Forgotten Book - Candidate for Lilies

Roger East was in many ways a minor Golden Age author. He only wrote a handful of books, although his career lasted for thirty years. Yet he was an interesting individual and an appealing author. So appealing, in fact, that I find myself feeling frustrated that he didn't make more of an effort to establish himself as a crime writer of the first rank.

Candidate for Lilies, first published in 1934, illustrates both his strengths and his weaknesses as an author. It's a well-written novel with a genuinely interesting central idea. Yet one feels it could have been so much better. Now that may seem a harsh verdict. After all, Kirkus Reviews (not easily pleased) admired the novel on its American publication. More recently John Norris, a shrewd judge, has sung its praises on his Pretty Sinister blog.

The initial set-up is a familiar one. A rich old person, in this case Uncle Arnold, invites penurious family members to his mansion in the country, only to break the news that he's planning to change his will. As usual in Golden Age novels, the would-be testator duly gets his come-uppance. He's stabbed to death with one of his own Italian daggers, and we don't mourn him.

There's a restricted pool of suspects, and East's focus is as much on character and motive as on whodunit. As a result, the novel has an unorthodox feel to it, hence the critical praise. Today, when sophisticated writing in the crime genre is common enough, we may take East's ambition almost for granted, and I'm sure he could have made more of such material. But he could certainly write. Incidentally, the East name concealed the identity of Roger Burford (Roger d'Este Burford, to be precise!) and he was a Cambridge chum of Christopher Isherwood who worked in the film industry and later wrote for television. He deserves to be better known.

Three Steps in the Dark - 1953 film review

I stumbled across the Talking Pictures TV channel recently, and it's proved to be a real find, featuring plenty of obscure and rather interesting movies. A prime example is a classic whodunit, absolutely in the Golden Age style, and based on a story by a Golden Age writer who deserves to be better known. The film is Three Steps in the Dark, and the writer was Roger East - the pen-name of Roger Burford, who focused on screenwriting after starting off as a novelist.

The film was made in 1953, but it looks very much like something written and made twenty years earlier. It's a black and white film with actors mostly unknown to me, and I wonder if it seemed very dated even when it was made. Apparently it had a limited release and was feared "lost" until quite recently. But I'm really glad that it's been retrieved.

What I don't know is whether East's story was ever published independently, or whether he just came up with the plot and characters, and passed it over to the prolific screenwriter Brock Williams to turn it into a movie. The set-up is highly traditional. A rich and grumpy old uncle summons his family, and his solicitor, to his stately pile, to announce that he's thinking of changing his will. This remarkably stupid plan has the usual, utterly predictable consequences...

I've read enough whodunits of this type to be able to spot the villain, and I did so on this occasion, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment. Yes, this film really is a period piece, but it doesn't outstay its welcome, and the woman detective novelist who solves the puzzle is a rather pleasing character. She reminded me slightly of Louie, wife of East's amateur detective Colin Knowles. East is certainly a writer I'd like to know more about.