Loughborough and the Academic World

I'm just back from a fascinating trip to Loughborough University. Thanks to the good offices of Professor Mike Wilson, I did a couple of events, one a public talk, the other an extensive workshop with Mike's third year students. The students are working on a dramatic version of Farjeon's Thirteen Guests, and I was very interested to hear the take of these young, thoughtful people on Golden Age fiction. Their positivity was refreshing and my visit as a whole very enjoyable. I was also greatly entertained by the poster designed to promote the event...

Nor is this to be my only encounter with the academic world this year. In April I'm taking part in a Golden Age weekend of events organised by the University of Chester. And later in the summer, the Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction will be published; an academic tome, with many contributions from academics - plus me.

My interest in the academic world goes back a long time. In my younger days, I thought seriously about becoming an academic and once I started to train as a solicitor, I wondered if I'd be better suited to lecturing and researching rather than working in a legal office. In either case, I wanted to pursue my dream of becoming a crime novelist, but I thought the academic life might be more conducive to that. So I went for lunch with one of my tutors at Balliol, a wonderful New Zealander called Don Harris, for whose judgement I always had the greatest respect. We talked it over, and he persuaded me that, at that time, the uncertainties of academic life were unappealing. So in the end I stayed in the legal profession, and it worked out well - in the long run.

I continued to write the occasional academic article, as well as more prosaic stuff for newspapers and magazines. And in recent years, as academic interest in crime fiction has risen, so my contacts with the academic world have increased. I very much enjoyed being part of Steven Powell's seminar on James Ellroy at Liverpool University a few years ago and I'm keen to see closer contact between crime novelists and academics interested in the genre.

There is some fascinating research going on, and some very good writing, but at present it seems to me that there's also some surprisingly poor writing in the academic field, stuff that - whatever its intellectual merits - is desperately boring to read, because some authors seem to pay more attention to things (such as bibliographies and other references) which try to show how well they have done their homework, rather than writing accessibly and in a way that others will find inspiring. I understand that part of the thinking is to assist future researchers, but the balance often seems to be tipped against good prose, a strange example for teachers to give to students. Thankfully, the likes of Steven Powell and Mike Wilson recognise the importance of communicating clearly, widely, and well. I'm optimistic that a similar approach will be followed by more and more academics in years to come.

Miraculous Mysteries and Continental Crimes

I'm delighted to have received my author copies of Miraculous Mysteries, my latest anthology in the British Library's Crime Classics series. The book is due out in a few weeks' time, but I thought I'd whet the appetite of locked room fans by telling you something about it now. And the first thing to say is that I've dedicated it to the memory of the late Bob Adey, from whose superb and truly unique book Locked Room Murders I have derived a vast amount of information and pleasure.

Bob collaborated on the production of one or two locked room mystery anthologies himself, and I hope and believe that he would have approved of this collection of stories dealing with a wide variety of impossible crimes. I've included the work of several major authors, and although this particular book does not include anything by the American maestro John Dickson Carr, it's not impossible (so to speak) that future BL anthologies will feature his work.

As usual with these anthologies, I've aimed to include some stories that are likely to be unfamiliar even to those well versed in the genre. Thus there are contributions from E.Charles Vivian, Grenville Robbins, and Marten Cumberland (best remembered as the creator of Saturnin Dax). I really enjoyed putting this one together, and I'm optimistic that it will encourage even those who aren't Golden Age fans or enthused about locked rooms to sample the delights of this very enjoyable form of the crime story.

In the early summer, there will be another Classic Crime anthology. This time it's Continental Crimes.- stories set in Europe long before the EU, let alone Brexit. I'm delighted to say that an Agatha Christie story - not an especially well-known one - is included, as well as stories by authors as diverse as Ian Hay, E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. Jefferson Farjeon, H.C. Bailey,, and Michael Gilbert.

Finally, a bit of news. I've just reached an agreement to compile two more Classic Crime anthologies - and that will take the total of story collections in the series to twelve. The BL and I are delighted by the way the book-buying public has responded to the short stories as well as to the novels (Crimson Snow,for instance, has done wonderfully well, with very good sales and equally gratifying reviews). And I can promise that there are some real treats in the books that are yet to come.

Forgotten Book - Mystery in White

Today's Forgotten Book was written by an author I'd never read until recently. His name was J. Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955), a prolific writer mainly associated with thrillers. He is best remembered as the author of Number 17, a play (and, later, novel) which was adapted into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock in 1932. I haven't seen the film, and it's not regarded as one of the great director's masterpieces. Even so, it's quite something to have been adapted by Hitchcock, and Farjeon was a cut above your average thriller writer.

The book I've read recently is Mystery in White, and it was first published in 1937. The setting is England, and the starting point is a train journey which is interrupted by very heavy snow. A motley assortment of passengers reluctantly start to get to know each other, and before long, murder is committed. Sounds familiar? Well, you might be tempted to think that this is a rip-off of Murder on the Orient Express, but it isn't. Although each book begins similarly, the stories travel along very different tracks.

I thought the first hundred pages or so of Mystery in White were absolutely terrific. So much so that I was reproaching myself for not having bothered to read Farjeon previously, even though I do have a copy of his Ben on the Job, with an excellent introduction by the late Harry Keating. A group of passengers leave the train, and come across a mysteriously deserted house. Soon someone else arrives, and the plot thickens form there. Some of the plot-thickening is a bit tortuous, but characterisation and humour are definitely above average.

Dorothy L.Sayers was a Farjeon fan, and so was Keating. More recently, Curt Evans has written very positively about him. You have to be a good writer to attract the interest of such expert judges,as well as Hitchcock, and Farjeon was certainly an accomplished novelist, who was trying to do something other than write conventional whoduntis. Mystery in White is an enjoyable read that deserves to be better known.