Forgotten Book - The Tube

Regular readers of this blog will know of my admiration for the books that Pierre Boileau wrote in tandem with Thomas Narcejac. Their excellent crime stories were by no means limited to the books that were brilliantly filmed as Vertigo and Les Diaboliques. They were, like Hitchcock, masters of suspense. They were also very clever plotsmiths, and The Tube is a case in point.

The book was originally published in France in 1958, under the title L'ingenieur aimait trop les chiffres, and was translated into English in 1960 by Robert Eglesfield. It continues to surprise me, by the way, that some of the duo's work remains untranslated. You'd think that their success would make their work very much in demand.

In this novel they set out to update the locked room mystery. We are presented with a classic impossible crime scenario, but in what was then a highly topical and controversial setting - a nuclear laboratory. The story opens with a shooting. The victim is a scientist who has been working on a nuclear device, misuse of which could kill millions. Not only is it impossible to figure out how the killer escaped detection - the tube containing the lethal material has gone missing. Yes, I'm afraid that health and safety systems at the lab were astonishingly lax.

The story is told with characteristic pace, and assurance - Boileau and Narcejac really were very skilled writers. They were also pleasingly ingenious. Their taste of the macabre is not quite so much in evidence here as in some of their mysteries; then again, the threat of  the exploding tube will be potent even for most readers' tastes. It's  a quick, light read, and I'm surprised that nobody has seen fit to reprint the story in English for almost sixty years.

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn - book review

A. J. Finn's debut novel The Woman in the Window has been riding high in the bestselling charts, and having read it, I can see why. Finn's story blends classic ingredients of psychological suspense with an unreliable narrator, excellent plot twists, and (especially in the early part of the book) compelling prose. There are a lot of books in this vein at present, but this is one I can safely recommend.

The premise of the story owes a great deal to the master of the emotional thriller, Cornell Woolrich: it's really lifted straight out of Rear Window, and Finn cleverly makes a virtue out of this borrowing by having his narrator, Anna Fox, talk endlessly about film noir. Anna is confined to her apartment by agoraphobia, and whiles away her time by spying on her neighbours. Needless to say, the day comes when she sees something shocking - but when the police come on the scene, her account appears to be incredible, and nobody believes her. What on earth is going on?

Although the premise is familiar, what Finn does with it is so cunningly thought out that I'd better not say too much about the way the storyline develops. I felt that Woolrich and his French disciples Boileau and Narcejac (Vertigo, based on their most famous book, is naturally referenced in this story) would not only have recognised the way Finn sets up his mystery, but also admired it. The question then is: can Finn resolve the puzzle he's created without letting us down? Woolrich in particular often struggled to avoid anti-climax, but I think Finn does an excellent job in tying up the loose ends. Having read this skilfully crafted novel, I wasn't in this least surprised to discover that Finn was an experienced book editor.

Finn's real name is Daniel Mallory, and I've been interested to read interviews in which he's discussed his experience of misdiagnosed depression - a topic I touched on the other day in the context of writers and wellbeing. That experience has evidently fed into his presentation of Anna, a deeply troubled woman, who seems to me to be portrayed very effectively. Yes, I enjoyed this book very much. The real challenge for Finn is now simply this: how can I improve on my excellent debut? 

Forgotten Book - Bird in a Cage

Frederic Dard was a successful and exceptionally prolific French crime writer whose work is little known in Britain despite the fact that he's often been compared to his friend Georges Simenon. That should change now, since Pushkin Vertigo have begun to publish some of his books.in English translation. I decided to have a look at Bird in a Cage, first published in 1961, and now translated by David Bellos.

This is a mystery set at Christmas, but if you're expecting a Parisian equivalent of The Santa Klaus Murder, you are in for a shock. It's really a noir story, with a melancholic mood, and a whiff of Boileau-Narcejac (when will more of their mysteries be translated into English, I wonder? Vertigo was far from being their only masterpiece).

The protagonist is Albert, who has come back home after years of absence. His mother is dead, and he becomes entranced by an attractive woman he chances to meet. The woman has a child (although it has to be said that the narrative does not show her parenting skills in a particularly good light) but she seems as drawn to Albert as he is to him.

Before long, however, we are confronted with a corpse, and in due course, in classic mystery fashion, the body vanishes. What is going on? I enjoyed this story, and felt that Bellos' translation worked well. It's a very short book, not much more than a novella, but none the worse for that brevity. I enjoyed reading it, and will look forward to reading more Frederic Dard.

Return from the Ashes - 1965 film review

I've mentioned the French crime novelist Hubert Monteilhet several times on this blog. Along with Boileau and Narcejac, Sebastien Japrisot, Catherine Arley and Robert Thomas, he took the post-war French story of suspense in fresh directions, and like those other writers, his work proved eminently filmable. Thanks to Sergio of that excellent blog Tipping My Fedora, I've become aware of two films of his book.Return from the Ashes. One was Phoenix, which I reviewed earlier this year and which updates the story in a very radical way. The other dates from 1965 and is rather more faithful to the original.

J. Lee Thompson does, I think, a pretty good job of turning the book into a dark and brooding movie with music by John Dankworth. The excellent cast is extremely well differentiated. Ingrid Thulin, a gifted actor who made a great impression on me many years ago in Bergman's well-regarded if rather depressing Cries and Whispers, plays the part of Michele, a very attractive and very rich widow who is also a successful doctor. Unfortunately, she falls for a good for nothing chess player (Maximilian Schell). They marry, but Michele is immediately arrested by the Nazis, and is thought to have died during the war.

In fact, she has survived the horrors of Dachau, but when she comes back home she finds that Stan, the chess-playing husband, has begun an affair with Fabi, her step-daughter, who hates her. Various complications ensue, but despite the warning words of her long-term admirer Charles (the splendid Herbert Lom) Michele remains devoted to Stan. But then Fabi tries to persuade Stan to murder Michele, so that they can be together forever, with the benefit of Michele's fortune....

I really enjoyed this one, and I'm glad that Sergio directed my attention to it. The film provides a good example of French domestic suspense, which I think has a highly distinctive flavour. The music contributes to the mood, and the acting is so good that the highly melodramatic plot seems not too implausible. It's a real shame that Monteilhet and his work are not better known in this country.

.

Forgotten Book - The House that Kills

The House that Kills was the first detective novel published by Noel Vindry, a major French writer of the Golden Age who was unknown to almost all English-speaking fans until recently, simply because nobody translated his work. Now, John Pugmire of Locked Room International, has repaired the omission,and published a nice paperback edition with an intro and appendices.

As John says in the intro, at one time Vindry (1896-1954) had a reputation to match those of two Belgians, Georges Simenon, and Stanislas-Andre Steeman (whom I've discussed previously on this blog). I was fascinated to learn that Boileau-Narcejac were huge fans of Vndry, speaking of his "unequalled virtuosity". Narcejac even went so far as to suggest that Vindry surpassed Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. I have to say that - on the evidence of Vindry's debut - this seems over the top, but Narcejac studied the genre in depth, and his opinions on it certainly command respect. So I look forward to reading Vindry's later work.

Vindry trained as an examining magistrate,and put his professional know-how to work by giving the same occupation to his Great Detective, Monsieur Allou. Vindry's focus was on puzzle rather than character,and Allou is not drawn in great depth (but then, you might say the same of Hercule Poirot). His speciality is solving impossible crimes, and here he is confronted by a bunch of them.

This is a clever book, if dry in style when compared to John Dickson Carr's atmospheric writing. Vindry was certainly ingenious, and Locked Room International have done a great job in making his debut available at long last. They also publish Paul Halter, a present day exponent of the impossible crime story who has attracted many admirers. Halter's work is also worth seeking out, and if you liked miraculous murders, I think you'll enjoy The House that Kills. Will you be able to solve the various puzzles before Allou? They aren't easy to crack believe me..  .

Forgotten Book - Evil Eye

One of the mysteries of crime fiction is why, even today, so few of the crime novels of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac have been translated into English. This was the duo who gave us Vertigo and Les Diaboliques, yet even when they were in their prime,in the Fifties, a good many of their collaborative novels went untranslated. And try laying your hands on an English language version of their earlier solo efforts...All very odd, for they were marvellous writers. I've featured their work several times on this blog, and today's Forgotten Book is Evil Eye, which Geoffrey Saintsbury translated in 1959.

It's a short novel, and the British hardback edition was bulked out by the inclusion of a novella called Sleeping Beauty, which I'll write about on another occasion (the UK paperback edition did not, I believe,include Sleeping Beauty for some reason.) The hardback is very difficult to find these days. When John Norris reviewed the book on his blog four years ago,(and an excellent and very enthusiastic review it was) I commented that I was keen to track down a copy myself. But I've only just managed to find one.

Was the book worth the wait? Yes, definitely. Boileau and Narcejac never repeated themselves, and yet somehow The Evil Eye is very characteristic of their work - one can't imagine it being written by anyone else. Their stories invariably have a touch of weirdness, and the plot is often so improbable that,in the hands of a less gifted writer, the result would be hopeless. But their work is always very readable.

Here, we have a young man, Remy, who is suddenly cured of his long-term paralysis by a healer. Once Remy can walk again and becomes independent, he becomes increasingly concerned by events in the past, which may in some way have caused the paralysis. The mood is menacing, and yet the reader can't be sure what is going on. The hallucinatory style of Boileau and Narcejac is very well captured in the translation. This isn't my favourite of their work - it's too slight, really, for that -, but it held my interest from start to finish.

Shakespeare and Company, and Paris

A well-read friend who knows my love of second-hand bookshops urged me some time ago to visit Shakespeare and Company, on Paris's Left Bank. During a short trip to the French capital, I found the shop, and discovered for myself that her praise for the place was well merited. It's hugely idiosyncratic, with places to sit and read from the substantial stock of books, not all of which are second-hand. Bags of atmosphere, and only a stone's throw from Notre Dame. It's immediately joined my list of favourite bookshops. and I'm really grateful for that recommendation.

This was my first visit to Paris for about thirty years; the occasion was a trip with my webmaster before he starts working life as a barrister. Since he'll be working in Lincoln's Inn, I felt it was about time to introduce
him to the work of Sarah Caudwell, and we each read a book of hers. Sadly, there are only four of those very funny, very clever stories - Sarah was far from prolific. There's an article about her on my website, but suffice to say that she was one of the more memorable writers I've met. I'll be featuring her work on this blog before long.

We tackled the obligatory sites, as well as some less well-known places. I climbed up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower rather less quickly than I did all those years ago, and enjoyed my first cruise on the Seine. Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur were magnificent, of course, and so were a number of smaller churches, as well as several city parks and the Arc de Triomphe. Having explored the Louvre in the past, I very much enjoyed my first visit to the Musee d'Orsay, with (among much else) a fantastic collection of Impressionist paintings.

The French have a long tradition of detective fiction, though I've read French crime novels only sporadically. Years ago, I tried Maurice Leblanc, creator of Arsene Lupin, and was slightly underwhelmed, but I did like Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room.. I enjoy Catherine Arley and one or two other suspense writers of the post-war period, but my favourite French crime writers are that gifted pair of magicians, Boileau and Narcejac. I still can't understand why so few of their books have been translated into English. As for one of today's superstars, Pierre Lemaitre, I thought Alex was very good, though I wasn't sure that some of the graphically described violence was absolutely necessary.

And, of course, what about Maigret? It's a very long time since I read any Simenon, but this trip has reminded me about a few Maigret stories in my library which I haven't got round to reading. Maybe it's time to give them a go.

The Skin I Live In - film review

When I read about Pedro Almodovar's film The Skin I Live In, the premise reminded me of Eyes Without a Face, the scary movie based on a creepy novel by those brilliant French writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. In fact, The Skin I Live In is based (quite loosely, I gather) on a book by a different French writer, Thierry Jonquet. The plot is very different from the earlier film and book, even though they both concern a brilliant plastic surgeon. But it's just as creepy.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, because there are some startling twists. Suffice to say that the film begins with a young and beautiful woman (played by Elena Anaya) who appears to be kept captive in the home of a very wealthy and controversial plastic surgeon (Antonia Banderas). There is a rather enigmatic housekeeper (Marisa Parades) and some other servants in the house. When the other servants are sent away, bad stuff starts to happen.

The story is complicated, and a good deal of the key events are revealed in dream-like flashbacks. The flashback device can be irritating and cumbersome, but I think Almodovar gets away with it very well. I found the storyline compelling, and even though this film does not flinch from sexual violence,I don't think it is handled in a gratuitously and offensive fashion, disturbing and shocking as it is. I decided to watch the film again, to spot the clues I'd missed, and found this rewarding - it added to my enjoyment of a remarkable movie, albeit one that will not be to everyone's taste.

I've only seen a few Almodovar films, but those I have watched persuade me that hey deserves his formidable reputation as a director. He's not a crime specialist, but he's adapted Ruth Rendell's Live Flesh as well as Jonquet's book. As for Jonquet, I confess I'd never heard of him,but having been impressed by the film,I looked him up. Sadly, he died relatively young not long ago, but I'd like to read the book on which this film is based and perhaps some of his other work.

Forgotten Book - Les Magiciennes

When you find a writer whose work you really enjoy, it is a rather sad moment when you have finally read all of their available books. There is, though, an added frustration if the writer is foreign, and there are plenty more titles out there- but which have yet to be translated. Such is the case with one of my favourite writing duos, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The authors of the books which formed the basis for Vertigo and Les Diaboliques were prolific, but despite their success, many of their stories have yet to appear in English (which I find very surprising, I must say.). And having stopped studying French at the age of 16, regrettably, I'm not up to reading the originals.

Happily, however, Mrs Edwards is, like our daughter, a more accomplished linguist than me, and she has made her own translation of a very interesting short novel by Boileau and Narcejac, Les Magiciennes, and this is my Forgotten Book for today (though whether it's forgotten in France, I don't know - perhaps not.).

As so often with these writers, the central plot idea is spooky and arresting. The central character, Pierre Doutre, comes from a family which has made its life in the theatrical world. When his father dies, Pierre and his mother (a nicely portrayed character) struggle to come up with a strong enough magic act that will keep them going.  And then they come across two identical - and enigmatic - twin girls, with whose help their lives are transformed.

Because the audience does not know that there are two girls who look exactly the same, rather than just one girl, the twins can be employed to produce illusions which cause a sensation. And that's exactly what happens. But when Pierre falls for one of the girls,the complications come thick and fast. This is a book about identity, but it's also a neat and vivid thriller. Apparently, like so many of the authors' stories, it was turned into a film ,but this does not seem to be easy to track down. I'd love to see it one day but in the meantime I enjoyed the novel and I hope that some enterprising publisher makes it more widely available one of these fine days.

The Leopard Man

Cornell Woolrich is a writer whose work was ideally suited for adaptation into movies. And this has been widely recognised by succeeding generations of film-makers – Wikipedia lists over 30 films based on his stories. One of the most acclaimed is a low-budget film noir directed byJacques Tourneur and released in 1943 – The Leopard Man. The source book is Black Alibi, published the year before.

It’s classic Woolrich stuff, with sinister imagery, macabre night-time incidents and a pervasive sense of foreboding. Other than the French duo Boileau and Narcejac, I can’t think of anyone who did this sort of thing as well and as consistently as Woolrich. Back in the 1980s, I went through a Woolrich phase, and devoured every story of his I could find, and I still rate him highly. And Tourneur makes good use of the material, with a short but snappy film, not much more than an hour long.

The setting is New Mexico. A young man, Jerry Manning, hires a black leopard as a gimmick to garner publicity for his girlfriend, who is a singer in a night club. A rival singer frightens the animal, and it escapes into the night. When a young girl is found savagely murdered, the leopard is the obvious culprit. But then another young woman is killed, and before long Jerry begins to suspect that a serial killer is at work.

Today, it’s easy to figure out what is going on, but that does not diminish the impact of the film. It’s pretty well made, and even though by modern standards it is scarcely the horrific film it was billed as 70 years ago, it’s still very watchable.

Fear in the Night - review

Fear in the Night is a film noir directed by Maxwell Shane in 1947 on a rather obviously low budget. It was based on a short story by William Irish, aka Cornell Woolrich, and was re-made a few years later as Nightmare starring Edward G. Robinson. In this version, Forrest DeKelley, later Bones in Star Trek, made his movie debut.

The set-up is pleasing. A man has a nightmare, finding himself in a weird, octagonal room with mirrors for walls. A murder takes place - and he commits it. He is thankful to wake up back in his hotel room, only to find that he still has the key to the room from his nightmare....

It may not be the most sophisticated mystery I've ever watched, but I found it rather enjoyable. There is a highly-wrought atmosphere from start to finish, as the man who believes he is guilty finds he cannot live with himself, even though he does not have a clue why he would have killed someone he didn't know. The solution is rational, and reasonably entertaining.

Woolrich was a master of the 'emotional thriller'. The only writers to equal his mastery in this field were Boileau and Narcejac. It's no coincidence that their books, like Woolrich's, were often made into films. They are highly visual, as well as dark. Woolrich, by the way, was gay, and I've read an article which suggests the film has a strong homosexual sub-text. But if that's right, it was lost on me.

Eyes Without a Face

I was drawn to the 1960 French film Eyes Without a Face, directed by Georges Franju, by the names of Boileau and Narcejac. They worked on the script, but it was in fact based on a novel by Jean Redon, of whom I really know nothing. A bit of research suggests that the original book may have been rather pulpy and that B and N added more sophisticated elements.

It's a film about a number of murders, but it's widely described as a horror movie, and for good reason, even though that label does not adequately convey the strangely lyrical nature of many of the scenes. Suffice to say that it's one of the most chilling and disturbing films I have ever seen.

When the film first came out, it was only a minor success and some critics and audiences were appalled by it. More than half a century later, it's been re-evaluated, and its excellence is now very widely acknowledged. Briefly, the story concerns the attempts of a plastic surgeon to reconstruct the face of his terribly disfigured daughter - played, quite brilliantly I thought, by Edith Scob. The doctor is assisted by an equally obsessed woman whose face he had previously restored.

The direction is excellent, and the score, by the legendary Maurice Jarre, makes a real impact, especially in the opening scene, when a woman is driving a car through the night with a mysterious passenger.

Choosing Boileau and Narcejac to work on the story was an inspired decision. The dialogue is sparse, but the terrible story is gripping throughout, all the way to its remarkable conclusion. Not an easy watch, but an impressive piece of work. And if anyone knows more about Jean Redon, I'd be interested to learn it.

Forgotten Book - Heart to Heart

My latest entry for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten books is another novel co-written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Heart to Heart was published in the UK In 1959, in a translation by Daphne Woodward – not long, that is, after Hitchcock turned one of the duo’s earlier books into Vertigo.

Heart to Heart is rather different from other Boileau-Narcejac novels that I have read – in fact, their ability to ring the changes and their willingness to take risks are aspects of their writing that I much admire. Here the setting is the world of popular music. Jean Leprat is a young pianist who has embarked on a dangerous affair with the glamorous Eve, who is married to Faugeres, a famous songwriter who is also a selfish and sadistic husband.

Leprat is responsible for the death of Faugeres, with Eve a witness, but at first it seems that the couple have successfully covered up their involvement. But then records arrive which, when played, feature the songwriter’s last composition – and menacing messages from him.

It is a sinister and gripping set-up, but for once the authors came up with a plot that is relatively thin. I enjoyed it, but didn’t think it reached the high level of some of their other books, such as The Prisoner. The rather clunky English prose didn’t help, either. It’s a highly charged emotional thriller, and might have benefited from a less literal translation. And also, perhaps, from a protagonist rather less self-centred and weak than Jean Leprat.

Forgotten Book - Dead Man's Bay

Some time back, I featured in Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books a novel by Catherine Arley called Woman of Straw, which was filmed with Sean Connery (although I continue to hunt in vain for a showing of the movie on the schedules). That is my favourite of the two Arley books I've read so far, but Dead Man's Bay also proved worth reading.

Arley was a French writer, several of whose thrillers were published in translation by Collins Crime Club in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She was an exponent of psychological suspense with startling plot twists in the same school as Boileau and Narcejac, Japrisot and Montheilet, although her reputation has not lasted as well.

Dead Man's Bay starts off as a routine woman-in-jeopardy novel, but eventually develops into something more sinister; the ending is very dark indeed. The set-up is straightforward: Ada is alone in a house on a remote Breton clifftop and has evidently suffered a mental collapse. She seems emotionally dependent on her rich husband Andre, but he is away on business and a sequence of troubling, though at first trivial, events causes Ada to fear for her sanity.

The flaw - to my mind - in the novel is that one needs to root for Ada, but in truth she is such a misery that one’s sympathy for her predicament soon becomes tested up to, and beyond, the limits of tolerance. Yet I found the book interesting enough to want to seek out more of her work, and discover whether she was able elsewhere to marry her undoubted talent for tension-building with more adept characterisation. In Woman of Straw, she did just that.

Therapy: review

Therapy, described as an ‘international bestseller’, was written by a leading figure in the German media, Sebastian Fitzek. It was first published in 2006 and appeared in the UK a couple of years later, though I have only just got round to reading it (a sad comment on my TBR pile, but believe me, I have some good books which have been in my possession for a lot longer which I still haven’t tackled – oh dear!)

The set-up is intriguing, and there are aspects of it which almost reminded me of the work of Boileau-Narcejac, or possibly even Cornell Woolrich, although Fitzek’s writing is very different from theirs. Josy, a 12 year old girl, has a mysterious illness and vanishes from her doctor’s surgery. Her father is Viktor Larenz, an eminent psychiatrist, who suffers a mental collapse and withdraws to a remote island in the North Sea.

His life is disturbed by the arrival on the island of a strange woman called Anna Glass, who claims to be a writer and whose characters, apparently, become real. In her last novel she wrote about a girl with a strange ailment who has vanished in circumstances very similar to Josy’s. Viktor reluctantly agrees to act as Anna’s therapist in order to solve this unsettling mystery.

This is a pretty good thriller, albeit rather bleak in tone. I enjoyed it, and there were some excellent twists in the narrative. A weakness, however, was the motivation of the culprit, which did not seem to me to be adequately explained. Nevertheless, a sound example of Eurocrime.

Forgotten Book - Spells of Evil

Spells of Evil, first published in 1961, is a little-known suspense novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, but it ranks with their more celebrated mysteries. As so often with these two writers, an outlandish story-line is made engrossing by virtue of their talent for creating a truly macabre atmosphere. Why most of their books have so long been out of print in English translation (and some have never been translated once) is inexplicable.

It’s not unusual in Boileau-Narcejac (and the other French writers who worked in the same vein) to find a charming yet weak-willed male protagonist falling in lust with a sexy but duplicitous woman, with fatal consequences. So it is here. Almost all of the story is told by a vet, Francois Rauchelle, who lives on the coast with his quiet wife Eliane. After he is called out to help a mysterious widow, Myriam Heller, who lives with a tame cheetah and an African maid, he embarks on a dangerous affair. But he soon has cause to worry that Myriam may be able to use black arts learned in Africa (the spells of the title) to murderous effect.

Boileau-Narcejac achieve their effects through a combination of clever plotting, intense prose and a choice of striking visual imagery. Myriam lives on an island linked to the mainland by a narrow causeway, and only accessible at low tide. Her bizarre domestic set-up is described vividly, as is Rauchelle’s terror when he finds himself caught in a trap. It all builds towards a startling climax from France’s masters of the surprise ending..

The blurb of the UK edition (which was translated by Daphne Woodward) gives too much of the story away, but it’s such a good and original story that the publishers’ error does not spoil things. And I do agree with the blurb writer on this: ‘The reader will fondly imagine that he knows exactly what is going to happen, but he will always be wrong.’

Trap for a Lonely Man

One of the stand-out memories of my teenage theatre-going was a trip to Chester’s Gateway Theatre to see a production of a play called Trap for a Lonely Man, involving a chap whose wife disappears and is replaced by a stranger. It proved to be an excellent thriller, with a classic final twist. Fast forward to the present, and I’ve tried to find out more about the play. It seems that it is something of a staple of provincial theatre even now, and it was written by a Frenchman, Robert Thomas.

A little more digging revealed that the play has been adapted into no fewer than four films. I haven’t seen any of them, although I’ve put in an order for Chase a Crooked Shadow, a version starring the young Richard Todd, who died recently. It also seems that Hitchcock planned to film the play, and I can well imagine that the premise would appeal to him, although he was evidently beaten to it.

The story-line is strongly reminiscent of the work of those French masters Boileau and Narcejac. I’ve mentioned before that group of writers, including Montheilhet, Arley and Valmain, who followed in the footsteps of Boileau and Narcejac, and this notable play suggests that Robert Thomas should be added to the list.

But who was Robert Thomas and what else did he write? So far, I’ve not come up with any detailed information about him, but surely he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder?

Forgotten Book - Woman at Risk

I’m fairly confident that few readers of this blog will be familiar with my latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books – even though it dates back only as far as 1974, and its author died just nine years ago, not too long after publishing his final novel. The book I’ve chosen is Woman at Risk, the author is Miles Tripp.

Tripp qualified as a solicitor after serving in the RAF during the war, and he produced no fewer than 37 novels, 14 of them featuring a private eye called John Samson. During the 1970s, I had a phase of enthusiasm for his work, and I’ve blogged previously about a very unusual novel of psychological suspense of his called Five Minutes with a Stranger.

Woman at Risk is a very different, possibly unique, novel. I don’t want to say too much about its structure, because that would spoil some of the surprises in store for anyone who cares to read it. In a nutshell, it’s a short but clever novel, with a number of quite remarkable twists.

On the face of it, the story is about a rather selfish solicitor called Robert, whose wife mysteriously disappeared three years ago. He is a workaholic and his social life is confined to a regular Friday evening get-together in a pub with three other men. But he starts an affair with the wife of a client, and in the first few pages of the story, the woman dies in his house. In a panic, he decides to bury her body in a wood. Suffice to say that this is not a wise decision, and that his sins are bound to find him out. But what his sins are, and how they are found out, are questions to which few readers will guess the answers at an early stage of this ingenious narrative.

There’s just a hint of Boileau and Narcejac about some of the melodramatic touches in this novel, and I really enjoyed devouring it. I picked up my copy by chance from a catalogue issued by that very good bookseller, Jamie Sturgeon of Littlehampton. I was attracted by Tripp’s inscription in this copy to a policeman friend. He says that ‘Anglia TV bought the TV rights of this book but couldn’t get a suitable script written.’ This puzzled me, until I realised how the complexity of the story might well defeat a script writer. To find out what I mean, you’ll have to read the book – and if you do, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Who Was Frederic Valmain?

One of the books I discovered in Hay-on-Wye was a novel I’d never heard of, by a writer unknown to me. But a glance at the back cover was enough to cause me to buy it. It was a paperback from 1965, a novel by Frederic Valmain called The Jackals (this copy does not disclose the original French title.)

The front cover bears an encomium from James Hadley Chase: ‘A book I can recommend for those who are looking for something new in suspense.’ Now, I’ve never read anything by Chase, and I’m not sure his work would appeal to me, but the back cover account of the plot – a young doctor is seduced by a woman who wants rid of her monstrous husband – suggests a story in the mould of some of the French novelists of suspense who worked at the same time as Valmain, and whom I admire: Boileau and Narcejac, Hubert Monteilhet, and Catherine Arley.

But who was the author? Initial researches have failed to reveal much, though Valmain obviously produced quite a lot of work, and some of it seems to have been filmed or televised. At least one internet site refers to him as a playwright. I consulted that great expert Xavier Lechard, but even Xavier didn’t know anything about Valmain. He told me that there was a belief that Valmain’s name was a pseudonym for a writer called Frederic Dard. But Valmain confounded that theory by giving an interview after Dard’s death. As Xavier said: ‘Valmain, as you can see, is thus a mystery writer in all meanings of the term.’

So do any of my knowledgable readers know anything about Valmain, or his work?

Forgotten Book - Praying Mantis

My latest entry for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is Praying Mantis, by Hubert Monteilhet. I’ve never heard anyone discuss the novel, even though it is a brilliant example of Eurocrime (but from a period when Eurocrime was distinctly unfashionable.) But I became aware of it back in 1982, when it was (I think) the very first film made specifically for Channel Four Television. It starred Cherie Lunghi and Jonathan Pryce and I thought it first-rate. Ever since, I’ve been trying to track down a copy, and a few weeks ago, I finally saw one in Jamie Sturgeon’s latest catalogue.

The novel was published in 1962, and it was Montheilet’s debut – and a brilliant one too. I’ve read one other of Monteilhet’s books, the excellent Return from the Ashes, and he seems to me to be good enough to be bracketed with those masters of suspense Boileau and Narcejac. Catherine Arley and the better known Sebastian Japrisot were other authors of the same era who worked in much the same territory.

The story is clever and compelling. A professor called Paul Canova takes out an extremely valuable insurance policy benefiting his wife. When his wife dies, he re-marries a beautiful but heartless woman, but before long he has an affair with a young student called Beatrice. Beatrice marries one of her teachers, Magny. But Magny has become embroiled with the second Madame Canova….

The telling of the tale is ingeniously handled – it’s done by extracts from letters, a diary, a tape recording and so on. Beatrice soon uncovers a cunning murder plot, but before long the reader is thrown into confusion about who is plotting against whom. Definitely a book that deserves to be better known.