Back from the Baltic

When I had the good fortune to be invited to take part in Tallinn's HeadRead Literary Festival, I was thrilled to accept. Tallinn's a city brimming with atmosphere and sights, and the festival programme was packed with stellar names from around the world. And having just returned (though by an unexpectedly circuitous route) I must say that the event more than lived up to expectations. For its success, great credit goes to Krista Kaer, and her excellent team of organisers. They even managed somehow to arrange gorgeous weather from start to finish!

I've visited Tallinn once before, as a stop on a Baltic cruise. One of the merits of cruising is that you can sample a destination and decide if you'd like to go back one day. Tallinn's always been high on my list of places meriting a return visit, and luckily the programme included several trips which allowed me to see more of Estonia, a real treat, as well as an evening reception in the remarkable historic setting of Tallinn's town hall, and another reception at the British Ambassador's residence. 

The itinerary included a walking tour and a rare chance to see the stunning altar piece in the church of St Nikolai (now a gallery) fully opened up by the curator. A bus trip to the coast included a visit to an art museum, and lunch at a delightful place called Kasmu. My event was a conversation with Sophie Hannah, hosted by fellow crime novelist, Jason Goodwin. I last met Jason in a bar in Baltimore ten years ago; he was very good company then, and again in Tallinn. What I hadn't known before was that his dad is Richard Goodwin, co-producer of the Albert Finney version of Murder on the Orient Express and other Christie films. 

There was plenty of time to socialise with fellow writers, most of whose work is far removed from crime fiction; so I had breakfast with a delightful Norwegian poet, lunched with an American journalist, dined with a Danish crime writer, and went out for a drink with a group including Jason, storyteller Janis MacKay and Helen Rappaport, as well as chatting with such luminaries as brain surgeon and author Henry Marsh, Scottish novelist James Robertson, and Michel Faber. When Jason arranged an impromptu tram trip to the baroque Kadriorg Palace, I had the pleasure of a chat with Louisa Young, whose forthcoming memoir You Left Early sounds as though it is both poignant and brilliant.

I'm so grateful to Krista and her colleagues for inviting me to Tallinn. My return to Britain yesterday took a bizarre turn when a series of mishaps on the part of Finnair led to my spending several  Kafkaesque hours in Helsinki airport before being told that I had to fly to Munich in order to get home. It took a very long time, and I arrived back in the small hours, exhausted. But never mind. Even on that bizarre journey I had the consolation of having the time to read from start to finish a quite superb novel, Newton Thornburg's Cutter and Bone. And I'm so glad to have brought home so many memories of a fantastic festival.  

  

Forgotten Book - The Sunset Law

I enjoyed my first John Buxton Hilton book, The Anathema Stone, and so decided to take advantage of the fact that Bello have reissued the Simon Kenworthy series in ebooks by trying another with a title I found inviting - The Sunset Law. In the earlier book, Kenworthy solves a mystery while on holiday in Derbyshire. This time, guess what? He's on holiday again - having retired from the Yard - although now he ventures futher afield, going with his wife to visit their daughter and her American husband, who happens to be a cop.

Holiday mysteries are a staple of the genre. They have been popular with writers, as well as readers, for a very long time. "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", for instance, is a mystery in which Conan Doyle took Sherlock off on holiday. Agatha Christie was forever doing it with Poirot, in great books ranging from Peril at End House to Murder on the Orient Express, and even allowed Miss Marple a slightly unlikely trip to the Caribbean. On a less exalted level, I've never written Harry Devlin or Hannah Scarlett books set on holiday, but holidays do feature in some of my non-series short stories, and holidays I've taken have often inspired short stories - examples include "Sunset City" (the Isle of Man) and "The Bookbinder's Apprentice" (Venice) as well as the very recent "A Glimpse of Hell" (Grand Cayman.) I am currently working on another travel story-related project.

So I was favourably disposed towards The Sunset Law from the start. Th e holiday idea gives one a chance to see Kenworthy in an unfamiliar setting - Florida - and the set-up crackles with potential conflict. The son-in-law's behaviour seems rather odd, and events soon take a grim turn as it appears that he may have been breaking the rules. Whose side should Kenworthy be on?

Hilton writes well, and his stories have more depth than many crime novels. I suspect he'd have been an interesting person to get to know - sadly, he died nearly thirty years ago. Unfortunately, the story here failed to hold my interest. The impression I gained towards the end (where the pace picks up nicely, I should add) was that Hilton had enjoyed visiting Florida, but had struggled to work out a suitable mystery to set there. He might have done better to content himself with a short story The Sunset Law is a decent read, but I preferred The Anathema Stone.

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.   

On the Orient Express

Last Wednesday morning, I embarked on one of those trips of a lifetime, travelling on the Orient Express from Venice, arriving back in London on Thursday evening. This was a long-held ambition, inspired originally of course by the classic Christie novel, and given fresh impetus by a work colleague who did the trip a while back and recommended it to me.

There was no murder on the Orient Express last week, I'm glad to say (though some emergency stops early in the trip did make me wonder if something strange was going on - "Italian drivers!" laughed one of the waiters as he did a bit of unintended juggling with the plates.) But the train lived up to its reputation for luxury and atmosphere, and the timing and route of this particular journey made it possible to enjoy some varied and wonderful scenery, above all in Switzerland.

In preparing for the trip, I'd read The 8.55 to Baghdad, by Andrew Eames, which traces Christie's first trip to Ur, and includes a section on the Orient Express. It's a very good book, and Eames clearly had great admiration for Christie's fortitude in making such a long journey on her own, especially as, once she left the great train, things got rather more challenging for her as she made her way to the dig run by Leonard Woolley, whose weird wife was later turned by Christie into a character in Murder in Mesopotamia.

The train ran as far as Calais, and after getting through the Channel Tunnel, the last leg of our journey was by British Pullman. Again, very swish with lots of food and drink. I've seldom experienced this kind of luxury living, and although it was for less than forty-eight hours from start to finish, it was truly memorable.

The stay in Venice beforehand was also brief, but it's a city I could never tire of, and tomorrow my post will focus on a truly extraordinary book "experience" during my visit- nothing to do with my Venetian story "The Bookbinder's Apprentice", mind you!

The Orient Express

I had lunch the other day with one of my new colleagues, a very interesting and likeable man, who told me about a trip he and his wife had recently on the Orient Express, from London to Venice. They aren't, I think, crime fans, but he is very well travelled and appreciates authenticity in his trips abroad, and seemed very happy to have done the trip.

To me, it all sounded fascinating (though evidently expensive) and I have a feeling that a Christie fan such as me really ought to do it once in his life. Murder on the Orient Express, after all, remains one of the classic crime titles, though it's by no means my personal favourite among Christie's books.

But, I'd be interested to find out whether other readers of this blog have actually ventured aboard the Orient Express, even if only for a short trip. Did it live up to expectations? Is the atmosphere still reminscent of the days of Poirot? Is the Christie connection featured on the journey in any way? I'd love to know!

Agatha Christie's Marple: The Secret of Chimneys - review

Agatha Christie’s Marple this evening gave us The Secret of Chimneys, from a book which dates back to 1925. Jane Marple does not appear in the book, and frankly the story – a cheerfully ludicrous thriller – would be long forgotten if Christie were not the author. I felt compelled to watch, though, to see what the scriptwriter, Paul Rutman – a capable and experienced TV detective drama writer - would make of a very tough challenge.

His approach was to take a few small plot elements and a number of characters (or, at least, their names) from the original but to create an entirely new story, with the scene being set in 1932 before moving into the 1950s, with Miss Marple, in the shape of Julia Mackenzie, improbably invited to Chimneys along with an exotic foreign aristocrat and a woman from ‘National Heritage’.

The cast was good, including the reliable Edward Fox, the beautiful Charlotte Salt and the talented Dervla Kirwan. But the story-line was risible and Christie probably turned in her grave at the identity and motive of the culprit. I was certainly amazed, but not in a good way.

I was left wondering what was the object of the exercise. I could see the point of the new TV version of Murder on the Orient Express, even though I’ve read some comments by purists who disapprove of the changes made to the original, because the focus on justice was – to me – genuinely interesting. But with The Secret of Chimneys, a silly but mildly amusing book from the 1920s just became a silly TV show of 2010. Disappointing, to say the least.

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express - review

Murder on the Orient Express, starring David Suchet, the latest Agatha Christie’s Poirot to hit the TV screen, was my choice for Christmas Day viewing. And I’m glad I watched it, since it was one of the best of all the screen versions of any Christie story. Better, certainly, than the film version of the book starring Albert Finney as Poirot, even though the film is not at all bad.

Why was this version so good? The answer lies in the focus on the precise nature of the motive for the crime and the proper response to it. I guess that most readers of this blog are familiar with the central gimmick, but I’m not going to give it away. However, the key theme of the book – as with And Then There Were None – is the idea of doing justice, and in particular the doing of justice in circumstances where conventional legal systems fail to achieve the ‘right’ result.

This is a powerful, perhaps eternal, issue, one that is apt to crop up in all societies, at all times. And Christie’s willingness to take on such issues, in the context of an elaborately and innovatively plotted classic detective story, is one of the reasons for her enduring success. The screenplay homed in on Poirot’s battle with his conscience, and I thought that Suchet’s performance was superb.

The supporting cast, including Eileen Atkins and David Morrissey, was very strong without being over-burdened by star names. The script by Stewart Harcourt was first class, creating a consistently sinister atmosphere. Anyone expecting an entirely cosy experience from watching this version will have been surprised. But also, I hope, impressed.

Transsiberian: review

Transsiberian (2008) is a movie thriller that really does thrill. It's one of the most gripping films I’ve seen in a long while. The script is intelligent and taut; the cast is excellent, and is headed by Woody Harrelson, a versatile actor I very much admire, and Emily Mortimer (daughter of the late Sir John) and includes Ben Kingsley.

The story opens dramatically, with the discovery of a murdered man in Vladivostok. Inspector Grinko (Ben Kingsley) suspects that the crime is connected with drug trafficking. But then Grinko disappears from the action and attention switches to an American couple (Harrelson and Mortimer) who have just completed work on a charitable project in China.

Harrelson’s character is gregarious, and thanks to him, the Americans befriend a very attractive younger couple, a Spanish man with a girlfiriend from Seattle, who share their compartment on the Transsiberian Express. Unfortunately, Mortimer finds herself attracted to the Spanish chap, and the complications escalate from there.

It takes a long time for the action to erupt in this movie, but we are never less than fascinated by the interplay of characters. Harrelson is a cheery do-gooder, Mortimer has a dark past and is dissatisfied with the marital status quo. Their relationship is put under intolerable strain, and part of the appeal of this film is the way in which the couple face up to the challenges with which they are confronted. When Kingsley shows up on the train, all charm and subdued menace, we are never quite sure whether he is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.

The Lady Vanishes and Murder on the Orient Express were earlier crime films of quality that were set mostly in the confined space of a train. In my opinion, Transsiberian deserves to rank with them as one of the best train-based films ever made.