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!

Mulholland Falls - 1996 film review

Mulholland Falls is a very good thriller dating from 1996. I liked the script, acting, camera work, and music, and I'm rather surprised that critical reaction seems to have been mixed, although that eminent film critic Roger Ebert was a fan of the movie, which was set in the early 1950s, a period captured with verve and style.

Nick Nolte, as Maxwell Hoover, leads a four-man squad of the LAPD, apparently based on a real life team, which takes a ruthless approach to law enforcement. The title of the film comes from the cops' habit of dropping miscreants from a great height off Mulholland Drive. Bruce Dern, who makes an impact in a cameo role, is the chief of police who turns a blind eye to his men's violent way with criminals.

A young woman is found dead at a construction site. She seems to have fallen from a great height - but there are no cliffs nearby. She turns out to be a good-time girl called Allison Pond (evocatively played by Jennifer Connelly) and the big twist is that, although Maxwell Hoover is happily married (to the equally attractive Melanie Griffith), he had a torrid six-month affair with Allison.

The plot thickens when a film emerges of Allison having sex with a Very Important Person. I don't want to give spoilers, but the story builds pace after a relatively steady start and I found the plot development - the script was written by Pete Dexter - quite gripping. Dave Grusin's soundtrack is well-crafted, and Chazz Palminteri, who plays Maxwell's sidekick, a man much influenced by his psychiatrist's advice, almost steals the film. All in all, a very entertaining film.

Forgotten Book - The Sister of Cain

I was unfamiliar with the work of Mary Collins unless Stark House Press reprinted her novels, but now I've read The Sister of Cain, I can see why Greg Shepard of Stark House was tempted to bring her work back into print. This book, which dates from 1943 is a strong novel combining domestic suspense with a whodunit mystery and stylistically it reminds me a little of the work of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.

Mary Collins (1908-79) grew up in California and wrote six novels between 1941 and 1949, all of them set in San Francisco, a city which has made a compelling background for so many crime stories over the years. I imagine that it was the brevity of Collins' career that has resulted in her descent into obscurity over the last seventy years, since there's no doubt that she could write.

One of the strengths of the book is the picture it gives of domestic life in the US during the Second World War, and after Pearl Harbor. While home life in the US wasn't affected as dramatically by the war as, say, life in London or Liverpool during the Blitz, there was nevertheless an impact. Here, the narrator, recently married Hilda Moreau, goes to stay with the six sisters of her husband David, who has gone off to war. Hilda is pregnant, and so, at the time she wrote the book, was Collins. The fact that she is on her own and in only limited contact with David adds to the tension and sense of claustrophobia, which Collins build with an assured touch.

The oldest sister, Pauline, is a deeply unpleasant and hypocritical woman who rules her siblings with a rod of iron. Each of them has a motive to murder her, and so do a couple of other characters - as well as Hilda herself. In fact, there are so many women behaving badly in this book that if a man had written it, he would probably be accused of sexism. It comes as no surprise when Pauline is murdered, but Collins shifts suspicion around quite skilfully and I found the story engaging. This is a good find.

The Best of Peter Lovesey Stories

The Best of Peter Lovesey Stories is a meaty volume just published by Allison & Busby and it represents a fitting memorial to the work of one of Britain's finest practitioners of the crime short story. Peter often said that he loved writing short stories and I always knew that if I asked him to contribute a new story to an anthology I was compiling, not only would he respond with his customary courtesy and positivity, he would send in a story that was of the highest calibre.

The best crime writers generally have a considerable range; they don't just stick to one type of writing. This was certainly true of Peter and his short stories covered not only a broad mix of subjects and settings, they demonstrate his mastery of narrative structure. One of my old favourites, 'Youdunnit', is a perfect example and I'm glad to see it in this book. Another is 'Arabella's Answer.'

The book kicks off with 'How Mr Smith Traced His Ancestors', a cunning tale told with characteristic felicity which was televised as 'A Man with a Fortune' in the famous ITV anthology series Tales of the Unexpected. There are several stories in the book which I commissioned, and I was touched to find Peter giving me a mention in connection 'And the Band Played On', which he wrote for Music of the Night. This was entirely characteristic of the kind man he was.

I'm very glad to say that, shortly before the end came, Peter wrote yet another story for me - 'Magic Moments' - for an anthology of stories inspired by the music of Burt Bacharach. It may even have been the last story he ever wrote - what I can say for sure is that it is terrificm and I'm looking forward very much to publishing it in due course. In the meantime, this splendid book is a wonderful compendium of good crime fiction that will give any aficionado a great deal of pleasure.