of which I never anticipated when I started out in 2007. The reason the blog is called Do You Write Under Your Own Name? is because, back then, despite the fact that I'd been a published novelist for sixteen years plus, relatively few readers were familiar with my work. 

To some extent, this blog forms a record of my writing life, so that I can look back and remember past events and trips. That in itself is very rewarding. And it's a great memory jogger. There have been many times when I've been about to watch a film, for instance, only to check the blog and realise that I'd not only watched it before but written a review. Eeek! It's sometimes fun to watch again anyway and see if my opinion of the film (or, on occasion, TV show or novel) is the same as it was the first time around.

Above all, I value the personal contacts I've made through this blog. Some people who have got in touch over the years have become good friends. There are many who have given me information that is helpful to my researches - or just plain interesting. Your comments are always a delight to read. And the messages of encouragement I get from blog readers are enormously motivating. 

At the moment, I feel my writing is going as well as it's ever done, perhaps better than it's ever done. There are several reasons for this, but undoubtedly they include the motivation I get from responses to my blog posts. I don't take these things for granted, believe me. I'm very grateful to all those people, from around the world, who support this blog. You've given me a great deal and I hope to return the compliment by keeping the blog going for a long time to come.

From Hemlock Bay to Whitley Bay

It's been a busy and enjoyable few days - unseasonally connected with the seaside! I was very pleased to see that The Critic magazine ranked Hemlock Bay as a runner-up in the list of crime books of the year. Thanks also to Mat Coward of the Morning Star: 'If you’re longing for a wholly satisfying Golden Age-style whodunnit, fully and fairly clued, and with every revelation followed by another twist, you need the 1930s-set Rachel Savernake series by Martin Edwards.' 

So the book has had glowing reviews from both the Daily Mail and the Morning Star - definitely appealing across the political spectrum, I'd say! As if to celebrate, Apple is currently giving a special offer on ebook editions of Hemlock Bay - see the screenshot at the top of this post. A good way to bring the publishing year to a close.

Meanwhile, I've taken part in my last literary event of the year. This was a conversation with Ann Cleeves as part of Newcastle Noir. It was great to get back to the north east and to enjoy some sunshine in between the stormier moments. I visited Ann in her home town of Whitley Bay and she introduced me to a couple of local bookshops, both excellent, and one with a terrific second hand stock.

Life in Whitley Bay is, it must be said, rather calmer than life in Hemlock Bay, and none the less appealing for that. I had a very good time and enjoyed having a pre-dinner drink with Ann at the Spanish City before a very good meal at Hinnie's, a restaurant I last visited when Murder Squad was celebrating its 21st birthday. And next year, we will be 25...

Forgotten Book - He Arrived at Dusk

It's ten years since a review by John Norris of a book by R.C. Ashby (who was to become much better-known as Ruby Ferguson, a popular author of 'pony' books) aroused my interest in Ashby's crime fiction. It took a long time, but I've finally acquired a copy of He Arrived at Dusk, which John also reviewed, in laudatory terms, describing it as 'a little masterpiece', and comparing Ashby's skill at misdirection with Agatha Christie's. 

Ashby wrote a number of detective novels and it seems that her forte was combining a fair play puzzle with strong elements of the supernatural. This is certainly the essence of He Arrived at Dusk, which was published in 1933. My copy is the Hodder file copy, which is dated 9 February in that year. It has crossed my mind that the timing was unfortunate, because this was just before Dorothy L. Sayers started reviewing crime for the Sunday Times. Had she covered this novel - and had she liked it - it would have given Ashby's career and reputation a significant boost.

My guess is that Sayers would indeed have liked it. This is not only a clever story, it is unusual and it is well-written (I am pretty sure Sayers would have approved the prose, which struck me as clear, but evocative and definitely better than the writing of many detective novels of the early Thirties). After an intriguing opening in a London club, we're plunged into a narrative written by a researcher called Mertoun, who is summoned to catalogue the library of Colonel Barr, who lives in a lonely house close to the coast of Northumberland. But Mertoun doesn't actually get to meet Barr, who is so ill that he remains in his room, fiercely guarded by Nurse Goff, who won't allow anyone - not even his nephew Charlie - to see him.

We soon hear about a strange local legend involving a Roman gladiator, a sort of ghost who haunts the locality. There have already been deaths in the Barr family and eventually someone else dies - but it is not Colonel Barr...

I did feel that the book lost some pace in the middle section, and when the narrator switches to the nurse's brother. But the finale is excellent and I appreciated the cunning with which Ashby had told a relatively simple story, embellishing it very nicely so as to create her surprise solution. Recommended.

Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction:1841-1920

Jamie Sturgeon, a book dealer who has over the years supplied me not only with plenty of books but also with a good deal of interesting information about authors and their work, has kindly introduced me to a new book by Ashley Bowden, Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction: 1841-1920: A Survey.

I thought I knew quite a bit about this subject until I read this book. I expected to see names like Dora Myrl, Judith Lee, Florence Cusack, Dorcas Dene, and Hagar Stanley, and I was not disappointed. But this valuable reference work contains a lot of information with which I wasn't familiar. Ashley Bowden has been reading and researching in this field for decades, and the result is a book which adds to our stock of knowledge in a concise and reader-friendly way.

Let me give just one example. I'd never thought of R.D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, as a crime writer. However, eight years after publishing the one book by which he is remembered today, he was responsible for Erema, or My Father's Sin. The female detective in question is Erema Castlewood. Ashley Bowden gives us a short synopsis of the plot, but his verdict is not encouraging. Nor is the review he quotes from the Spectator: 'we think it to be unworthy of Mr Blackmore's talents.' Oh dear. I won't be rushing to read that one. But it's very useful to have the benefit of Ashley Bowden's view of the story as well as the review.

There are many good illustrations, and also a wealth of appendices, as well as (importantly) indexes. I suspect that I'll be consulting this book regularly in the future. There are a number of stories discussed here that I'd like to read, and several that sound as though they deserve to be back in print. So my thanks, once again, to Jamie as well as to Ashley Bowden. 

Playing the Game

Puzzles are much in vogue at present, and this fashion is reflected in contemporary crime writing. In many ways, it seems to me that the public enthusiasm for puzzles such as Wordle and Murdle is comparable to the 'play fever' which swept the western world after the First World War and the influenza pandemic. This is the zeitgeist, I think. People want to have fun, and who can blame them?

Not me, that's for sure, because I've always been a puzzle fan. Bethan, my lovely editor at Head of Zeus introduced me to a mystery game called Cryptic Killers about a year ago, and I've enjoyed several games of that. Back in May, I took part in a Murdle game hosted by the creator, G.T. Karber. Ten days ago I was chatting with my editor at HarperCollins about this trend and last week (after an encouraging lunch meeting with the British Library folk and then a coffee with Bethan and the Head of Zeus and their publicist) I rounded the day off in style, as I had the pleasure of participating in an interactive mystery game hosted by my agent James Wills and his company Watson, Little.

This was a game devised by Jury Games and it took place at the Theatre Deli in London. The literary agents were joined by a group of their clients, all of whom are crime writers. A very convivial bunch of jurors, and we had a lot of fun trying to figure out what was going on. How did we do? Ah, that would be telling...

Just as enjoyable were the conversations in a local pub after the game was over. I had the pleasure of chatting with a group of lovely people, including Alex Marwood, Ajay Choudray, Victoria Dowd, Luke Chilton, and Alex Pavesi. I've often made the point that the life of a writer has plenty of downs as well as ups, but that was one of those days when I was acutely aware that overall it's a hugely pleasurable existence.

Appointment with Death - 1988 film review

Until recently I'd avoided Michael Winner's 1988 movie version of Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death for two reasons. First, I'm not keen on the book. I recall that when I first read it as a teenager I felt it might have been called Disappointment with Death. For me, the characters didn't really come to life and I didn't believe in the criminal motivation, which was not, I felt, adequately foreshadowed. Second, I've never been a big fan of Winner, and the memoirs of Anthony Shaffer, who co-wrote the screenplay, were very negative about the film.

However, I decided to give it a go on realising that Peter Buckman also had a hand in writing the screenplay. Peter and his wife were very kind to me a couple of years back when I narrowly missed my own appointment with death. While en route to have lunch with them in Oxfordshire, my car was involved in a hit and run with a motorbike, a pretty terrifying experience. These days Peter is primarily a literary agent, but he's also a good writer. And the screenplay does have some rather nice touches.

There is a starry cast. Peter Ustinov plays Poirot in a very Ustinov way, as usual, while John Gielgud is the official detective, Colonel Carbury. The appalling Mrs Boynton, now the matriarch of a dysfunctional American family, is played by Piper Laurie, while Lauren Bacall is cast as the almost equally unappealing Lady Westholme. Winner cast his partner Jenny Seagrove as the young Dr King and David Soul as the lawyer Jefferson Cope. The two Boynton sons are played, rather underwhelmingly, by less well-known actors, but it's still quite a roster.

The story is significantly changed from the book, but here that's arguably a positive, given the flaws in the original. However, it's a shame that filming was done in Israel rather than Petra, which made a notable backdrop for the novel. Overall, it's not a brilliant movie, but it's competent: by no means as bad as some critics have suggested, and far superior (for instance) to The Alphabet Murders.

 

Forgotten Book - Not to be Taken aka A Puzzle in Poison

When I first read Anthony Berkeley's 1938 stand-alone novel Not to be Taken, many moons ago, I recall that I was slightly underwhelmed for most of the book, even though it was agreeably written. And then the later developments in the story enabled me to understand what Berkeley had been trying to do, and I ended up by being very satisfied. I thought I'd take another look at the book to see if I still felt as positive about it.

The answer is yes. This is a quietly told village mystery, set in rural Dorset. The narrator, Douglas Sewell, is a fruit farmer. Berkeley went to school in Dorset and he understood country life pretty well. His observations about gossip are spot on, and he also uses a scene with a local gossip-monger to impart key information relevant to the plot. It's quite a subtle piece of writing.

What I didn't know when I first read this novel was that it was originally a serial, published by instalments in the very popular magazine John O'London's Weekly. The magazine used it to set a competition for readers, with a total of £350 in prizes - no mean sum back in 1938. When the book became a novel, it incorporated a Challenge to the Reader, very much in the Ellery Queen tradition. 

The novel's subtitle, which became the actual title in the US edition, was A Puzzle in Poison. And this is a mystery which does exactly what it says on the label. There's little obvious detection - Roger Sheringham does not feature - but the apparently low-key storytelling is deceptive. In fact, this is a pretty ingenious mystery, and I'm not really surprised that none of the entrants in the competition came up with the complete solution. A pleasing read. The cover image, by the way, comes from the website o a London book dealer, Stephen Foster. If you want this copy, alas, it will set you back £1250. (And there are two costlier copies on Abebooks as I write). Berkeley is a very collectible author and his first editions don't come cheap.

Forgotten Book - Parting Breath

Catherine Aird is someone I've known and admired for a long time, both as a writer and as a delightful companion. In the course of her exceptionally long writing career she has won the Gold Handcuffs award (a forerunner of the Dagger in the Library) and the Diamond Dagger, and she has entertained her readers royally. I've collected signed and inscribed copies of her books over the years and acquired a number of her older titles recently. These included a signed copy of Parting Breath, published in 1977, which I hadn't read previously.

The story is set in the University of Calleshire and since I was a student myself in 1977, I was greatly amused by Catherine's portrayal of academic and student politics - a sit-in plays an important part in the story. One of the features of her writing is its sheer cunning. Yet this is far from obvious, because the style is so low-key and agreeable. She lures you in with her comfortable and amusing descriptions and dialogue and you tend not to realise that she's also supplying you with information vital to the solution of the puzzle.

The title Parting Breath (which turns out to be taken from the work of Robert Burns) is a crafty reference to the fact that this story features our old friend The Dying Message Clue. And it's a cryptic one. The relevant phrase uttered by the first murder victim is 'twenty six minutes'. I confess that I didn't manage to figure out its relevance to the story.

As usual, the detection is undertaken by Sloan and Crosby, an amusingly contrasted pair of sleuths. There are some fascinating literary references, with a plot strand concerning literary detection; the mystery is one I wasn't familiar with (it concerns Jane Austen) but I found it interesting. All in all, this is a good example of Catherine Aird's quietly accomplished crime writing. 

 

Person Unknown - 1967 Anglia TV review

Thanks to YouTube, I've just watched Person Unknown, an ITV 'play of the week' made by Anglia TV back in 1967 which was previously unknown to me. The script was written by David Butler and adapted from a play called A Person Unknown by Olive Chase and Stanley Clayton. I know nothing about the writers, but it seems that Chase and Clayton wrote a number of crime-themed stage plays together.

This is a reasonably good whodunit set in a modern university, around a women's hall of residence. The stage origin of the story are abundantly clear from the way almost all the action takes place in the office and home of Jane Canning, who is in charge of the place. Low-budget, yes, but definitely not without merit.

The strength of the show comes from the quality of the cast. One of the minor roles, that of the student Beth Gray, is played by Felicity Kendal; it must have been one of her earliest TV parts. She and her friend Margo (Wendy Varnals, whose career didn't last nearly as long) become concerned when a fellow student goes missing. They report her absence to Jane Canning (Elizabeth Sellars) - see the above photo. Jane just happens to be romantically involved with a detective superintendent, played by the super-reliable John Gregson. Soon a body is found...

Suspicion falls on Jane's brother Gilbert, who is played by John Wood with characteristic nervous energy. Wood was an eminent thespian, though on occasion here perhaps his performance, although arresting (no pun intended), lacks subtlety; maybe that can be blamed on the script. But there are one or two nice twists before all is finally revealed. I enjoyed this one, even if it showed its age in terms of production values.

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge

Yale University Press have published some interesting books of late - one that I hope to get round to before long is about 'murders in blackout London' - and I recently had the pleasure of reading The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge. Sara Lodge is an academic, but she belongs to that growing band of academic writers in the crime field who write engagingly with a view to sharing their erudition and the fruits of their research with a wide readership. This is a trend that I find very appealing.

In her introduction, Sara Lodge explains that her interest in her subject was stirred in 2012 at the British Library, when she read those intriguing books The Female Detective and Revelations of a Lady Detective. That must have been about the time that the British Library's Publications Department started to delve into its vaults for historic crime titles, for both books were republished, with characteristically excellent intros by Mike Ashley. In those early days, sales of these titles (and also The Notting Hill Mystery, which is in many ways even more interesting) were modest and this prompted the Publications Department to move on to the Golden Age, reviving three novels by Mavis Doriel Hay (two with intros by Stephen Booth) before Rob Davies had the brilliant idea of using railway artwork posters for the cover art, and the rest is history.

Anyway, I digress. There is a wealth of material about women in Victorian times who undertook various forms of detective work. I learned a good deal. You can get some idea of the author's wit from the title of chapter 4: 'Sex and the Female Dick: The Secrets of the Private Enquiry Agency'. This contains some fascinating stories and plenty of information that would provide good background for fiction set in the period, as well as insights into social attitudes of the time. Only occasionally does the author lapse, unnecessarily I thought, into academic-speak like 'I will argue...' and 'I will be examining two cases in detail', but on the whole the text is very readable, and this is an important plus.

There is some excellent discussion of Victorian detective fiction in which female detectives appear. There is more of this than you might think, and Sara Lodge discusses, interestingly, a couple of authors about whom I knew little, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett and Florence Marryat (daughter of Captain Marryat, once a popular author himself). She made me want to explore their work in some depth. I also think that the illustrations are well chosen - for instance, there's a map of detective agencies, publishers and newspaper offices in Victorian London which helps to underline a rather important point made in the text, about the close relationship between journalism and detection. The inclusion of this map is just one nice, imaginative touch in a book which has them in abundance. Recommended reading and surely a contender for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.

 

Forgotten Book - The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye

Over the past few years, Dean Street Press have reprinted the work of a wide range of relatively obscure detective novelists. I wrote introductions for books written by Sir Basil Thomson and Winifred Peck, and one of the other revived authors, Peter Drax, also strikes me as very interesting. But I think that probably the best 'find' of all in the extensive DSP catalogue is Brian Flynn. His revival owes everything to the doughty advocacy of Steve Barge, who blogs as The Puzzle Doctor.

Flynn was a writer with plenty of good ideas and he was adept at weaving complicated and sometimes unusual plots. These strengths are on display in The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye, the third in the long series of Anthony Bathurst novels, dating from 1928. This is the first Flynn book that Steve read and, as he explains in his introduction, it's the story which caused him to become a Flynn obsessive. (His intros, by the way, are crisp and informative).

Steve describes it as a 'long-lost classic', and the first thing I must say about the book is that the solution came as a complete surprise to me. I appreciate the cleverness with which I was led up the garden path. I was also amused by the way in which Flynn, who had a weakness for purple prose and a tendency to write in a verbose and old-fashioned way, turned one example of pedantic dialogue into a rather nice clue.

I also rather liked the way in which Flynn used a couple of the most tedious tropes in Golden Age detective fiction - a fabulous jewel taken from India, and a crown prince from one of those Ruritanian countries - and did something unusual with them. Nor is Bathurst as irritating here as in some of the other books by Flynn that I've read. The characterisation is mostly thin, it must be said, and as a result it's not easy to keep some of the characters distinct in one's mind. But this is an enjoyable mystery and well worth reading. 

 

Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey - review

Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey is billed as the last Peter Diamond novel. I've followed Diamond's rollercoaster crime-solving career right from the start, so reading the book was in a sense a bitter-sweet experience, but I'm delighted to say that this story shows Diamond at his best. The sense of fun that Peter Lovesey must have had in writing this novel is palpable.

Here, for the first time, the gruff Bath cop investigates a village mystery. The book opens with a memorable scene, when a man climbs into a grain silo with disastrous results. We then move forward in time to find Diamond and his partner Paloma invited to stay in the country with his former sidekick, Julie Hargreaves. Julie, it turns out, wants him to do some investigating. Was what happened to the man in the grain silo manslaughter? Or even murder? Naturally, Diamond can't resist the challenge.

The text is peppered with crime fiction references - Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, Columbo, Jack Reacher - as Diamond engages in all kinds of antics in his attempt to find the truth. He even helps to deliver a new-born calf and participates in a country hoe-down. There are some good jokes and we find out what Peter Lovesey thinks about a certain theory concerning the identity of Jack the Ripper (suffice to say, I agree with him).

Writing a series that runs to twenty-two novels is an impressive feat. What is much more impressive is the sheer variety of the Diamond books. It is their range and constant inventiveness that makes them stand out. It's so easy for a long series to become formulaic, and we can all think of examples, but that has never been the case with the Diamond stories. Even if Peter Lovesey had written nothing else - and of course, he's written many wonderful novels and short stories outside this particular series - this would stand as an admirable achievement.

I'm rather proud that a quote from me features on the rear of the dust jacket. I described Peter as 'a master of tales of the unexpected' and Against the Grain, which is full of surprises, certainly bears out the truth of that statement. No wonder this book gained a starred review from Publishers Weekly. This is great entertainment, strongly recommended.

 

Hemlock Bay...and what comes next?

I'm feeling slightly liberated just at the moment, for a number of reasons. First, I'm very pleased with the reaction of critics and readers to Hemlock Bay. This is a novel I felt very confident about when I was writing it - not something that happens very often, to be perfectly frank - and so I was hopeful that others would like it just as much as my editor Bethan and my agent James did. But you can never be too sure about these things. And no sensible author is ever complacent.

I was lucky to get a great review in the Daily Mail earlier this month; as a bonus, there was also a nice review of Dramatic Murder, the latest Crime Classic to which I've supplied an introduction. This is a real boost to morale, given that it's extremely difficult (unless you're a big bestseller) to get any coverage in the national newspapers for the fifth book in a series. I've previously mentioned Jeremy Black's nice review in The Critic, and some of the best bloggers around have been extremely supportive too. All this is very motivating when one is toiling away on a work-in-progress.

Second, what about that work-in-progress? Well, I'm glad to say that I have just sent off the manuscript for my latest novel. I can't say too much about it yet, but I can say that it's a stand-alone and it is significantly different from my other crime novels (though it's very much in the detective genre, and yes, there is a Cluefinder!) Writing this book has been quite demanding, but once again I'm very pleased with the very enthusiastic response of my editor and agent, and that is a big positive. Believe me, it isn't a given that discerning editors and agents will like everything that their authors produce, and I don't take their support for granted. More news about this book before too long.

So now I'm turning my mind to future projects. There are a number of them, including two novels. One of those novels is another break from my usual type of crime writing (although it's still a detective story, but again one with a difference and wholly distinct from the book I've just finished). The other is the next Rachel Savernake book. As regards the latter, I'm playing around with various plot ideas at the moment, which I find a lot of fun. In my early days as a crime novelist, I found it quite intimidating to try to think up something fresh (and even when writing a series, I like each book to be distinctive) but I'm glad to say I find it a bit easier nowadays. 

I've been asked many times over the course of this year when (or if) I'm going to return to the Lake District Mysteries. The short answer is that I do intend to do so, but again I'm toying with ideas about some degree of reinvention of the series. So nobody should hold their breath, but I do believe there is a lot of mileage in this series, and I do love writing books set in the Lakes. Which is why Rachel Savernake will go to the Lakes in her new adventure...

Forgotten Book - Licensed for Murder

Plenty of crime writers like a drink, but I doubt any of us over the years has been quite as fixated on featuring pubs in our stories as John Rhode. He really did love them, and quite possibly they brought out the best in him as a writer. Licensed for Murder certainly suggests this; it was published towards the end of his long career, in 1958, but it isn't a tired effort by any means. In fact, I'd say it's one of the Rhodes I've most enjoyed travelling (forgive the pun, but I did read it on my recent trip to Spain...)

The opening of the story is by no means dramatic. The bombshell that greets the managing director of a brewery is merely that the veteran tenant of a pub called the Knappers' Arms has decided to retire. The snag is that the pub, in a remote village that was a hub of the flint-knapping trade (which, I admit, I'd never even heard of, though apparently it was a big thing in the south of England at one time), is no longer an attractive proposition to a new tenant. 

Unexpectedly, however, a couple agree to take over the running of the pub, following a short interregnum. But they then discover a body on the premises, charred beyond recognition. Who is the deceased and how did their remains come to be there? An interesting conundrum. Scotland Yard, in the person of Jimmy Waghorn, is called in, but soon finds himself at a loss. Naturally, he consults old Dr Priestley, who is as astute as he is grumpy...

There are some nice plot twists in the story, along with a shoal of red herrings. One small piece of factual information given early on made me suspicious, although the reason why it was suspicious was impossible to figure out until towards the end of the novel. I found this one very readable, with an authentic background that Rhode evokes well. 

Penning Poison (and Wicked Little Lies)

The psychology of people who write poison pen letters is very interesting to anyone who dabbles in criminology. I've touched on this subject several times in my novels and short stories and in fact poison pen letters have been a trope in the crime fiction genre for upwards of a century, though few mystery novels handled the subject as deftly as the very first example I read in my youth, Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger.

Penning Poison is an extremely worthwhile study of the subject, and it ranges far and wide, with a focus on the period 1760-1939. After that, Emily Cockayne argues, 'study of anonymous communications...is increasingly complicated by burgeoning methods of despatch'; in addition, there was a flood of cases from the late 1930s on. She even wonders if publication of The Moving Finger in 1943 contributed to this.

There is a great deal of material in this book that I found interesting and thought-provoking, and even if I don't necessarily agree with all the author's conclusions, they invariably deserve careful consideration. Inevitably there are some examples from murder cases (the Edmunds and Luard cases are among those that spring to mind) that I think would have been worthy of mention, but that isn't really a criticism. As I know well myself, when writing a wide-ranging book, you simply have to be selective, and overall the treatment of the subject struck me as thoughtful.

This is quite a densely written book, with an academic edge, and this may account for the fact that it didn't make the longlist for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction - a pity, because I think it was a worthy contender. This is a book that I'm sure I will return to - perhaps when looking for story ideas! However, I wasn't quite so impressed by the author's complaint that 'it is very difficult to write on top of a "teaching-only contract"'. But this is the real world that 99% of authors have to contend with. Anyone who is funded to write or given paid research leave is in a very privileged position indeed. Perhaps not all recipients of such largesse know quite how lucky they are?

In any event, the author did get a presumably lucrative gig as a consultant to the film Wicked Little Letters, a film about the Littlehampton Libel Case which has an excellent cast headed by Olivia Coleman and featuring Timothy Spall, Eileen Atkins, and Jason Watkins. Suffice to say that with such ingredients, I felt that the film should have been much better than it was.      

The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries by Michael Cohen

I was pleased, a short time ago, to be sent a copy of a new book by Michael Cohen. The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries has an explanatory sub-title: A Mystery Guide and Finding List. In other words, it's a guide for readers who are interested in detective writers and their characters from the Holmes era.

A book of this kind, which aims, I guess, at readers who are interested in the genre but aren't necessarily deeply knowledgeable, needs to be written in clear and crisp prose; the publisher claims that Michael Cohen's book has these attributes, and I agree. It's genuinely readable, and the various chapter and section divisions are well-chosen.

Quite rightly, Cohen starts with Sherlock Holmes and proceeds from there. His second chapter is particularly interesting, broadly dealing with Sherlock's early male rivals, whom he divides into 'Plain Men' (a favourite Julian Symons term) and 'Exaggerators' (a rather nice term that he has coined; I haven't come across it before). The latter group includes, for instance, M.P. Shiel's Prince Zaleski, whom Cohen describes rather nicely as a 'languid aesthete'.

Women detectives, medical and scientific detectives, rogues, and occult detectives are among those who are explored in an interesting way. Among the occult sleuths is Thomas Carnacki, created by William Hope Hodgson, an author who has long fascinated me. All in all, this book is a worthwhile piece of work and I'm delighted to have been able to add it to my groaning bookshelves.  

Forgotten Book - Life Cycle

Life Cycle is the rather poignant title of a novel published by Harry Carmichael in 1978, the year before his death. It is the last entry in the long series featuring the hard-drinking newspaper reporter Quinn and the insurance assessor Piper, although in this story Quinn takes centre stage. An apparently popular doctor called Wingate is found battered to death in the very first chapter and from that point on, the pace is maintained well.

Quinn is immediately interested in the doctor's widow, an attractive woman who may have been having an affair. Is that where the explanation for the crime lies? Or is it in the doctor's unexpected deviation from routine on the last evening of his life? And what is the significance of the patient who called on the doctor regularly without ever giving his name to the secretary, Leila Farrow?

For anyone who has struggled to get an appointment to see their local GP, there's an element of nostalgia about the description of Dr Wingate's house calls and ready availability. Quinn is fairly likeable, but his attitude to women leaves quite a lot to be desired. In many ways he is his own worst enemy.

Carmichael had a very readable style, and in his day he was one of the stalwarts of the Collins Crime Club list. I enjoyed the story all the way up to the concluding scenes, when one or two developments stretched my credulity to the limit. Once all had been revealed, I felt Carmichael had an interesting story idea but didn't work hard enough on his characterisation to make it as compelling as it might have been. So Life Cycle isn't the best of his books, but it's still a light, fast-moving read - good, undemanding entertainment. 

Phil Rickman R.I.P.

I was sorry to hear that Phil Rickman died on 29 October at the age of 74. He was a writer whose work straddled the mystery and supernatural genres. Although born in Lancashire, he lived in Wales for most of his life and he had a great affinity with the country. He wrote three books under the name Will Kingdom, and two as Thom Madley, but he is best-known for the novels he wrote under his own name which featured Merrily Watkins.

I didn't know Phil well, but on my few encounters with him I found him extremely pleasant. Our first connection came when he interviewed me a couple of times on Radio Wales about the Lake District Mysteries. Landscape interested him and he evoked it well in his own work. He was a good broadcaster and a very capable interviewer. We finally met in person fifteen years ago, when we both took part in an enjoyable event held in a terrific historic setting - Ludlow Castle. 

On that occasion Phil revealed that he was in talks with regard to the televising of the Merrily books, although such is the nature of the TV world that six more years were to pass before Merrily finally reached the screen. A year or so later, he was involved with the CWA annual conference when it was held on his 'patch' in Abergavenny. A fun weekend, as I recall.

Merrily, a female priest who is an exorcist, was played on television by Anna Maxwell Martin in a three-parter called Midwinter of the Spirit. The cast also included David Threlfall and Siobhan Finneran. I enjoyed watching it, but for whatever reason, Merrily did not become a fixture on the screen. On Phil's website, there are some comments which give clues to his dissatisfaction - he regarded himself first and foremost as a crime writer rather than a horror writer and he saw the Merrily books as crime stories, albeit seen from the perspective of an exorcist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he felt that the TV version wasn't fully in tune with the novel on which it was based. But as he said, he couldn't complain, and he continued to write quietly accomplished fiction that was both polished and very readable. 

Trial of Christiana Edmunds by Kate Clarke

Kate Clarke is a doyenne of British women true crime writers. It's often forgotten how many women have been first-rate writers on the subject of true crime - Fryn Tennyson Jesse, for instance, was a leading light in the field for decades - and Kate has been writing high-calibre books for at least as long as her distinguished predecessor. With Bernard Taylor, she co-wrote Murder at the Priory, which was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction.

Her latest publication is an entry in the happily revived series of Notable British Trials - it is number 92 in the series, and it's an account of the trial of Christiana Edmunds. This case is truly fascinating and among those crime novelists who have referenced it are Anthony Berkeley and John Dickson Carr. It is a murder mystery that involves poisoned chocolates - definitely one of my favourite detective fiction tropes!

Christiana Edmunds was a deeply disturbed woman who became obsessed with a doctor in Brighton called Charles Beard. She knew Dr Beard and his wife Mary socially, and it may be that Beard, deliberately or unwittingly, encouraged her friendship with him. If so, he paid a very heavy price, as her obsession took a very dark turn indeed, leading her to carry out a series of poisonings in the town from 1870 onwards. 

Her first victim was Mary Beard, and although Mary survived, Christiana embarked on a campaign of lacing chocolate creams with strychnine. One child died as a result and others were made seriously ill. Eventually she was found guilty of murder, although her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and she spent the rest of her life in Broadmoor, dying there in 1907. Beard was among her victims: his own mental health was destroyed by his involvement in the case.

Kate Clarke provides a crisply written and detailed introduction, and in addition to the fascinating trial transcript (I noted that Christiana's defence counsel referred to her 'idiotic vanity' among other things...) there are useful appendices and a good index. For anyone interested in this remarkable case, this book is required reading.  

  

Forgotten Book - Better Dead

I've been meaning to take a look at the work of John and Emery Bonett (the writing name of a husband and wife team, John Coulson and Felicity Carter) for some time, but I've only just got around to their 1964 novel Better Dead. The story is set in the Costa Brava, an area the couple knew very well. My recent trip to Spain seemed like the right moment to give a try to this novel (known in the US as Better Off Dead). Overall, it's an odd one, a mixture of genuinely pleasing elements and deeply disappointing flaws.

Let's start with the positives. The fictional town of Rocadamor is nicely evoked (it's clear that the authors, who settled in Spain in later life, were disenchanted with life in England), the police detective - who is called Borges - is appealing, although off-stage for most of the novel, and the writing is agreeable, with prose a cut above the average. The way in which the story ends is also quite well done.

However, I had major reservations about the plot and structure, reservations closely connected with some aspects of the characterisation. The story begins with two Englishmen, a head teacher who is about to open a school for local children and the architect he has hired, discovering a body. The corpse belongs to a bar manager called Ferdy whom they both had reason to detest. I'm afraid that I found the way they reacted to this discovery to be utterly implausible.

We then have a very, very long flashback, in which we're introduced to a variety of local characters, mostly English, all of whom seem to have possible motives to kill Ferdy. They are an interesting bunch, but unfortunately, I found some of those motives unconvincing. In a way the trouble stems from the fact that the characters are quite well-drawn. But if one creates intelligent people who behave in a consistently stupid way, that behaviour needs to be convincing. Of course intelligent people behave foolishly very often in the real world, but in fiction there does need to be a degree of believability - and I felt the Bonetts failed to supply this. I couldn't really get my head around why the culprit behaved as they did. As a result, in my opinion the plot doesn't really work. A shame, because this is a book that I wanted to like more than I did. Frustrating.

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.