Stone Circles

There is something fascinating about ancient stone circles. One has a sense of timelessness, of sharing with people long gone and forgotten. And yesterday I visited, for the first time in more than twenty years, a stone circle in a quite lovely setting. This was Castlerigg, on the outskirts of Keswick.

I decided to celebrate my birthday by having a day’s holiday from work – and where better to spend it than in the Lakes? After the recent fine weather, the day began with drizzle, but – untypically, it has to be said – the weather improved the closer we came to the Lake District. The first stop was Windermere, a town I’ve always liked, and the second was Castlerigg.

The stone circle at Castlerigg isn’t exactly Stonehenge, but it’s quite notable and well visited. It dates back 4,500 years, which is quite a thought. I find it impossible to resist imagining what it was like all that time ago, and what mysterious rites took place in the circle, and around the gathering of stones known as the Sanctuary. The landscape of the Lakes has no doubt changed a lot in the interim – human beings have had a massive impact on it, an impact that isn’t always obvious. But I’m sure it was gorgeous 4,500 years ago, as it is today.

I’m not sure if I’m going to feature Castlerigg in either my work in progress or a future novel. I’m conscious that Stephen Booth, in his Peak District series, had a novel that featured a stone circle, Dancing with the Virgins, and I think both he and I are keen to avoid utilising similar material, though of course so much depends on how that material is presented. P.D. James featured a stone circle, for instance, in The Private Patient. One thing is for sure, a stone circle makes for a very evocative setting, and does have the potential to provide a great scene in a mystery, as well as for a stop on a day trip.

P.D. James and Victims

The latest Adam Dalgleish novel, The Private Patient, is published in paperback by Penguin on 24 September. It’s P.D. James’ 18th novel, and I read and enjoyed it upon publication last year. Apparently, it was a ‘top five bestseller in hardback’. I’m never quite sure about the definition of ‘bestseller’. I can even recall seeing promotional literature which has referred to a couple of my books as bestsellers, which in all honesty does require a bit of an imaginative leap. But one thing is for sure, P.D. James is genuinely a Premier League crime writer, and her sales must put her close to the top of any table.

The key figure in the book is Rhoda Gradwyn, a notorious investigative journalist. Her face is scarred, and as the blurb correctly, if rather melodramatically, puts it, the scar ‘was to be the death of her’. She checks into a private clinic for cosmetic surgery, only to meet her Maker in rather grim circumstances.

Rhoda is one of those characters whose life and behaviour provide plenty of people with reason to kill her. By detective fiction standards, she is a natural victim. This book was one of those that I covered in my recent paper at the St Hilda’s conference, dealing with ‘sinful victims’. Sinful victims, as I tried to show, are a staple of the genre, although I very much enjoy those books where the victim is apparently so blameless that there is a real mystery as to who would wish to kill them. Playing games with human motivation is one of the great challenges for whodunit writers, I think. The aim nowadays must be to come up with a solution to the game that does not defy credibility, and treats the players in the game as believable human beings.

P.D. James is very good at this, I think. The Private Patient is not by any means her best book (my choice would be Devices and Desires), and there are some parts of the closing section which I struggled with, but it’s nevertheless an excellent read. An incidental pleasure for me came with her references in the story-line to the late, great Cyril Hare, in whose footsteps she followed when she first signed up with Faber and Faber – which, remarkably, was not all that far short of half a century ago.

Forgotten Book - Tragedy at Law

Discussion about great opening lines in crime novels is common enough. But what about great last lines? A number spring to mind, but I don’t want to include spoilers. One of the best, though, crops up in Cyril Hare’s Tragedy at Law – and it must be one of the most original. I thought I'd include it in Patti Abbott's series Friday's Forgotten Books, but I do hope that at least those who have read it haven't forgotten it.

Tragedy at Law, first published in 1942, is in fact full of good things. I was drawn to it as a law student by high praise from Michael Gilbert and Henry Cecil, and I was certainly not disappointed. It’s a brilliant and unusual detective story, in which the murder is committed quite late in the book. But interest is maintained throughout, because of the evocative description of the life of an English circuit judge, Sir William Hereward Barber, coupled with acute characterisation and Hare’s good ear for dialogue.

The novel features Hare’s police detective Inspector Mallett, but also introduced the unlucky barrister, Francis Pettigrew. Pettigrew proved to be such an effective and appealing amateur sleuth that Hare wisely decided to bring him back for further adventures.

Cyril Hare died all too young. He was Faber and Faber’s star detective novelist, and when they were casting around for a successor, they had the good fortune to receive a manuscript from a new writer called P.D. James. The rest is history. But I was delighted to see that, in James’ latest novel, The Private Patient, not only does a plot-line from another novel by Cyril Hare plays a significant part in the story, but she takes care properly to acknowledge her gifted predecessor.

I too had a bit of good fortune a few years ago, when out of the blue I was contacted by Cyril Hare’s son, Charles Gordon Clark. To my regret, we never met, but Charles provided me with a great deal of fascinating information about his father. Some of it found its way into an article that I co-wrote with that tireless researcher, Philip Scowcroft, and which, having first appeared in CADS, is now to be found on my website: Cyril Hare.