Gaudy Nights

I read Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night at a tender age, maybe about twelve, long before I'd ever visited Oxford. I knew nothing, really, about the city or the university and I was rather baffled by a 'love story with detective interruptions' as it was described. I judge it more generously now, although it's definitely not my favourite Sayers. And now, at long last, I've attended a Gaudy of my own, for the very first time.

This was last Friday, when Balliol College (Lord Peter Wimsey's alma mater, as it happens) held a Gaudy for the matriculation years of 1972-76 - five years of students, almost half a century on. I suspected it might be my last chance to attend one of these infrequent events, so I decided to go. And I'm very glad I did.

It was a thought-provoking experience, to say the least. One of the challenges, of course, was to recognise the long-haired students who were now well-upholstered men in their sixties, often with little or no hair. And yes, they were all men: Balliol went mixed-sex just after I left, rather like my grammar school, so I missed out on a more rounded education twice! But happily, various wives and partners were in attendance.

I knew it was going to be a memorable occasion when, as I was checking in at the porter's lodge, a Geordie voice behind me urged the porter to instruct me not to have late night visitors in my room and not to play my Dionne Warwick records all night. This was Tony, a guy I'd not seen since 1977, other than to spot him one election night some years ago, as a defeated Green Party candidate. When I told him I'm still a devotee of Dionne, he said he'd expected no less. Chatting to Tony and his partner Sue was one of many highlights of a terrific day which began with refreshments in the Buttery, proceeded with tea with the Master and then a champagne reception, followed by a dinner in the Hall and a very late night having drinks with old friends in the Senior Common Room. 

And you can be sure that I'm now wondering about a short story inspired by the occasion. Gaudy Midnight, perhaps? 

Jonathan Creek Revisited

For me, as for many people, the lockdown has (among other things) meant more time for writing, reading, and, to a lesser extent, watching television. As far as TV is concerned, I've caught up with a few recent series and also had another chance to enjoy some old favourites. I found, to my surprise and delight, that Ian Carmichael's Lord Peter Wimsey series from the 1970s held up much better than I'd expected, but the greatest pleasure has come from revisiting David Renwick's brilliant series Jonathan Creek.

I've rhapsodised about Renwick's writing and this series in particular on this blog in the past, but what strikes me on a second viewing is just how strong and tightly written the scripts are. One recurrent feature of many series nowadays is that they are excessively long and tend to drag. This is true even of strong series that I've watched lately, such as Sharp Objects, based on Gillian Flynn's novel, and The Hour (which I hope to blog about shortly). But with Jonathan Creek, there's never (or almost never) any padding.

The care with which Renwick writes is evident from the early episodes to the recent shows, such as The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, which I watched again last night. I'd forgotten the story, but on looking back at this blog, I see that I gave the episode a rave review on its original showing, more than six years ago. If anything, I enjoyed it even more the second time around, which is saying something.

I've found that I've forgotten the detailed plots of almost all the stories (except the brilliant Miracle in Crooked Lane) but that doesn't indicate a failure on the writer's part. Rather, I think that Renwick's command of detail is such that it compels attention at the time of viewing while not distracting from the overall pleasure of the character of Creek and the bizarre and deftly handled scenarios - and it's that overall sense of satisfaction and indeed delight that lingers in the memory.

I've been thinking about locked room mysteries a lot recently, partly because of the arrival of a new anthology (I'll talk more about this shortly), partly because I've been reading some more John Dickson Carr, and partly because I've been toying with an idea for a new locked room mystery of my own. Watch this space... 

The Art of the Whodunit - again

I've returned from my latest trip, directing the Art of the Whodunit programme again for Road Scholar, and a group of lovely American crime fans (one of whom turned out to be a fellow Brit, who'd met and married a charming member of the group on a previous trip). Having run this programme for the first time in May, I felt more confident this time around, and that helped to make the journey even more enjoyable.

We began by flying out to New York City, where again I managed to find my way to the Mysterious Bookshop, somehow managing to restrict myself to buying just four books. There was also time for a river cruise on a hot Saturday afternoon before meeting the group, and the following day we all embarked on Queen Mary 2, a much more civilised and straightforward process than last time, when all the roads around the terminal were closed because of a bike race, meaning that we had to set out at the crack of dawn.

A seven day Atlantic crossing is quite an experience, and the days raced by. I'd made some changes to the programme this time, since I'd realised that it would be viable to stage my Victorian murder mystery, "Who Killed George Hargrave?" on board. Four members of the group volunteered to play the suspects, and did a great job.

After landing at Southampton we headed over to Oxford, staying at a hotel in the charming village of Iffley. Weirdly enough, I'd never got nearer to Iffley than the stadium, and the locks on the river, even though it's within walking distance of the city centre. I found it a lovely village. The various tours, of Balliol (where I admired the picture of Lord Peter Wimsey, below, which is to be found in the Buttery), Christ Church, the Sheldonian Theatre, the canal and river, and Blackwell's bookshop were great fun, and when it was time to say goodbye there was the chance to reflect on a quite wonderful fortnight in the company of delightful people. And now, I really do need to get my head down and embark on...some serious writing!! 

Strike: The Cuckoo's Calling - BBC TV review

Strike: The Cuckoo's Calling, screened last night, opened a new seven-part private eye series based on the books of Robert Galbraith. As all the world now knows, Galbraith is a pen-name, and it conceals the identity of J. K. Rowling. But the secret was kept, not only until publication day, but for weeks thereafter, until an incautious leak revealed the truth.

Rowling has long been a detective fiction fan, and she's been quoted expressing admiration for predecessors such as Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. And there are plenty of parallels between her hero, Cormoran Strike, and Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey - and not just the fact they both have odd names. Both are sons of the rich, both attended Oxford, both have fought in war, and suffered because of it. Wimsey was shell-shocked; Strike lost his leg in Afghanistan.

The cleverness of this BBC version of Rowling's first novel, lies in the casting of Tom Burke as Strike. He captures the character superbly, on the evidence of this first episode, just the right mix of scruffiness and that dogged determination displayed by all the best detectives. There was a classic scene in this episode, when a suave lawyer (the always dependable Martin Shaw) tries to warn Strike off. We've seen this kind of thing a thousand times before, but these two actors handled the situation in compelling fashion.

When I read the book, I thought that it was enjoyable but over-long, and the early signs are that the discipline of TV adaptation will be good for it. The mystery concerns the apparent suicide of a supermodel, and the scenario of a supposed suicide that may just be murder is again very familiar to fans of the genre. But Burke, and Holliday Grainger, who plays his newly arrived assistant, make a very likeable team, and I'm looking forward to episode two.

The Longevity of Detective Fiction

An interesting feature of Rupert Penny’s The Talkative Policeman, which I mentioned the other day, was his introductory note, in which he expounds on what he sees as the lack of longevity of the detective story: ‘The detective shall find his grave at last as surely as the lifeless flesh he theorised upon.’

He identifies Holmes as the sole exception to this: he and Watson ‘are, first and foremost, characters, and the rest is incidental. At a guess, it is not impossible that Lord Peter Wimsey may one day qualify to keep them company.’ No mention of Poirot or Miss Marple here, and by the time Penny wrote this, Wimsey had solved his last major case!

For Penny, plainly, the plot was the thing, and this was no doubt why, after the Second World War, he did not return to the genre: it had moved on, and elaborate puzzles of the kind he favoured were no longer in fashion. It is a shame that he abandoned the genre, though, since he (like the much more eminent Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkeley, who also gave up writing crime novels in the post-war era) had genuine talent as a writer, a talent which in his case never fully flowered.

I suppose Penny would have been amazed had he been told that, more than seventy years after his debut novel was published, it has reappeared in a fresh and appealing version, courtesy of Ramble House. Of course, it is true that minor writers like Penny are forgotten by most readers nowadays, but the appeal of ingenious mysteries has by no means faded. The detective as a character, and the detective story as a form, have proved much more flexible, and thus enjoyed much greater longevity, than some of their creators over the years have anticipated.

When Should a Series End?

One of the fascinations about the fast-paced conversations that blogging and social networks facilitate is that a single contribution to debate can create a fresh and intriguing direction for the discussion. The way in which these cyberspace conversations mimic, yet differ from, spoken conversations would be a good field for research.

But today my focus is on a thought-provoking comment made on this blog by Paul Beech in relation to detective series. He asked: when should a series end? Let me quote directly from him:

‘The author running out of steam or simply fancying a change doesn’t quite justify a “never again” ending with a popular character, surely? After all the author might discover a fresh head of steam after a break. But what if the series was conceived thematically as a cycle and this is now complete? Or if the character’s personal goal is achieved – a relationship (Daniel Kind / Hannah Scarlett), reconciliation with a daughter (John Harvey’s Frank Elder), etc. Is it then time, regretfully perhaps, to move on?’

Series can come to an end, or an apparent end, in a variety of ways. Conan Doyle decided to dispose of Sherlock Holmes because he became frustrated that detective stories were getting in the way of his other activities – but, of course, public pressure forced him into a re-think. Nicolas Freeling, presumably bored with his finest creation, killed off Van Der Valk, but then had the detective’s widow investigate subsequent cases.

More commonly, an author decides upon a change of direction, but prudently avoids killing off the detective – just in case. It's still relatively uncommon for series to be conceived thematically as a cycle, although as Paul says, it does happen. Increasingly in the money- and sales-driven business climate of the modern publishing world, the decision is taken out of the author’s hands when the publishers simply decree that they will not produce any more books featuring a particular detective. If the author is lucky, the publisher will accept further books with a different set-up. But often, nowadays, the author is cut adrift. I can think of several friends who have suffered this fate, and it is a great shame.

Oddly, an unsuccessful television series can so disappoint a writer that they are reluctant to write about the character again – the protagonist has, in a sense, been ‘spoiled’ in their eyes. I can think of two British writers, one male and one female, of whom this could be said.

Sometimes, it’s simply the case that the author’s focus switches, and the framework and characters he or she has created in the series do not accommodate a more ambitious approach. This is, you might say, the Dorothy L. Sayers conundrum. Lord Peter Wimsey began almost as a Bertie Wooster type of character, but became a much more serious and substantial figure in later books. Arguably, she might have created a major new series detective, but she preferred to stick with Wimsey. Likewise, Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion evolved quite remarkably as the years went by. Today, I think publishers would prefer their authors to make a fresh start.

In my own case, I wrote seven successive books featuring Harry Devlin, as well as a number of short stories. I then decided that I wanted a change, even though it would have been possible to take up a further contract offer. By the time I’d written a non-series book and was ready to return to Harry, my editor had moved on – and my new editor suggested a series with a rural setting. Hence The Coffin Trail and the beginning of the Lake District Mysteries.

However, I never lost my enthusiasm for Harry, and when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture in 2008, it provided the perfect opportunity to revive him in Waterloo Sunset. It was a book I really enjoyed writing, and I think it is possibly the best of all the Devlins. But commercially, there is not as much demand for that series as for the Lake District Mysteries, so it will (unfortunately) be some time before Harry returns. But I hope he will, one day.

As for Paul’s question about Hannah and Daniel getting together – we’ll just have to wait and see! But here's a hint: their developing relationship is the spine of the series, but I didn't conceive the series in cyclical terms. In my mind, it's very much open-ended. A journey without a particular end in sight....

.

Why So Gruesome?

Jill Paton Walsh’s paper at the St Hilda’s conference last Saturday morning sparked quite a debate. She suggested that it was interesting to consider why crime fiction had become so much more gruesome in recent times, and she advanced the theory that it might have some connection with the fact that capital punishment was abolished in the UK in the 1960s.

The idea was, in part, that since readers no longer had to contemplate the horrors of the scaffold, the hood, and the trapdoor, when the culprit was hanged after being brought to justice, they searched for them elsewhere As a great expert on Dorothy L. Sayers, she drew attention to the fact that Wimsey (towards the end of his detecting career, in particular) took the fate of the criminal rather more seriously than many of his fellow sleuths.

Someone in the audience pointed out that the snag with this particular theory (which Jill expressed much more persuasively than my crude summary might indicate) is that crime fiction has become much more gruesome in many countries around the world, some of which retain the death penalty to this day. On reflection, Jill accepted this was a fair point.

So, has crime fiction become gruesome in recent years, and if so, why? Inevitably, we are generalising, but the strong consensus at St Hilda’s was that it has indeed become more gruesome. That’s certainly my view. But what is the reason for it? I really don’t know, but I suspect the answer may have something to do with the fact that – at least on a certain level - life tends to feel more secure today than it did, say, sixty years ago Fiction often seeks to engage very closely with real life, but it also has an escapist component. But does anyone have a better explanation?

St Hilda's

I was lucky in that my paper for the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery weekend conference was scheduled for presentation at 11.30 on the Saturday morning – an excellent time. Not too early, but soon enough that, having given the presentation, one can then chill out without agonising further about last minute edits to the paper.

The opening paper was presented by Jill Paton Walsh, who talked fascinatingly about The Attenbury Emeralds (Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case) and retribution. She was paired with the Conference’s guiding light, Kate Charles, whose main focus was on that classic by Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke. I’m not an Allingham expert, but I agree with Kate that it’s one of the most notable books in the genre.

The theme of the weekend was The Wages of Sin, and I focused on the topic of sinful victims in crime fiction. I’m planning to publish the paper on my website in due course. My aim was to highlight, amongst the famous titles, a few books that are undeservedly obscure. The set-up is that two linked papers are presented, and then the two presenters answer questions from the (formidably well-informed) audience. I was partnered with my friend Christine Poulson, a very good writer about whom I’ll have more to say in a future blog post. We were both very pleased with the reaction to our session.

When I last visited St Hilda’s College for the conference some years back, it was the last remaining women-only college in Oxford. Now it has bowed to the inevitable and become mixed, but if traditionalists feared that the atmosphere around the place would be adversely affected, their anxiety was misplaced. St Hilda’s benefits from a gorgeous setting by the River Cherwell, close to Magdalen and the Botanic Garden, and to sit in the grounds on a sunny day and watch people drifting by on punts is extremely relaxing and agreeable. I can recommend this conference unreservedly.

Forgotten Book - The Documents in the Case

The author of my latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is very definitely not forgotten. Dorothy L. Sayers’ reputation as one of the greatest British detective writers is secure. But The Documents in the Case is a book which doesn’t often seem to be discussed these days – something that surprises me, because it is an unorthodox and original piece of work.

For sure, it’s a very different book from the classic Wimseys. For a start, a co-author is named alongside Sayers. This is Robert Eustace, a shadowy figure who collaborated with a number of crime writers (most notably with Edgar Jepson on the classic short story, ‘The Tea Leaf’), supplying scientific expertise. And science plays a very important part in the story.

There are a number of intriguing themes in the book, but what has always fascinated me is that this is an epistolary novel. The story told through letters by various hands appears to be relatively commonplace but, bit by bit, a complex set of relationships is presented. I first read this as a teenager. At the time, I admired the skill with which Sayers conveyed information through correspondence, and I still do (I’ve flirted with variations of the device in one or two short stories, and I plan to do so again in the future.)

Like many innovative works, this one has a few flaws. There are not too many likeable characters, and the epistolary form does impose some constraints. But Sayers was a very fine letter writer indeed – examples of her mastery of that dying art are easy to come by, as five volumes of her letters have been published – and she deploys her skill to impressive effect here. In some ways, this book is as much a landmark in the history of the genre as the best Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

Forgotten Book - Gory Knight

Gory Knight, my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of forgotten books, was published in 1937, not long after the appearance of Dorothy L. Sayers’ renowned Gaudy Night. It’s a parody, written by the partnership of Margaret Rivers Larminie and Jane Langslow.

The story parodies the celebrated detectives Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey (and his manservant Bunter), Reggie Fortune, Dr Thorndyke and Inspector French – although the French character appears only in the final stages of the book .The sleuths gather, by improbable means, in an English country house, and are immediately greeted by the disappearance of the cook (the eponymous Ms Knight.)

It’s a fun book. The plot is slight, and perhaps stretched out too much, but there is much pleasure to be had in the rendering of the eccentricities of Poirot, Wimsey and Bunter in particular. I was glad to stumble across it – initially in the pages of Jamie Sturgeon’s catalogue. Jamie sold the book before I called him, but he referred me to another crime fan, the locked room expert Bob Adey, who was able to supply me with a copy.

There is an intriguing family connection between Larminie and a leading contemporary writer, Margaret Yorke. I hope to write an article about this aspect of the story at a future date. But I know nothing about Langslow. If anyone can tell me anything about her, or about how the book came to be written, I’d be very interested to hear it.

16 Things

I’ve never really got to grips with memes and tags, but Ali Karim has asked me (along with various others, including Mike Stotter of Shots Magazine), to highlight 16 little-known facts about myself. I would normally be desperate to come up with some excuse to avoid doing this, but Ali is such a great guy - and I do already owe him a pint or three - that I’m glad to oblige. But then, the awful challenge is to come up with 16 morsels of info that do not immediately characterise me as Britan’s Boringest Blogger. How interesting these bits and pieces are, I’m dubious, but here goes.

1. I was born in Knutsford, the Cheshire town which was the basis for Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, and to this day the law firm I’m a partner in has an office in the town.

2. The first time I wrote about crime fiction, I was seven years old. I recorded in my school book that I’d enjoyed an episode of ’77 Sunset Strip’ called ‘The Chrome Coffin.’ The teacher needed to correct my spelling of ‘chrome’, though.

3. A Team for all Seasons is the title of the book written by my father about the local football club of which he was a passionate supporter and ultimately President. It took him ten years to write and was published shortly before his death. It ran to over 400 pages. Quite an achievement for someone who left school at 14 and had little formal education. He consulted me regularly about his writing, but routinely disregarded my advice – and the book was all the better for it.


4. After I left school, I had what is now known as a ‘gap year’. I spent three months unemployed (it was the era of the miners’ strike, daily power cuts and the three day working week) and then six months working in a factory that made yogurt. Surely this was the least exciting gap year ever. But it certainly made me appreciate university.


5. Balliol, the Oxford college where I studied law, was also the college of those great fictional detectives Lord Peter Wimsey and John Dickson Carr’s Dr Gideon Fell.

6. I saw the Beatles in person when I was about eight years old and many years later carried out legal work for the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where they were discovered.

7. My first book was published in 1983 and rejoiced in the title of Understanding Computer Contracts. Racy, huh?

8. Three years after that, I published a book called Managing Redundancies. Unfortunately, it has again become a very topical subject. In recent years, my book on equal opportunities has reached its fourth edition.

9. Magazines I’ve written for include such action-packed titles as Car Mechanics (though I barely know how to open my car's bonnet), Practical Woodworker (there is nobody less practical than me), and Good Housekeeping (I'm deplorably untidy). I was legal correspondent for those legendary publications Social Services Insight and The Expatiate at different times, and spent 18 months writing leader articles for The Solicitors Journal - an excellent opportunity to pontificate on anything that appealed to me (a bit like blogging!)

10. My first fiction success was with a short story that won the Southport Writers’ annual competition, judged by the fiction editor of Bella, a women’s magazine which duly published it. It later appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. After that, there was no stopping me….

11. My methods of coping with stress are listening to music and, less obviously, shopping (but not in a supermarket.)

12. I once gave a lecture to a group of international lawyers in the unlikely setting of the Salzburg castle where much of ‘The Sound of Music’ was filmed.

13. My favourite sport is cricket, but currently my clients at work include Liverpool Football Club and the Football Association.

14. Although I tend to take the Edith Piaf line on regrets, I do regret never learning to play the piano. But when I was a student, a song I’d co-written was recorded on an album by an Italian musician and I was featured in the pop column of ‘The Oxford Mail’. (Someone currently selling the album on eBay describes it as ‘unusual’….) One of my neighbours now is Ian Brown, a rock musician formerly of the Stone Roses, but I have not been brave enough to tell Ian about my past life as a songwriter.

15. The first pop music concert I attended was by Dionne Warwick, in 1976, and the most recent was by…Dionne Warwick, last year.

16. A phrase that crops up several times in my novels is: ‘Life is short’. Something I strongly believe.