Jessica Mann R.I.P.

 

I'm truly sorry to report the death, on Wednesday, of Jessica Mann, a crime writer and reviewer of distinction. It's only a month ago that she played a full part in the Alibis in the Archives weekend, talking with her customary fluency and passion about female crime writing, and then joining a panel of authors for a wide-ranging discussion about the genre. A fortnight ago, she was - as so often - a convivial guest at a Detection Club dinner. And only last week I received a parcel of books from her. It was, therefore, with great shock and much sadness that I heard the news from her daughter Lavinia yesterday. 

Jessica lived a full life of high accomplishment, and I’ll remember her with huge affection not just as a talented author but as someone who was always ready, willing, and able to give younger colleagues, myself included, a great deal of help and encouragement. I first met her in the late 1980s, some years after I first read her books, but it's really been in the past ten years that she and I became friends. She followed this blog and emailed me regularly to urge me to keep busy, travelling and writing. We'd even talked recently about collaborating on a book together. She was a great believer in making the most of life, a philosophy that stood her in good stead.

Jessica Mann was educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School and Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied archaeology, and Leicester University, where she took a degree in law; she became a barrister, but did not practise, although she later served as an employment tribunal member. Over the years, she served as a planning inspector as well as serving on numerous committees – including the CWA committee – and as Secretary of the Detection Club. A week after she completed her finals at Cambridge, she married the distinguished archaeologist and historian Charles Thomas; they had two sons and two daughters. Jessica and Charles lived in Cornwall for many years, but after his death two years ago she came back to London, the city of her birth.

Jessica’s first crime novel, A Charitable End, appeared in 1971; her penultimate book, Dead Woman Walking took her career full circle, as it reintroduced one of the characters from her debut, as well as the psychiatrist Dr Fidelis Berlin, who appeared in a handful of earlier novels, perhaps most memorably the superb A Private Enquiry, which was shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger. Her final novel, The Stroke of Death, saw the reappearance of perhaps her most popular character, the archaeologist Tamara Hoyland, after an absence, regretted by many readers, of a quarter of a century. 

Jessica’s non-fiction included Deadlier than the Male, an excellent study of female crime writing, and she was in much demand as a journalist and broadcaster from the time she first appeared on Radio 4’s Any Questions in the 1970s; she also featured on Question Time, Start the Week, Stop the Week, and the Round Britain Quiz . For many years, she reviewed crime for the Literary Review. For about fifteen years, she’d coped with Parkinson’s, which must have been very difficult, but her spirit was indomitable. Her life advice to me, regularly repeated and much appreciated, was very simple: “Do it now!”  Jessica was, you see, a wise woman as well as a good friend and a fine writer. She will be much missed.

Alibis in the Archives 2018

I'm back from Alibis in the Archives at Gladstone's Library, the second week-end event celebrating the British Crime Writing Archives which are held there. As archivist of the CWA and of the Detection Club, I set up the BCW Archives, and as a result found myself organising Alibis, in conjunction with the Library's wonderful team, brilliantly led by Louisa Yates.

The week-end was, like last year, a sell-out. The plan is for Alibis to take place again next year, from 22-24 June, and I encourage you to make a note of those dates in your diary!

This year's programme kicked off on Friday evening with "Bannocks and Blood", a murder mystery written by Ann Cleeves which was good fun. Then on Saturday morning, Simon Brett got everyone in the right mood with his extremely witty Golden Age murder mystery - in verse. Andrew Taylor talked about three real life cases in which he has a personal interest and then interviewed me about collecting crime fiction. To illustrate some of my themes during the conversation, I brought along various books, correspondence, and ephemera from my own collection, and there was a chance for members of the audience to have a look at these before Sarah Ward talked about crime in Derbyshire.

After lunch, Ruth Dudley Edwards talked about subversive crime writing, and Mike Jecks about historical mysteries. Then there was a special treat - Professor James Grieve, the leading Scottish forensic pathologist, discussing some famous cases. The day's formal programme ended with a crime writers' panel - see the photo, taken from The Puzzle Doctor's blog about the weekend.

Yesterday began with Jessica Mann talking about female crime writing, and I discussed the BCW Archives with Peter Lovesey and Sheila Mitchell (widow of H.R.F. Keating) before Peter Lovesey closed the show with a very witty account of the calamitous crime writing of James Corbett. By the end of it all, I was just a little tired, but also exhilarated as a result of the enthusiasm of the delegates (and indeed my fellow speakers) which really did make all the work and the planning worthwhile.

Living the Dream

I'm back home, briefly, after an exhilarating Crimefest, superbly organised as usual by Adrian, Myles, Liz and Donna. It's always fun to go to Bristol, and the fact that this year saw a record attendance speaks for itself.

For me, it was an especially memorable week-end. On Thursday, as usual, we had the Forgotten Authors panel: Jessica Mann, Susan Moody, John Curran, Len  Tyler, and Guy Fraser-Sampson made the occasion engaging as well as informative. And in the evening came the pub quiz, now happily restored to an actual pub, in which I was part of a team that narrowly squeaked victory thanks to a tie-break.

Even better, on Friday, at the CWA Daggers reception (where one of the speakers was Peter Davision, not only a former Doctor Who, but also TV's Albert Campion) , The Golden Age of Murder was announced as one of the books on the longlist for the non-fiction Dagger. Given that, in the past, this category has really been the preserve of books dealing with real life crime, this was not necessarily to be foreseen, and naturally I am delighted.

And even more happily, at the gala banquet on Saturday evening (toastmaster Hugh Fraser, alias Poirot's chum Captain Hastings) Sheila Keating announced that the winner of the H.R.F. Keating award for best non-fiction crime-related book of the past year was...The Golden Age of Murder. Among many reasons why I was gratified was that Harry was very supportive of me in my early years as a writer - he was even good enough to give a lovely quote for the cover of The Devil in Disguise - and Sheila too has become a great friend. In fact, she and her delightful agent were my dinner companions the previous evening, but not a word was mentioned about the award. Sheila said to me afterwards that she is good at keeping a secret, and that's absolutely right.

My other panel for the week-end was themed around Brit Noir and moderated with his usual expertise by Barry Forshaw; fellow panellists were Howard Linskey, whom I was glad to meet for the first time, Alison Bruce and Laura Wilson. There was plenty of time for socialising as well as attending other panels and talks (for instance by the creator of Death in Paradise, the hugely impressive Robert Thorogood). The photo of Ali Karim with the book was actually taken at last year's Crimefest, but Ali has kindly offered to send me some of his shots from this year, which I shall upload here in due course. In the meantime, I can only say that Crimefest goes from strength to strength, and if you have never attended, it is definitely recommended, whether you are a reader or a writer or both..

A Night to Remember

Last Thursday evening was for me very special. The highpoint of my crime writing life, no less. For Thursday was when, during a wonderful occasion as the Dorchester Hotel, I became President of the Detection Club. Since 1930, there have only been seven previous Presidents, plus a co-president, Lord Gorell, who acted as a public speaker during the early years of Agatha Christie's nineteen year reign as President. My immediate predecessor was Simon Brett, who has served with distinction for the past fourteen years.

The first President, from 1930, was G.K. Chesterton - Sir Arthur Conan  Doyle was approached, but too infirm in the months before his death to accept. Chesterton was followed by E.C. Bentley, author of the book that really inaugurated the Golden Age of detective fiction, Trent's Last Case. Next came Dorothy L. Sayers, and when she died, Agatha Christie took over. After her death, Julian Symons became President; he was followed by another leading crime novelist and critic H.R.F.Keating, and then Harry handed over to Simon. As I said at the close of the installation ceremony, those are big shoes to fill. And there's a big presidential robe to fill, too! It was clearly designed, as Simon noted, to accommodate the well-upholstered Chesterton

A very happy feature of the evening was that we had the largest turn-out for a Detection Club event for many years. Those attending included Harry's widow Sheila, Jessica Mann (who was the Club Secretary for several years), the eminent journalist Katherine Whitehorn, and a host of distinguished novelists including Andrew Taylor and N.J. Cooper. The guest speaker was Mark Lawson, himself a novelist of note, as well as a leading cultural critic and commentator. He spoke movingly and well about a trio of recently departed crime writers, P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Henning Mankell, and we also had a chat about The Golden Age of Murder, which he reviewed very generously some months ago.

The Detection Club is a private, London-based dining club, no more, no less. But it has the distinction of being the first major social network for crime writers, and it played a significant part in the genre's development and its cultural heritage. And next year will see the publication of the first Detection Club novel for decades. This is The Sinking Admiral, a book which we thoroughly enjoyed putting together. I'm very glad to be part of the Club, and naturally I'm thrilled that the members have honoured me by asking me to take over from Simon. It's not something I ever anticipated, but I'm very, very glad that it's happened.

Forgotten No More? Deadlier than the Male

Something a little different today. Since the sad death of Bob Adey, author of the wonderful Locked Room Murders, I've been reflecting further on books about the genre, and those that I've enjoyed over the years, including some that are not often discussed nowadays. I'm tempted to write about several of them, and today I'm going to talk about one that has just been made available again to a new generation of readers

Deadlier than the Male was originally published in 1981. Its sub-title then was: "Why are respectable English women so good at murder?" which is a question that's been given various answers over the years, not least by P.D. James. The author was a friend of Phyllis James, and herself a crime novelist of distinction, Jessica Mann. Her books often have a feminist perspective, in a way that is persuasive and appealing, and this title is no exception.

Unfortunately, this particular book has been out of print for years, and it would, I think, be fair to describe it as a Forgotten Book. Happily, we live in an age when, with a bit of luck and enterprise, forgotten books need remain forgotten no longer. And Deadlier Than the Male is now available again, as an ebook, for the modest sum of £1.99. The sub-title now is "an investigation into feminine crime writing". As the blurb says, on its original appearance, the book was described by one critic as “obligatory reading for any reader of crime fiction”, while another wrote, "I cannot recall a better work of criticism devoted to the crime story."

I bought and devoured the book a good many years before I met Jessica, and I found the coverage of the "crime queens", especially those other than Agatha Christie (about whom I'd already read plenty) informative and enjoyable. It is fair to say that the range of books in this area has greatly improved over the past thirty years, and in some cases, more information has come to light about the lives of the authors. But that does not devalue the significance or merit of this consistently interesting book, and I'm delighted that it has returned to enjoy a new life and attract a new set of readers.

The Running Heroine - guest blog by Jessica Mann

The competing merits of stand-alone and series crime novels is a topic of perennial interest, and I'm delighted to say that Jessica Mann is today contributing a guest blog on this very topic.

"Off the top of your head how many crime writers can you think of whose books are all stand alone? In fact, can you think of any? Because even those who started with one-offs usually move on to re-using the same characters, as HRF Keating, did when the first Inspector Ghote followed five stand-alones. Authors can be bored by their running heroes, as Christie seemed to become with Poirot.  Lindsey Davis and Val McDermid  both gave themselves breaks recently , each writing a one-off novels, but then returned to their series characters, in, almost by definition, “series places”.

Other writers feature not so much series as recurring places and people. One is Michael Gilbert, of whom Martin Edwards wrote , “It is a feature of this author’s work that he regularly created fresh and engaging characters who would pop up in various novels and short stories, without any one achieving dominance.” Characters, and  places: having adopted Thomas Hardy’s cathedral city of Melchester in his first book, Close Quarters, he  revived that scene of crime thirty years later  in The Black Seraphim.   

I enjoy these surprise encounters even  more than meeting reliable old favorites. It was fun when Margery Allingham’s Amanda Fitton,  introduced  in  one of the  early, more light-hearted crime novels,  reappeared half a dozen books later in The Fashion In Shrouds,  after which she’s a fixture. Agatha Christie’s return to Hercule Poirot in her last book, Curtain, is in  a different category, as she wrote the book many years earlier and put it aside for later publication.

Minor characters reappear in my own books; and some  are connected by   series heroines.   Professor Thea Crawford,  reluctant detective in The Only Security and Captive Audience, plays a small part  in subsequent novels featuring her former  pupil,  the archaeologist Tamara Hoyland. Both of them know   Dr Fidelis Berlin, introduced  in A Private Inquiry, and taking  a minor role in Under A Dark Sun and a major one in The Voice From The Grave.

The  heroes and heroines of crime fiction  often grow up (as Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion did)  even reach retirement age, like Ian Rankin’s Rebus, but they usually remain vigorous and influential, as did Ngaio Marsh’s Alleyn. Very few  detective heroes  grow realistically old, though Ruth Rendell’s Wexford,  Peter Dickinson’s Pibble and Hercule Poirot do.

And I hope the septuagenarian Fidelis is credible  in my new book, Dead Woman Walking. One of its minor  characters, a young Isabel Drummond,  is revived forty years after her first appearance in  A Charitable End. It was my first novel – so perhaps it no longer counts as a stand-alone."

Dead Woman Walking by Jessica Mann: review

Jessica Mann is a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer whose primary reputation is as a crime novelist. Amongst other things, she's written a study of the "Crime Queens" of the Golden Age, Deadlier than the Male. She's also written outside the genre, and her latest novel, Dead Woman Walking is a reminder of the breadth of her interests.

It's also a peculiarly fascinating book because she's done something unusual and appealing. Just as Agatha Christie, having started her career with A Mysterious Affair at Styles, took Poirot and Hastings back to Styles Court in her excellent and under-estimated novel Curtain, so here Jessica Mann has delved back into her own literary past.

As she explains in a note at the end of the book, the woman who narrates part of the story, Isabel, appearead in her very first novel, A Charitable End. Another major character, the memorably evoked Fidelis Berlin, appeared in an excellent mystery, A Private Inquiry, as well as in two subsequent books which I haven't read as yet. And Jessica is kind enough to say in the note that a suggestion from me inspired her to write a "sort of sequel" to her debut novel, forty years on. Very gratifying from my perspective (especially as she is a writer whose books I enjoyed long before I ever met her), and suffice to say that she's done something unusual and distinctive with that initial idea. The result is a book to savour.

This is a relatively short novel (published by The Cornovia Press, based in Yorkshire) and there are plenty of switches of scenes, as well as (mainly in the early part of the book) switches of period. So we begin with a preamble set in Nazi Germany, move forward to Scotland in 1964, then go to the present day, and so on. The catalyst for the story is the discovery of the body of a woman who disappeared half a century ago, but there is also a dramatic mix of ingredients, ranging from Fidelis' quest for the truth about her own identity to an ingenious method of murder, the abduction of children, and Satanic rituals.

There is a very striking climax, but this is also a novel of ideas, about feminism, family and literature. In addition, I suspect that there may be a number of semi-autobiographical elements. As you would expect with Jessica Mann, it's a very well-written as well as a poignant book. I'm delighted to have read it, and to be able to confirm that after a slight delay in publication date, it's now available generally..

Remembering Two Stars

A time for reflection, today. Along with Jessica Mann, I was interviewed for Radio 4's obituary programme, Last Word, which aired this afternoon and which featured a tribute to Reg Hill. There were some quotes from interviews with Reg himself, and it was sad and strange to think that I won't be hearing that distinctive, civilised voice again.

And today, Etta James died. Evidently someone who had a very troubled life, to put it mildly, but a great singer. My favourite of her recordings, although it was never a hit, and is little known, is Waiting For Charlie To Come Home. It's a superb song, and you can hear it on Youtube - there is also a very good version by Trinitje Oosterhuis, and quite a good one by Karima, but Etta James' original remains definitive. How sad, again, that we won't be hearing that voice again, but at least we have the recordings.

Blogs

Jessica Mann is a writer of very interesting novels, some of which I’ve mentioned in the past. She’s also a critic and commentator, with a very good full-length study of female crime writers, Deadlier Than the Male, to her name.

Jessica has now started a blog with discussions about “pre-feminism for post-feminists”, a topic that really is much more fascinating than that tag-line may suggest. You could argue that feminist issues are at the heart of much of Jessica’s fiction, but her novels are certainly not didactic, and any points she wants to make don’t get in the way of the story.

The blog anticipates the appearance next spring of her latest non-fiction book, The Fifties Mystique, which evidently talks about some issues of concern to feminists. But whether or not one labels oneself as feminist, I’d expect it to be a very interesting piece of work. As a male reader who enjoys many books written by women and featuring female characters, I’m looking forward to it.

On the subject of blogs, you’ll have gathered that I’ve been having continuing problems with the new version of Blogger. My apologies – and thanks for your patience. My webmaster is now back to help me get things sorted out - hence the new layout. There are still some issues to iron out, but I hope that both the blog and my website will be looking better and more up to date before Christmas.

How Jessica Mann's crime writing career began

I was really pleased when Jessica Mann responded to my suggestion that she write something about how she got started as a writer. It's the sort of topic I find really interesting, and I'm especially keen that we hear more about writers past and present who - like me - are by no means household names.

'When Martin emailed saying he had acquired a pristine first edition of my first novel, A Charitable End, I read it again myself and found a story I’d forgotten in a tone of voice I hardly recognize. Then Martin asked me to write something about how I got started as a crime novelist.

In my head, I’d been a writer ever since I could read and was determined to be the youngest published novelist ever. I was broken-hearted at seventeen to discover that Pamela Brown had been only sixteen when The Swish of the Curtain was published. All the same, to write a novel and get it published was still my ambition though deferred and deferred again as I went to Cambridge, got married, moved to Edinburgh where my archaeologist husband was a university lecturer and had children.

Many writer friends have told me that they always felt, exactly as I did, that holding a hardback volume with one’s own name on the spine was more than a simple ambition or life-plan, it was something without which life would have been meaningless. But I had still produced little more than random scribbles when Charles was appointed to a chair at Leicester. I suddenly realised that it was now or never: write that novel before we moved south or accept that it wasn’t ever going to happen. So, at last, I got down to work, half-an-hour here and half-an-hour there, whenever I could get away from our three (at the time) small children. I have had an irregular working timetable ever since.

A Charitable End was finished shortly before we left Scotland. I sent the manuscript to Collins and got it back almost by return of post. Then a friend introduced me to an agent who took me on and sent the book back to Collins who bought it, not quite by return of post, and published it in 1973, to encouraging reviews. On republication in 1992 Gwendoline Butler wrote that the book is “a story of the secrets that can lie hidden behind a respectable façade.” (She also kindly called it “a wickedly funny picture of manners and morals in the Scottish capital, a fascinating mystery and also an understanding and sensitive novel about the position of women.”)

Why crime fiction? Partly because that was what I liked reading; partly because I was interested in what happens when the thin ice of civilised society cracks or breaks; and partly because it was a genre that was by definition not autobiographical. I had no wish for my writing to be any kind of emotional strip-tease. As I was to realise when I wrote a book about women crime writers (Deadlier Than The Male, 1981) the grandes dames of crime fiction all used it as a kind of barrier between themselves and self-revelation.

A Charitable End came out in 1973. In various ways it’s become a period piece. First of all, at 60,000 words it’s less than half the length of most 21st century crime novels. It’s written in a less colloquial style than is usual now. And it’s about middle class people.

It has become fashionable to suggest that crime fiction can only be regarded as realistic if it concerns gritty low-lifes, and investigation is only worth following if it’s performed by cops. The Edinburgh that Ian Rankin and Quentin Jardine describe or the Edinburgh of the current new wave of Scottish noir, is a very different place from the city in which A Charitable End is set, in the beautiful Georgian New Town where we lived ourselves amidst middle class respectability. Our friends were lawyers, doctors, journalists, academics (all men) and their wives who, in those pre-liberation days, didn’t have jobs, but probably did voluntary work – do-gooders, as they would later be derisively termed (would a do-badder be preferable?). I was writing about a society and a setting familiar from my own experience. But I’ve always insisted that everyone and everything else in the book was pure invention.

Or was it? With several decades of hindsight, I can see that I did borrow (probably unconsciously) aspects of people, places and predicaments that really existed; and I can recognize the naïve thought processes of the person I once was, a young woman who had been bounced into a kind of premature maturity by marriage and motherhood. A Charitable End reminds me of a happy period and lovely place, but there is much more I could and should have said about them. Perhaps, forty years on, my first book should have a sequel.'

Now, wouldn't it be great if a bit of blogging could inspire a sequel to a book dating back four decades?!

Milward Kennedy's Big Mistake

When I bought Jessica Mann’s A Charitable End from Jamie Sturgeon recently, he told me a story that I never knew before. We were discussing Milward Kennedy, an interesting writer whom I’ve blogged about recently, and he mentioned a libel case in which Kennedy featured. The story is told in a true crime book called The Ordeal of Philip Yale Drew. It’s written by Richard Whittington-Egan, a chap of immense knowledge, whom I’ve never met, but to whom I’ve chatted on the phone several times. He was very helpful indeed when I was writing Dancing for the Hangman, and was kind enough to read and comment on the manuscript. Apparently, a novel that Kennedy wrote featured a thinly disguised version of Drew. The snag was that, though Drew had been suspected of murder, and was grilled at a coroner’s inquest, he was never tried and the case was never solved. Drew sued Kennedy and his publishers, Gollancz, for libel. The case was settled at the last minute before the trial, as often happens. The compensation didn’t do Drew much good, however, as he died only three years later. Kennedy’s barrister was H.C. Leon, who later became well-known as a writer under the name Henry Cecil. This mishap rather messed up Kennedy’s career as a crime writer, or so it would seem. Until the court case, he had been prolific, a rising star of the genre. Afterwards, though he lived for thirty years or more, he only published four more books. A sobering story, to my mind. And a reminder of why it’s a good idea to try not to libel anyone. The trouble is, avoiding accidental libel is by definition rather difficult.

A Charitable End - review

A Charitable End was Jessica Mann’s first novel, published back in 1971. I was pleased to find a first edition in Jamie Sturgeon’s last catalogue, and couldn’t resist the temptation to snap it up.

The novel was a Collins Crime Club title. So many splendid books were produced under that imprint over the years. I still can’t understand why the publishers abandoned it after the retirement of the legendary editor, Elizabeth Walter. She had an eye for talent, and clearly she took to Mann’s elegant prose style.

The setting is Edinburgh, and a middle-class world where well-off people pursue charitable activities in their leisure time, before the cosy status quo is shattered by a sudden death, and a sequence of poison pen letters. The narrator is a young woman who has been conducting an affair with the deceased’s husband, and Mann examines the tension s beneath the surface calm with some accomplishment.

The narrative is far from orthodox, but it never sinks into self-indulgence. The main focus is on the lives of the female characters, rather than on detection, but in the end, the mystery is rather neatly unravelled. At the time, naturally, Mann was feeling her way as a crime writer, but the assurance of her debut promised good things to come, a promise on which, in the intervening years, she has delivered.

I’ve quizzed Jessica Mann about the background to this book, and to my delight she has agreed to write a post for this blog which will say a bit more about it. Watch this space!

How long should a crime novel be?

There’s little doubt that – as a generalisation – crime novels have grown fatter over the years. Jessica Mann pointed out a while back that, in days gone by, a typical crime novel was not much more than 60,000 words long; she pointed to many of the old green Penguins to illustrate her point. But things have change. Compare, for instance, the early Reginald Hill books with his more recent publications. The latter are much longer – yet equally fine, I hasten to add. But length is not always synonymous with quality.

This trend towards obesity is driven, primarily, by publishers’ requirements, but no doubt the publishers would say they are only responding to consumer demand. A writer like Robert Barnard, for instance, tends to stick to relatively short books. But Stieg Larsson’s success has not been hindered the bulkiness of his three novels. Some have opined, though, that Larsson’s books might not have been harmed by a bit of judicious cutting. And much as I liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I think the book could easily have been shortened.

I know of one successful writer of historical mysteries whose publisher insisted that she increase the already substantial word count of her books. And a fellow lawyer once told me that he judged the value of a book by its size. Which shocked me at least as much as those who judge the quality of a novel by its cover.

Personally I have a slight prejudice as both a reader and a writer for books that are not too long. But of course there are plenty of exceptions – Reg Hill’s work is but one example. All the same, I do think that the quality of plenty of crime novels might be improved by some cutting. Most stories have a natural length, and it does them no favours to increase it.

Forgotten Book - A Private Inquiry

My recent Jessica Mann reading binge has continued with A Private Inquiry, first published in 1996. This came twenty years after The Eighth Deadly Sin, which I discussed here recently, and the story is very different – but there are two elements which are similar.

The first is the way Mann shifts viewpoints. In the early stages of the book, she does so to almost bewildering effect. We begin with a planning inquiry, overseen by Barbara Pomeroy, and it seems as though this will be her story. But then the focus shifts to one of the inquiry witnesses, Fidelis, with off-shoots involving her new young assistant Sophie, Barbara’s family life, and the dodgy entrepreneur whose planning application is under consideration in the opening pages. It’s a clever and unorthodox technique, which has the effect that you don’t really know what the book is ‘about’ in terms of the central mystery, for quite some time.

The second is the focus on women characters and the issue that concern them. We start with Barbara and her career, and before long her family life – which involves an impotent husband who takes a keen interest in a mysterious neighbour, and a child who has recovered from serious illness – becomes significant. Fidelis, who has had a double mastectomy, is a fascinating and complex character, who finds herself strangely attracted to, and envious of, young Sophie. Sophie herself is an intriguing character, a biker with an interest in psychology. And finally there is Buffy, the wife of the entrepreneur, who has gone missing in rather odd circumstances.

All these ingredients are mixed with subtle skill. I guessed some elements of the plot, but by no means all of it, despite the fact that the clues are fairly supplied, and for me, the suspense became truly gripping in the latter part of the story, as I began to realise the nature of the puzzle. An unusual and satisfying book, which unquestionably deserves to be better known.

Autobiographical crime fiction

‘Write what you know’ is a tired – and unnecessarily limiting - cliché of advice for budding writers, but like most clichés, it contains an element of common sense. However, the nature of fiction is that it is an imaginative form, and so to my mind, there is a limit to ‘writing what you know’ – because it’s good to escape from what you know, and to explore things you don’t really know at all. To take an obvious example, I’m fascinated by writing about murder, and motivations for murder. But I’ve never murdered anybody, and I don’t plan to. Honest.

Having said all that, it would be silly to deny that sometimes there is an element of autobiography in fiction, and this can sometimes creep in quite unintentionally. This is a point which Jessica Mann made when responding to my enthusiastic post about her book The Eighth Deadly Sin. A writer will often take elements from their own life and use them in fiction – but perhaps subtly, or dramatically, changed.

There is a great temptation, when reading a novel, to seek clues to the author’s personal life and thoughts. And sometimes the clues are fascinating. But this kind of amateur detective work is often liable to result in one jumping to the wrong conclusions. It’s fun to do, sometimes, but not to be taken too seriously.

With my own books, Harry Devlin shares a number of characteristics with me. He’s a lawyer based in Liverpool, who likes soccer, cricket, films and 60s pop music. But I never wanted him to be a portrayal of myself, so I wove in plenty of stuff that he and I do not share. For instance, he gets involved with criminal and divorce work, and I’d hate to do so. He also lives less in his imagination than I do, and as a result, he’s a lot braver than me. But I’ve never seen this as wish fulfilment – I created a life for him that I really would never want to have for myself!

With Daniel Kind, it’s different. He and I both come from the north of England, and went to Oxford, but otherwise our lives are dissimilar in countless respects. Sometimes the differences - as well as similarities, are written into the character without pre-planning. I still can’t understand why he got hooked up with people like Aimee and Miranda, and judging from emails I receive, nor can many of my readers!

Strangely enough, I’ve become more fascinated by Hannah Scarlett than by Daniel in recent years. I love exploring her life and psychology. The way women think is something else that fascinates me, even though sometimes it perplexes me. And I've written short stories from the perspective of historical characters, an American, and a gay politician. I’m just intensely curious about other people’s lives, and on the whole, fiction appeals to me much more as a means of exploring other lives than of presenting an autobiographical picture of myself.

The Eighth Deadly Sin

Jessica Mann is a British writer I’ve mentioned several times on this blog, and I’m surprised her work is not more widely discussed, as she has produced a number of very well-written novels over a long period. I’ve just read one that dates back to 1976, The Eighth Deadly Sin.

The set-up is intriguing. A sleazy lawyer (yes, believe it or not, they do exist!) meets an attractive woman at a party and they begin an affair. But she conceals her true identity from him. Gradually, his lust turns to love, but she doesn’t reciprocate. When he runs into significant financial trouble, he wants to turn to her for help. Trouble is, she has vanished, and his attempts to trace her run into a brick wall.

Then the viewpoint switches, and we start to see things from the woman’s perspective. And it becomes clear that Mann’s real preoccupation is not so much to do with the mystery of who the woman is, but the question of how she can escape from what stifles her in her everyday life. The rather unappealing and unfortunate lawyer fades increasingly into the background even though he remains, in a sense, pivotal to the plot.

There are crimes, a mystery, and ultimately a murder and a trial in this story, yet it is far removed from a conventional crime novel. If you are interested in the way women think and behave - and who is not? - I’d say that you are likely to find this unusual book worth tracking down. There aren’t too many fireworks, but the story-line does provoke thought.

Forgotten Book - Deadlier Than The Male

Jessica Mann is an accomplished novelist, and I plan to write about her fiction in a future blog post, but my choice today for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is a non-fiction work dating back to 1981. Deadlier Than The Male was written at a time when reference volumes about the crime fiction genre came out in a trickle, rather than (as now) a flood. But nearly three decades on, it stands up to scrutiny very well indeed.

The book is sub-titled ‘An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing’, and it seeks to answer the question: ‘Why is it that respectable English women are so good at murder?’

Mann displays her formidable knowledge of the genre throughout. The heart of the book is devoted to an in-depth look at the work of Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Tey and Allingham, but many other authors are considered (including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of whose forgotten titles I featured last week.) I was pleased to see mention of Nina Bawden – it’s now seldom noted that, early in her career, she wrote detective stories of real merit.

This is such a good book that I’m sorry Mann has not written further works of crime-related criticism – although she remains a highly regarded reviewer. One of her many interesting observations is that ‘Crime novelists…are particularly reticent about their own personal lives’. I think it’s fair to say that this is less the case today than it was in 1981, thanks to the pressures on authors to promote themselves, coupled with the rise of the internet, social networking, and, yes, blogging. It’s not at all easy for modern crime writers to maintain their privacy as did the likes of Sayers, Christie and their contemporaries. But whether the change is wholly a good thing is an interesting subject for debate.

One final point. Mann acknowledges the help of that delightful writer Catherine Aird, and refers to Aird's proposed biography of Josephine Tey. It's a matter for regret that the biography has never appeared, and I still hope against hope that, one day, it might.

Jessica Mann

I’ve been giving more thought to the discussion about gruesome crime fiction that we had the other day. It is always slightly unnerving when I read in the media about the latest real-life serial killer to be arrested – invariably, it turns out (horror of horrors!) that his home is full of books about murder. Of course, mine is too, even though I really don’t think I am that ghoulish, and my books certainly aren’t in the grisly mould of some current best-sellers.

Here is an interesting article by a notable reviewer, Jessica Mann, who has tired of gore. And I can well understand why. Jessica Mann’s own books are rather more sophisticated than those she has decided not to bother with in future. I’ve read several of them over the years, dating back to the days when I’d just started work and I haunted the local library, as book-buying was outside my budget.

One of her most notable books, however, is a non-fiction study of female crime writers, Deadlier Than the Male. This is full of interest, especially on the topic of the great ‘crime queens’ of the past. One of them is Josephine Tey, a class act who, although far from prolific, had many admirers at the recent St Hilda’s conference. From the discussion, it was clear that her work has stood the test of time better than most.

In her acknowledgements, Jessica Mann notes the assistance of that great Tey expert (and very agreeable crime writer) Catherine Aird, who was at the time working on a biography of Tey. Sadly, the book has never appeared. I’ve talked to Catherine about this project a few times over the years, and it’s by no means certain it will ever see the light of day. But I hope it will, eventually.