Forgotten Book - Crime in Reverse

One of the joys of blogging is the range of contacts that I've had with so many interesting and thoughtful people over the years. As well as comments on the individual blog posts, I often receive private messages from fellow crime fans via my website (where there's a contact page) or by email and these give rise to some very informative discussions which add greatly to my stock of knowledge about the genre. 

A while ago, David Rodd got in touch to suggest Crime in Reverse by J. de Navarre Kennedy for the British Library's Crime Classics series. This was a book I'd never even heard of, but I managed to get hold of a copy (inscribed by Kennedy himself, which was a real bonus; no jacket, however - the image comes from Mark Terry's impressive facsimile dust jackets site) and I found it extremely readable, an example of an ironic story very much in the Francis Iles vein.

I devoured this novel with a great deal of pleasure. Kennedy has a smooth and readable style and his premise is fascinating. So how has this one slipped through the net so far as critics are concerned? Well, timing is so important in life, and certainly in an author's life. This novel was published in the autumn of 1939, when the world had other things on its mind. That is, I feel sure, why it's never had the attention it deserves. Poor Kennedy - this book deserved more fanfare than it received.

The premise is simple. At the start of the book we learn that Nicholas Chetwynd K.C. has just murdered a man. But the police have decided that someone else, a naive artist called Ricardo,is guilty. Chetwynd is offered the chance to defend Ricardo, and he accepts with alacrity...

There's a substantial trial scene, and overall the book benefits greatly from Kennedy's legal experience. Born in England and educated at Cambridge, he moved to Canada and became a respected lawyer and ultimately a judge. He lived from 1888 to 1979, and was clearly a man of varied talents. He wrote a couple of thrillers and a number of non-fiction books, but I doubt if any of them are as intriguing as Crime in Reverse. 

Forgotten Book - No Tears for Hilda

No Tears for Hilda was Andrew Garve's first book to be published by Collins Crime Club. This was in 1950, and Garve was a new pen-name for Paul Winterton, a journalist who had previously published crime novels under the name Roger Bax (he'd later write a few books under another name, Paul Somers). Garve novels would appear regularly until 1978, when Winterton was 70. After that, he retired from the scene, although he lived until just short of his 93rd birthday. 

Garve was evidently an interesting individual, a member of the Detection Club and a founder member of the CWA. He stood for election to Parliament in 1931 as a Labour candidate, but since that was the year that Labour were wiped out in a landslide, his political career never got going. It's not easy to find out much about his personal life, though I understand that he wrote a (regrettably unpublished) autobiography. Signed Garve books are hard to come by, and when I came across his personal copy of this title on eBay, I was keen to snaffle it. Now I've read it, I'm glad I did. 

This is one of those novels in which a man is charged with murder, but someone close to him insists that he is innocent, and tried to prove it. A familiar scenario, but Garve handles it with a touch of originality, focusing on the psychological make-up of the victim. Although Francis Iles had focused on a 'murderee' almost twenty years earlier, in his extraordinary novel Before the Fact, Garve's approach is very different. The setting and storyline are in keeping with the rather grey mood of the post-war austerity era.  

George Lambert's wife Hilda is found dead. At first sight it looks as though she has gassed herself, but it's soon evident that someone killed her. George appears to be the only suspect. He has no alibi, while an affair with a young nurse gives him a motive. His war-time pal Max Easterbrook can't believe that good old George could have committed such a crime. But there are no other suspects.

To find the truth, Max needs to learn more about Hilda's personality. It soon becomes evident that nobody did shed any tears after her death and Garve's attempt to present a rounded psychological portrait of an unpleasant woman is interesting if not, to my mind, wholly successful. But Max's search for the real culprit is interesting and Garve's smooth and accessible prose style kept me turning the pages. 

Forgotten Book - So I Killed Her

I came across Leonard O. Mosley's 1936 novel So I Killed Her by chance, while browsing a dealer's catalogue. I'd never heard of it, but the blurb sounded interesting, so I investigated further and gained the impression that this was a book very much in the Francis Iles tradition. But there has been little or no discussion of it, so far as I could find, by crime fiction fans.

I'm not quite sure why this is. The book has been reprinted a time or two - I obtained a cheap paperback copy from the late 50s. Mosley was a young man - a very young man - when he wrote the story - and although he wrote one or two other crime novels, he became much better known as a biographer. I don't know if he was related to Oswald Mosley - his own second name was Oswald - but if so, there appears to be no obvious connection between them. When I read the book, I felt that, for all its limitations, it has a certain dark power, and definitely does not deserve the critical neglect that has been its fate.

Mosley must have been about 22 when he wrote the novel. He came from my neck of the woods, the north west, but travelled extensively and spent time in the US prior to writing this book. So one of the unusual features of the story is that, unlike the novels by Iles, Richard Hull, Bruce Hamilton and others who wrote in the ironic vein, it is predominantly set in the US. And the American hardboiled influence lurks, far in the background. There's more candour about sex in this book than you find in the overwhelming majority of Golden Age stories.

This is a first person narrative, and we know from the start that we are in the company of a murderer - apparently one who has committed the perfect crime, murdering his wife and framing someone else -who is about to be executed. The killer happens to be a detective novelist, although perhaps Mosley doesn't make quite as much of this idea as he could. The prose has verve, but the characters are mostly very unpleasant, and the wit that flavoured the books of Iles and the best of Hull is generally absent. All the same, it's a highly readable book, and I'm amazed that it has been ignored by the commentators.

Forgotten Book - The Crime against Marcella

I was prompted to seek out George Milner's The Crime Against Marcella, which dates from 1963, after reading a laudatory review by Francis Iles, who was no mean judge of a book. Milner was really George Hardinge, a noted publisher, who was the editor of (among many other crime writers) Julian Symons. He also edited the Winter's Crimes anthologies before handing over to Hilary Watson, aka Hilary Hale, another editor of distinction.

Milner was a good enough novelist to earn election to the Detection Club, and this book is fluently written. In a distant way, it seems to me to be an update for the Sixties of the type of ironic crime story in which Francis Iles himself specialised. The tone is reminiscent of that to be found in other crime books of similar vintage by the likes of John Bingham and Symons.

Milner plays a game with the structure of his story, while his title is ambiguous. The scene is set by internal memoranda from Scotland Yard, which discuss the disappearance and presumed murder of a young married woman called Marcella Pemberton, but the bulk of the novel is a first-person narrative by her husband. Jim Pemberton explains how he became besotted with Marcella, and the various complications that ensued from the fact that his best friend and business partner was equally interested in her.

I figured out the principal plot twist some time before the end of this short, snappy mystery, and my main reservation about the book is that it reads rather more like a novella than a full-length story. But it's agreeably written, and a good example of the way in which writers of the time were trying to update the conventional puzzle story with a focus on character and exploration of the nature of sexual repression and jealousy. An obscure book nowadays, but well worth reading. 

Forgotten Book - Sudden Fear

One of the wonderful consequences of global communication via the internet is that it's now possible to come across information in a matter of moments that in the not too distant past would either have been unobtainable or would have take extensive research to track down. For anyone with a special interest, that's terrific. Book lovers like me have really benefited from the dissemination of information worldwide via blogs and other means.

I look at a good many blogs sporadically; one of those I check out regularly is Kate Jackson's Cross Examining Crime, because she seems able to read more books than almost anyone and her taste is excellent. When she raved about Edna Sherry's Sudden Fear, I sat up and took notice - and it took me a while to realise that I'd already seen and enjoyed the film based on the book. The book came out in 1948 and the film in the early 50s. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon I've now been able to read the book for myself, and it turns out that Kate was spot on. It's a gripping story.

I don't know much about Sherry, but it seems that although she'd done plenty of writing, this was her first crime novel to be published under her own name, when she was 67. She continue to publish, but this appears to be far and away her most successful novel, though John Norris (another of my favourite bloggers) has praised Girl Missing. Certainly, the portrayal of Myra, the ruthless playwright who discovers that her younger husband is plotting with his lover to kill her and inherit her fortune, is compelling. 

Kate is, I think, right to say that in some respects this story is in the Francis Iles vein, but she's also right to highlight its distinctive qualities. There are one or two oddities about the writing (e.g. some unnecessary mid-chapter shifts of viewpoint) but these are minor matters - Sherry knew how to tell a good story. Much as I liked the film, the book seems to me to be better.

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? - 1969 film review

No sooner did film audiences of the 60s discover the fate of Baby Jane than they had to find out the mystery concerning Aunt Alice's demise. What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? was produced by Robert Aldrich and based on The Forbidden Garden, a 1962 novel by the talented suspense writer Ursula Curtiss.

I've not read the book, although Francis Iles admired it, which is a good enough recommendation, so I've put it on my list. The film utilises the plot material for a black comedy about a homicidal widow, Claire Marrable, played with gusto and no little flair by Geraldine Page. She doesn't mourn the death of her husband, but isn't happy to find he's left her destitute. She moves to Arizona and seeks to solve her financial problems by hiring single women as housekeepers, getting them to entrust their savings to them, killing them, and burying them in her garden.

Although in many ways she really is not very bright, she pursues her m.o. with some success, until she hires a new companion, played splendidly by the redoubtable Ruth Gordon. We soon find out that she is really trying to figure out what happened to her predecessor in the role, who happened to be an old friend. A battle of wits between the two women ensues.

The plot complications are handled nicely and the two women in the lead roles are terrific, and although I tend to agree with the critic who thought that the script was underdeveloped, it is still entertaining. Apparently it falls within the sub-genre of so-called "psycho-biddy" films of its era. Hmmm....My main reservation was that Gerald Fried's soundtrack was obtrusive and didn't seem to fit. But that's a quibble. It's a good film. 

Forgotten Book - The Marriage Bureau Murders

My interest in John Bingham and his work has led me to cover quite a few of his books in this blog over the past year or so. I admire the originality of his approach to crime fiction, while his ironic storylines made him, along with Julian Symons, the most important successor to Francis Iles of his generation. It's no surprise to me that Iles the critic also admired Bingham. As novelists, they were both risk-takers. And as my regular readers will know, I do like a crime writer who is prepared to avoid formula and take a few risks. Nobody could sensibly accuse John Bingham of being formulaic. Although certain elements recur, each book he wrote strikes me as pleasingly different from its predecessor.

Taking risks doesn't, alas, necessarily pay off. Bingham could write in a very readable style, but his unorthodox plots often depend on coincidences outlandish even by the standards of our coincidence-rich genre. His literary style involves a good deal of authorial intervention: too much for my taste. And occasionally his attitudes strike me not merely as dated but also as a bit odd.

The Marriage Bureau Murders was published in 1977, when his crime writing career was more than a quarter of a century old. He should have been at his peak, but I'm afraid this is a novel of a writer whose powers are in serious decline. It's a pity, because there's a very dark and unusual idea (about a voyeur of murder) at the heart of the story which, although exceptionally tricky to handle, might drive a powerful work of crime fiction.   

This book, however, is a misfire. Sidney Shaw sets up a "friendship bureau" as a means of getting his kicks, but what happens after he chances upon a sociopath who signs up with his bureau is so odd and unlikely that I found the whole bizarre business hopelessly unconvincing. Of course it's reasonable to ask readers of a crime novel to suspend their disbelief - I do so myself in books like Gallows Court, and so do many of my colleagues - but there must be a limit. There are plenty of stabs at black humour, and I suspect that Bingham was trying for the mood of Symons' first two "Man Who..." books, but although I'm a fan of black comedy, it doesn't really work here.

So I was disappointed with this novel, and can't recommend it. Even at the time of its appearance, the critics weren't impressed. Edmund Crispin, who liked Bingham and his work, described it as a "nadir", and I'm not surprised. Despite Bingham's past achievements, it sold few copies and I don't think it's ever been reprinted. Many of his books definitely deserve a second look. This one certainly has curiosity value, but not much else.

The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury by Sean O'Connor

The Rattenbury-Stoner murder trial of 1935 was, as the dustjacket blurb of Sean O'Connor's new study of the case says, one of the great tabloid sensations of the interwar period. The story behind the trial is poignant and complicated and it certainly doesn't have a happy ending. But it does have a great deal of human interest, and casts light on the mores and legal process of the Thirties.

The story has fascinated a number of crime writers, most notably Francis Iles, who wrote a long essay about it in the Detection Club book The Anatomy of Murder (recently reissued in paperback, and a very good read covering famous and little-known murder cases) as well as As for the Woman. That book took some elements from the case as well as from the even more famous Thompson-Bywaters case, to which the Rattenbury-Stoner case bore certain striking similarities.

Another novelist who made good use of the story was Shelley Smith, in The Woman in the Sea, a book now so forgotten that it doesn't earn a mention even in this wide-ranging and well-researched study. And without giving too much away, I can say that there are one or two elements from the story that inspired one of the plot strands in Mortmain Hall, the sequel to Gallows Court, which I've been working on recently and which will be published next year.

Sean O'Connor is a writer, director, and producer who first came to my attention a few years ago with his interesting examination of the Neville Heath case, Handsome Brute. He makes the point in his foreword to this book that the Rattenbury case has been examined not only by the famous criminologist F. Tennyson Jesse but also by such leading lawyers as Sir Michael Havers and Sir David Napley. But he has undertaken extensive investigation of his own, and the result is a book that will, I'm sure, be of great interest to true crime fans.

Forgotten Book - Night's Black Agent

John Bingham's seventh novel, Night's Black Agent, was published in 1961. In Michael Jago's excellent biography of Bingham, it doesn't get a particularly warm write-up, as Jago focuses on aspects of the story that test the suspension of disbelief. There are indeed some coincidences and unlikely incidents. Julian Symons, however, greatly admired the novel, and I think that it's my favourite of all the Binghams I've read.

We're told right from the start who wishes to kill whom and (at least in part) why. The would-be killer is a journalist (as Bingham once was) and the proposed victim, a man known as Green, is not only a blackmailer who ruins lives, but also a sociopathic sex killer. In other words, it's a book in the tradition of Francis Iles' Malice Aforethought. But the story follows an unusual path, effectively with two major digressions to explain the background before a climax in Norway. It's a relatively short book, and I found it compelling.

I was lucky enough to acquire a copy that Bingham had inscribed to Joe Gaute, a publisher and expert on true crime. The dust jacket bears a laudatory quote from none other than Francis Iles, in respect of one of Bingham's earlier novels, and I'm sure Iles must have been impressed with this one too, since Bingham tackles a favourite Iles theme - how can we do justice, when the legal system proves inadequate to meet the task?

The title of the book is taken from Macbeth, but it's also a punning reference to Bingham's secret service work - he was a member of Maxwell Knight's team of spies, known as Knight's Black Agents. But this isn't a spy novel. It's a study of crime and character, and even if the Bad Guy is thinly characterised, the portrayal of his victims is done with considerable skill. I really enjoyed this book, and I recommend it warmly, coincidences and all.

Forgotten Book - Five Roundabouts to Heaven

I've become increasingly interested in the work of John Bingham in recent times, and having enjoyed the film Married Life, I decided to read the book on which it is (rather loosely, it has to be said) based. This is Five Roundabouts to Heaven, which first appeared in 1953. It's an unusual book, again in my opinion betraying the influence of Francis Iles, especially in the deployment of irony, notably with the final sentence of the book.

The story is told, though, in Bingham's rather discursive style, and it does take some time to get going. The narrator, Peter Harding, is a hotel owner, and the story focuses on his relationship with a friend called Philip Bartels. I have to say that I felt the early pages moved slowly, which is usually a great weakness in a crime novel, but Bingham wrote readable prose, and he maintained my interest, even when I was becoming a bit impatient.

Friendship - of a kind - is also at the heart of Bingham's first novel, My Name is Michael Sibley, and the relationship between two friends where one is a much stronger character than the other, and where one covets the other's lover, obviously fascinated him. Peter is more forceful than Philip, and this drive determines the course of the narrative.

Philip marries a pleasant and attractive woman, but then falls in love with someone else, called Lorna Dickson. Unfortunately, when he introduces Peter to Lorna, Peter immediately falls for her as well. To make matters more complicated, Philip decides to murder his wife. His motive for so doing, rather than simply seeking a divorce, is not easy to fathom, but Bingham makes a reasonably good fist of his attempt to explain the seemingly absurd. The explanation is rooted, in fact, in Philip's weakness of character.

Overall, the story is interesting and out of the ordinary; one can see why its potential for filming was spotted, and the film-makers made a good job of it too. Despite the fact that Bingham does meander at times, I can recommend this one.

Forgotten Book - Singled Out

Simon Brett is a multi-talented author, and the range of the 100-plus books that he's written is truly impressive. Not all his work is within the crime genre, but that's the specialism for which he's best known, perhaps above all for his long and very entertaining series featuring the actor Charles Paris. His dark novels of psychological suspense are interesting, but only the first of them, A Shock to the System, is well-known, thanks to the film version starring Michael Caine.

Singled Out was published in 1995. It's not an easy book to write about in detail, because the plot is so elaborate that it's almost impossible not to give spoilers. But let me have a try. The story begins in 1973, with attractive Laura Fisher, whose marriage has recently broken down, setting out to seduce a man so as to become pregnant. In this first section of the book, we learn about Laura's past - and of how she'd been deeply affected by a murder. Laura works in television, and Simon Brett's understanding of the  TV world makes the background seem authentic, even if the events of the story are outlandish.

The story then moves on to 1993, and a sequence of events which forces Laura to confront the horrors of her personal background, and the fear that history may be about to repeat itself. The narrative is concerned not just with murder, but with child abuse and incest. Reading it now, a quarter of a century later, it seems to reflect the mores of the time, which are in some ways rather different from those of the present.

I see this book as forming part of a tradition of British psychological suspense, reaching back to Francis Iles' novels, and including several of the novels of Julian Symons, such as The Plot Against Roger Rider. Like Iles and Symons, Brett is an expert plotsmith, but for me, his greatest strength as a crime writer is his wit. Humour isn't much in evidence in such a bleak story as this, and I suspect that explains why he moved away from this type of writing. Singled Out isn't by any means his best book, but it's an interesting and laudably ambitious example of a fast-paced and very readable novel of suspense.

Forgotten Book - The Getaway

Because of my keen and lifelong enthusiasm for Golden Age detective fiction, people sometimes express surprise when I mention the American hardboiled books that I admire. But there's nothing inconsistent about liking both types of writing, far from it. I like good crime fiction of all kinds, and today's Forgotten Book is an example. It's The Getaway, by Jim Thompson.

Thompson was an interesting character, and not long ago I read his biography, Savage Art, by Robert Polito, which is informative and very well-written. Although he died in obscurity, Thompson predicted that he'd become famous, and there was a great revival of interest in his work a few years after his death. Several of his novels have been filmed, and indeed The Getaway was filmed by Sam Peckinpah while Thompson was still alive.

It's a book that I find quite remarkable. The central story concerns a bank robber, Carter "Doc" McCoy, who is married to a former librarian called Carol, who takes to the criminal life with gusto. Doc is unwise enough to collaborate with a villain called Rudy Torrento, and inevitably "the perfect job" goes wrong. Doc and Carol end up fleeing for their lives, with the forces of law and order after them, as well as Rudy.

The story of their fugitive experience is gripping, but Thompson has up his sleeve a final chapter that is, by any standards, quite stunning. I can't think of anything quite like it in the crime genre. Not even Sam Peckinpah, incidentally, was up to the task of trying to film it (rather like Hitchcock's failure to master the dark finale of Francis Iles' Before the Fact - you knew I'd get a Golden Age reference in somewhere, didn't you?!) I really enjoyed this book.

Recently, by the way, I've also read Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet. This is another good and highly readable book, narrated by a strangely sympathetic psychopath, though I wouldn't rate it as highly as The Getaway.

Forgotten Book - Game for Three Losers

Edgar Lustgarten was once a familiar face on British TV screens. A barrister from Manchester, he became a successful broadcaster, specialising in programmes about crime. The Scotland Yard TV series that he fronted (and which was very good) has recently been resurrected on the Talking Pictures channel, and this has reignited my interest in a writer who wrote occasional novels as well as numerous true crime books. His first novel, A Case to Answer, was especially well-regarded, not least by Julian Symons.

Game for Three Losers was first published in 1952; later, it was adapted for TV as part of the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series which has again resurfaced thanks to Talking Pictures. The novel is written in Lustgarten's rather distinctive style, with rather more "tell" than "show"; today, this isn't a fashionable method, but he handles it pretty well.

Robert Hilary is a rising star in the political world, a Conservative MP in his late forties. When his trusty secretary leaves work to have a baby, her replacement is a stunningly beautiful young woman and Hilary finds her irresistible. He soon finds himself in a compromising position, and open to blackmail by the woman's rascally lover, who poses as her outraged brother.

I rather expected Hilary to decide that the only solution to his dilemma was murder, but Lustgarten's main focus is on charting the consequences of crime. This is a book roughly in the Francis Iles tradition that focuses on the way the legal system operates - not very justly, in some cases. The story is downbeat in mood, but Lustgarten's crisp writing kept me interested from start to finish.

Forgotten Book - The Announcer

I've talked previously about Donald Henderson, a writer who has long intrigued me. Because he died young, his work fell out of print quite quickly, and he's hardly ever been discussed in reference books (though I do talk about him in The Story of Classic Crime). Recently, I read his 1946 book, The Announcer, and found it extremely enjoyable.

The book's alternative title in the US, and perhaps a better one, was A Voice Like Velvet, which is a phrase taken from the story, concerning the protagonist, Ernest Bisham. He happens to be a BBC radio announcer by day. But he is also, by night....wait for it...a cat-burglar!

As a premise this carries, perhaps a whiff of the absurd, but in a pleasing way. Henderson worked for the BBC, and he has a great deal of fun with his account of BBC life. I'm sure it appealed to his ironic sense of humour to imagine a very correct announcer as a master-criminal. His wit reminds me of Francis Iles, and he shares Iles' interest in true crime: Crippen, Jack the Ripper, and Neil Cream are among the killers name-checked in the story.

Like Iles, Henderson had considerable gifts as a novelist. This is a well-written story, with plenty of nice lines, but he also manages to create suspense in a very pleasing way. I found myself rooting for Ernest even when he behaved foolishly, and especially when he found himself in tricky situations, facing almost certain discovery. This really is a hidden gem.

Malice Aforethought - BBC TV - 1979

I was sorry to learn recently of the death of Hywel Bennett. I've mentioned him several times on this blog, and I always felt that he was a first-class actor, perhaps under-rated simply because in youth he was very good-looking. But he had tremendous range, and was equally good in Twisted Nerve and in Agatha Christie's Endless Night. He was also successful in comedy. But my favourite performance as his was his portrayal of Dr Bickleigh in Malice Aforethought.

I first watched that four-parter when it was screened originally in 1979. I was impressed then, and watching it again, in a grainy version on Youtube (there doesn't seem to be a DVD) I was equally impressed. Of course, it's a very fine story, which made the name of Francis Iles famous, even though nobody knew he was really Anthony Berkeley Cox, already a leading detective novelist. But Philip Mackie deserves much credit for an excellent screenplay which captures the essence of the book.

Mackie was an excellent television writer, whose other credits included The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Praying Mantis. I've often wished I could see the latter again; it's a gripping psychological chiller, - what a shame that it, too, isn't available on DVD. Mackie also wrote successful crime plays, but I've not seen them. His writing gave Bennett the chance to present Bickleigh ia a three-dimensional way. He's not a likeable man, the doctor, but his capacity for self-deception is quite fascinating.

The cast is excellent. Judy Parfitt plays the disagreeable Mrs Bickleigh, while Cheryl Campbell is the woman the doctor becomes obsessed with, and Harold Innocent is the vicar. I'd forgotten that the inspector was played by James Grout, who went on to become Superintendent Strange, John Thaw's boss in Inspector Morse; this role was almost a rehearsal for the later part. Overall, an excellent show, and a reminder of Bennett's charisma, even when playing someone unattractive.

Forgotten Book - Until She Was Dead

Richard Hull, author of today's Forgotten Book, was one of the most interesting Golden Age detective novelists. He was strongly influence by the work of Anthony Berkeley, writing as Francis Iles - it was as a result of reading Iles' instant classic Malice Aforethought that Hull decide to try his hand at writing a crime story. And Iles' cynicism and ironic view of the world is matched by Hull's.

What I like about Berkeley/Iles is that he was always keen to try something different. He showed courage as a writer, and even though some of the risks he took didn't come off, it seems to me that a writer who pushes the boundaries, and isn;t content to write the same book over and over again is to be admired. Following a formula, as many notable crime writers do, is all very well, but it's not really as exciting or inspiring.

Hull was an innovator, and was especially keen on playing tricky games with story structure. Again, it's undeniable that some of his tricks fell rather flat, and also that in his later work he began to struggle to match the originality of his earlier work. But even his weaker novels generally boast points of interest as far as a modern reader is concerned.

This is so with Until She Was Dead, which was first published in 1949. Again, Hull experiments with structure - we know from the outset that there is to be a murder trial, but we don't know who the victim was. So it's a form of "whowasdunin" story We then flash back in time, and see the build up to a crime committed, I have to say, by a rather chancy and unlikely means. In his personal life, Hull was keen on wine and philately, and both play a part in this story.

Unfortunately the small cast of suspects doesn't contain characters we care about - a recurrent weakness of this interesting and unorthodox author. The police detective, who sees the best in everyone, is a pleasing invention, but I felt the story flagged far too soon. So although I enjoyed its unusual features, overall I can't claim that it's a neglected masterpiece. A minor work from a writer of talent.

Forgotten Book - High Seas Murder

Years ago, I came across a brief mention in a reference book of Peter Drax as one of those writers who followed in the footsteps of Francis Iles, Bruce Hamilton, and C.E. Vulliamy as an author of realistic, ironic crime novels. Intrigued, I strove to find Drax's books, but they were hard to find. Eventually I was pleased to come across one, but they have remained elusive. Until now, that is. Dean Street Press have just reissued the six books that Drax published during his short life, and Rupert Heath of DSP recommended me to have a look at High Seas Murder, which I'd not encountered before.

Rupert was right - it's a really good book. It was first published in 1939, and was the last novel Drax (whose real name was Eric Elrington Addis - I can see why he opted for a pen-name) produced in his lifetime. His crime writing career began in 1936, so he flourished only briefly. A senior naval officer, he was killed in a German air raid on Alexandria in 1941. After his death, a seventh book was completed by his novelist wife Hazel.

Drax spent much of his adult life as a sailor, though he retired from the Royal Navy in 1929, and practised as a barrister until the war broke out. His knowledge of the sea informs this book, and the authentic feel of the story adds to its quality. But what I find very interesting is the fact that the story focuses almost exclusively on working class people in the fishing port of Gilsboro. The lawyers and the cops play only a minor role.

Although (rather oddly) he is not the first character to whom we are introduced, the central protagonist is Carl Swanson, captain of a local fishing ship. His personality is key to the story - and it's a sign of Drax's skill that the final paragraph contains a clever twist that casts fresh light on Carl's psychological profile. There's a doom-laden feel to the story that today would undoubtedly be described as "noir". The writing is crisp and gripping, and Gilsboro is well-evoked: Curtis Evans' informative introduction doesn't suggest any real life model for the town, and though I have two or three candidates in mind, it may be an amalgam of several towns Drax knew. This is an enjoyable example of the ironic Thirties crime novel, different from Iles', Hull's, and Vulliamy's work yet certainly worthy of being associated with it.

Forgotten Book - The Martineau Murders

The Martineau Murders is the last novel published by Richard Hull. An obscure and hard-to-find title, It appeared under the Collins Crime Club imprint in 1953, and it marked the end of an interesting literary career. I've mentioned my enthusiasm for Hull (real name Richard Henry Sampson) several times on this blog, and I've been trying to find out more about him for years..

In  his day, he was much admired, and he continued to play an active part in the Detection Club, of which he was Secretary, for a long time after he gave up writing. It seems to me that he lost enthusiasm for fiction, as there is a touch of weariness evident in some of his post-war books. None of them lived up to his famous debut, The Murder of My Aunt. But The Martineau Murders represents a return to that book. Not because there are any common characters or a shared setting, but certainly some story elements are to be found in both novels.

"My doctor has just left me" is the opening sentence. Alas, the medic has brought bad news to the narrator, the eponymous Martineau, or so it seems. But Martineau is a rather unreliable narrator, and much of the pleasure of the story comes from the reader's recognition of the gulf between Martineau's perceptions and reality. Some of this is, perhaps, rather laboured for modern tastes, and this is a book that (like one or two of Hull's other books) could have done with a meatier plot, but it is still quite entertaining.

By the time this book was written, more than a decade had passed since the appearance of the last book by Francis Iles, the author whose Malice Aforethought was a profound influence on Hull. The two men laced their work with a good deal of irony, and the law of unintended consequences plays a central part in their fiction. So it is with The Martineau Murders, a village mystery with a pleasing if foreseeable twist in the final chapter.

Forgotten Book - Lobelia Grove

Lobelia Grove was the second novel published under the name of Anthony Rolls, a follow-up to the successful The Vicar's Experiments. The book appeared in 1932, and my copy, from the Bob Adey collection, is signed by the author and dated September 1932. It's signed in his real name, C.E. Vulliamy, rather than as Rolls. (Bob's copy of the first Rolls book is signed in both names.)

The setting is a fictitious "garden suburb", and the social life of Kipperly  Park is portrayed with a great deal of sly wit. One always feels, with Rolls-Vulliamy that constructing a mystery interested him rather less than exercising his gift for satire,,but I must say I really enjoyed this one. He tackles the theme of the craving for respectability exhibited by so many English people, and he presents us with a number of incisive portraits of local characters, and how they behave when murder disrupts the serenity of their lives.

A case in point is Mr Bertie Quirtle (the author liked to give his characters unlikely names, a habit that I find a trifle irritating). Quirtle is returning home one night when he encounters a rude stranger in a hurry. Almost immediately thereafter,he stumbles across the body of one of his neighbours. Rather than doing something about it, he scuttles off and later tells a series of lies, seemingly out of fear of becoming involved.

There's a pleasingly ironic plot twist towards the end, but the real pleasure of the book comes from Vulliamy's jokes, and his ability to make shrewd points through humour. At the time he was writing, these books must have seemed refreshingly "different", and they still retain that quality. Yes, the influence of Francis Iles can be detected, but unlike Iles, Vulliamy was not someone who had written tightly structured whodunits, and this helps to explain why his novels focus more on people than on plot. He was a novelist who happened to write about crime. All the books of his that I've read are worth seeking out..  .

Forgotten Book - The Man Whose Dreams Came True

The Man Whose Dreams Came True is a novel published by Julian Symons in 1968, and although it is a Forgotten Book, it should not be. I borrowed a copy from the local library not long after it came out, having recently discovered Symons,and I thought it was terrific. I still do. Symons' cynical wit is much in evidence, and the plot is wonderfully twisty and ironic. As with its immediate predecessor, The Man Who Killed Himself, Symons was working very much in the tradition of Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles, while producing a novel that was distinctive and thoroughly entertaining.

Tony Jones is a good-looking but feckless young man who has plenty of ambitions, but neither the money nor the character - it seems - to realise them. When we are introduced to him, he is working for a crusty old general as his secretary, and indulging in a variety of petty fiddles as well as an affair with a local girl who is - like several characters in the book - not all that she seems.

Things don't work out for Tony in this job, and he soon drifts into an affair with an older woman, before a new job, working for the wealthy husband of a sexy woman, seems to offer him that long-awaited chance to make his dreams come true. There are numerous excellent plot complications, and plenty of surprises before Tony finds his destiny.

This is a very readable story, which stands up well nearly fifty years after it was written. Yes, the price of a flight to Venezuela has changed, and so have some of the other specifics in the storyline, but Symons describes human folly with cool insight as well as humour. Returning to this book so long after I first read it, I definitely was not disappointed, and if you track it down, I don't think you will be, either.