Forgotten Book - On the Night of the Fire

If you're looking for 'cosy' escapism, you'd probably better give F.L. Green's On the Night of the Fire a miss. This book, published in 1939, reads almost as if it was written to demonstrate that crime fiction of the 30s was not all about nostalgic make-believe. It's a doom-laden tale and was the basis of a film released in 1940 and also known as The Fugitive, which has been claimed as the first British film noir. The movie starred Ralph Richardson.

Frederick Laurence Green (1902-53) was born in Portsmouth and died in Bristol, but after marrying an Irish woman spent much of his life in Belfast - and he was himself of Irish descent. He is perhaps best known as the author of Odd Man Out, filmed by Carol Reed and starring James Mason, but it was his second novel, On the Night of the Fire, that made his name. It's the only crime novel I can think of in which the protagonist is a barber.

The book is a sort of  'inverted mystery' in that we follow Wal Kobling's journey from petty thief to burglar to murderer, but there is no puzzle element in the story. And it must be said that the events of the book are as bleak as the drab back streets of the unnamed port town (scenes for the film were shot in Newcastle) in which it is set. This isn't a mystery that will cheer you up. But it's well-written and compelling and Francis Iles (a very good critic as well as a very good writer) was among those who approved.

Green's literary style, on the evidence of this book, is interesting. His material is sensational but he handles it in an almost relentlessly unsensational way. To an extent I was reminded of Patrick Hamilton, but that's mainly because of their shared fascination with the tawdry side of life. I'm not sure I'm 'selling' this book very well, but I must say that I found it distinctive and powerful and whilst it won't suit everyone, I'm very glad I read it. 

 

Forgotten Book - The Wife of the Red-Haired Man

I wrote recently about Bill S. Ballinger's excellent The Tooth and the Nail, which appears in a new volume published by Stark House Press. In the same edition is another of Ballinger's novels from the 1950s, The Wife of the Red-Haired Man. This too is told in Ballinger's trademark  narrative style, with one storyline presented in the first person, another in the third.

The similarities end there. The Wife of the Red-Haired Man isn't an ingenious puzzle, but a book in the old tradition of the story about the hunter and the hunted. Here the emphasis is on presentation of character and on the relentless building of suspense. It's fair to say that Ballinger masters these skills just as he did the skill of bamboozling the reader in the earlier book.

The hunted are a couple, a man called Rohan and a woman called Mercedes Turner. Rohan is an escaped convict and Mercedes is devoted to him, although at the start of the story she has inconveniently (and rather strangely, I thought) married a rich hoodlum. Murder is committed, and the pair go on the run.

The hunter is a police officer who is assigned to the case and follows them with a relentlessness worthy of the cop in The Fugitive. The meticulous care with which he investigates every lead is progressive. And right at the end of the book there is a revelation about him which is very well done and puts what we have read in a slightly different light. Another good novel by Ballinger and it's pleasing to see it back in print.