The Life of Crime - the first review

When you publish a book, you 'd be less than human if you didn't wonder how people were going to react to it. After all the time you've devoted to the writing, it's natural to be anxious about the critical response. This is bound to be true of a novel, a creative work coming from one's own imagination, but it's also true of a non-fiction book - especially some of those I've written (not so much those on legal subjects!), where I've used a novelistic approach, and presented information in the style of a story, as with The Golden Age of Murder, The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books and now The Life of Crime.

It's important to realise that you can't please everyone - even when you've put years into the writing, as I've done with The Life of Crime. For me, Julian Symons' Bloody Murder is a masterpiece (even though I don't agree with many of his individual opinions) and yet he received endless criticism - and still does - some of it fair, some of it not, as well as innumerable deserved accolades. The Life of Crime is a very different book. But if a book is good enough and makes something of an impression, the fact that some people don't 'get' it or have some sort of axe to grind about it doesn't matter too much. The reality is that not every reviewer takes the trouble to consider what the author was trying to do and to judge the book on that basis, rather than in relation to what the reviewer thinks the book should have been about. 

Against that background, I was absolutely thrilled by the very first review of The Life of Crime. Not just because it was so generous, but also because the reviewer, Scott Herbertson, had taken time and care in reflecting on the aims of the book. I'm very glad, too, that he saw no obvious omissions, because the reality is that even when writing a book of this length, it's essential to be highly selective, because the subject matter is so vast and so diverse. To say that I'm encouraged by this initial reaction is a massive under-statement.

And to put a bit of icing on the cake, I've just had word of a lovely review from Kirkus: 'ambitious...a big sweeping text...an impressive range of less well-known authors...a thorough sketch of the genre's origins, its evolutions, and its flexibility in response to cultural shifts...a broad and absorbing overview of one of the most popular and enduring genres of fiction'. So - a great start, and truly gratifying.

 

Forgotten Book - Cat and Mouse

 I first read Christianna Brand's Cat and Mouse a very long time ago - probably in the early 80s. I knew Julian Symons had extolled the book in Bloody Murder as her best (I believe he was also a fan of a later novel, The Rose in Darkness) but I confess I was underwhelmed. Having forgotten pretty much everything about the story except for the fact that it's set in Wales, I've had another go. And, as sometimes happens, my judgment this time was considerably more favourable.

I've always been a fan of Brand, but at the same time I've had reservations about some aspects of her characterisation. She does set out, clearly, to create people who are much more than mere ciphers, and that is admirable. The snag, at least for me, is that her characters are often highly-strung and overwrought. Given the nightmare of being involved in a murder case, that's fair enough up to a point, but at times I think Brand overdoes the hysterics so that the angst becomes a bit irritating. That said, I suspect this is a minority opinion, at least among Golden Age fans.

Cat and Mouse is unusual in her repertoire in that it sets out very deliberately to conjure up melodrama. There is an entertaining dedication to 'Mary Lewis' (this was Brand's married name!) which references Northanger Abbey, and this sets the context for the story. What we have here is an overt homage to Austen's splendid novel (I read it as a schoolboy and loved it; time for a re-read) in terms of the melodrama. 

The catalyst for the mystery (which Brand took from a real life incident) is a set of letters received by a journalist on a magazine by a woman who calls herself Amista. It seems that Amista has married a glamorous chap called Carlyon and the journalist, while in Wales, attempts to look up the happy couple. But there is no sign of Amista and it is soon clear that Something Is Up. What follows is a twisty puzzle that is rather unorthodox and, despite those overwrought bits, intriguing and enjoyable.

Forgotten Book - One is One

Miles Tripp is an author who has intrigued me for a long time. His writing was admired by Len Deighton and Julian Symons (who mentioned him in Bloody Murder) and you can't get much better judges than those two, yet he faded into obscurity even while he was still writing, and I've not found many people who have read his books. Reading his 1968 stand-alone One is One reminded me of the quality of his writing, but it's a book which also supplies some clues as to why he never really made it big as a crime writer, despite publishing no fewer than 37 novels, including a series featuring the private eye John Samson.

The early pages of One is One chart a marriage that is seemingly on the rocks. Mark Donaldson is a businessman married to the gorgeous Marie, but her extravagance is driving him into debt. He conceives a wild plan, connected to Marie's potential inheritance, which involves killing an old man in France. At first it seems that he has got away with murder, but there is a witness to his crime...

I found this book extremely readable,while Tripp's insights into character are sometimes compelling. What is more, the story is unusual. It begins as a relatively straightforward variation on the 'inverted mystery' theme and develops into something much more elaborate. There are several surprise twists, some of them involving impersonation.

I haven't been able to find any discussion about this book, or any significant reviews, and I imagine Tripp must have been disappointed that the novel seems to have made little impression. But there are reasons for this. In a nutshell, Tripp was too unorthodox for his own good. We start by following Mark's activities, but the viewpoint keeps shifting and there are a number of flashbacks. I'm not convinced that Tripp found the best way of structuring a rather interesting plot. His chosen method doesn't quite achieve the necessary suspense, and feels a bit disjointed. This is a pity, because he has some interesting things to say about relationships, in particular those involving mutual dependence. All too often, I've found myself frustrated by the way he handled his material. But he could write very well indeed, and his novels, despite their flaws, have an admirable ambition.  

Forgotten Book - Obelists Fly High

I first came across the name of C. Daly King in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. Symons was notoriously dismissive of many Golden Age writers, although he admired Anthony Berkeley and Agatha Christie, and he clearly had a sneaking affection for King's work. I think he recognised that although King's stories were usually quite barmy and riddled with flaws of various kinds, there was something breathtaking and at times admirable about the sheer outrageousness of his use of the tropes of the classic whodunit. My feelings are much the same.

Symons felt, and again I agree, that King's most notable novel was Obelists Fly High. When introducing a 1980 reprint for Collins Crime Club (which had published several of King's books - first editions are rare and much sought-after by collectors; the jacket image comes from Mark Sutcliffe's site), he summed it up as "one of the most extraordinary detective puzzles of the twentieth century". It was the third of the "obelist" books, each of which involved a bizarre killing aboard a particular form of transportation: the first as on board ship, the second on a transcontinental express, and this one on an aeroplane.

There are three diagrams, one of them a plan of the plane. Then comes a "schedule of reported movements" of the passengers, because this is one of those books where timings and whereabouts of suspects are key. And finally there is a "schedule of actual movements", whose contents are naturally rather different. But there is more. The book begins with an epilogue. And it ends with a prologue. King was one of those writers who played games with the structure of the whodunit, and I'm sure Borges would have approved.

There is also a "cluefinder", a device I really love. Basically, it ties in with the idea of "fair play" in detection, and highlights clues in the text that the reader may have missed. It's sometimes been said that King originated the "cluefinder", which isn't the case, although the example in this book is my favourite. J.J. Connington came up with one before King turned to fiction, and his example was followed by others, including Freeman Wills Crofts. If there was an earlier pioneer of this device than Connington, I'd be interested to know, but I'm not aware of one. (Similarly, whilst other writers have begun their books with an epilogue, has anyone else ended with a prologue as well?)

What of the story? Well, it involves a threat to kill a famous surgeon. Michael Lord, King's series cop, is tasked with guarding the surgeon, but suffice to say that he doesn't make a good fist of it. There is plenty to cringe about in the story, quite apart from Lord's bungling, and King's habit of giving his characters jokey names is especially irksome. He doesn't ramble quite as much as in some other books, but his habit of inserting his own idiosyncratic opinions in his stories is also rather challenging to a modern reader. So it is undeniably a flawed novel. But if you are fascinated by the structure and techniques of the Golden Age mystery, as I am, it is a must-read.

Forgotten Book - The Chief Inspector's Statement

Maurice Procter put his experience as a policeman in Yorkshire to excellent use in a series of crime novels. His best-known book is Hell is a City, which introduced the tough but decent cop Harry Martineau, portrayed by Stanley Baker when the novel was filmed. The Chief Inspector's Statement, which predated that book, came out in 1951, and introduced another strong character, DCI Hunter of Scotland Yard. It's not a well-remembered title these days, but it's a good example of Procter's craftsmanship.

The setting is the fictitious Yorkshire village of Pennycross, and the alternative title of the story is  The Pennycross Murders. Hunter is summoned back there when a child is murdered, the second such crime in the space of a few months. His investigation of the first killing drew a blank, although he found himself attracted to the victim's older sister, Barbary. On his return, he manages to combine his investigative work with a developing friendship with Barbary.

This is a village mystery, but we are a long, long way from St Mary Mead or "Mayhem Parva" here. The mood is realistic, and rather dark, as one would expect in a story about child murders. Procter's descriptions of place are as sound as his accounts of police procedure, and although there are really only two credible suspects, he still manages to maintain interest in whodunit.

I was impressed by this book, and I can see why Procter earned a considerable reputation in the 1950s. Even those great traditionalists, the American critics Barzun and Taylor, were great fans of his work. What is rather less easy for me to understand is why Procter seems to have fallen off the critical radar since his heyday. Julian Symons never mentioned him in Bloody Murder, and his work is rarely discussed. A shame, because he was a very capable writer.

Forgotten Book - My Name is Michael Sibley

Someone asked me recently about whether I ever bother to re-read crime novels. When so many remain unread, logically, can it be a good use of time to revisit books one has read before? Well, I do re-read books, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's simply because I love them. Sometimes, too, I'm prepared to give a second chance to a book that disappointed me first time around. The latter course may be risky, but sometimes it reaps dividends.

So it was with John Bingham's debut novel, My Name is Michael Sibley. The book came out in 1952, and was praised by Julian Symons in Bloody Murder, which led me to seek it out. I must have been in my early twenties when I read it, perhaps younger, and I felt that Symons had over-praised it. But when I read it again recently, I saw why Symons liked it, and appreciated Bingham's achievement as I should have done the first time around.

The book is told in the first person by, you guessed it, Michael Sibley. He's a professional writer, and a friend of his from school days has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. A police inspector and sergeant, whose names are never revealed, come to interview him, and he tells a less than truthful story. As events unfold, this proves to have been a serious error. Along the way, we learn about the nature of the supposed friendship between Sibley and the dead man.

I suppose that, originally, I was disappointed partly by the lack of a clever twist to the murder mystery, and partly by the fact that Sibley is a deeply flawed man, hard to warm to. Nowadays, I'm much readier to appreciate the cleverness of Bingham in the way he tells his story. I suspect this book had a considerable influence on Symons' books, and I also feel that there are elements of the story which suggest that Bingham himself was influenced by Francis Iles. Be that as it may, it's a good novel, and I'm really glad I re-read it.

Death in the Dark

I'm delighted to bring marvellous news for locked room mystery fans. Locked Room International will, at the start of March, be publishing Death in the Dark by Stacey Bishop. This novel, set in New York City, was originally published in 1930 as one of pair of books issue experimentally by Faber with pictorial boards and no dust jacket. It has subsequently become one of the most sought-after rarities among crime novels.

Prior to this edition, no English language reprint has ever appeared. I'm sure the arrival on the market of a nicely produced and very affordable copy will be greeted by collectors with a good deal of pleasure. John Pugmire of LRI deserves great credit for bringing the book back to life - and he's already been rewarded by a starred review in Publishers' Weekly.

I've written an introduction to this new edition, and there's also a fascinating Afterword written by the author's nephew and executor. Mystery has, suitably enough, long surrounded this book. Julian Symons talked about it in Bloody Murder, and suggested that there was in fact another Stacey Bishop book out there somewhere. Plenty of people, including me, have tried to track it down, but it now seems clear that this novel was a one-off.

And what a one-off! Symons, who revealed that the Bishop pen-name concealed the identity of a controversial composer called George Antheil, called it "an extraordinary performance". Bob Adey said it was "an extraordinarily complex work". As John said when interviewed by Publishers' Weekly, this is "probably the only literary work of any kind in history to have had three Nobel Prize winners involved in its creation." Does that whet your appetite? I thought it might....

Forgotten Book - One Deadly Summer

I've mentioned before my admiration for Sebastien Japrisot (1931-2003), a renowned film-maker who is one of my favourite European crime writers. He conjures up plots as tricky as those of Arley and Boileau-Narcejac, but the stand-out feature of his work is the hypnotic quality of his writing. These attributes are evident in One Deadly Summer (1977), well translated by Alan Sheridan, which was adapted into a successful film starring Isabelle Adjani, which - as yet - I haven't seen.

This is a story with multiple narrators, and Japrisot uses the device cleverly to reveal layer after layer of his psychological melodrama. We start with "Ping Pong", a naive but rather likeable man who is a mechanic and volunteer fireman with a crush on a beautiful but mysterious nineteen year old girl, Eliane, often known as Elle. When Elle sets out to seduce him, we realise that she has an ulterior motive. But what exactly does she have in mind?

From an early point, it becomes evident that this is a story about revenge for an incident that occurred twenty years earlier, but what exactly happened, and who was involved is not quite so clear. Elle is as charismatic as she is scheming, and as she insinuates her way into Ping Pong's family life, we know that something terrible is destined to happen. Japrisot makes the reader desperate to find out exactly what fate has store for his characters.

You'll have gathered that I really admired this book. Japrisot was hugely successful in France, but has never been as well known in Britain, though I came to his work because it was mentioned by Julian Symons in Bloody Murder, such a great source of information back in the 70s. I am, though, much more of a fan of Japrisot than was Symons. It's a real shame that he didn't write more novels; I haven't read a book of his that I didn't enjoy.

Forgotten Book - The Ingenious Mr Stone

I first became aware of Robert Player's debut novel The Ingenious Mr Stone thanks to Julian Symons' Bloody Murder, a book which introduced me to many fine writers and novels (if The Golden Age of Murder does as much for others as Symons' book did for me, I'll be more than satisfied!)) Symons included  the novel in a disparate collection of "curiosities and singletons" whose very randomness was, for me, part of its appeal. He said the book "is notable for the evident enjoyment with which it is written, its humour, and the outrageous (as late as 1945) use of more than one disguise."

When I first read the novel, I enjoyed it, but not in fact as much as I did when I went back to it, having allowed enough time to have elapsed to have forgotten most of the story. Perhaps I'm better able to appreciate it now. As Symons noted, the structure is reminiscent of that of The Moonstone, and two of Player's three narrators are, if not totally unreliable, at least not to be trusted in all their judgements.

The story is sub-titled "The Documents in the Langdon-Miles case", and it tells, or purports to tell, a tale dating back a decade or so, to 1931, and begins with a foreword written by Adam Muir, a crusty old Scottish lawyer, speaking about the deaths, in quick succession, of two sisters. Almost half the story is told by Sophie Coppock, secretary and bursar of a girls' school, and a fervent admirer of the head teacher who was the first of the women to die. Her account is full of tantalising clue which makes little sense to begin with, until an explanation is forthcoming.

That explanation is given by an elderly woman who is Sophie's aunt, and who "describes the methods used by Lysander Stone in solving the Langdon-Miles problem". We are not, in fact, introduced to Lysander Stone until the book is half way through, and this is just one of many unusual features of a remarkably enjoyable story. Julian Symons was a good judge, and this one is definitely recommended. It's odd that Player did not return to crime fiction until the Seventies - not long before his death - but even if his other work did not quite match the brilliance of his debut, The Ingenious Mr Stone is a great example of a very clever and entertaining whodunit..

Forgotten Book - Scarweather

Scarweather, first published in 1934, is the third book by Anthony Rolls (real name C.E. Vulliamy) that I've covered in this blog, and it's a distinctive and interesting novel, with pleasing touches of satiric wit, especially at the expense of archaeologists. One of the unusual features of the novel is that the events described take place over an extended period - a decade and a half. The action kicks off just before the start of the First World War, but the final drama is enacted much later.

The story is told by a young barrister called John Farringdale, who has to be one of the most naive fictional lawyers I've encountered in a long time. The detective work - unhurried, to say the least - is done by Farringdale's mentor, a gifted all-rounder called Ellingham, who is presented in such a way that I did wonder if Vulliamy had thought of using him in more than one story.

Much of the action takes place at a lonely spot on the northern coast called Scarweather. Apparently there is somewhere called Scarweather Sands in the author's native Wales, but his fictional version is located in England - presumably on the east coast, rather than the west, though I couldn't identify it with any resort that I know; certainly not with Scarborough. Farringdale, his friend Eric, and Ellingham, get to know Professor Reisby and his gorgeous wife Hilda, who live at Scarweather, and a sinister sequence of events begins to unfold.

I found the style of writing enjoyable; Scarweather's a good read. The plot has a pleasing central idea, but the main flaw of the book, in my opinion, is that the final revelation is obvious long, long before the end. I was hoping for an unexpected twist, but no luck. This seems to me to be Vulliamy's weakness as a crime writer; he had a gift for coming up with terrific ideas, but struggled to sustain plot development and narrative tension to the end of his books. This may explain why his work has faded from view, but his merits are such that he deserves rediscovery.

Golden Age commentators have had mixed views about him over the years. There is a good essay about him in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers by the very knowledgeable Charles Shibuk, and Barry Pike is another admirer, but Barzun and Taylor were not keen, and Julian Symons expressed some reservations in Bloody Murder. As ever,  Curt Evan's blog is informative and includes a review of this novel; he also published an article about Vulliamy in CADS  a couple of issues back.

Incidentally, when I wrote about Vulliamy on this blog five and a half years ago (blimey, can it be that long?) I mentioned that I have a signed copy of his late book Floral Tribute, but had never read it. Alas and alack, I still haven't got round to it. But I really, really, intend to make the effort now....

Forgotten Book - Criminal Sentences

Next week, I will revert to my usual Friday pattern of a Forgotten Book which is a crime novel (and the author I have in mind is a very good exponent of Golden Age fiction.) Today, though, as a further tribute to the late Bob Adey, whose funeral took place this week, I'd like to talk about another "book about the books". This time it's a title from 1997, Criminal Sentences, by Steve Haste.

I've mentioned this book once or twice before, but I've yet to find anyone else who has read it. Surely there must be someone out there who shares my enthusiasm for it? The sub-title is self-explanatory: "True crime in fiction in drama." This is a book about real life cases that inspired crime fiction, a subject which, I would argue, is of great importance to any understanding of the genre's history and development. Because, from Poe, Collins and Conan Doyle onwards, crime writers have made great use of "true crime" in their fiction.

I don't claim that Haste's book is totally comprehensive. There are some notable novels inspired by fiction which are not mentioned, along with a number of rather obscure titles that have been overlooked. And there are a number of significant murder cases that are not covered either. But that is inevitable in a pioneering work of this kind. It's not possible to cover everything, and it would be futile to pretend otherwise.

Haste does a great job of summarising the cases, and then listing works of fiction derived from them. Many are Golden Age titles, but there are many others. He writes in a concise style, and that's a strength in this sort of reference book. The particular joy that comes from reading this book is the chance to seek out books of which one was previously unaware, where they fictionalise interesting crimes. If I read a "book about books", I like to be pointed to unfamiliar titles that I might enjoy reading (this is part of the reason why I've always admired Julian Symons' Bloody Murder.) Steve Haste's book does this, in an unfussy and enjoyable way. Will there ever be a second, updated edition? I have never met or had any contact with Mr Haste, but I would love to think he is contemplating a new edition.

Writing about the Crime Genre

I'm fascinated not only by crime fiction, but also by books about the genre. This stems from my teens, when I first read Julian Symons' Bloody Murder, and learned a great deal about my favourite form of entertainment reading. One of the many strengths of the book is the pointers that Symons gives to titles worth reading (including many that took me a very long time to track down - one or two I've still never seen) and I continue to refer to it regularly. Another great merit of the book, by the way, is that Symons' prose is lean and highly readable.

The book prompted me to write a letter that was the closest I've ever come to sending a fan letter. Shortly after I left university, I had the temerity to drop Symons a line, and tell him how much I admired his book - but I questioned one or two things he'd said about Francis Iles' books, and suggested that he might have mentioned C.S. Forester's Payment Deserved, which somewhat anticipates Malice Aforethought, To my delight (and surprise) he responded with a charming and very thoughtful letter; he was well aware of Forester's book, and in fact he included it in a revised edition of Bloody Murder. He had a reputation in some quarters as being a rather grumpy chap, but I found him delightful, and did so all over again, when I  met him in person two or three times, many years later.He was clearly happy to debate opinions that conflicted with his own, as long as they were expressed in a courteous and measured way, and that is surely one of the marks of a civilised mind.

Since then, I've devoured scores and scores of books about the genre in all its aspects. On Thursday, I plan to write a post about ten favourites, but now let me just mention some new or forthcoming books by friends that are quite excellent, although like many other fine books, they are not in the list. I'll be covering B.J. Rahn's The World of Sherlock Holmes shortly, and I'm very much looking forward to an ebook reissue of Jessica Mann's Deadlier than the Male which will become available soon - details to follow.

And then there's Peter Lewis's Eric Ambler: a literary biography, a revised edition of which is now available from Endeavour Press as an ebook and via Createspace in print form..Peter contributed a guest blog about the book recently, and I was delighted by its new incarnation, almost a quarter of a century after it first earned acclaim. He makes the telling point right at the end that Ambler did so much to blur the boundaries between "the novel" and "the spy novel" or "the thriller". I would add that one thing that can be wearisome in books about the genre (if overdone) is extensive discussion of distinctions between, say, "thrillers" and "detective novels" or prolonged agonising about the precise definition of a "crime novel" or a "mystery". These are all useful terms,and they have their place, but they can also assume undue importance. Focus too much on such detail, and you risk losing sight of the big picture, or becoming uncertain of its true nature. I'm not sure, for instance, whether the great Julian's thesis that the detective novel had transformed into something superior, the crime novel, was really as helpful as it may have seemed when Bloody Murder first appeared. But to say that does not diminish his overall achievement. Just as the perfect novel can't be written, nor can the perfect book about crime fiction.

Last week, Curt Evans included on his blog an interesting piece which focused on writing about the Golden Age, and mentioned The Golden Age of Murder in very positive terms. As Curt anticipates, my views differ from those of Symons and Colin Watson (whose Snobbery With Violence is nevertheless a very good read) in numerous respects. Both men had a clear and credible point of view, but it led them to overlook some of the more interesting sub-texts in Golden Age fiction. Or at least, that's what I think, and that's what The Golden Age of Murder is -in part - about. In the run-up to publication, I'll discuss a number of aspects of my approach to writing the book. It was quite a departure for me, and one that has taken a great deal of work over a good many years. But now, thank goodness, the manuscript has been copy-edited (by another writer about popular culture, in fact) and best of all, Harper Collins have agreed to take on the task of preparing the index! .

Forgotten Book - Sudden Death

Exceptionally, my Forgotten Book for today is a nineteenth century crime novel written by a baron, no less, who, for unexplained reasons, never revisited the genre. The author is B.C. Skottowe, and the book is Sudden Death, which has the splendid sub-title My Lady the Wolf. Britiffe Constable (what wonderful forenames!) Skottowe was born in 1857 and died in 1925, a year before the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Sudden Death was first published in 1886, the year before Sherlock Holmes made his debut, so Skottowe certainly ranks as one of our earliest crime writers and was a young man when he wrote this one. And in fact, there is a kind of youthful gusto about the story, which helps to overcome the plausibility deficit. Skottowe was educated at New College, Oxford, and had wide-ranging interests (one of his books was A Short History of Parliament), but sadly, I don't know a great deal more about him.

I first heard about the book when I read Julian Symons' marvellous Bloody Murder. Symons described the book as a particular curiosity, but unfortunately explained why this was so by summarising the story, including the solution. I shall avoid a similar spoiler here. Yet despite knowing the plot, I have wanted to read this book ever since I read what Symons said about it. Unfortunately, the book is pretty rare, and I've only just tracked down a copy.

The story is told by Jack Buchanan, a wealthy young man, who witnesses a murder committed on  a cliff top by a mysterious woman. She escapes and cannot be traced. Three years later, Jack is spending time in Homburg with a group of equally well-off acquaintances when another murder occurs and the prime suspect - yes! - bears an uncanny resemblance to the cliff top killer. The plot thickens from there.

The prose and literary style of Sudden Death may be quite decorous (if sometimes over the top by modern standards) but the story is really all about sex and sexual ambiguity. It's a strange, uneven story, yet still very readable,and I'm really glad that my long search for it has borne fruit. Symons was right, it is a curiosity. Yes, it's the work of a youthful and inexperienced writer, rather than a mature novelist, but to anyone with a strong interest in Victorian crime fiction, I'd say it is a must-read, not least because of its historical significance. It's a real shame, and also a mystery, that Skottowe never returned to the genre. I can't summon up the same enthusiasm for his history of Parliament.

Forgotten Book - Death in the Dark

Death in the Dark by Stacey Bishop is today's Forgotten Book. I've been hunting for it for a good many years - I first heard of it when I read Julian Symons' wonderful history of the genre, Bloody Murder, a book which interested me in a great many books and writers of which I'd never previously heard (in part because their books weren't in my local library). The book was published in 1930, but is extremely rare. I'm glad I've finally managed to read it, though to buy a copy would be beyond my budget - in fact, so obscure is it, that I've never seen a copy for sale.

As Symons indicated, it's an extraordinary book, written by an extraordinary man. Stacey Bishop was a pseudonym for Georges Antheil, a controversial American avant-garde composer who was a great fan of Stravinsky, and also a good friend of Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot. Stravinsky and Pound get generous mentions in the story, while the book's UK edition was published by Faber, a company with which Eliot was very closely connected.

The book begins in dazzling fashion, setting out a summary of what is to happen (an impossible crime is included) in a tantalising way that is almost impossible to resist .In classic fashion, we're also provided with a plan of the apartment in which the first shooting (in a series of them) takes place. The story is told by Stacey Bishop, who acts as a Dr Watson to the brilliant sleuth Stephan Bayard.

There are, I am sure, a lot of in-jokes in this story, most of which were lost on me. Bishop has a great deal to say about modern music, and I'm sure he was paying off old scores. There's a touch of S.S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen in the complexity of the problem, but the small and thinly characterised circle of suspects didn't appeal to me very much. I found the whole thing fascinating but highly eccentric and the interest of this book lies in its oddity, its rarity and the remarkable nature of the author rather than in the excellence of the plot. I'm delighted I found it, though, and I'm very grateful to the kind person who made it possible. Symons mentioned a rumour that there was a second Stacey Bishop book, but there's no evidence to suggest that Antheil ever returned to the genre. One thing is for sure, if he had written another crime story, it could not have been much stranger than this one.

Plausibility and Patricia Highsmith

The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith has been made into a film, something I learned immediately after reading the book for the first time. I'm a Highsmith fan, and have read quite a lot of her work over the years, bu this title had escaped my attention, although Julian Symons admired it, and mentioned it in Bloody Murder. Fitfy years after it was published, it remains a gripping read - although Symons rightly made it clear that not everyone "gets" Highsmith, because of her strange outlook on the world, and the odd way in which her people behave.

And she could be inconsistent - I've also recently read A Game for the Living, which has a fascinating and very well evoked setting (Mexico) but not much else to recommend it in my opinion. Highsmith herself judged it one of her failures, perhaps because it is a sort of whodunit, and the feeble mystery is poorly constructed (I wasn't surprised to learn that she changed her solution, though she didn't come up with a satisfying one.) As in The Two Faces of January, the focus is on a rather odd relationship between a couple of youngish men, but although the book opens with the savage murder and mutilation of the woman both men slept with, tension soon dissipates, and even a mysterious message apparently sent by the dead woman is handled in a casual, anti-climactic way.

Back to The Two Faces of January. The story is told from the perspectives of two men. Chester MacFarland is an American con man travelling in Europe with his pretty young wife Colette. They are staying in Athens at the start of the story, as is a young American called Rydal Keener, a former law student, who spots the couple and thinks that Chester is like his father, while Colette resembles a girl with whom he misbehaved in his teens. Rydal finds himself strangely drawn to the MacFarlands, and when Chester kills a Greek police officer by mistake, Rydal - for no instantly obvious reason - helps him to get away with it.

None of the three main characters behave in a predictable way, and this seemingly irrational way of living, quite typical of Highsmithland, can be off-putting to some readers. Interestingly, her American editor, the legendary Joan Kahn, rejected this book, and she was herself unhappy with what she'd done, re-writing extensively. Yet if you buy into the characters, it's a very rewarding read. The settings - Athens, Crete, Paris - add to a feeling of exoticism, certainly by standards of Fifties fiction, which is a hallmark of many of her books..

Highsmith was interested in the choices that people make in life, and this is very fertile territory for any crime novelist. I suppose the closest I've come to a Highsmith (or Rendell) type of character is Guy in The Arsenic Labyrinth. I really enjoyed writing him. The challenge is to make the way that people like Chester and Rydal behave seem believable. It requires an intensity of vision and writing that makes even apparently inconsistent behaviour (I'm thinking of what Chester does at the end of the story) seem plausible. This is much easier said than done, but in my opinion this particular book is an example of Highsmith at her best. I would admit that the quality of her novels, except perhaps those that revisited Tom Ripley, slipped after the late Sixties, but she remains in my view one of the most notable crime writers of the 20th century. If you haven't read this one, I can recommend it. I only hope the film will be as good.

Harry Keating

The first book  about crime fiction that I read was Bloody Murder, by Julian Symons. It remains a classic commentary on the genre. I also much enjoyed Symons novels, and before long I tried another novelist of distinction who doubled as a crime critic, H.R.F. Keating. I didn't know it at the time, but Symons and Keating were very good friends. And I certainly didn't know that eventually, I would meet both men, and find them as pleasant in person as they were incisive in print.

I got to know Harry Keating rather better than Julian Symons, and I also met Sheila Mitchell, an actor who was Harry's wife. Harry, Sheila and I spent some time together at Malice Domestic in Washington D.C. when Harry was guest of honour, and they were kind enough to invite me to join them at their table for the main banquet. Later we met from time to time at the Detection Club. Harry's death was a great loss to family and friends, to the Club, of which he was a former President, and to the genre as a whole..

Sheila, I'm glad to say, is remarkably fit and active and recently I had the privilege of staying at her home when in London to attend a Detection Club dinner. She showed me the early chapters of a biography of Harry which she has more or less completed, and which I very much hope will attract a major publisher. I learned a great deal from her about Harry's early career. Sitting in the study where Harry wrote so many notable books - two of the CWA Gold Daggers was a genuine thrill. So too was a taxi trip through the city that evening, in the company of Sheila and her friend P.D. James, with whom I had a fascinating conversation over dinner. Truly memorable.

I'm glad to say that most of Harry's books remain readily available, no mean feat given that he was prolific. It's a reminder of his enduring popularity. There is, by the way, a special deal on his novel A Long Walk to Wimbledon on Amazon tomorrow. An excellent chance for you to catch up with an intriguingly different book from one of the major figures of the genre in Britain during the past fifty years. And if you want to know a bit more about the man and his work, there's an essay I wrote about him on the articles page of my website.

Jacques Barzun R.I.P.

There's an excellent tribute on Curt Evans' blog to Jacques Barzun, who has died at the ripe old age of 104. Curt says most of the things I'd like to mention about Barzun,a crtic of whom I first became aware through reading Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. Symons disagreed with Barzun about many aspects of crime fiction, but I'm certain both men had a great deal of respect for each other.

A Catalogue of Crime is a fascinating reference work, and long ago I invested in both editions. Barzun and his collaborator Taylor comment on many books that were otherwise ignored in reference works about detective fiction, and I suspect they would be delighted to know that "forgotten books" of the type they enjoyed are finally emerging from obscurity thanks to digital publishing and internet commentaries. It is, mind you, an idiosyncratic text, and like all reference books it contains the occasional howler (such as locating Knutsford in Ireland). But it's a terrific book to dip into, and one I strongly recommend.

One does not have to agree with all (or even most) of what Barzun wrote about the genre to recognise the value and importance of his contribution to crime fiction criticism. His love of classic detective fiction became unfashionable, but - even though I'm more in the Symons camp in many ways - I think that the best of the books that he lauded will endure for as long as crime fiction is read, and his acute assessments of many of those books will remain indispensable not only for confirmed Golden Age fans but also for others who come to recognise the merits of the classic mystery, as well as its potential limitations - a group that is, I sense, growing quite rapidly, something of which Barzun would surely have approved.

R.T. Campbell

I’ve been rather intrigued by the work of R.T Campbell ever since, many years ago, I first read about him in Bloody Murder, the superb history of the genre written by Julian Symons. Symons was a friend of Ruthven Todd, a Scots poet who dashed off crime novels under the Campbell name. Todd contributed, if only as a character model, to Symons’ crime debut, The Immaterial Murder Case.

As Symons said, there was even a lack of certainty about how many of the Campbell books were actually published. Todd himself didn’t seem to know. But now, at last, there is a solution to the mystery. I’m not going to reveal it, because the book which tells the story of Todd’s crime writing is well worth obtaining. Take Thee a Sharp Knife has just been published by Lomax Press in an attractively produced limited edition. I think it’s marvellous that such an obscure book should be granted a new life, in high quality format.

A couple of the Todd books were reprinted a couple of decades back, byDover. Of these, I have read Bodies in a Bookshop, which entertained me without being so memorable that I can now recall the story-line. Campbell didn’t rate his work as Todd, but I think he was being too hard on himself.

The story is annotated by Forbes Gibbs, and contains a note by Peter Main on the Campbell novels, as well as nice reminiscence piece by Todd’s son. This material does add to our stock of knowledge about a likeable writer, and I’m looking forward to reading the book from cover to cover.

Arthur Machen

When I wrote about the CWA conference in Abergavenny recently, I mentioned that as well as locally born Ethel Lina White, another writer from South Wales came to my attention that week-end. This was, in fact, Arthur Machen, who was born not too far away in Caerleon-on-Usk (the Usk, as I discovered, is a lovely river and there are a number of very pleasant towns in its environs.)

There is a nice little museum at Abergavenny Castle, and when we visited it, I was interested to see a small exhibition about the life and work of Arthur Machen. I first came across Machen’s name many years ago, when I read Julian Symons’ brilliant Bloody Murder. He praises Machen’s book The Three Impostors, while noting that ‘it falls outside the detective canon’ and describing it as a tale of terror.

The opening line of the book, Symons says, is both tantalising and disturbing: ‘And Mr Joseph Waters is going to stay the night?’ When I first read this, I thought Symons was over-stating the impact of that sentence, and thought it rather ordinary, but on reflection I agree it has a sinister, fairly subtle, quality..

Machen is featured at length in Julia Briggs’ excellent study of supernatural fiction, Night Visitors, which is introducing me to some very interesting writers and stories. He clearly retains a power to appeal to the modern enthusiast – I learned in Abergavenny that there is a Friends of Arthur Machen Society (FOAM!) and for all I know he may even have a Facebook fan club.

Talking About Detective Fiction

I devoured P.D. James’ new book about detective stories with a great deal of enthusiasm, as well as interest. Talking About Detective Fiction is a short book, and naturally, therefore, it cannot compare with some of the much more detailed studies of the genre (my favourite remains Julian Symons’ masterly Bloody Murder, and I was pleased to see that Symons is mentioned more than once by James.) But it is a pleasure to read.

With books of this kind, much critical attention often focuses on the boundaries that the author chooses to draw. Whereas Symons tried to show that the detective story had transformed into the crime novel, James differentiates the detective story both from ‘mainstream fiction and the generality of crime novels’. The difference, she argues, is that detective stories have ‘a highly organised structure and recognised conventions.’ The trouble with generalised dividing lines, of course, is that one can always come up with exceptions to the general rule. But this doesn’t really matter. James, like Symons, offers an assessment of our favourite genre that is articulate and appealing.

This is a highly personal book, and I found James’ references to her own work illuminating. She emphasises, of course, her fascination with settings for murder and explains how, in Original Sin, she tried to ensure that the River Thames exerted ‘a unifying and dominant influence on both the characters and the plot.’

Whenever I have heard James speak, I have been struck by her very agreeable wit – something which is not as evident in her novels, which can be rather bleak in mood. For instance, I liked her comment here about Baroness Orczy’s detective Lady Molly, who has the blokes at Scotland Yard swooning as she hunts for the truth about the murder for which her husband was wrongly convicted: ‘I suspect that Lady Molly’s husband was in no hurry to be liberated from Dartmoor Prison.’ Quite.