Forgotten Book - I Wake Up Screaming

I Wake Up Screaming is a pulpy crime novel by Steve Fisher, set in Hollywood and first published in 1941. It was turned into a film noir which was also known as Hot Spot, and later remade as Vicki. Unusually, Fisher updated the story for later editions. He had crammed the novel with topical allusions, and sought to modernise them to retain a contemporary feel.

In classic noir fashion, this story, narrated by a Hollywood writer, involves a man trapped in a nightmarish situation. The protagonist falls for a studio secretary, Vicki Lynn, who is aiming to become a film star, although he also finds himself attracted to her sister, a torch singer, Jill. Just as Vicki's dreams are starting to come true, she is murdered. And our hero is a prime suspect.

The unusual feature of the story is the obsessive pursuit of the protagonist by a detective, a dying man called Ed Cornell. Cornell was based in part on Cornell Woolrich, who can hardly have felt flattered. Cornell is a gifted detective, but he seems uninterested in any other suspect, although several other people might have had a motive to kill Vicki.

Fisher references Raffles, and crime writers ranging from Dorothy L. Sayers to Horace McCoy, whose They Shoot Horses, Don't They? seems to me a much more powerful novel of crime in Tinseltown than this one. It's a book I'd been after for years, and it's certainly pacy. Overall, however, I was rather disappointed. I was expecting something more than simply a workmanlike effort. The story didn't grip me, I'm afraid. Woolrich did this sort of thing much better.

Forgotten Book - Laura

Laura, by Vera Caspary, is a famous crime novel that became an even more famous film noir, as well as a stage play, and haunting song. The book was originally published in 1942, and it made an instant impact. Caspary was a talented mainstream writer, whose memoirs, The Secrets of Grown-Ups, make fascinating reading. She makes it clear that she wasn't really a mystery fan, but it's noteworthy that her favourite crime writer was Cornell Woolrich, her favourite crime novel Francis Iles' Before the Fact. Suspense appealed to her, in other words, and Laura is a novel of suspense as much as it is a detective story.

When, many years ago, I first saw the film, and read the book, I enjoyed them without fully appreciating them. That was because I paid too much attention to the plot, and although the story has one excellent plot twist, Caspary's strength didn't lie in plotting. On rereading the book after having done some research into Caspary's life, I got more out of it than I did the first time around.

Mark McPherson is called in to investigate the murder of Laura Hunt, a very attractive woman who works in advertising. She is engaged to be married, and her fiance becomes a suspect. McPherson becomes intrigued by Waldo Lydecker, a rather effete older man who was close to Laura, and who is one of the narrators.

In telling her story, Caspary borrowed the narrative device favoured by Wilkie Collins - using different points of view, so as to conceal as well as reveal. It's a device which, when employed with skill (and Caspary was highly skilled), I find engrossing. I've never written a "casebook" novel, but it's something I'd certainly consider at some future date, because the form has a great deal of potential for the crime writer. It's fair to say that Caspary never surpassed Laura, but her other books are also intriguing and well-written, and I'll talk about one or two of them in the future.

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? 

The Night Has Eyes - 1942 film review

The Night Has Eyes is a British film, released in 1942, and not to be confused with Cornell Woolrich's Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which was published three years later and subsequently turned into a good film starring Edward G. Robinson. The British film also had two alternative titles in the US - Terror House and Moonlight Madness. No prizes for guessing which title I prefer.

The Night Has Eyes is based on a thriller by Alan Kennington which was published in 1939. I know very little about Kennington, though apparently in later life he was friendly with the better-known (yet still under-estimated) P. M. Hubbard. The film version of his book is in some respects creaky and melodramatic, as well as fog-shrouded, but it has a number of redeeming features.

One of these is the performance of James Mason as Stephen Dermid, a composer who has suffered severe shell-shock after being wounded while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Mason manages, not for the only time in his career, to combine the charming with the sinister. A young teacher called Marian (Joyce Howard) falls for him after travelling to the Yorkshire moors with her American chum (Tucker McGuire) to try to discover the fate of her friend Evelyn, who disappeared a year ago.

Stephen is cared for by a housekeeper, Mrs Ranger (Mary Clare, an actress of real ability who played the very different part of Mrs Pym of Scotland Yard) and an odd-job man, Jim. Unfortunately for Marian, it becomes increasingly clear that something terrible happened to Evelyn, and before long she is at risk of suffering a similar fate. Despite the presentation of Yorkshire, a county I love, as a wild blend of fog and bog, and not much else, I found the film rather entertaining.

The Girl on the Train - book review

Paula Hawkins' thriller The Girl on the Train has become perhaps the most successful book in roughly the same vein as Gillian Flynn's bestseller Gone Girl. (Perhaps I should have called my last book The Girl from the Dungeon House). It's an example of domestic suspense, an update of the woman-in-jeopardy type of novel that has been around for many years, but which has in recent times had a fresh lease of life.

Hawkins' book, like Flynn's, features unreliable narrators, and marriages tested to destruction. Like Flynn, she uses first person narratives cunningly; they give the story immediacy (even though some of the sections are set before the crucial sequence of events begins) and they conceal as much as they reveal. These are powerful techniques if used well, and I feel that Hawkins handles the material expertly. I was not surprised to learn that, although this is the first Hawkins novel, she has previously published fiction under a pen-name as she learned her craft. There is something highly professional about the storytelling.

The principal narrator (there are three in all) is Rachel, an alcoholic who becomes obsessed with the lives of a seemingly happy couple whose house is on her train route. Hawkins has acknowledged her debt to Rear Window (the film, perhaps, rather than Cornell Woolrich's excellent novella) and is evidently an Alfred Hitchcock fan, but makes inventive use of the idea of a voyeur watching a crime scene. Rachel behaves crazily, involving herself in lives that are no business of hers, with dangerous results. It's all very gripping.

An interesting feature of the book is that there are only six main characters, three men and three women. Suffice to say that none of them is likeable, and if you prefer your novels to have at least one character you can love, you may not find this book to your taste. Yet Hawkins has argued that there is something appealing about Rachel, and I certainly found myself wanting to know what fate she would meet. Gone Girl set a high standard for domestic suspense novels, but Hawkins' book is a worthy example of the form, and deserves its success..

The Glass Key - 1942 film review

The Glass Key is a well-regarded film from 1942, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, first published in 1931 (it appeared in serial form the previous year). The screenplay was written by Jonathan Latimer, himself a crime novelist of distinction, Latimer's later film scripts included the masterly The Big Clock, based on Kenneth Fearing's equally fine novel, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes, based on a characteristically compelling Cornell Woolrich story.

The central character is Ed Beaumont, played by Alan Ladd. He's the right hand man of Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy), a rascally political fixer who throws his weight behind the election campaign of Ralph Henry after falling for Henry's daughter (Veronica Lake). She, however, is more interested in Beaumont, who does the decent thing and rebuffs her advances.

When Beaumont finds the body of Henry's son, who has been playing around with Madvig's sister, Madvig is the prime suspect. Madvig has earned the enmity of a local gang boss, who has Beaumont badly beaten up, but although Madvig behaves ungratefully, Beaumont continues to show considerably loyalty. Commendable as this is, I could have done with more insight into the reasons for Beaumont's devotion, given that he's not a closet gay character.

The plot continues to thicken, and the film is watchable from start to finish. Beaumont isn't a private eye, but he plays the detective and solves the mystery to everyone's satisfaction. He even gets the girl. I find it rather sad to reflect that both Ladd and Lake, two charismatic actors, died relatively young. This is a good film which deserves its reputation,,although the book is even better, and so are The Big Clock and, arguably, Night Has a Thousand Eyes. To say nothing of The Maltese Falcon.



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Forgotten Book - Puzzle for Fiends

Patrick Quentin was one of the Forgotten Authors featured at  Crimefest last week, and Quentin, alias Q. Patrick, alias Jonathan Stagge, is one of the most interesting of all pseudonymous American crime writers, not least because, in total, those names concealed not just one identity, but four. The most notable were Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler. They started a series under the Quentin name featuring Peter Duluth, and my Forgotten Book for today, Puzzle for Fiends, a Duluth story.

The premise is super. After a brief prologue in which Peter waves off his new wife Iris at an airfield, the picture transforms when he wakes up after an accident, suffering from amnesia. He is surrounded by people who claim to be family members or associates and who say that he is the wealthy Gordon Renton Friend the Third. Whilst it's some consolation that his newly found wife, mother and sister are all very beautiful, he finds himself trapped in a nightmarish situation, from which escape seems impossible.

Of course, variations on this theme have often been used in mysteries - the Liam Neeson film Unknown is an excellent recent example. But Quentin handles it well, and it's no surprise that this book has been highly regarded, not least by Julian Symons. There are plenty of plot twists along the way - you can always rely on the PQ (or QP) franchise for tantalising mysteries.

And yet. I felt there were some unsatisfactory features of the second half of the story which meant that I wouldn't regard it as a classic, much as it entertained me. There is a puritanical cult called the Aurora League which features heavily in the plot, and although it is satirically and wittily described, I felt that its sheer absurdity militated against suspense. As Cornell Woolrich showed in nightmare-scenario books like Phantom Lady, the way to handle a story like this is to maintain tension throughout, and Puzzle for Fiends didn't quite manage this. All the same, it remains a lively and efficient thriller, still worth reading.

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.

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 - The Doll

Resuming my contributions to Patti Abbott's series, Friday's Forgotten Books, here is my take on The Doll by Francis Durbridge:

'This 1982 novel, based on a television series which came out seven years earlier, shows Durbridge at his best. The protagonist is not Durbridge's regular sleuth Paul Temple, but wealthy publisher Peter Matty who, when in the company of his brother Claude, a famous pianist, meets an attractive woman at Geneva airport. Soon he bumps into her again and learns that her name is Phyllis du Salle. An air of mystery clings to her that fascinates Peter – and when she vanishes unexpectedly, he becomes obsessed with tracking her down and discovering the truth behind her apparently secretive life. A macabre toy – the doll of the title – is found floating in the bath, an image that lingers in the memory.

The constant twists of the narrative, coupled with its unrelenting pace, make this a very suspenseful book. Although Durbridge was not as good a writer as Cornell Woolrich, and in particular lacked the American master’s ability to create emotional resonance in his situations, he was at least equal to Woolrich in devising storylines that tantalise and intrigue.

Almost inevitably – and this is also true of Woolrich – the solution to the mystery is a bit of a let-down and the explanation for the use of the doll seemed to me to be unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, Durbridge offers a very good red herring and a neat final shuffle of the rather slim pack of suspects. An excellent light read.'