Forgotten Book - Suspicous Circumstances

My Forgotten Book for today is one of the last novels to appear under the famous pen-name of Patrick Quentin. Suspicious Circumstances, written by Hugh Wheeler, was published in 1957. At this time, I suspect Wheeler was pursuing his keen interest in showbiz which eventually led to his writing with the legendary Stephen Sondheim - Wheeler wrote the book of that wonderful musical "A Little Night Music", for instance, and was involved with "Cabaret", although sources differ as to the extent of that involvement.

So Wheeler certainly loved the showbiz world, and this shines through in the novel. The story is told by Nickie, a 19 year old young man who is devoted to his mother, once a famous actress. While he is away in France, enjoying himself with a woman called Monique, he receives an urgent summons from her to return home. Is this connected with the recent death of his mother's rival, Norma Delanay, by any chance? The answer proves to be yes.

It seems that Norma died accidentally, but Nickie is not so sure, and neither are the police. His mother, along with a number of other people in her circle, may have been at or close to the place where the accident happened. Suspicion switches around from one person to another. Whom can Nickie trust? This question of trust, suspicion and betrayal is eternally fascinating and it formed the core of my own second novel, Suspicious Minds.

Unfortunately, despite the potential of the showbiz setting, I found myself unable to warm to Nickie, his mother or anyone else in the book, and unable to care how Norma met her end. It seems to me that Wheeler was losing interest in the crime novel when he wrote this book. It has a perfunctory feel, very different from the energy that drives most of his fiction. I'm sorry to say so, but this is by far the worst Quentin I've read. But everyone has an off-day, and the other Quentins I've read are pacy and enjoyable. Please don't let my disappointment with one particular book put you off Quentin"

Forgotten Book - The Grindle Nightmare

My Forgotten Book today is The Grindle Nightmare, by Quentin Patrick, and I have to thank John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books for not only calling it to my attention, but also supplying me with a copy. Very kind of him, and, I must say, typical of the kindness which, I have found, abounds among crime bloggers and fans.

The book was first published in 1935, and was one of two books which Richard Wilson Webb, an Englishman born (like Robert Barnard) in the Essex town of Burnham, and an American journalist, Mary Louise Aswell, wrote under the pseudonym (used almost interchangeably with the name Q.Patrick – the name Patrick Quentin was used extensively in later years). Webb had earlier written with another woman, Martha Mott Kelley, but his major collaborator was Hugh Wheeler, another Englishman who eventually became famous for writing the book of musicals such as A Little Night Music.

The setting is a rather remote New England valley called Grindle, and a helpful map is supplied in true Golden Age tradition. But Grindle isn’t St Mary Mead, but a place where dark and disturbing things are happening. Animals are being mistreated, and then a young girl disappears. The narrator is a young scientist, Dr Doug Swanson, who shares his home with a fellow doctor; their work involves vivisection. Suffice to say that nobody in their right mind would call this book “cosy”. It is very dark by any standards, but especially for the time when it was written. Not one for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.

The plot is complicated, and a genuine whodunit puzzle is supplied. Mention is made of a very famous real life American murder case, which may have been a source of some inspiration for the device at the heart of the narrative. But this is a book unlike any others of its period that I have read – and it really is memorable. Short, snappy, chilling and clever, it deserves to be much better known.