Collecting Richard Austin Freeman

Whilst I was researching The Golden Age of Murder, I corresponded with David Ian Chapman, who had been introduced to me by a mutual friend as someone very expert in the work of R. Austin Freeman, a crime writer admired by Dorothy L. Sayers, T.S. Eliot, and Raymond Chandler (and many others, but that's not a bad trio to start with...)

I've never met David, but the information he supplied me was very helpful. This included fascinating insight into Freeman's coded journal, extracts from which David allowed me to publish in the book. Our hope was that someone would come along and help to decipher it. This hasn't happened as yet - Freeman's code is tricky! But I live in hope.

Anyway, it's only recently that I've acquired a copy, inscribed by David, of his bibliography of Freeman and also his biography of another author he's very interested in, William Le Queux. Le Queux was a fascinating character and I am planning to devote a separate blog post to David's very enjoyable study of his extraordinary life.

In the meantime, I've enjoyed the Freeman book, because I've collected a number of the author's novels and David discusses them, and their background, in fascinating depth. He also explains how he came to collect Freeman's work, and if you fancy collecting a crime writer, what he has to say will be of special interest. I'm in regular correspondence with a number of collectors in different parts of the world and my impression is that interest in the older detective stories is growing.

The lovely illustrations in Collecting Richard Austin Freeman, some of them in full colour, are in themselves a delight. If you're interested in Austin Freeman, do take a look at David's book. It was published two years ago by Highfield Press.

Motive: Universal TV review

Motive is a new television series shown on the Universal channel which began last week. I decided to watch the first episode of this North American cop show because it has an unusual premise. The viewer knows throughout who is the killer and who is the victim. This is because they are captioned "KILLER" and "VICTIM" in large letters on the screen at the start of the show. The real question is - what is the motive for the crime?

This is a clever spin on the classic detective plot. It was Richard Austin Freeman, back in the early years of the last century, who first came up with the idea of the detective story which starts out by showing the reader the culprit committing the crime, and then describes the detective work that led to the solution of the mystery. Freeman was a talented and inventive writer, and I mean to say more about him on this blog in the future.

Freeman's idea of the "inverted" story has been adapted many times, for instance by Roy Vickers in his stories about the Department of Dead Ends, and in the hit TV show Columbo. But I can't think of anyone who has tweaked the detective story in quite the same way as happens in Motive. For that touch of originality alone, the show deserves praise. Slightly less original is the decision to cast two exceptionally attractive women, Kristin Lehman (as the cop, Angie Flynn) and Lauren Holly (as the pathologist) in lead roles.

The first episode involved the killing of a teacher by a pupil. Why did the lad do it? I have to say that the mysterious motive wasn't especially memorable, and this was a bit of a disappointment. Overall, I'd say that the show was efficient rather than brilliant. But the premise alone makes it worthy of note. Will I watchi it regularly? Unlikely, because life is short. But I'd be quite happy to watch an occasional future episode.