The Riddle of the Sands and the birth of the spy novel

The Riddle of the Sands is a classic novel of 1903 by Erskine Childers which is widely regarded as one of the first notable spy novels. I saw the 1979 film version a long time ago, but despite a starry cast, including Michael York and the always watchable Jenny Agutter, it found it a bit flat. Perhaps partly because of that, it has taken me a long time to get round to reading the novel itself, but I recently read the Atlatntic Books edition, which includes an excellent afterword by Professor Robert Giddings.

Briefly, the story is narrated by a rather irritating civil servant called Carruthers, who is invited by an old university friend, Davies, to join him on a yachting trip. Carruthers' behaviour and attitudes in the early pages are boorish, although he recognises this later, and develops into a more likeable character. The relationship between him and the eager, obsessive Davies, is one of the strengths of the book. As they sail around the Frisian Islands, they have to figure out whether a mysterious man called Dollmann is all that he seems.

This is an important book for two reasons. First, in the short term, it drew people's attention to the threat to international peace posed by the Kaiser's Germany. Second, it set a standard for the spy story, and paved the way for the work of the likes of Eric Ambler and, much later, John Le Carre. Ambler and Le Carre, like Childers, were men who were prepared to question the status quo, but the story of how in real life, Childers eventually finished up paying the ultimate price for his attitudes is fascinating as well as upsetting.

There is a huge amount about sailing in this story, and - despite my admiration for the book - I felt this was a mistake. At one point Carruthers says of a train journey "the pace was execrable" and to be brutally honest, by that point. I felt much the same about The Riddle of the Sands. I suppose this is because endless details about how to sail a boat don't really interest me, yet Childers went overboard on them (sorry, couldn't resist that!)

Not a perfect novel, then, and I don't think Childers really was a committed novelist. He was more interested in ideas and actions and politics, and he was evidently as brave, stubborn and obsessive as Davies. But there's no doubt that he made a lasting contribution to espionage fiction. Giddings says the book has never been out of print, so I have not called it a Forgotten Book. And despite my reservations, it certainly does deserve to continue to be remembered.

Canals and Crime

Yesterday evening we went on a canal cruise that involved a very good dinner, consumed in excellent company that included crime writer Kate Ellis and her husband Roger (picture getting on to the narrow boat). The round trip along the Macclesfield Canal began and ended at Bollington, on the Cheshire side of the border with Derbyshire. There can be few more restful or enjoyable ways to travel.

And yet. Canals have been a scene of fictional crime more often than you might guess. I’ve even been responsible for one short story myself, ‘To Encourage the Others’, which included a canal-side murder.

Philip Scowcroft, an indefatigable researcher and expert on the genre, recently sent me a copy of an article he wrote some years back on the subject of ‘Canals and Waterways in British Crime Fiction’. Classic titles cited include The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, the first great spy story of the last century, and The Pit-Prop Syndicate by the alibi king, Freeman Wills Crofts.

Among the many other titles Philip mentions are Death in Little Venice (2001) by Leo McNair, and Joan Lock’s historical mystery Dead Image, as well as a book I have read, Night’s Black Agents, by the under-rated David Armstrong. The Llangollen Canal features in Andrew Garve’s The Narrow Search, and a fictionalised Stourbridge Navigation in Marjorie Eccles’ Requiem for a Dove. The most famous book in this sub-genre is, though, surely Colin Dexter’s acclaimed The Wench is Dead, which is distantly based on a real-life case.