Forgotten Book - Man with a Calico Face

I've written here previously about my enthusiasm for the crime fiction of Shelley Smith, the pen-name of Nancy Bodington, nee Courlander. That interest was originally fired by Julian Symons, a long-time admirer of her work, who heaped praise on her in Bloody Murder, and subsequently shepherded that brilliant novel An Afternoon to Kill back into print in a series of Collins Crime Club reissues.

Man with a Calico Face is a fairly early book, first published in 1951 and it's hardly ever been mentioned on the internet. I did, however, find a link to a negative contemporary critique in Kirkus Reviews, which moans about the unpleasant nature of the characters. This is a complaint often made about the books of Francis Iles, whom Symons and I both admire, and although there is a grain of truth in the complaint, I think it's overdone in relation to both Iles and Smith. Like Symons, I think that Smith's work occasionally betrays Iles' influence, and that is especially true of the final twist in this novel.

At first, I have to admit, I was underwhelmed by the story. An attractive wife and mother is found dead at the bottom of the stairs. The body is discovered by a young man who has nursed an unrequited passion for her, and her large house is occupied by a number of people who might be described as hangers-on. There is no sign of her husband. How has she come to die? The seasoned mystery reader might have a good idea, but the seasoned mystery reader might well turn out to be wrong, because Smith was a very clever writer

The structure of this novel is extremely interesting. After the set-up section, there is a section which delves into the past, before we come back up to date again. This is the same structure that Henry Wade used in the masterly Lonely Magdalen, and although I don't think this book is as good as that one, it's certainly intriguing, and after a slow start builds to a highly dramatic and ironic climax. And who is "the man with a calico face"? We don't find out for a long time, but the explanation rather pleased me. Not Smith's best book, for sure, but definitely worth a read..

Forgotten Book - Background for Murder

Today, my Forgotten Book comes from another author whose reputation owed much to the advocacy of Julian Symons in Bloody Murder. Shelley Smith was a writer he greatly admired, and his enthusiasm prompted me to read her avidly in my younger days. Suffice to say that I shared his opinion about the excellence and variety of her writing. An Afternoon to Kill, in particular, is a real tour de force.

Background for Murder was her very first book, published in 1942, and I've only recently tracked it down and read it. Whilst Smith later developed into an accomplished writer of psychological suspense, this is a genuine whodunit, with a dizzying list of suspects. But she was clearly also trying to update the classic form. The story is narrated by Jacob Chaos, a private eye who is called in (rather improbably, to be honest) by Scotland Yard, to solve a baffling murder mystery which has the local police stumped. There's a distant influence of Philip Marlowe here, although Chaos is not a tough guy, and the setting is much more genteel than the mean streets of Chandlertown.

The setting is, in fact, a hospital for the mentally ill, and one of the interesting features of the book when read today is how attitudes towards the mentally ill have changed in the last seventy odd years. They've changed markedly for the better, although in my opinion there's still a long way to go. But it seems to me that this book was quite 'progressive' in its attitudes - by the standards of the Forties. Smith was a young writer, and the plot touches on issues such as abortion and a key character who is described as "sexually gay" (I discovered that this meant the chap in question was heterosexual but promiscuous.)

The author's youth and inexperience are evident in the liveliness of the story and also one or two flaws. Overall, though, it's a very good debut, although Chaos only appeared in one more book, as Smith rapidly moved away from whodunits. Smith's real name was Nancy Hermione Bodington, nee Courlander. She wrote vividly, and it's no surprise that she later became involved in film work - she was one of those who worked on the screenplay of that successful movie Tiger Bay. Her career as a crime writer rather petered out in the Seventies, but Symons was right. She was a fine crime novelist.