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.