Forgotten Book - The Second Shot

Anthony Berkeley's The Second Shot is rare if not unique among detective novels for being more renowned for its preface than for the substance of its story. In what is really an extended dedication to his literary agent, the legendary A.D. Peters (whose former wife Berkeley married not long afterwards), he argued that 'the detective story is already in process of developing into the novel with a detective or crime interest, holding its reader less by mathematical than psychological ties.' This opinion was quoted with approval by Julian Symons in Bloody Murder and I agree that Berkeley was spot on.

Symons pointed out that in fact this particular novel did much less to demonstrate the point Berkeley was making than did his first Francis Iles book, Malice Aforethought. Again, I agree. Nevertheless, it's a distinctive effort, a Roger Sheringham mystery narrated by Cyril Pinkerton, although Pinkerton certainly isn't a Watson-character. In fact, he's the prime suspect for the murder of loathsome Eric Scott-Davies.

Berkeley's ideas about crime, punishment, and justice were invariably as interesting and often as controversial as his opinions (and he was never short of opinions) about the crime genre. This novel was, along with Gladys Mitchell's Speedy Death, one of the first Golden Age puzzle to tackle head-on - explicitly, rather than by implication - the notion of the 'altruistic crime',  which I explored in The Golden Age of Murder. If you can think of an earlier example, do let me know. Christie, Carr, and others tackled the 'altruistic crime' during the Thirties, but Berkeley led the way.

Apart from Sheringham, the writer Morton Harrogate Bradley, who had appeared in The Poisoned Chocolates Case, pops up in the story, albeit without contributing much. There's also passing mention of Alice Dammers, from the same novel. This novel reflects his habit of fictionalising real life places and people. There's a wonderful map on the endpapers of the crime scene, Minton Deeps, which was based on Berkeley's own Devon home, Linton Hills. I suspect that Paul de Revel and his glamorous wife were based on people in Berkeley's circle (E.M. Delafield and her husband Paul, perhaps?). The same may also be true of Armorel Scott-Davies, who plays a central role in the story. 

The main problem with the novel is that, after a sprightly start, the pace drags. Berkeley's prose is never less than readable, but there is endless discussion about who was where and when. There are compensations in the way Berkeley juggles multiple false solutions, while the final revelation of the culprit is highly characteristic of his ironic approach to crime writing: he gives a fresh twist to a narrative technique that had been around for a few years. This novel was published in 1930, a year that in many ways marked a turning point in the genre. Berkeley was one of those who showed the way ahead, and his influence continues to be felt.   

Forgotten Book - The Saltmarsh Murders

It's fair to say that the exuberant detective fiction of Gladys Mitchell is an acquired taste. Julian Symons, one of the best judges of all, never acquired it, and it's easy to understand why. Her books, or at least those that I've read (she was very prolific, and I've focused on reading her work from the 30s and 40s) often seem rather over the top. But I get the impression that she was a fun person, and had fun writing her novels, and that in itself I find appealing.

The Saltmarsh Murders, first published in 1932, was her fourth novel featuring Mrs Bradley, who is fine form, cackling and screeching as she sets about solving a whole series of mysteries which centre around the little coastal resort of Saltmarsh. The story is narrated by Noel Wells, the local curate, but one thing is for sure. This is really not a re-run of The Murder at the Vicarage. In place of Christie's coolly assembled and crystal clear storyline, we have a whirl of activity that often threatens to descend into incoherence - though it just about avoids doing so.

The starting point is that Meg Tosstick, a young girl who works at the vicarage, has got pregnant. Rumours swirl as to who the father might be. The baby is born, but nobody sees it. Then Meg disappears, and in due course is discovered to have been murdered. But there is more, much more going on than that.

I found some of the comedy in the book quite effective; not for nothing is mention made by Noel Wells of P.G. Wodehouse. Some of it, however, has not stood the test of time, while the presence in the story of a black servant prompts some depressing racial stereotyping. And although the presentation of sexual repression might have seemed advanced in the 30s, it's now unappealing. However, if you can cope with all the downsides of Mitchell's eccentric approach to crime writing, this is a book that most of her devotees regard as one of her very best. Me? I'm glad I read it, but I prefer Christie, no question.

Forgotten Book - Death by Request

My Forgotten Book for today dates from 1933. Death by Request is unusual in at least two respects. First, its authors were a husband and wife team, Romilly and Katherine John, a pair of Cambridge graduates who were both in their twenties. Second, they never published another novel - either jointly or separately. Surely they weren't disappointed with this first effort? It still reads pretty well today.

My copy dates back to the Eighties. Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan provided intros for several good books reissued by Hogarth Crime at that time, and they do a good job of setting the scene, although one comment that they make, whilst not really a spoiler, does give the alert crime fan a better chance of guessing the outcome.

The story is in some respects a light-hearted homage to Agatha Christie, with a clergyman narrator just as in Murder at the Vicarage. (Gladys Mitchell also wrote a book told in the first person by a member of the clergy at around the same time.) I enjoyed the prissy voice of the Rev. Joseph Colchester, as well as the witty portrayal of an idiotic colonel, who is constantly putting his foot in his mouth.

The authors offer us a traditional country house mystery, with Lord Malvern, who is a bit of a cad, found gassed in his bedroom. The door is locked, but this isn't really a locked room mystery. The cause of death is soon obvious, as is the fact that it was no accident. A socialist butler is one of the other incidental pleasures, and although I felt the action dragged a bit in the middle section, overall I enjoyed the story, and very much regret that Mr and Mrs John didn't write more mysteries.

Katherine became a translator of Scandinavian literature, while Romilly's best-known book was a memoir of his early years in a strange household presided over by his father, Augustus John. Oddly enough, yesterday I was in London, and went to visit the Foundling Museum, a fascinating place that I can strongly recommend. As part of an exhibition of the life and work of Jacob Epstein, who was fascinated by children, there was a bronze of....the young Romilly John. .

The Craft of Writing: Originality

Originality is something to be prized in any form of writing, and certainly in crime fiction. The snag is that it is very, very difficult to be truly original. Even when you firmly believe you've come up with something absolutely fresh and new, all too often it turns out that you've been beaten to it, generally in a work that you weren't even aware of.

This sense that I needed to come up with something absolutely original held me back when, in my teens (yes, I started early) I thought about writing a detective novel. I didn't know how to create something that wasn't likely to be derivative. Inhibitions of this kind are not helpful, and I only got over them properly when I came up with the idea of writing a number of mysteries about a Liverpool lawyer. Something I knew for sure had never been done. Even then, one reviewer of my debut, All the Lonely People, thought she detected the influence of Raymond Chandler (which I wasn't conscious of, I must say, and I'm not sure she had read much Chandler or indeed much crime fiction).

I also imagined that I'd come up with a great idea for my first book that combined plot development with snappy social comment. A body would be discovered in a municipal waste heap, picked over by impoverished scavengers. Very good - except that, many years later, someone told me that G.D.H. and Margaret Cole also wrote a story about a body in a waste heap....Similarly, one of my early short stories about Harry Devlin included a plot device that I discovered, only very recently, to have been used by Gladys Mitchell.

These things can make you despair, believe me - but there's no sense in despairing. The stories by Cole and Mitchell are little known, but that's not really the point, either. The real issue is that I was trying to do something very different in those two Devlin stories than they were trying to do in their books. There have always been similarities between story ideas that appear in different books. There are said to be Russian and Swedish books that anticipate The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and one American mystery anticipated And Then There Were None. These were not, I'm sure, conscious borrowings, but rather ideas that were somehow in the air and which were developed by writers in different countries. Similarly, one of Dorothy L. Sayers' best plot ideas also occurred to Ronald Knox while she was working on her book. Another resembled an idea used (in a similar setting but in a different style of story) by Freeman Wills Crofts.

The same thing applies when there are overlaps between contemporary books. For instance, there was a vogue a few years back, after a drought in England, for crime novels in which bodies were discovered when the waters receded (very different from England 2014 - perhaps we are in for a spate of 'flood' stories...) I remember one Northern writer being rather cross that Reginald Hill had written a book about 'mystery plays' not long after she had done the same. But it was a mistake to be cross, in my opinion. The books were quite distinct, and I could give many other examples of overlaps which seem to me to be not in the least problematic. The real challenge for a writer is to come up with some element - be it voice, or character, or an aspect of setting - that is fresh. Trying to come up with at totally new storyline is wonderful when it happens - but it is rather uncommon, to say the least.

Forgotten Book - Speedy Death

Speedy Death, my Forgotten Book for today, was published in 1929. It marked the arrival not only of Gladys Mitchell, but also of her remarkable detective Mrs Bradley. Both went on to enjoy long and notable careers, and Mrs Bradley even had the accolade of appearing on television in the unexpected person of Diana Rigg. I say "unexpected" because even here, when she was aged 57 (not old at all!) her appearance is constantly compared to that of pterodactyls and aged lizards.

I've had very mixed feelings about the other Mitchell books I've read, as I've mentioned in previous posts about her. She was an extraordinarily variable writer, and I suspect that she wrote too much and too quickly. Yet she had genuine talent, as well as an interesting perspective on life and human nature. And I must say that I really loved this book. It is hugely entertaining, and although -like almost every first novel - it has flaws, it is actually the most enjoyable Mitchell that I've read.

Mrs Bradley is invited to a country house party. Familiar territory in the Golden Age, to put it mildly. A corpse is discovered in the bath. Well, Dorothy L. Sayers had done something similar six years earlier. But wait! The corpse is that of a woman who has been masquerading as a man. I couldn't imagine Agatha or Dorothy using that as a plot device for a novel.

There are some great lines in this book. My favourite exchange is when Mrs Bradley asks the Chief Constable: "Have you heard of sexual perversions?" The Chief Constable nods. "Not a pleasant subject," he says curtly. Enough said! In the mix, we have a weird homicidal maniac and a barmy trial scene in which Mrs Bradley is defended on a murder charge by a top barrister who just happens to be her son,. It's all a bit wild, but it's also tremendous fun.

Forgotten Book - Dead Men's Morris

Gladys Mitchell is a Golden Age writer who definitely falls into the category of "an acquired taste".I'm not sure I've wholly acquired that taste, and yet there are aspects of those of her books that I've read that I find admirable. Yet these invariably need to be balanced against various shortcomings. This is true of Dead Men's Morris,my Forgotten Book for today, which first appeared in 1936 and which is rated highly by a number of Mitchell devotees.

Mrs Bradley, Mitchell's detective, is in fine form here, cackling manically on her way to solving a rather elaborate mystery.The first victim dies (apparently from natural causes) early on Christmas Day in rural Oxfordshire, and the cast of characters includes not only a couple of Mrs Bradley's relatives but also assorted rustics, who speak in a dialect that becomes wearisome after a while (even the local police inspector speaks in dialect - over-egging the pudding, I felt).

Disparate ingredients are hurled into the mix - pig farming (the second victim is savaged by a boar), Morris dancing, a secret passage, a legend about a ghost, a couple of cryptic clues and a brief visit to the then premises of the Detection Club, of which Mrs Bradley was an honorary member, and to which Mitchell herself had recently been elected. There are even a couple of lawyers,one a victim, one a suspect, though neither bears the faintest resemblance to a real life solicitor. The most credible person in the entire story is a likeable young boy, and one can tell that Mitchell was fond of children..

What I like about Mitchell's writing is its sheer exuberance. The gusto with which she describes her detective's gleeful investigation is matched by the wackiness of the plot. Some people assume that Golden Age writers were prudish about sex, but here the sexual adventures of two young women play a part in the story; there are no graphic details of what they get up to, but even so...

If you haven't read Mitchell, she is definitely worth a look. Whether she is worth more than one look is a matter of personal taste. Some fans love her, Julian Symons (arguably the best crime critic of all, but someone who could be a severe judge) was utterly unimpressed. My own feeling is that, taken in small doses, Mitchell at her best is fun. And, though this book is characteristically eccentric, it does boast a very neat last line.

Ask a Policeman

I've blogged ,previously about the Detection Club's collaborative novel Ask a Policeman, and now I'm delighted to say that this fascinating book is to enjoy a new life in an edition to be published by Harper Collins on 30 August. This edition is reproduced from a first printing and beneath the appealing new dust jacket (see above) the binding replicates that of the original edition. It follows on from Harper Collins' extremely successful reissue last year of The Floating Admrial.

I'd be glad to see the book reappear in any circumstances, but there are a couple of features that I'm especially happy about. First, this edition contains an essay written by Agatha Christie about her fellow detective novelistss, which is truly insightful, especially as she writes with an unexpected candour (the essay was written for publication in Russia and did not appear in the UK at the time).

And second, the book contains a brand new introduction, commissioned by Harper Collins - and written by me! Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that this truly was a labour of love. I'm delighted to be associated with a book that is a classic of its kind and which will, I hope, amuse a new generation of readers as much as it did on its original appearance.

The contributors to the narrative, by the way are some of the great names from the Golden Age: Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, Helen Simpson, Milward Kennedy and John Rhode.  

Forgotten Book - The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

Gladys Mitchell, one of the most prolific female detective novelists, is one of those writers whose work divides critical opinion. Philip Larkin was a huge fan, for instance, but Julian Symons did not have too much time for her. I read one or two of her books a long time ago and was not particularly impressed, but recently I decided it was time to give her another go. And my choice for today's Forgotten Book is a rather enjoyable story dating back to 1929, The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop.

This book marked the second appearance of Mitchell's remarkable detective, Mrs Bradley. She is living in a quintessentially English village, which happens also to be home to a rather unpleasant blackmailer who goes missing in mysterious circumstances. Suffice to say that you don't need me to tell you what is eventually found in the eponymous butcher's shop…

It is a mark of Mitchell's unique style that she is able to combine decapitation and dismemberment with plentiful humour. Some of the jokes do not stand the test of time, and the dialogue of the working-class characters is almost unreadable. Yet the book does have, despite various flaws, an enduring charm which explains why Vintage have reprinted half a dozen titles in the Mrs Bradley series. Mitchell offers multiple potential solutions to her mystery, with a flair worthy of Anthony Berkeley, and we are supplied with extracts from Mrs Bradley's notebook, as well as two plans and a timetable. Finally, there is a pleasing twist which sees Mrs Bradley taking a rather idiosyncratic approach to the notion of justice.

One further thing struck me about this book. Not far from the village is to be found "The Stone of Sacrifice" – and in my Lake District Mysteries, there is a Sacrifice Stone close to where Daniel Kind has his cottage. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun!

Following the Detectives in Oxford

Last week-end I returned to Oxford, subject of the second of my essays for Maxim Jakubowski’s forthcoming book on scenes of crime fiction, Following the Detectives. In the April sunshine, the city of dreaming spires was looking at its photogenic best.

One of the most intriguing developments in Oxford’s recent past is the transformation of the city prison into a luxury hotel. It featured in an episode of Lewis a while back. The castle is also accessible nowadays, and for the first time ever I had lunch there, and also climbed the castle mound, which commands rather good views of the city centre.

Wandering around The Parks, and some of the college quadrangles, I was reminded of the pleasures of watching Inspector Morse, and of course the books of Colin Dexter are extensively referenced in what I wrote for Maxim’s book. There are, however, a good many other writers who have set crime novels or short stories in Oxford. I was even responsible for one of them myself. ‘The Mind of the Master’ is set in 19th century Balliol, and introduces the legendary Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett as a a sort of proto-Sherlock Holmes.

Over the week-end there was a folk festival in Oxford, and the city centre was full of Morris dancers. I know of at least one very successful crime writer who is a Morris dancer, and I believe that Morris dancing featured in at least one of the novels written by Gladys Mitchell. It’s a curious English tradition which, to judge from the enthusiasm on display in Oxford last Saturday, is in no danger of dying out. So – who will write the next Morris dancing murder mystery?