Patti Abbott - guest blog

Blog readers will be very familiar with the name of Patti Abbott, who got the Friday Forgotten Books feature going a few years ago. A blog gives a clue to its writer's personality, and hers is a very engaging blog indeed, always a first class read. I'm delighted to host a guest post from her about her new book, Concrete Angel:

"I grew up in Philadelphia in the fifties and sixties so when I began to think about writing a novel, (after writing well over a hundred short stories) it seemed right to set in there and then. I think you have an almost sensate relationship with the time and place you grew up in that you never quite experience again.  I know I could walk into my childhood home and identify it by the smell alone.

My novel centers on two characters: Eve and Christine Moran, a mother and daughter. Eve is half a generation older than me and Christine more than half a generation younger. I wanted to look at Christine's childhood through my adult eyes rather than fall too much into reliving the years of my own youth.

My favorite parts of the book are the ones that lean heavily on the Philadelphia of the sixties and early seventies: what is was like to live in a 750 square foot row house, what is was like to go downtown to shop dressed in white gloves and high heels, how it felt taking a trolley car when they still existed, what working in a glamorous store was like, how closely you were observed in neighborhoods like that.

Of course, Concrete Angel is essentially a very dark book so I couldn't allow my memories of a happy childhood to prevail too often. Almost all of the details about Eve and Christine mirror a childhood friend and her mother. Their story was a dark one two and their co-dependency was much like Eve and Christine's. Both are gone now so I had no worry about them reading it.

Thanks, Martin, for allowing me to discuss the book's setting here. My next book is set in Detroit, where I have lived since leaving Philadelphia." 

Blogs and Inspiration

One of the blogs I study most closely is Kerrie’s Mysteries in Paradise, and I was flattered a few days ago when Kerrie mentioned this blog as one of seven that she’s found inspiring. She asked that I name seven blogs which I regarded as inspirational. Since then, I’ve kept on deliberating (once a lawyer, always a lawyer?)

A tricky aspect of these memes is that selectivity is challenging. How can I confine myself to picking just seven blogs? Amnesia afflicts me regularly, and I’m bound to forget to highlight at least one that I really enjoy, probably half a dozen or more. (When I wrote up my 16 allegedly interesting things about myself, I clean forgot that I’d once been involved with a feature film – a story for another day, perhaps.)

Yet I didn’t want this post simply to be a list. I’m sure that readers will find plenty of interest in all the blogs listed in the blogroll - please don't overlook the ones I haven't mentioned specifically in this post. I thought that, as well as mentioning some blogs by name, I’d also make one or two brief general observations.

There are different types of inspiration, as well as different sources. For instance, Kerrie’s blog contains a number of adventurous technical features that one day I’d like to emulate (lack of time, as well as a massive techy expertise, is the snag here.) Then there are blogs which contain a good deal of useful info – examples include Karen Meek’s Eurocrime blog, It’s a Crime, Detectives Beyond Borders, Petrona (Maxine Clarke is an advocate of Friendfeed, something else I regret not having got round to investigating in sufficient detail yet), Murderati, Criminal Brief (Steve Steinbock’s Friday column is a definite must-read), Gerald So’s blog, and The Rap Sheet.

Several American writers have terrific blogs – Ed Gorman and the witty Bill Crider are among the names that spring instantly to mind. Patti Abbott’s series of Friday’s Forgotten Books is fascinating, and I am really pleased to be involved with it.

Then there are the blogs of readers and fans, sometimes focusing heavily on crime, like Ali Karim’ The Existentialist Man (with an emphasis on the contemporary), and Xavier Lechard’s At the Villa Rose (with an emphasis on the traditional detective sotry), sometimes ranging:far and wide (beyond books, let alone mysteries) for example, Letters from a Hill Farm, Books Please, Confessions of a Book and Opera Lover, Harriet Devine's blog, and the blogs of Roberta Rood and Lourdes Fernandes, two Americans I met when they were visiting England, and before I started blogging. In fact, I’ve met a number of fellow bloggers for the first time in the past twelve months, although often all too briefly, and this too has been a tremendous plus.


And then there are blogs which, at least at first sight, don’t have much to do with my fields of interest. One is Juliet Doyle’s Musings from a Muddy Island; yet her interest in letterpress has influenced me in developing one of the characters in my current work in progress. Another is a blog which links to Jane Gallagher’s writing blog – also by Jane, it’s called Work that Wardrobe. Now, nobody who has ever met me would ever confuse me with a dedicated follower of fashion. Yet as a novelist, I’m bound to be interested in most things – including what my female characters wear. But it’s a subject on which I’m pretty ignorant. And it occurred to me not long ago that I could pick up some good ideas for their appearance from Jane’s blog.

All this means that blogs can inspire me in a whole variety of ways. To guide me to interesting books I haven’t read before (old as well as new), to introduce me to delightful people and to help me, in one way or another, with my own writing. One thing is for sure. When I started off on this blogging lark, I had absolutely no idea how much fun it would give me. It’s been a revelation - and it’s become an addiction, but a very pleasurable one.

Forgotten Book - The Doll

Resuming my contributions to Patti Abbott's series, Friday's Forgotten Books, here is my take on The Doll by Francis Durbridge:

'This 1982 novel, based on a television series which came out seven years earlier, shows Durbridge at his best. The protagonist is not Durbridge's regular sleuth Paul Temple, but wealthy publisher Peter Matty who, when in the company of his brother Claude, a famous pianist, meets an attractive woman at Geneva airport. Soon he bumps into her again and learns that her name is Phyllis du Salle. An air of mystery clings to her that fascinates Peter – and when she vanishes unexpectedly, he becomes obsessed with tracking her down and discovering the truth behind her apparently secretive life. A macabre toy – the doll of the title – is found floating in the bath, an image that lingers in the memory.

The constant twists of the narrative, coupled with its unrelenting pace, make this a very suspenseful book. Although Durbridge was not as good a writer as Cornell Woolrich, and in particular lacked the American master’s ability to create emotional resonance in his situations, he was at least equal to Woolrich in devising storylines that tantalise and intrigue.

Almost inevitably – and this is also true of Woolrich – the solution to the mystery is a bit of a let-down and the explanation for the use of the doll seemed to me to be unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, Durbridge offers a very good red herring and a neat final shuffle of the rather slim pack of suspects. An excellent light read.'