Forgotten Book - No Tears for Hilda

No Tears for Hilda was Andrew Garve's first book to be published by Collins Crime Club. This was in 1950, and Garve was a new pen-name for Paul Winterton, a journalist who had previously published crime novels under the name Roger Bax (he'd later write a few books under another name, Paul Somers). Garve novels would appear regularly until 1978, when Winterton was 70. After that, he retired from the scene, although he lived until just short of his 93rd birthday. 

Garve was evidently an interesting individual, a member of the Detection Club and a founder member of the CWA. He stood for election to Parliament in 1931 as a Labour candidate, but since that was the year that Labour were wiped out in a landslide, his political career never got going. It's not easy to find out much about his personal life, though I understand that he wrote a (regrettably unpublished) autobiography. Signed Garve books are hard to come by, and when I came across his personal copy of this title on eBay, I was keen to snaffle it. Now I've read it, I'm glad I did. 

This is one of those novels in which a man is charged with murder, but someone close to him insists that he is innocent, and tried to prove it. A familiar scenario, but Garve handles it with a touch of originality, focusing on the psychological make-up of the victim. Although Francis Iles had focused on a 'murderee' almost twenty years earlier, in his extraordinary novel Before the Fact, Garve's approach is very different. The setting and storyline are in keeping with the rather grey mood of the post-war austerity era.  

George Lambert's wife Hilda is found dead. At first sight it looks as though she has gassed herself, but it's soon evident that someone killed her. George appears to be the only suspect. He has no alibi, while an affair with a young nurse gives him a motive. His war-time pal Max Easterbrook can't believe that good old George could have committed such a crime. But there are no other suspects.

To find the truth, Max needs to learn more about Hilda's personality. It soon becomes evident that nobody did shed any tears after her death and Garve's attempt to present a rounded psychological portrait of an unpleasant woman is interesting if not, to my mind, wholly successful. But Max's search for the real culprit is interesting and Garve's smooth and accessible prose style kept me turning the pages. 

Forgotten Book - Murderer's Fen

Andrew Garve enjoyed a long and fairly illustrious career as a crime writer, as well as pursuing a successful career as a journalist under his real name, Paul Winterton. I tend to bracket him with Michael Gilbert, who was just a few years younger, because they were both versatile and highly professional writers whose books are invariably smooth reads. If I lean in favour of Gilbert, it's partly because he uses his legal expertise so brilliantly, and I think he was a slightly more gifted writer. But Garve was good, make no mistake about that.

Today I'm focusing on Murderer's Fen, a novel he wrote in the mid-Sixties and which is nowadays available again, thanks to Bello. If I didn't know Garve had written it, I could guess, because it features life on a boat as one of the elements in the story - Garve plainly loved sailing, almost to the point of obsession. It crops up time and again in his novels, and it's to his credit that although I'm not interested in the technical details of boats and sailing, this quirk doesn't irritate me at all.

Murderer's Fen is interesting as an example of the "inverted mystery". We're introduced to Alan Hunter, handsome and persuasive, while he's on holiday, eyeing up the girls. Before long we realise that he's actually a nasty piece of work, a sexual predator with little or no empathy for the girls he seduces. And soon, he has cause to contemplate murder.

Garve offers us a variation on the classic form of inverted mystery, by shifting the viewpoint from time to time between the culprit and the investigating detectives (a nicely contrasted pair). This device works well as a means of building suspense. An idea for a twist occurred to me which never materialised - perhaps I'll use it myself one day! Garve wasn't super-ingenious, really, but he knew how to tell a good story. And Murderer's Fen is a good read with an excellent setting in -naturally - Fen country.. 

Bello and a Murder Omnibus

The rapid growth of print on demand and digital publishing is having the happy effect of reviving all kinds of detective novels that were, until recently, hard to find. One of the most significant entrants in the market is Bello, an arm of Pan Macmillan, and I’ve been impressed with their enthusiasm for neglected gems o the genre.

I first came across them when I was asked to write an introduction to an omnibus of three revived mysteries. It turned out to be a pleasurable task. A Game of Murder, by Francis Durbridge, was one of the novels – it happens to be a book I’ve covered in this blog, and I still remember watching the original TV series on which the novel was based. A very entertaining and twisty story.

Murder in Moscow, by Andrew Garve, illustrates that author’s deep knowledge of Russia and the Russian way of life. Garve (real name, Paul Winterton) was a journalist who visited the country in the early 30s and he wrote factual books about the place, as well as novels set there. The final book in the omnibus was Prescription for Murder, one of the long series of novels that the late David Williams wrote featuring Mark Treasure -  a likeable banker, in the days when bankers were allowed to be likeable. The omnibus is due to be launched at the Harrogate Festival this week, and I hope that, even though the focus of the Festival is naturally on contemporary crime, there will be a chance to interest readers in worthwhile writers of the past as well.

From talking to people at Bello, I’m convinced that the imprint (can a digital publisher be said to have an imprint? I guess so) will become increasingly prominent. Among the other crime novelists they are bringing back into the limelight is Josephine Bell, a writer as reliable as Garve. There are a lot of unknown, but worthwhile, books from the 20^th century waiting to be rediscovered, and I’m confident that Bello will be among the leaders in making sure that happens.

Forgotten Book - Blueprint for Murder

My choice for today's Forgotten Book is another entry in the impressive new series of classic crime novels published by Arcturus. This one is called Blueprint for Murder, and the author is Roger Bax. If the name of Roger Bax is unfamiliar to you, you might be familiar with the work of Andrew Garve. Both were among the pseudonyms used by the journalist and prolific author Paul Winterton, but it is as Garve that he carved out a considerable reputation.

I had never previously read any of the books he wrote as Roger Bax, but even if I had not known the identity of the author before reading the book, I might have guessed it because of the focus on small boat sailing – clearly this was one of Winterton's great passions.

The book changes character in its last quarter. It starts out as an "inverted" crime novel, tracing how a man made ruthless by his wartime experiences sets out to kill a wealthy benefactor, contriving an ingenious alibi so as to escape justice. But his plan has some rather obvious flaws, and after it falls apart, but the book is in the form of an adventure thriller as he tries to flee across the Channel.

The book is set in the immediate post-war period, and the horrors of the concentration camp that so corrupted the villain are conveyed tersely but well. This is a readable and entertaining story, and although the outcome is only foreseeable, I enjoyed it from start to finish. Had it not been reissued, I'm sure I would never come across it, and Arcturus are to be congratulated for publishing a novel that, although hardly well-known, deserves a new lease of life as a lively period piece.

Andrew Garve

Andrew Garve was one of the pen-names used by a left-leaning journalist called Paul Winterton. His early publications included A Student in Russia and Eye-Witness on the Soviet War-front, but he became one of the most reliable purveyors of mysteries and thrillers in the immediate post-war era. A founder member of the CWA, he was also its first secretary, holding the office jointly with Elizabeth Ferrars. He also used the pseudonyms of Roger Bax and, later, Paul Somers. But Garve is the name associated with his most successful work.

This includes the first Garve book I ever read (because his friend, that great judge Julian Symons, rated it highly), The Megstone Plot. This story, with a nice fake-blackmail plan, was filmed as A Touch of Larceny, a movie that crops up on television from time to time, although I have never managed to see it.

In 1997, I was commissioned by Chivers to write an introduction for their reissue of Prisoner’s Friend, a lively if straightforward thriller Garve wrote 35 years earlier, in their excellent Black Dagger series. It was no masterpiece, but still a book that exemplified Garve’s competence as a story-teller.

When I attended the Las Vegas Bouchercon, a few years back, someone on a panel concerning the collecting of crime fiction suggested that Garve would become increasingly collectible in years to come. As far as I can tell from internet book prices, this has yet to happen. But Garve, who died in 2001 but gave up writing long before then, was a capable practitioner and I’ve bought a few more of his paperbacks to check him out in more detail.