Forgotten Book - We Shot an Arrow

This has been a fantastic year for lovers of Forgotten Books; so many long-lost titles are now readily available, and I'm sure next year will see the return of many more. To celebrate, this week I'm going to highlight a Forgotten Book on each of the next four days in the run-up to Christmas, starting with one that's very obscure, but certainly of interest.

We Shot an Arrow, first published in 1939, is the work of writing duo George Goodchild and Carl Bechhofer Roberts. I have covered a couple of their books here previously, The Jury Disagree and Tidings of Joy,but I was particularly interested in this one, as it boasts one feature that is, as far as I know, unique. It's a book by two writers who play the detective - under their own names - in the story.

The story begins with Goodchild and Roberts debating the subject matter of their next novel, and taking a trip to a small town where a by-election is taking place. Roberts knows the Conservative candidate slightly, and is aware that he's a rather unpleasant character. His Labour rival seems little better. When the Tory is found dead in his bath, the death is determined to have been an accident, and the Labour man, Vansittart, becomes the town's M.P. But his success is short-lived. Soon he, too, dies in his bath....

This is an unusual novel with an odd confection of ingredients: archery, golf, politics and the by-play between the writer-protagonists. The events coincide with Neville Chamberlain's "peace pact" at Munich, and this provokes a lot of discussion. Rather too much to enable tension to be maintained, I'd say. The political background is certainly of interest,but the plot is relatively slight.

I was hoping to learn more about the authors from their self-portraits, and one poignant element of the story is that Carl Roberts talks about a near-fatal car accident in which he'd been involved in France, which provided plot material for Tidings of Joy. A scene involving a car plays an important part in the unravelling of the mystery - and these passages take on a very melancholy character once one learns that Roberts was killed in a car crash, at the age of 55 in 1949. A tragic end to a busy and fascinating life.

Forgotten Book - The Jury Disagree

My Forgotten Book for today was featured, (or more precisely, its dust jacket was featured) for about a nanosecond, in Lucy Worsley's TV show about crime fiction, when she was discussing the  Wallace case. The Jury Disagree, by George Goodchild and C.E. Bechhofer Roberts, is a fictionalised version of the case, and the authors' interpretation of the facts is as interesting as the excellent jury room setting.

The twelve jurors whose deliberations about the case they have heard form the heart of the novel are described by reference to their work, rather than by name. So we have the Watch-Maker, the Actor, the Journalist, the Clerk, and so on. This might appear rather formulaic, especially when it is the man who makes watches who is fascinated by the timeline of events in the case, and the journalist likes to interpret the facts imaginatively. But the story has a real pull, and I enjoyed it.

I thought that the authors handled the adaptation of a real life case rather well. There are differences between the detailed facts of the actual and fictional crimes, but they do not detract in any way from the appeal of the book, and the ending is neatly contrived. You can never quite be sure how things are going to work out, and it's thought-provoking that the real trial resulted in a verdict that was clearly unsustainable.Whether or not you believe that William Herbert Wallace killed his wife, a question on which opinions are divided (personally, I think he was innocent,but P.D. James felt differently) I think it's pretty clear that the evidence to find him guilty beyond reasonable doubt simply was not there.

Goodchild and Bechhofer Roberts made a good writing team and I'm reading another of their books, We Shot an Arrow, at present, which I shall cover in this feature in the new year. Their prose was functional, but they were good at maintaining pace and tension, and that is more than can be said of some Golden Age writers. Even if you are not interested in the Wallace case, The Jury Disagree remains an engaging read.

Forgotten Book - Tidings of Joy

Today's Forgotten Book is a collaborative effort from 1936 by two writers who strike me as an interesting if slightly unlikely partnership. Tidings of Joy was one of a handful of titles co-written by George Goodchild and C.E. Bechhofer Roberts. I first came across Goodchild's detective fiction when I was a small boy, while Roberts is someone I discovered much more recently - and I was rather intrigued, and perhaps surprised, to be told by a rare book dealer that his crime fiction is enthusiastically collected by some people.

Goodchild had a long and prolific career, and is best known for his novels and short stories about Inspector McLean. When I was a young boy, my grandmother lived with us, and every week she read "The Weekly News",which I started to read too. McLean stories were a staple of "The Weekly News",and for a time I enjoyed reading them -until, aged about ten,  I realised they were becoming very formulaic indeed.

Roberts was an interesting character, an Englishman with strong German connections at a time when that probably led to a degree of ostracism. He was fascinated by criminology, among many other things. Spiritualism was a particular interest, but he became very sceptical, as is clear from his portrayal of a dodgy duo involved in spiritualism in Tidings of Joy.

The eponymous Joy is a wealthy woman with a habit of widowhood. She and her latest husband, a drunk, are involved in  a car crash, and rescued by a young British doctor called Connell. Joy takes af fancy to the doctor, which he reciprocates at first, before realising she is a dangerous woman to know. The plot thickens from there. It's a light but reasonably unorthodox mystery which I found highly readable. Sayers admired an earlier book by this pair, and I hope to be writing more about them before long.