Christopher Fowler R.I.P.

 

High-calibre crime writing suffered a grievous loss with the death last week of Christopher Fowler. As is well-known, Chris had been suffering from cancer from some time. He and I have for many years shared a literary agent - first Mandy Little and then James Wills - and it was Mandy who first drew his work to my attention almost twenty years ago, sending me a book of his short stories, Demonized. He was a versatile writer, as accomplished an exponent of non-fiction (such as Film Freak) as he was of different forms of fiction. From then on, we corresponded intermittently, but much more regularly in recent years.

He was a Londoner who knew the city inside out and his love of London shone through in his Bryant and May mysteries. The series began in 2004 with Full Dark House - I was lucky enough to snaffle a first edition and was immediately impressed. In all, the series ran to twenty titles. It's great fun and GA fans might like to know that his enthusiasm for Edmund Crispin and The Moving Toyshop influenced The Victoria Vanishes.

I didn't get the chance to see Chris very often, but he was excellent company and I always enjoyed our occasional get-togethers and I had the pleasure of being there to cheer him when he won the CWA Dagger in the Library seven years ago. He contributed several short stories to anthologies that I edited and each was delightfully crafted and a joy to read. We also shared a great interest in obscure writers, which in Chris' case surfaced in many articles as well as in Invisible Ink and The Book of Forgotten Authors.

Chris had been unwell for some time prior to his election to membership of the Detection Club. However, he responded well to unlicensed, experimental treatment and was in wonderful form on the occasion of his initiation at the Ritz in October 2021. He, his fellow initiate Lynne Truss, his husband Pete, James Wills and I had a great couple of hours after the dinner, chatting in the bar until it was throwing-out time. I took the photo above of Lynne and Chris that night.

At the end of January, Chris sent me a very kind and unforgettably poignant email. He was housebound, but still able to do a little writing. He told me he'd completed his collection of my anthologies and added, in a memorable phrase, 'I hope we meet again in libraries yet undiscovered.' And he said he had three more books waiting to be published - excellent news for all his fans, who will miss him and his work a great deal.

The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler

Christopher Fowler, a worthy winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library a couple of years back, is one of the most interesting writers around. I first encountered his work through a book of short stories Demonized. It's a collection of dark tales that appealed to me a lot. I started to read and enjoy his flavoursome Bryant and May novels, and I've also appreciated his non-fiction. He and I have met several times, though we've never found the time for a long conversation, and one of these days, I hope to repair that omission..

His latest book is another non-fiction work, The Book of Forgotten Authors, and it displays the qualities that appeal to me in all his work. It's quirky, witty, and thoroughly entertaining. Like all the best books, from time to time this one confounds expectations. The opinions he expresses, the judgments he makes, are often provocative - in a good way. Like another (albeit very different) writer whom I admire, Julian Symons, Chris Fowler has the confidence to recognise that others may disagree, and the good sense to realise that this doesn't matter a jot.

This is not a book that focuses exclusively on crime writers - in fact, it ranges widely (and I was very pleased to find that he covers various authors I've never even heard of, alongside one or two who may be turning in their graves now they've been labelled "forgotten"). But there's a good deal about crime fiction, and the writers he features range from Edgar Wallace and Georgette Heyer to Kyril Bonfiglioli, John Creasey, and Boileau and Narcejac. Overall, the book's a treasure trove of intriguing trivia. It's also packed with crisp, off-beat comment..

Discussions of 99 individual authors are interspersed with longer sections covering a miscellany of topics. Some of these, like the choices of the featured authors, have a rather random feel to them, but that's part of the appeal of this book. All of the entries contain something to interest and amuse readers who love popular literature. And the underlying message that I take from Chris Fowler's book  is that, even for those writers who achieve huge success, fame is often fleeting, and perhaps matters much less in the long run than we might believe. .

Invisible Ink by Christopher Fowler

I'm very keen on "books about books" and have just finished reading one that is an absolute gem. It's early days, but if I read a more entertaining book about books in the whole of 2013, I'll count myself extremely fortunate. I'm talking about a little volume called Invisible Ink: How 100  Great Authors Disappeared. The publisher - not previously known to me - is Strange Attractor Press, and the author is Christopher Fowler.

Chris Fowler is someone I've only met very briefly in person, though we do share an agent, but I've been delighted to receive a couple of brilliant short stories from him for CWA anthologies, featuring his series characters Bryant and May. His writing is distinguished by a combination of intelligence and wit that is very much to my taste, and these qualities are constantly in evidence throughout this little book.

The title really is self-explanatory. It's based on a long series of articles Chris Fowler wrote for  The Independent, and at times the pieces show their journalistic origins. There are a few errors of fact, of the kind that crop up in all books like this. For instance, Harry Keating did not produce "the definitive biography of Agatha Christie", but rather edited a book of essays about her. It is also a pity that not only does the book lack an index, there isn't even a list of contents. But at least this meant that it was a pleasant surprise to keep reading and find such great choices of author and so many fascinating and unexpected anecdotes.

There are far too many good lines for me to quote them all, but I really loved the description of Ronald Firbank as "a sort of polar opposite to Andy McNab." Quite a lot of interesting crime writers are featured (but is Harry, who died less than two years ago, really forgotten? it's a grim thought), including the likes of Gladys Mitchell, John Dickson Carr and Austin Freeman. However, there are some people I confess I've never even heard of and some of their personal stories were gripping. Fowler's gift is to make you want to read what his chosen hundred (or at least, most of them) have written, even though each of his pieces is short as well as snappy. All I want now is for him to find another hundred equally fascinating authors to tell us about. In the meantime, I am sure many readers of this blog will enjoy this book as much as I did.

Scorpion Press and Original Sins

I'm delighted to report that I have received my copy of the Scorpion Press limited edition of the latest anthology that I have edited on behalf of the Crime Writers' Association, Original Sins. Although I once contributed a short story to an anthology that was turned into a limited edition, this is the first time that a book I have edited myself has been produced for the collectors' market.

Scorpion Press have been producing very attractive collectors' editions for about 20 years now, and I'm very pleased with their work on Original Sins. It is beautifully bound, and contains the signatures of all the contributors – including such leading lights of the genre as Reginald Hill, Christopher Fowler, Sophie Hannah and Andrew Taylor.

A special feature of the book – which did not appear in the mass-market hardback or paperback editions published by Severn House towards the end of last year – is an essay written by Michael Johnson, who runs Scorpion Press. This celebrates the work of the late Lionel Davidson, and Michael and I thought it was appropriate to pay tribute to Lionel's distinguished career in a CWA anthology, given that he won no fewer than three CWA Gold Daggers.

The reality is that relatively few of us buy mysteries in hardback at any time, let alone in rather more expensive limited edition formats. However, if you are ever on the lookout for a really attractive present of a special nature for a true mystery fan, it is worth keeping the productions of Scorpion Press in mind. I have picked up a few of their books over the years, and they are prized possessions. And Michael's dedication to the cause of publishing beautiful crime books does, I think, deserve a great deal of support.

The Serial Thrillers and Marketing Books

Transworld have sent me a sampler of book extracts entitled The Serial Thrillers (sub-title ‘Fourteen Killer Reads’) to publicise a group of their leading authors whose latest books appear in 2010. This strikes me as a good marketing ploy, although not unique, and I’d guess it’s something which many authors published elsewhere will find quite enviable.

How you market crime fiction (or, indeed, any fiction) effectively is one of the questions over which much ink has been spilt for years. There isn't any easy answer, but trying to be innovative and interesting is probably a large part of the answer. Sadly, though, the solutions that reach the widest audiences tend to demand substantial investment of cash.

I was published by the Bantam imprint of Transworld in the early 90s, but in fact my hardback publisher was Piatkus. In those long ago days, Piatkus was an independent house, and they didn’t publish paperback editions, but they did secure a paperback deal with Bantam, who duly published the first four Harry Devlin novels. No samplers then, unfortunately, and although Bantam did try to market the books by selling them at what were then very competitive prices (£2.99 for a new paperback, I recall – bargain!) I didn’t reach the best-seller lists. And then Piatkus started publishing paperbacks themselves.

Now things are different in the publishing world. Piatkus are no longer independent, but part of a large group, and large publishers tend to focus on a limited number of writers, who are sometimes promoted heavily and effectively, as with this sampler. I think it’s a pity that many good writers of the ‘mid-list’ don’t benefit from similar initiatives, but that doesn’t meant that the initiatives aren’t welcome.

The authors featured in this sampler include such major figures as Mo Hayder, Tess Gerritsen, and Simon Kernick, along with one of my own recently discovered faves, Christopher Fowler. There is an extract from Bryant and May Off the Rails, and that is one of the Transworld titles that I definitely look forward to devouring.

Short Stories

Amongst other things lately, I've been co-judging the Mystery Women short story competition with my good friend Ayo Onatade, who happens not only to be a great fan of crime fiction, but also one of the most knowledgable and supportive readers around. We've found it far from easy to make our decision, but finally we've managed to do it.

I well remember entering my own work for competitions, before I ever had any fiction published. For example, I submitted an early version of what became the first chapter of All the Lonely People. It got nowhere. But eventually, I won one, and it did give me a great motivational boost for which I shall always be grateful.

So I don’t begrudge the precious time devoted to reading competition entries when I really ought to be writing my own fiction. It’s a genuine privilege to have the opportunity to encourage people who write good stories, and I think it’s also something that is very worthwhile.

In a different way, it’s a honour to have the opportunity to consider contributions to the forthcoming CWA anthology that I’m editing, Original Sins. Here, of course, the standards of writing are very high – as one would expect from professional writers. The real challenge is to decide which of the many submissions to omit from the book. That’s the bit I don’t enjoy, but on the other hand it’s a rare treat to be the first person to read a new story by, for instance, Christopher Fowler or Reginald Hill. And a honour.

The Victoria Vanishes

I’ve never met Christopher Fowler in person, although we share an agent, and whilst I’ve read and enjoyed his short fiction in the past, I’ve been slow in catching up with his successful series about Bryant and May, from the Peculiar Crimes Unit. I’ve just finished the sixth book in that series, The Victoria Vanishes, and I must say I found it immensely enjoyable – one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a long time.

This is a book packed with good things. For instance, there is a very nice ‘impossible’ puzzle, which features almost incidentally in the story-line. How is it that Arthur Bryant, after a few drinks, should have seen a woman coming out of a pub that no longer exists?

The main plot concerns a series of killings of middle-aged women in London’s public houses. The mystery is splendidly contrived, and although the solution is a little far-fetched, that matters not. The twists and turns make the hunt for the culprit a very satisfactory one.

But above all, what I liked about the book was the quality of the writing, and in particular its humour, which was very much on my wavelength. The style blends nostalgia with a sharply contemporary eye on the nature of modern society. And there are lots of wonderful lines. As well as a cat called Crippen. What more could anyone want?

One thing is for sure. I shall be reading more Bryant and May books.

Harrogate - the panels

Once you have attended a few crime fiction conferences, you learn that it’s a good idea to pace yourself. It’s inevitable that some themes and interviews crop up regularly, and it’s a good idea to be selective. It also helps to take time out to recover from those late nights chatting in the bar….

But I really did enjoy a diverse range of events and activities during the Festival. These included a panel hosted by Barry Norman, and a session where Mark Lawson interviewed both Reginald Hill and John Banville, a brilliant and contrasting pair of writers. I had the pleasure of a long chat before and during lunch with Reg and, as ever, he was as witty and entertaining in person as he is in his books. (The photo of Reg and myself was kindly supplied by Ali Karim.)

There was also an interesting discussion of ‘nursery crimes’ led by Andrew Taylor which featured a classy line-up, including three writers I’ve never heard speak before, Suzette Hill, Christopher Fowler and Jasper Fforde, all of whom were very good indeed. The level of discussion was so high, I wished the hour could have stretched to two.

The Transporter

Christopher Fowler rated The Transporter as one of his top ten crime films in a recent newspaper piece, and this prompted me to take a look at a movie which was screened in 2002 and has spawned two sequels.

The eponymous ‘transporter’ is Jason Statham, whom I encountered recently in the popular but, to my mind unsatisfactory, Crank. Here he is in excellent form, as Frank Martin, an ex-soldier who earns a very good living in the south of France, transporting people and packages. The film begins with his giving a lift – by way of a frenetic car chase - to a group of bank robbers (who fail to engage him to take them to their next destination, and finish up under arrest.)

Frank is then hired by a villain called ‘Wall Street’ to deliver a package. When the package starts to squirm, he breaks his own rules and, succumbing to curiosity, he opens it up – to discover a gorgeous Chinese girl called Lai. He duly delivers her, but after falling out with his hirer, he rescues her, and a relationship of sorts develops between them.

I enjoyed this film. Yes, it may be described as a bit mindless, but of its kind, it is very well done (Crank is an example of how not to do it) and the pace never relents. The downside is that the plot is rather thin, and there’s not much of an attempt to make it all plausible. ( I never really figured out why Lai was put in the package in the first place – if anyone can explain this, I’d be glad to know.)

If you’re looking for sensitive insight into the human condition, The Transporter is not for you. But I go along with Chris Fowler - as a piece of fast-moving escapism, it’s pretty good.