Forgotten Book - Murderer's Fen

Andrew Garve enjoyed a long and fairly illustrious career as a crime writer, as well as pursuing a successful career as a journalist under his real name, Paul Winterton. I tend to bracket him with Michael Gilbert, who was just a few years younger, because they were both versatile and highly professional writers whose books are invariably smooth reads. If I lean in favour of Gilbert, it's partly because he uses his legal expertise so brilliantly, and I think he was a slightly more gifted writer. But Garve was good, make no mistake about that.

Today I'm focusing on Murderer's Fen, a novel he wrote in the mid-Sixties and which is nowadays available again, thanks to Bello. If I didn't know Garve had written it, I could guess, because it features life on a boat as one of the elements in the story - Garve plainly loved sailing, almost to the point of obsession. It crops up time and again in his novels, and it's to his credit that although I'm not interested in the technical details of boats and sailing, this quirk doesn't irritate me at all.

Murderer's Fen is interesting as an example of the "inverted mystery". We're introduced to Alan Hunter, handsome and persuasive, while he's on holiday, eyeing up the girls. Before long we realise that he's actually a nasty piece of work, a sexual predator with little or no empathy for the girls he seduces. And soon, he has cause to contemplate murder.

Garve offers us a variation on the classic form of inverted mystery, by shifting the viewpoint from time to time between the culprit and the investigating detectives (a nicely contrasted pair). This device works well as a means of building suspense. An idea for a twist occurred to me which never materialised - perhaps I'll use it myself one day! Garve wasn't super-ingenious, really, but he knew how to tell a good story. And Murderer's Fen is a good read with an excellent setting in -naturally - Fen country.. 

Rogue's Yarn - 1957 film review

Rogue's Yarn is a film released in 1957 which has recently featured on the Talking Pictures TV channel. The clever screenplay, by Vernon Sewell and Ernie Bradford, is an "inverted mystery", and the story is told in gripping fashion. It may not be Dial M for Murder, but it's not far short of Hitchcock's much better known movie in terms of storytelling quality. A well-made film, it's definitely worth watching.

Our attention is grabbed right at the start. Michele Cartier (Nicole Mauray) is waiting for the arrival of her lover, John Marsden (Derek Bond, the best-known actor in the cast). He announces that he has bad news. This turns out to be an announcement that his invalid wife, whose death the pair had been eagerly anticipating, is now expected to make a full recovery from serious illness.

The snag is that the wife is very rich, and the lovers are desperate not only to get together, but to do so with Mrs Marsden's money. The only solution is murder. Marsden, an accomplished sailor, quickly works out an elaborate plan which involves taking his boat on a trip to Le Havre to create an alibi, then swimming back to the English shore to do the dirty deed.

At first, all goes well. Unfortunately, the Yard are called in, and Inspector Walker (Elwyn Brook-Jones, who is very good in the role) decides to take a closer look at the circumstances of the crime. We know that all is not likely to go well for Marsden, and we don't like him enough to root for him to get away with it, but there are several memorable moments, notably including a great scene where Walker, not once but several times, nearly walks into a fatal trap set by the bad guy.

Motive: Universal TV review

Motive is a new television series shown on the Universal channel which began last week. I decided to watch the first episode of this North American cop show because it has an unusual premise. The viewer knows throughout who is the killer and who is the victim. This is because they are captioned "KILLER" and "VICTIM" in large letters on the screen at the start of the show. The real question is - what is the motive for the crime?

This is a clever spin on the classic detective plot. It was Richard Austin Freeman, back in the early years of the last century, who first came up with the idea of the detective story which starts out by showing the reader the culprit committing the crime, and then describes the detective work that led to the solution of the mystery. Freeman was a talented and inventive writer, and I mean to say more about him on this blog in the future.

Freeman's idea of the "inverted" story has been adapted many times, for instance by Roy Vickers in his stories about the Department of Dead Ends, and in the hit TV show Columbo. But I can't think of anyone who has tweaked the detective story in quite the same way as happens in Motive. For that touch of originality alone, the show deserves praise. Slightly less original is the decision to cast two exceptionally attractive women, Kristin Lehman (as the cop, Angie Flynn) and Lauren Holly (as the pathologist) in lead roles.

The first episode involved the killing of a teacher by a pupil. Why did the lad do it? I have to say that the mysterious motive wasn't especially memorable, and this was a bit of a disappointment. Overall, I'd say that the show was efficient rather than brilliant. But the premise alone makes it worthy of note. Will I watchi it regularly? Unlikely, because life is short. But I'd be quite happy to watch an occasional future episode.