Forgotten Book - The West Pier

Patrick Hamilton was a fascinating writer. I've read no fewer than three biographies of him, those by his brother Bruce, Nigel Jones, and Sean French (all are good, by the way), and I find his life story intriguing, though I have to say he was welcome to it; a classic case of money not being everything, really. He suffered disability and disfigurement as a result of a road accident that wasn't his fault, but even by then he was a heavy drinker, and his health deteriorated steadily until he died in his late fifties.

It's as a playwright that he's best remembered. Rope and Gaslight were both highly successful, and both were filmed. But he felt that his novels were more important, and even if  many would disagree, I find them highly readable. The West Pier, set in Brighton, is a case in point. It was also the first of a trilogy that he wrote about the same character, Ernest Ralph Gorse.

The first thing to say about Gorse is that he's a deeply unpleasant individual. Hamilton makes that clear right away - in fact, the author's voice intrudes constantly, an odd feature that some would find irritating and others old-fashioned. Personally, I didn't mind, although I was surprised that such an experienced novelist resorted to such a device.

Gorse bears some comparison to Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, because he possesses a certain charm, and he lacks a conscience. But this isn't a murder story. It is, instead, the story of a minor crime, the work of an embryonic confidence trickster, and his deceitful treatment of a decent girl and two schoolfriends. And despite the lack of "high stakes", it's compelling because Hamilton creates a frighteningly credible picture of someone who indulges in petty acts of cruelty and revenge - and has a knack of getting away with it.

Complicit: review

My first encounter with the fiction of Nicci French was the superb Killing Me Softly, and I’ve read a number of the other French novels (‘Nicci French’ is, in fact, a husband and wife duo, Sean French and Nicci Gerrard). Their latest novel of psychological suspense, Complicit, has just been published, and I found it an excellent read.

The book is divided into past and present narratives, each told by a young music teacher, Bonnie Graham. The story set in the present recounts the bizarre sequence of events that unfolds once Bonnie finds the dead body of a man to whom she was very close (who is not identified to the reader for quite some time.) The ‘past’ narrative explains the events of a chaotic summer which led up to the man’s murder.

Bonnie is asked by a friend to play at her wedding, and so she forms a band that includes past, future, and would-be lovers. Her choice of fellow musicians is unwise in the extreme, as it turns out, and there were times when Bonnie’s folly irritated me intensely. Some of the events of the story are unlikely in the extreme, but the skill of Nicci French is to ensure that you suspend your disbelief because you do want to find out what has been going on, and how matters will be resolved.

At first, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this story, but it soon had me hooked. The split story-line is handled adroitly, and you can never be quite sure what will happen next (although my rule of thumb was that Bonnie would mess up in some way, and she consistently lived up to these expectations!) If you like pacy suspense novels, I am sure you will find Complicit gripping. It's not a short book, but I devoured it ravenously.

Patrick Hamilton

There are three interesting biographies of Patrick Hamilton – few writers who work in the crime genre are so blessed, although maybe this is because Hamilton is not always described as a ‘crime writer’ (though he would be if he were working today, I think.) One of the books is Through a Glass Darkly, by Nigel Jones, a sound piece of work that is well worth reading.

Jones is in possession of many private papers relating to Hamilton, and was generous enough to make these available to Sean French, who wrote another biography not long afterwards. Sean French is now better known as one half of the best-selling crime-writing duo Nicci French, but his Patrick Hamilton: a life shows him to be a very accomplished biographer as well.

Rather spookily, French describes the sociopathic Ralph Ernest Gorse as an ‘oblique self-portrait’ of Hamilton. Like Jones, he doesn’t try to place Hamilton in the context of crime writing history generally (a missed opportunity, I feel) but he describes with some poignancy the bitter life of a man who knew great success, but also tragedy – he was disabled and disfigured when a motor car ran into him while he was crossing the road, his sex life was often depressing, he suffered mental problems, and his addiction to alcohol ultimately cost him his life. His judgment, it has to be said, was hopeless – a Marxist who never joined the Communist Party, he was a big fan of Stalin, and was bemused when the truth about his hero came out.

The third biography is The Light Went Out, by Patrick’s elder brother, Bruce Hamilton. There was a close and curious relationship between the two men. Bruce was also a writer, and much of his work unquestionably falls within the crime genre. His frustrated devotion to Patrick shines through the pages, even though, according to Sean French, the longer and unpublished version of the memoir casts a rather different light – he seems to have been jealous of Patrick’s greater literary talents.

Because Patrick was a fine writer, Bruce’s own literary achievements tend to be under-estimated, even by Sean French. I’ve read several of Bruce’s books, and they are interestingly different from the run of the mill whodunits of the time, though one or two of them show the same weird adoration of Stalin and Soviet Russia. But there’s no doubt that Patrick is, and will remain, better remembered, and these three books, taken together, provide copious fascinating nformation about a life of soured brilliance.

Another thing about Bruce, by the way (sorry, I just can’t resist trivia.) His godfather was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.