Forgotten Book - ...And Presumed Dead

There really ought to be a prize for the most excitable blurb for a crime novel. If there were, then a strong contender would be the Corgi Crime paperback edition from 1965 of a book published a couple of years earlier. The author was Lucille Fletcher, ex-wife of Bernard Herrmann and famed for her radio play (later filmed and novelised) Sorry, Wrong Number. The novel was ...And Presumed Dead.

So what did Corgi have to say? The blurb begins in breathless, conspiratorial fashion: "We are pledged to remain completely silent about the plot of this extraordinary novel." Wow! It gets better."So brilliantly constructed is it that even the smallest preview would detract from its shattering, agonising suspense." Gosh! And a few lines later the blurb concludes with the modest claim that the story "establishes an entirely new landmark in the literature of suspense."

I'm not pledged to silence, so I can say that this is an interesting version of the "woman in jeopardy" novel, and it's set in a fictitious town in Switzerland. The events take place in 1951, and this is significant; it wouldn't have been easy to set this particular story in the 1960s, when it was written. We follow the misadventures of Julia, whose beloved husband Russ was an airman who went missing during the war. She has followed Russ' mother to Alpenstadt, and it soon begins to look as though the older woman has something to hide.

Lucille Fletcher was not only a successful exponent of the suspense story, she was also a pretty good prose stylist. Yes, there are one or two overwrought passages, but there are also several memorable and gripping scenes, some of which have a Gothic flavour (there's even a ruined castle). The solution to the mystery of Alpenstadt does indeed take the story in an unexpected, and on the whole satisfactory, direction. Is this novel a landmark of suspense? I don't really think so. That blurb raised my expectations extremely high, and they weren't met. But even if it's not as extraordinary or as brilliant as Corgi claimed, it's still a good story. A period piece, yes, but worth reading, not least as an example of Fletcher's skill in building and maintaining tension.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as the rich and spoiled invalid wife of Burt Lancaster. Alone at home, she overhears a phone call which seems to be about a murder plot. It’s a classic set-up and I enjoyed the movie, which is dark both in photography and plot.

The ‘overheard conversation’ is a staple of a good many crime stories, one example being Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, which predates Lucille Fletcher’s very successful radio play on which the film is based. In the movie, the main story is told through a series of flashbacks, but this doesn’t stop the tension mounting, thanks to Stanwyck’s performance, at her highly-strung best.

The story involves a fraudulent scheme featuring a dodgy guy called Morano – played by William Conrad, who later played Frank Cannon, the rather obese TV gumshoe. Lancaster is in moody, and pretty effective, form, but the film belongs to Stanwyck.

Fletcher turned her story into a novel, and she wrote a number of others, none of which I’ve read. As an aspiring radio writer, she met a young composer, who became her first husband. His name was Bernard Herrmann, and he became one of the best composers for crime films of all time. But his great scores for Hitchcock came after the marriage ended.