Forgotten Book - Invisible Green

John Sladek's brief but brilliant career as a writer of locked room mysteries came to an end with Invisible Green (1977). in which his Great Detective, an American living in London called Thackeray Phin, made a triumphant return after his successes in Black Aura. Apparently Sladek didn't make enough money for writing more books of this kind to be worthwhile - a real shame.

With this book, he moved publisher from Jonathan Cape, who published Black Aura, to Victor Gollancz. The front cover of the first edition bore a typical Gollancz summary: 'A real, classical detective story that might have been written in the ingenious days of the last century, or of the first quarter of this, with an amateur detective from the same mould, but a puzzle to tax the most up-to-date minds'. And this is all perfectly true.

The book begins with a Prologue set in August 1939 and featuring a group of mystery fans with the pleasing name of the Seven Unravellers. We then move forward to the present with one member of the group, Dorothea Pharaoh, planning to organise a reunion of the seven keen puzzle-solvers. When she is confronted by a troubling problem, she calls on Phin - with whom she has been playing postal chess - to help.

There are some genuinely funny moments in this story, as well as some neat mysteries to fathom. We never learn much about Phin (where does his money come from? I kept wondering) but the story moves at a brisk pace and intrigues from start to finish, and although I did figure out the culprit in good time, some aspects of the solution eluded me. Very good light entertainment and a book that deserves to be back in print.

  

A Most Wanted Man - 2014 film

A Most Wanted Man is a film from 2014 based on a novel published by John le Carre eight years earlier. I haven't read the book, but apparently it is at least in part a critique of the American policy of 'extraordinary rendition'. This aspect of the story is present in the film but somewhat downplayed, and in fact it is overall quite a low-key movie, although one that has won quite a few admirers as well as one or two less favourable reactions.

The stand-out element of the film is undoubtedly the central performance, by Philip Seymour Hoffman, in what turned out, sadly, to be his last major role before his untimely death aged 46. Hoffman plays Gunther Bachman, who runs a covert German intelligence unit, and I think that - even though he wasn't the obvious person to cast as a German spy - he is convincing, because of the humanity his nuanced performance brings to the role.

The story is about Issa Karpov, a refugee from Chechnya, who arrives illegally in Germany and is helped by an idealistic immigration lawyer, well played by Rachel McAdams. Bachman is leading an investigation into a Muslim philanthropist who is suspected of channelling money to a terrorist organisation and when it turns out that Karpov is entitled to a vast amount of money held in a German bank, Hoffman persuades the banker Tommy Brue (William Dafoe, who is always good to watch) to help him snare the bad guy. But of course, in the grubby world of espionage, especially as presented by le Carre, we can always expect there to be luckless casualties of double-dealing.

I watched this film shortly after watching The Bourne Identity for the second time, and it certainly lacks the excitement of many a more straightforward thriller. It takes an age for the story to click into gear, and I feel that the script - although certainly competent - could have been pacier. However, the later stages of the film are gripping, and in any event it's worth watching for Hoffman alone.

A book event in Wigtown and touring south west Scotland

Last year I spent a few days at the cottage of my old school friend Stephen in Monreith, which is in the Machars, a peninsula in Dumfries and Galloway and I'm just back from another trip there. One of several highlights was an evening spent in conversation with Ruth Anderson of Well Read Books in Wigtown, a sell-out event in the book town's delightful community pub, The Wigtown Ploughman. Given that pubs everywhere seem to be under threat, this kind of enterprising venture is one that I hope will become more common.

Ruth's bookshop is fun to explore, and I picked up a few titles during my trip to Wigtown, even though I tried to exercise restraint (not easy when it comes to acquiring books). I also discovered that Wigtown has a rather charming harbour area, a relic of the past before the river Cree silted up. Thanks to Stephen's hospitality I also enjoyed travelling around in the area and visiting Newton Stewart as well as the beautiful Glenwhan Gardens, villages like the Isle of Whithorn (really, a peninsula on the tip of a bigger peninsula, the Machars) and the Rhins, another peninsula which ends in the southernmost point in Scotland. I got the glimmerings of an idea for a short story set in the area - probably to be called 'The Scares', after splendidly named local rocks. The main challenge will be finding time to write it...

At the Mull of Galloway, there is a lighthouse which featured in that dark but compelling film The Vanishing, which I wrote about on this blog three years ago (in the film, the lighthouse is on an island). We were lucky with the weather and there are some delightful off-the-beaten-track places. On the way home, I enjoyed looking round Threave Gardens and the Threave Nature Reserve. A great little trip. But now it's back to writing the novel...

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife - the first review

It's an exciting time as I look forward to my puzzle mystery Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife coming out in hardback on 11 September in the UK and appearing a few weeks later in the US. I very much enjoyed my experience recording some of the audiobook and here are one or two photos taken in the studio by the lovely Head of Zeus publicity team.

I'm also excited about the UK launch at Serenity Books in Romiley. If you happen to be in the vicinity of north Cheshire, south Manchester, on the evening of 11 September, do come along. Details here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/serenity-booksellers/miss-winter-in-the-library-with-a-knife-an-evening-with-martin-edwards/e-ogzqpy

Nowadays it's becoming commoner for reviews to appear before actual publication. Goodreads, for instance, features early reviews, but in the case of this book, the reviews that have appeared so far have been of an early, advance version of the book (or, in most cases, just a part of it). So it was with some holding of breath that I awaited the first magazine review of the final version...

And a US publication, First Clue, which I gather is run by librarians, has come up with that first review, and I'm very pleased with it: 'In a clever standalone homage to Agatha Christie and other Golden Age authors, Edwards (Rachel Savernake series) invites “external observers” (i.e., readers) and “analysts” (reviewers) to participate in an interactive puzzle mystery-within-a-mystery set in a remote, snowbound Yorkshire village. The mysterious Midwinter Trust has brought six down-on-their-luck people with connections to crime fiction (including washed-out author Harry Crystal and laid-off book publicist Poppy de Lisle) to Midwinter village in the rugged Pennines to solve a fictional murder over the Christmas holidays under the close supervision of six Midwinter Trust employees. But the game soon goes awry...a fun, diverting read.'

Forgotten Book - Nightmare

Nightmare is a novel by Anne Blaisdell, but the author - who went on to enjoy a highly prolific career - is better known as Dell Shannon (not to be confused with the American pop singer) and as Lesley Egan, and her real name was Elizabeth Linington. Linington (1921-88) was a pioneering female exponent of the police procedural, but this book, which is one of her earliest, and dates from 1961, is very different. I gather that it was later published under the name Lesley Egan, as - apparently - were some later books which appeared in the UK under the Blaisdell name; her bibliography seems quite complicated.

Nightmare was published in the UK by Victor Gollancz, and the jacket was dominated by a wordy encomium from Nancy Hale, of whom I must admit I'd never heard - it turns out that she was a highly regarded short story writer of the time. The story is set in Wales and concerns an attractive young American woman, Pat Carroll, who decides to splurge her inheritance on a trip to Britain. She plans to meet the mother of her dead fiance, Stephen, but before doing so she bumps into a writer called Alan Glentower, who takes a shine to her.

She agrees to meet Glentower again, but her visit to Mrs Trefoile does not go well. The old lady (not that old - just about sixty!) turns out to be a religious fanatic who decides to imprison Pat so as to preserve her purity and who is assisted in this task by two servants whom she has been blackmailing for years. I didn't find the premise especially convincing, but the author does handle it effectively, ratcheting up the tension chapter after chapter. As a dark novel of suspense, it works pretty well. And the Welsh setting is captured competently; I only noticed one tiny bit of dialogue that struck me as pure American. On this evidence, Linington was certainly a very capable storyteller.

Nightmare was filmed in 1965 as Fanatic, which has the less than subtle alternative title of Die! Die! My Darling and benefited from a script by Richard Matheson as well as from an eclectic cast including Tallulah Bankhead, Donald Sutherland, Stefanie Powers, Peter Vaughan - and Yootha Joyce. And the 2010 Broadway play Looped is, I gather, based on Bankhead's performance in the film. 

    

Phil Lecomber - guest blog post

 

I've met Phil Lecomber, with whom I share an agent, a number of times over the past year or so. I enjoy his company, and asked him to talk about the background to his books. Here's his guest post: 

'For inspiration for my Golden Age crime series, Piccadilly Noir, I turned to a collection of books with a distinctly local provenance. After all, unlike the American milieu of Raymond Chandler, my protagonist, George Harley, inhabits a peculiarly British world – one of grubby bedsits, all-night cafés, and Gold Flake cigarettes.

To establish the base flavour, I began with some classic London aromatics. Dickens, of course – particularly in his Sketches by Boz phase; Thomas Burke, whose problematic racial stereotypes might now obscure his otherwise fascinating depictions of the city; and that great biographer of London, Peter Ackroyd.

To bring out the interwar period flavour, I turned to Patrick Hamilton, whose novels – with their petrichor of disappointment and cast of troubled lodgers – provided a rich stock for my world-building. I added further depth with some more obscure works, including Storm Jameson’s Here Comes a Candle, Philip Allingham’s Cheapjack, and Hippo Neville’s glorious Sneak-Thief on the Road.

Now to the meat of the stew: the works of the great Gerald Kersh – chiefly Night and the City, but also Fowler’s End, Prelude to a Certain Midnight, and The Angel and the Cuckoo. Now sadly mostly forgotten, Kersh was once among Britain’s highest-paid writers, living a life as colourful as his characters. A blend of Night and the City and Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock was exactly the flavour I was aiming for when I first began creating Harley’s world.

For a little extra spice, I turned to a handful of gritty 1930s novels, including James Curtis’s The Gilt Kid; Robert Westerby’s Wide Boys Never Work; and Grierson Dickson’s Soho Racket. And so, I believed, I had arrived at the perfect recipe for a hard-boiled British noir series.'

Recording Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

If you've read The Life of Crime, you'll know that the lives of crime writers are full of ups and downs, but it's fair to say that, in my experience, the ups far outweigh the downs. You simply never know what is around the corner. For instance, I had a brand new experience just last Tuesday. I recorded part of my own audiobook...

Some time ago, my editor Bethan suggested that I might like to record some parts of Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife for the audiobook version. Given that we'd already agreed on two excellent actors, Mark Elstob and Candida Gubbins, to do the recording, this took me aback. But Bethan thought that it would be fun - and this is a book that's definitely meant to be fun - if I were to read certain parts of it, including the 'Rules of the Game' at the beginning, and the Cluefinder.

Given her confidence in me, I thought I should give it a go and so I travelled down to London to the Chatterbox studio in Camden Town, where Chris Ahjem, who has produced over 200 audiobooks, was in the studio. It's never possible to judge one's own work, especially in an unfamiliar context, but I did enjoy the whole experience, and it was nice to meet Zoe, from Head of Zeus publicity, who came along to take photos and videos as part of the publicity push surrounding the book.

Publication is drawing nearer. The book finally sees the light of day on September 11 and there will be a launch at Serenity Books in Romiley, near Stockport. If you're interested in coming along, please get in touch for detais.

Forgotten Book - Shadow Run

Desmond Lowden is a writer who interests me more as I find out more about the man and his work. He was far from prolific, publishing just eight novels between 1969 and 1990, as well as several screenplays. He achieved considerable success, and today's Forgotten Book, published in 1989, won the CWA Silver Dagger (an award that no longer exists). In other words, it was judged to be the second best crime novel of the year. When you consider that the winner was Colin Dexter (with The Wench is Dead) that is quite something. Yet after publishing just one more book, in the following year, he never published another novel. I do find that hard to understand.

The Shadow Run is a thriller which counterpoints two sets of relationships. One concerns a 'fat boy', a young lad at a private school called Joffrey, and his school friends. Joffrey has a troubled family background and he tells a lot of fibs. So when he spots blood coming from a van, nobody believes him. But this time he is telling the truth.

The other relationships involve a hardened criminal called Haskell. He's a man who uses people for his own ends and is determined to make a lot of money from an ambitious robbery. The details (which explain the title) are complex, but since they are related to the technology of the late 1980s, they are also now out of date. This lessens the impact of the later stages of the story for a modern reader, I think, as the worlds of Joffrey and Haskell converge.

The first part of the book is excellent, as Lowden establishes his characters in short, snappy chapters, with crisp dialogue and intriguing incidents. Lowden also makes good use of his great interest in music (Joffrey and some of his pals are members of a choir that sings in a cathedral). I can see why the book attracted such favourable attention at the time, but like so many books which rely on cutting-edge technical detail, it has lost a bit of its allure. Nevertheless, I was glad to read it, and I'm definitely curious as to why Lowden gave up on writing novels so soon after this one earned the Silver Dagger.

The Lake District Mysteries are back!

I'm absolutely delighted to say that Joffe Books have agreed to republish my Lake District Mysteries, and the first title in the series, The Coffin Trail, appears tomorrow, 31 July. The other titles will come out, I gather, month by month. I'm excited by this development, not least by the new artwork and the prospect of an infusion of energetic marketing and sales savvy.

I'm also very glad to say that this move reunites me with Kate Lyall Grant, who was the editor at Hodder who acquired my sixth and seventh Harry Devlin novels, The Devil in Disguise and First Cut is the Deepest, back in the late 90s. I've worked with Kate since, on a Murder Squad anthology for Severn House, but not in relation to my own novels.

The Coffin Trail was an important book in my writing career. The idea for a new rural series was suggested by David Shelley, when he was my editor at Allison & Busby, and my great friend the late Peter Robinson gave me a lot of encouragement. The novel was shortlisted for the Theakston's Prize for best first crime novel of the year - in very illustrious company, it must be said. I enjoyed creating Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind, though of course as time passed my ideas about the development of the series evolved. So, for instance, originally I thought Daniel would retain close links with Oxford, but that hasn't happened...yet.

I'm often asked if you need to start reading my series from the beginning or whether you can start with any book. I do work very hard to make sure that you can start anywhere, but I know that a lot of readers prefer to begin at the beginning. So I'm hoping that plenty of people will want to give The Coffin Trail a try. It seems quite amazing to me that it was first published twenty-one years ago, but I think that, by and large, the passage of time has been pretty kind to it, and I'm hoping that others will agree.

 

The July newsletter

My July newsletter is now available. It includes links to more information and the first part of an interview with Gold Dagger winner John Cornwell. Please do sign up if you're interested - it's free of charge. Here is the link (which can be pasted into your browser): https://substack.com/@martinedwardsbooks/

Ilkley Book Fair

Friday was a fun day at the Ilkley Book Fair. A couple of years ago, friends in the PBFA (Provincial Booksellers' Fairs Association) kindly invited me to have a stand at the bi-annual crime and detection book fair at Harrogate. I had a lovely time and they invited me back this year, but I was already committed elsewhere. So as an alternative Louise Harrison of TP Books generously offered me the chance to take part in Ilkley Book Fair, which I enjoyed visiting on a quite memorable day more than a decade ago.

I was also given the chance to pop into the Grove Bookshop in Ilkley - a very good shop where I once did an event to celebrate the reissue by the British Library of two of Gil North's Sergeant Cluff novels - to sign copies of Hemlock Bay. Then it was back to the fair and organising my stand. Ilkley is a generalist book fair, unlike Harrogate, so I didn't know what to expect.

As it turned out, I had the chance to talk to a lot of nice people, including old friends such as the Sherlockians John Hall and Paul Charles, and several of the excellent booksellers, notably Phil Woolley of Black Cat (who had some impressive inscribed books by Stephen Maddock, an author of thrillers whose work I'm not familiar with), Stephen Conway, Rob and Catherine Hawley, and Jeremiah Vokes. Not to forget Louise, who went to great lengths to make sure all went well.

I really enjoyed seeing a book fair from an insider's perspective. It is indeed a different experience and watching potential buyers is psychologically fascinating. The time flew by to such an extent that I didn't have much chance to look at other stalls. The setting, in the King's Hall/Winter Gardens, was pleasant and rather atmospheric. I did well in terms of selling books, which was nice (and there was, slightly to my surprise, no pattern at all to which titles were purchased) but more than that, it was good to be part of a world that has long intrigued me. Even if only for five and a half hours.  

Forgotten Book - Body Blow

Last year, I acquired a book called Body Blow by Kenneth Hopkins inscribed to John Arlott. Readers of a certain vintage may recall John Arlott as a famous (and very good) cricket commentator - his voice rippled through my younger days - but he was also a poet and bibliophile. Hopkins was a multi-talented writer, primarily a poet but, like so many poets over the years, he dabbled in detection, publishing seven books between the late fifties and early sixties along with a final book under a pen-name, Christopher Adam.

To be honest, I wasn't familiar with Hopkins, and the purchase was motivated mainly by the charming inscription, which reads 'and no prizes for recognizing the original of Dr Blow'. Dr William Blow is an elderly eccentric (and a big fan of Robert Southey) who, together with the slightly more worldly Professor Manciple, featured in three novels, of which Body Blow (1962) was the last.

The book joined the Himalayan range that is my to-be-read pile, but I was motivated to read it by a series of interesting emails from Paul Roberts. Paul was a friend of Kenneth Hopkins (who sounds like a delightful person) and he told me quite a bit about his life and work. I was, for instance, intrigued to learn that the model for Dr Blow was actually the writer E.H. Visiak, who was a good friend of Hopkins. This was yet another example of the fascinating correspondence that I'm fortunate to receive, and from which I learn so much.

The story begins with Blow buying a large quantity of books by Robert Southey at auction. But when he expects delivery, what in fact he receives is a large and heavy box containing the body of a dead woman. Strange! And it's even stranger when the box disappears again, almost immediately. There are quite a few funny lines and situations in this story, and if the plot is rather barmy, this isn't untypical of humorous crime fiction. I'm very grateful to Paul for drawing Kenneth Hopkins to my attention. 

Emily the Criminal - 2022 film review

Emily the Criminal is a fairly recent film which tells a pretty good story while also making some interesting points about modern society. It's all the more effective because those points, although made with clarity, aren't hammered home in a crude and tedious way. Emily is played, exceptionally well, by Aubrey Plaza (the inspiration for whose first name apparently came from a song by Bread). She is a flawed character, to say the least, but Plaza manages to enlist our sympathy for her.

Emily is weighed down by student debt. It's very sad that, around the world, there are many people like Emily, who have in effect been conned into taking out heavy student loans only to wind up in jobs that are less than rewarding. At the start of the film, we see Emily caught out in a lie to a prospective employer, and later in the story we see a ruthless employer trying to get her to do a six month unpaid internship.

Although Emily is driven to try to make a better life for herself, she finds herself lured into criminality in order to make it happen. We may not approve, but the script is good enough to make us understand and - at some points, anyway - root for her. John Patton Ford, who wrote and directed the movie, is a real talent.

Emily gets involved with a couple of brothers who are involved in credit card scams. She proves herself to be alarmingly adept at lying and cheating her way out of trouble, but there are occasional dark moments which get darker as the film goes on. From start to finish, we see people making 'bad choices'. I don't think this film sets out to justify crime, but it does quite a good job of showing how so many get sucked into it. Thought-provoking.

Dangerous Waters - 2023 film review

Ray Liotta was a compelling actor and he makes his presence felt in the later scenes of Dangerous Waters, a thriller which was the last movie he made before his sudden death in 2022. In many ways, though, the performance of Eric Dane is equally impressive. And so is that of a young Israeli actor, Odeya Rush, who has the central role in the story. She plays Rose, whose mother Alma (Saffron Burrows) has recently begun a new relationship with a man called Derek (Dane).

Derek has invited them to join him on a boat trip to Bermuda, but it's clear that Rose has reservations about her mother's choice of boyfriend. He works in the security business, a sector that covers a multitude of sins, but he does have a certain charm. Alma is impulsive and naive; Rose is much smarter. However, things take an unexpected turn when two villains board the ship. They kill Alma and shoot Derek. He survives, and so does Rose, who hid during the attack, but it's very clear by now that he has something to hide. What is it, though?

There's an entertaining review of this film in the Guardian by Phil Hoad, who said: 'Claustrophobic family drama, survivalist ordeal and balls-to-the-wall action barnstormer – any one of these would have amply filled out a single film. But director John Barr chucks all three into an unsubtle and faintly ludicrous outing that at least is never boring.' Faint praise, perhaps, but praise nonetheless. . I also liked Hoad's comparison of the 'offbeat intensity' of Liotta's performance to that of a 'deranged William Shatner'.

Hoad is right. Dangerous Waters isn't boring and despite the mounting implausibilities, I kept watching. This was partly because of the acting, but the script moves with pace, and that's generally essential in a thriller. Overall, I'd class this as decent, undemanding light entertainment. 

Forgotten Book - Ring of Terror

Ring of Terror was the last book by Michael Gilbert to be published by Hodder, who had published his novels since his debut, Close Quarters, in 1947. The novel appeared in 1995, and introduced a new character, the likeable Luke Pagan, but when Gilbert wrote another Pagan book, Hodder turned it down. Eventually, the book was taken by Robert Hale, essentially a library publisher; they also published the third Pagan novel, which was Gilbert's last. Quite a come-down, to be honest, although I mean no disrespect to Hale, who published some good books over the years.

Thirty years ago, I was astonished and rather indignant - naive as it now seems - that a publisher could treat a loyal author in this way. I recall talking to the late Carolyn Caughey, a senior Hodder editor and a very pleasant person whom I knew for many years, about it. She said the second Pagan book read like 'an old man's novel', and maybe it did (it's next on my list to read), but even so I think it's sad that Hodder dumped him. 

Ring of Terror had a very small print run in the UK, I think. At the time of writing, there was no UK first edition for sale on Abebooks, and as far as I know there was no paperback edition. That's why, for all my enthusiasm for Gilbert, it's taken me so long to acquire a copy and read it. This copy is inscribed to Gilbert's fellow Detection Club member, the former spy Kenneth Benton, in gratitude for lending him a book about espionage written by Christopher Andrew, which perhaps Gilbert used when researching the later Pagan books. Ring of Terror is actually dedicated to Don Rumbelow, former policeman and CWA Chair, whom Gilbert describes as 'the only man I know who talks and writes sense about the Siege of Sidney Street'.

And Ring of Terror is unlike Gilbert's earlier novels in being, very clearly, based on a real life case - the Siege and the events that followed it, not long before the First World War. There are also glancing references to the Steinie Morrison case. Among other real life people, Winston Churchill has a cameo role in the story. 

Gilbert did his homework on the case, and he handles the thrillerish material (and the societal issues associated with immigration) with his customary polish. As usual in his novels, there are several different viewpoints, but Luke is at the centre of things and is in many ways a typical Gilbert hero, brave, modest, and intelligent. The main problem is that I've never been hugely interested in the Siege of Sidney Street, and so I found Luke's investigations into Russian anarchists less inherently interesting than most of the storylines in Gilbert's earlier novels, although as ever the action scenes are well done. I'd have preferred more emphasis on mystery. However, it's a readable story and I'm glad I finally caught up with it.

Forgotten Book - Charteris Royal

Long before there was Casino Royale, there was Charteris Royal. First published by Gollancz in 1941, this is an obscure book that I'd probably have remained unaware of if it hadn't been for Jamie Sturgeon, who drew my attention to the work of the author, Hubert Phillips. I hadn't heard of Phillips (though I'd come across one or two of his pseudonymous short stories) but the front cover of the dustjacket proclaims that he 'has been famous for many years as one of the most ingenious of men, as well as one of the most versatile'.

He was a renowned maker of puzzles, published in the News Chronicle, and also an expert in bridge, and a noted chess player. These gifts seemed to equip him splendidly to become a writer of detective fiction in the classic mould, but perhaps unexpectedly, Charteris Royal is a thriller, set in the run-up to the Second World War, rather than a cerebral whodunit. 

Jonquil Tatham, the attractive young secretary of writer Gerrard Davenall, is kidnapped. It soon becomes clear that she has fallen into the clutches of Nazis based in England and that they want to blackmail Davenall into giving away secrets. Davenall's response is to call on the services of Rusty Bendore, who runs a small organisation called Rho Beta, which aims to combat crime and Bad People, and is comprised of a variety of people who are skilled in different fields. This is, I think, a pleasing concept and has been used in modified forms plenty of times since.

The action develops over the course of twenty-four hours. The race-against-time is a good way of ratcheting up tension in a thriller. Unfortunately, Phillips' inexperience as a novelist is all too evident. There is far too much chit-chat between the different members of Rho Beta, and not enough variety in the action for my taste. As a result, the story seems drawn-out rather than tense and attention-grabbing. This is a pity, because Phillips had a good idea here (and he may have contemplated writing more books about Rho Beta), but I don't think he developed the story well enough. Perhaps significantly, he never published another novel, which may well indicate that he was disappointed by the outcome. I'd rate this an interesting curiosity.

Calibre - 2018 film review

As he has shown in Slow Horses, Jack Lowden is a terrific actor and his presence in the cast prompted me to take a look at one of his early starring roles in the film Calibre. This is a fairly low-budget thriller written and directed by Matt Palmer, whose work is otherwise unknown to me; but on this evidence, Palmer too has a good deal of talent.

The premise is straightforward and cut from familiar cloth. Lowden plays Vaughn, whose partner is pregnant, and who goes off on a hunting trip in the Scottish Highlands with his old school friend Marcus (Martin McCann), who is a rather cocky and self-assured, as well as wealthy, businessman. They head off to a small and remote village called Culcarran and meet an assortment of locals who seem faintly sinister. It's entirely predictable that Something Terrible will happen. 

So it does, but the strength of the film is that it doesn't follow an entirely formulaic pattern. This isn't - despite one or two red herrings - a rip-off of The Wicker Man. Palmer is interested in the moral choices made by his two protagonists. Unfortunately, most of those choices turn out to be extremely unwise. Nor does the film wallow in gore; I'm glad Palmer resisted this temptation, because the under-stated nature of some crucial scenes is effective.

I was confident from the outset that there would at some point be a chase through a dark wood and I wasn't disappointed. Overall, though, the relatively low-key approach of the film works well, and I'm not surprised that it has been well reviewed. I agree with those who said that it was a good decision not to make the incomers to Culcarran crude and boisterous and English. Lowden's presence in the film ensures that the two young men's essential vulnerability comes over well. This is essentially a story about the duality of Scottish life, the tensions between the moneyed urban world and the rural communities struggling for survival. But it's not preachy - and that is always a plus. 

All Good Things - 2010 film review

All Good Things is a film based on a truly astonishing real life case in the United States with which - until I watched the movie - I was completely unfamiliar. The story is, when you know about the case, very obviously based on the life of the real estate heir Robert Durst, although in the film he is called David Marks, and is played (very well) by the versatile Ryan Gosling. In this review, I'll concentrate on the film rather than the man who inspired it (and, amazingly, approved it).

Much of the story is set in the 1970s, in a protracted flashback from a court case. Marks is the son of a dodgy tycoon (strongly portrayed by Frank Langella) who owns a chunk of Times Square and is affected by a terrible experience - aged seven, he witnessed his mother's suicide. He meets a young woman, Katie McCarthy, who has ambitions to study medicine and they begin a relationship and eventually get married. 

Katie (again well played, by another high-calibre actor, Kirsten Dunst) wants to start a family, but Marks refuses to go along with this. When she becomes pregnant, he puts her under pressure to have an abortion. Gradually the couple drift apart and Katie focuses on her medical studies. To say much more would be a spoiler, but suffice to say that there are several significant plot twists.

Because of the real-life origins of the story, it veers around in the messy way that real life does, rather than in an artistically elegant fashion. This may be why the film hasn't garnered as much praise as perhaps it deserves. However, I thought it was interesting and unusual. If you aren't familiar with the Durst case, I suggest you do what I did, and watch the film before finding out about the background to it. You may be as startled by the true story as I was...

Forgotten Book - Mr Pendlebury Makes a Catch

Anthony Webb is a fairly obscure Golden Age author who earned some good reviews in his day, especially for his series featuring an amiable amateur sleuth, getting on in years, called George Pendlebury. Webb's real name was Norman Scarlyn Wilson (1901-96) and he also wrote titles for the 'Teach Yourself' series of educational books (I'm pretty sure I recall his name from reading a couple of the books about modern languages many moons ago). I came across him in his Webb incarnation when I had the chance to buy a lovely inscribed copy of his 1939 book Mr Pendlebury Makes a Catch.

As the title suggests, the book opens at a cricket match, although it has to be said that after this good start, there's nothing more in the story for cricket lovers. We settle down to a story that involve three murders investigated not only by a local superintendent but also by Mr Pendlebury's visiting friend, Inspector Wagstaffe, and the old gentleman himself.

I don't really care for the term 'cosy crime', but if it fits any Golden Age book, it fits this one. There may be three violent deaths but the mood throughout is serene and charming - if you're charmed by Webb's light, humorous writing, that is. For me, it's something to be taken in small doses. Mr Pendlebury's circumlocutions and digressions can become a bit much, although he does get to the truth of the case in the end.

Anthony Berkeley, Milward Kennedy and Sir Hugh Walpole were among those who reviewed Webb's Pendlebury books favourably. They retain a genuine period charm, and the mystery plot is competently constructed. I have to admit that I didn't really care too much about the victims or who killed them, but I think that perhaps I wasn't intended to. I read this book in lovely summer weather - ideal for cricket - and it made perfectly satisfactory super-light entertainment. 

  

Return to Aberdyfi

I'm back home after a delightful, and highly nostalgic, birthday trip to Aberdyfi in mid-Wales. This was the seaside resort where we stayed as a family for many years while the children were growing up and we were accompanied by my mother, who was a key member of the party. After she died, I felt that Aberdyfi and the Trefeddian Hotel, where we stayed, were so closely associated with her memory that a break would be a good idea and this was my first time back since 2008. It was wonderful to revisit old haunts and the whole five-day experience brought back many happy memories.

Much has changed in my own life, and in a good way, since my last visit to Aberdyfi, but I'm glad to say that not a lot has changed about this lovely part of Wales, at least so far as I could tell; it is just as gorgeous and appealing as ever. One highlight was a trip on the world's oldest preserved railway, the Talylynn. This is an old favourite of mine, running through lovely countryside from Tywyn on the edge of Cardigan Bay to Nant Gwernol, with some pleasing stops in between, notably at the Dolgoch Falls. Next year sees the railway's 75th anniversary: an impressive achievement, and a great credit to all the volunteers who make it possible.

When I was working in the law full-time, I used to find my trips to Wales restful and therapeutic, and also positive in terms of giving me time and space to come up with fresh story ideas, sometimes connected with research in the locality. The same was true this time as we explored such places as Corris, Harlech, and Barmouth, as well as watching a kite festival on the expansive sands of Aberdyfi.

On my birthday itself there was a trip to Borth and Aberystwyth, including a return visit to the funicular railway and the camera obscura on the top of Constitution Hill as well as a wander through the ruins of Aberystwyth castle. And there was one memorable if weird incident, too. Whilst I was playing mini golf with my son at the hotel, a police car turned up and a woman police officer said that I bore a resemblance to a missing person and asked my name. It was quite surreal and unexpected. I'd like to think that the person who has gone missing is a George Clooney lookalike, but there is a deplorable counter-theory that he is suffering from dementia. But in terms of provoking ideas for mystery stories, this brief encounter was quite something!