Forgotten Book - Elizabeth X

Vera Caspary (1899-1987) is remembered today chiefly as the author of Laura, but that book launched her as a crime writer, and she continued to work in the genre for more than 35 years. Her very last novel was Elizabeth X, published in 1978, and it's relatively obscure. But it's well worth a look, especially for anyone who enjoyed Laura.

I don't say that because the stories are similar: they aren't. Laura is a murder mystery; Elizabeth X offers a puzzle of character and identity. An attractive young woman in her early twenties, apparently suffering from amnesia, is found wandering in the road by a married couple called Kate and Allan Royce. The Royces take her home and look after her, but attempts to discover her true identity prove surprisingly unsuccessful.

Where Elizabeth X does resemble Laura is in its structure. Again, Caspary employs the Wilkie Collins method of telling a story from several different first-person viewpoints, starting with that of Chauncey Greenleaf, a man much older than Elizabeth, who nevertheless founds himself strongly drawn to her. But is he destined for misery when the truth about her past emerges?

A plot development later in the story also betrays the Collins influence, though I won't say too much about it for fearing of spoiling the surprise. Collins was, at his best, a master of plotting, and I don't think even Caspary's admirers would make a similar claim for her. She is, though, very good at depicting character, and writing incisive, readable prose. I wanted to find out the truth about Elizabeth, even though I feared I might be slightly disappointed at the end of the book (as, to be honest, I was). But Caspary was an independently minded woman who always does an excellent job of portraying the pressures faced by equally strong-minded women, and Elizabeth X , the final example of her gifts, is definitely worth reading.

Forgotten Book - Laura

Laura, by Vera Caspary, is a famous crime novel that became an even more famous film noir, as well as a stage play, and haunting song. The book was originally published in 1942, and it made an instant impact. Caspary was a talented mainstream writer, whose memoirs, The Secrets of Grown-Ups, make fascinating reading. She makes it clear that she wasn't really a mystery fan, but it's noteworthy that her favourite crime writer was Cornell Woolrich, her favourite crime novel Francis Iles' Before the Fact. Suspense appealed to her, in other words, and Laura is a novel of suspense as much as it is a detective story.

When, many years ago, I first saw the film, and read the book, I enjoyed them without fully appreciating them. That was because I paid too much attention to the plot, and although the story has one excellent plot twist, Caspary's strength didn't lie in plotting. On rereading the book after having done some research into Caspary's life, I got more out of it than I did the first time around.

Mark McPherson is called in to investigate the murder of Laura Hunt, a very attractive woman who works in advertising. She is engaged to be married, and her fiance becomes a suspect. McPherson becomes intrigued by Waldo Lydecker, a rather effete older man who was close to Laura, and who is one of the narrators.

In telling her story, Caspary borrowed the narrative device favoured by Wilkie Collins - using different points of view, so as to conceal as well as reveal. It's a device which, when employed with skill (and Caspary was highly skilled), I find engrossing. I've never written a "casebook" novel, but it's something I'd certainly consider at some future date, because the form has a great deal of potential for the crime writer. It's fair to say that Caspary never surpassed Laura, but her other books are also intriguing and well-written, and I'll talk about one or two of them in the future.

The Somnambulist: review

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox is one of the books featured in the TV Book Club 2012, sponsored by Specsavers. It’s described on the cover as “a spellbinding tale of lost love, grief, murder and madness in Victorian England”, and that’s a pretty fair summary.

There is mention of that Wilkie Collins masterpiece, The Woman in White, in the opening pages – it’s said that a painting by Millais of a young female somnambulist may have been inspired by it. This suggests that we are in for a densely plotted murder mystery of the kind Collins favoured, but although there is a murder which has a critical effect on the events of the story, I wouldn’t say that this is first and foremost a crime novel. And perhaps this book is a good illustration of the unsatisfactory nature of genre definitions – however one describes it, the key point is that it is a pretty gripping read.(It's an odd coincidence, by the way, that another fictional, though very different, painting by Millais features in The Hanging Wood.)

The focal point is young Phoebe Turner, and most of the story is told from her perspective. Her devotion to her Aunt Cissy leads her to a brief involvement in the music hall, and after her aunt’s death, because her mother is impoverished, Phoebe accepts a job as a companion to a sickly and reclusive woman who is married to businessman Nathaniel Samuels.

Several chapters are presented in the third person, with Samuels as the viewpoint character. A considerable amount of plot development is conducted in these chapters, which are rather less satisfactory than those narrated by Phoebe – a character who clearly fascinated her author. But this is a minor flaw in a truly accomplished debut novel.

I’m a fan of Victorian fiction, and also of more recent books set in the Victorian period. That age has an enduring appeal, and Essie Fox captures it very well. Her descriptive powers are formidable, and she conjures up splendidly both the bustle of the East End and the sinister atmosphere of the Samuels’ country retreat. A very good read.

Dorothy and Wilkie

Dorothy L Sayers had a huge admiration for her Victorian predecessor Wilkie Collins. I too am a Collins fan, and it's interesting to see the ways in which his work sometimesinfluenced hers. Perhaps the most notable example is to be found in theepistolary form that she adopted for her non-Wimsey novel The Documents in theCase.

For many years, Sayerstalked about writing a biography of Collins. She did start work on it, butnever managed to complete it – for reasons that are not entirely clear. She hadall the attributes, certainly including a gift for scholarship, that would haveequipped her ideally for the task.

I've often wonderedabout the incomplete biography, and recently John Curran told me that it hadbeen published, but was very difficult to obtain. Now, thanks to the kindnessof Christopher Dean, the chairman of the Dorothy L Sayers Society, I have beenable to borrow a copy, which I read with much interest.

There are one or twopassing observations to her fellow detective story writers, J.J. Connington andHenry Wade, but sadly, the manuscript finishes before Sayers reaches the pointin Collins' life when he wrote his masterpieces, The Moonstone and The Woman in White. What a pity that we do not have a really detailed study of those booksfrom Sayers in the context of Collins' life story. Perhaps she meant to returnto the book one day in the future. Her sudden and rather premature death meantthat she did not have the chance to do so – and we are the poorer for it, eventhough it is pleasing that the fragment remains in existence.

Dickensian Crime

I’ve received my copy of a chunky short story collection, The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunits, edited by the amazingly prolific Mike Ashley. I contributed a story, ‘The Mystery of Canute Villa’, in which Dickens joins Elizabeth Gaskell in investigating a mystery in Knutsford, aka Cranford.

I was born in Knutsford and thought it would be fun to set a story in the town. It’s a fascinating and historic place, well worth a visit, not only for the Gaskell associations, but also because of the weird and intriguing Italianate architecture of some of the buildings.

As for the Dickensian Whodunits, there’s some great stuff in there from authors I admire, including Robert Barnard, Gillian Linscott and Kate Ellis. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the stories.

Oddly enough, this is the second Dickensian collection to include a story of mine. A few years ago, Anne Perry put together Death by Dickens. That time I teamed Dickens up with Wilkie Collins in ‘The House of the Red Candle’. This was a sort of locked room/impossible crime story which later made it into Maxim Jakubowski’s Best British Mysteries.

One of the attractions of writing short stories to an editor’s theme is that you can quickly work out a framework. With a historical mystery, it’s then a matter of capturing the essence of the period, as well as of the characters. More about this another day.