Smallbone Deceased

Two novels vie for the title of best British whodunit with a legal setting, in my opinion. One is Tragedy at Law, by the admirable Cyril Hare. The other is Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone Deceased.

Gilbert’s book was published in 1950. His first novel, Close Quarters, was – so the story goes – started before the Second World War, but rudely interrupted by the Nazis. By the time he got round to seeing it in print, he’d endured a spell in an Italian POW camp, which provided the setting for an excellent mystery, Death in Captivity, also known as Danger Within (Don Chaffey’s enjoyable film of the story uses the latter title.)

When he turned his attention to writing a book set in a solicitors’ firm, Gilbert’s own legal career was soundly established. Quite apart from his literary gifts, he was clearly a very good lawyer; he rose to become the second most senior partner in a prestigious Lincoln’s Inn firm, and his clients included his friend, the legendary Raymond Chandler.

Smallbone Deceased makes clever use of his professional knowledge. Gilbert has a very accessible style, and his wit was seldom more evident than here, when he was writing about a world with which he was very comfortable. No wonder Harry Keating included it in his list of the 100 best crime novels. The body of a trustee is found in a hermetically sealed deed box and a cleverly conceived mystery ensues. The story features not only Hazelrigg, the cop who featured in several of his early books, but also the para-insomniac solicitor Henry Bohun, who sadly never returned in a follow-up novel, although he did feature n several short stories. I say ‘sadly’, but it was Gilbert’s way to ring the changes. He varied his characters and his plots with astonishing ease.

I like so many of his books (perhaps the out-and-out thrillers a bit less than the rest) that it’s hard to pick out other favourites. Death Has Deep Roots is a good courtroom thriller. The Night of the Twelfth is an excellent mystery, much darker in tone than most of Gilbert’s work. The Dust and the Heat and The Crack in the Teapot, very different from each other, are rich in entertainment, but also quietly thought-provoking. And there’s a late work, The Queen against Karl Mullen, which I found very impressive. Gilbert put a lot of effort into it, and was understandably disappointed when it was more or less ignored by the critics. By that time, he was an elderly man, and the focus was on more fashionable writers. As a result, few readers are aware of a thoroughly accomplished crime novel, which again makes effective use of Gilbert’s legal expertise.

Pseudonyms

Do you write under your own name? I’d never be asked that question, would never have conceived it as the title of this blog, if writers didn’t sometimes use pseudonyms. I tend to answer the question with another: ‘Why would I work so hard on a book and then want to put it out under someone else’s name?’ But in truth there can be good reasons why authors want to adopt a pseudonym.

Occasionally, it may be a matter of seeking privacy. The first detective novel published by the humorous journalist A.B.Cox, an intensely private man, appeared anonymously. Later he wrote as Anthony Berkeley. When he wrote stand-alones as Francis Iles, a prolonged debate took place as to the author’s true identity; suffice to say that many of the guesses were ludicrously wide of the mark.

Sometimes a pseudonym is used to conceal the fact that the book is written by more than one person: Ellery Queen, Francis Beeding and Nicci French are obvious examples. Sometimes there are commercial reasons, for instance if a publisher does not want to flood the market with books coming out under the same author’s name: thus John Dickson Carr became Carter Dickson, and Cornell Woolrich transformed into William Irish. The immensely productive John Creasey used countless pen-names.

On other occasions, there is a desire to brand certain books separately from the rest of the author’s output. I suspect this is why Ruth Rendell sometimes writes as Barbara Vine, even though there is no attempt to conceal her true identity. Similar considerations explain why John Banville, the Man Booker Prize winner, writes crime as Benjamin Black.

John Banville told me recently: ‘Christine Falls was something different, compared to my earlier work. It was important to make that clear to readers, to give them a signal that this book would be more straightforward in some ways, not post-modern at all.’ In his early books, he had a character called Ben White, and his first plan was to adopt Benjamin White as a pseudonym. But his publishers felt that Benjamin Black sounded better – and, alphabetically, would get closer to the top of librarians’ and booksellers’ purchase lists!

Nothing new?

It’s desperately difficult to be truly original when writing a novel, no matter how hard one tries. There are a few landmark books that do seem to pass that test of originality – yet, on closer inspection, doubts may set in.

One example is Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The ingenious solution caused outrage (misplaced, surely) when the book came out in 1926. Yet Christie had made a gesture towards the same plot device in an earlier book, The Man in the Brown Suit. And later in came to light that Anton Chekhov, no less, had written a book with a similar twist called The Shooting Party, back in 1884.

Christie’s And Then There Were None is another all-time classic. But the idea of a closed circle of characters trapped by a mysterious adversary had been done before – by the husband and wife duo Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, in The Invisible Host.

And then there is Kenneth Fearing’s masterly The Big Clock, twice brilliantly filmed. The idea of a man being set to investigate himself was used later, by Derek Marlowe in A Dandy in Aspic. But now it seems, from an article by David Ellis in the latest issue of CADS, that the basic plot was used earlier, by Bruce Graeme, in a book I'd never heard of before, Not Proven (1935.)

There are all kinds of similarities that can be found in superficially very different books. The device in Christie’s The ABC Murders has often been used, for instance by writers as different from her as Ed McBain and Lee Child. But this is definitely not a sign of lack of originality, in my opinion – it’s a challenge for any writer to breathe new life into an old idea, and very satisfying when it comes off, as it did when McBain and Child spun their own variations on the basic theme.

For what it’s worth, I think it unlikely that Christie had read either The Shooting Party or The Invisible Host when she wrote those masterpieces that have some resemblance to the earlier books. Different people frequently come up with the same idea at different times (and, when it’s a topical idea, often at much the same time.) Incidentally, The Shooting Party is rather enjoyable, and well worth seeking out. As for The Invisible Host, I’m hoping to read it soon.

Lewis

I was dubious about the concept of ‘Lewis’, the spin-off from ‘Inspector Morse’. Much as I enjoyed the character and the actor in the original series, my instinct was to side with those who felt that enough was enough, and that television should give the dreaming spires a rest for a while longer. I’d been (apart from a few episodes) disappointed with the Geraldine McEwen version of ‘Marple’, and less than enthralled by the news that Julia Mackenzie is now being lined up to play Christie’s great spinster sleuth. I’m sure I’m not the only crime writer around who couldn't help thinking that it was time to give a few less familiar detectives a try on the small screen!

But that was before I saw ‘Lewis’ for the first time last Sunday. A very strong episode, written by the reliable Alan Plater, ‘And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea.’ The cast was excellent, with the likes of Neil Pearson and Haydn Gwynne joined by the very attractive Emily Beecham (a murder victim all too soon, alas) and, in a very fine performance, Tom Riley as a gifted young artist with a form of autism. The Oxford locations were as pretty as ever, and the story-line came up with murder in the Bodleian – a classic ‘body in the library’, if ever there was one.

I really enjoyed the show. It may have lacked John Thaw, and one or two of the plot elements were a shade contrived, but it was great entertainment, up there with the best episodes of ‘Inspector Morse’. Lewis’s new sidekick Hathaway is an appealing character, and the mystery was witty (I loved the hoax Oxford tourist tours) and ingenious, with a couple of very interesting underlying themes linked with plagiarism and probability theory.

Excellent Sunday evening entertainment. It wasn’t quite as good as seeing Dionne Warwick live the previous week, but I shall certainly watch ‘Lewis’ again.

The Arsenic Labyrinth

Today is the official UK publication date for the paperback edition of The Arsenic Labyrinth, my third Lake District Mystery. It’s a book that gave me a good deal of pleasure for a number of reasons.

I’ll talk another day about the process of researching the story-line and background material. From a crime fan’s perspective, I enjoy combining, every now and then, the contemporary mystery and characters with plotting elements usually found in books of the past. So I used a ‘dying message’ clue in Eve of Destruction and I’ve tried my hand at ‘locked room mysteries’ in several short stories. In The Arsenic Labyrinth, I introduced a family tree - in fact, two family trees, showing the lines of descent in two families, the Inchmores and the Cloughs, whose contrasting fortunes are relevant to the plot (but in saying this, I’m not really giving much away at all!.)

When I was hunting for information about arsenic labyrinths, I came across an website for an art gallery in Falmouth which was running an exhibition of work by local artists, including a series of etchings and oil paintings by the talented Bren Unwin. I was very taken with a limited edition black and white lithograph of a rather spooky arsenic labyrinth. And now one of them hangs on one of our walls at home, a reminder of a book that was so much fun to write.

Libraries and readers' groups

Like many other writers, I owe an enormous debt to libraries. I became a member of the children’s section of my home town library when I was young, and in the years since then I’ve been a member of a good many other libraries, including the Bodleian and Oxford Union’s library (no spare cash to buy books when you are a student, so I devoured scores from the fiction stock held by the Union)

Since becoming a published novelist, I’ve had an added pleasure – the chance to visit libraries up and down the country to give talks, hold events, and meet readers face to face. This is one of the most rewarding pastimes for any writer, I think.

One of the most appealing developments in recent years has been the increasing popularity of readers’ groups, very often (though not always) associated with libraries. I’ve found that group members who attend library talks are invariably well-informed and the fact they have had a chance to discuss and debate one of my books before meeting me gives an added dimension to any event.

With readers’ groups and future library discussions in mind, I’ve added a new page to my website. It features both The Arsenic Labryinth and Waterloo Sunset at this stage, and contains background info as well as suggested questions for discussion. I hope it’s found useful and would welcome any feedback or ideas for improvement.

The Last Post

I’ve received an early copy of the latest novel by Robert Barnard. It’s called The Last Post and it looks very promising. The back cover carries a review from ‘The Daily Telegraph’ which, while not recent, remains true to this day: ‘Robert Barnard is always original, never repeats himself and has a delectable wit.’

I’ve known Bob Barnard for about twenty years, but I started reading his books some time before we first met, through a social event held by the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers Association. His first detective was Scotland Yard man Perry Trethowan, and later books have often featured another cop, Charlie Peace, but the series don’t focus on the central character in quite the same way as you find with, say, Ian Rankin, John Harvey or Val McDermid. Bob’s books are snappy and fairly short, and full of acute social observation, as well as gleeful humour.

One of my favourites is A Scandal in Belgravia , but although his work is very varied, the books are consistently enjoyable. He's written several books under the pseudonym of Bernard Bastable; these are light historical mysteries, and one of them, A Mansion and its Murders, has never been published in the UK - odd, this, because I found it typically entertaining. He is also a prolific writer of short stories, several of which I've had the pleasure of including in anthologies I've edited (one of them, 'Sins of Scarlet', won the CWA award for best short story of 2006.) A few years ago he was a worthy winner of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, and his reputation is secure. I’m looking forward to The Last Post.

But there’s one Bob Barnard book which isn’t a novel that I’d particularly like to recommend. It is A Talent to Deceive, his appreciation of the work of Agatha Christie. It’s packed with insight, especially in relation to Christie’s ‘strategies of deception’. If you like Christie, you’ll find this book an excellent and characteristically succinct, as well as highly readable, companion to her work.

Michael Gilbert

After mentioning Michael Gilbert several times in this blog, I wanted to say something about the influence he exerted on my writing career. When I first came across his novels in the late 60s, they were in a uniform edition that included a biographical note which explained that he combined his writing with a career as a solicitor. He wrote his books on the train, commuting to work in a prestigious London law firm.

My parents were, at the time, worried about my stated ambition to write detective novels. They didn’t want me to starve, so they thought it would be a good idea for me to have a proper job. In the legal profession, for instance. Cunningly (for they too liked Michael Gilbert) they pointed out that it was possible to combine a legal career with crime writing. And I was duly persuaded, although I’ve never written a word when commuting to work (tricky, when you are driving on the M6.)

Shortly after I became a solicitor I started writing legal articles for'The Law Society’s Gazette' and eventually I persuaded the editor to let me write an article about Michael Gilbert. By this time, I’d read every novel he’d written, as well as many of his first rate short stories. The chance to interview my hero by telephone arrived, and it was tremendous fun to speak to him at long last. He was, predictably, urbane, charming and highly articulate. The perfect interviewee.

I’ve written several more articles about him over the years. After I became a published crime writer, he offered me encouragement and even contributed a very supportive quote for the book cover after reading Eve of Destruction – a gesture that meant a good deal to me. The last time we were in touch, he was well into his 90s and very infirm, but happy to grant me permission to include his classic London Underground mystery ‘A Case for Gourmets’ in an anthology I was editing.

There’s much more to say about a man who had such a distinguished and lengthy literary career. Future posts will focus on both his novels and his short stories. I owe Michael Gilbert a lot, but above all for the reading pleasure he continues to give.

Footnotes and The Athenian Murders

David Ellis wrote an interesting article on Chekhov’s career as a crime writer (yes!) in the latest issue of CADS. He also added an interesting ‘footnote about footnotes’, commenting that ‘there is surely a treatise to be written on the role of footnotes in crime and detective stories.’ As he points out, footnotes can be found in Poe’s ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’, as well as in Chekhov’s The Shooting Party and the work of John Dickson Carr

Several whodunits of the Golden Age made regular use of footnotes, sometimes merely for the purpose of advertising previous books by the same author. C. Daly King, whom I mentioned recently, used footnotes extensively, sometimes perhaps to bolster the impression of erudition in the field of psychiatry.

Ellis also makes mention of The Athenian Murders, by Jose Carlos Somoza, published in the UK very successfully a few years ago. It’s an astonishing performance, quite unlike anything I’ve read – a one-off to rank, arguably, alongside two strange masterpieces: The Face on the Cutting Room Floor by Cameron McCabe and The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers. I don’t wish to spoil the story, but Ellis summarises the relevance of footnotes well: they ‘at first appear to be helpful comments from a translator [but] become more frequent and assertive until the translator intrudes into the actual story.’ Suffice to say that it’s a very clever book. Some may say it’s too clever for its own good, but I found it refreshingly different.

Waterloo Sunshine

Yesterday was interesting, with a lunch-time photo-shoot followed by an interview with the Liverpool Daily Post, in connection with the forthcoming paperback publication of The Arsenic Labyrinth and the arrival in May of the long-awaited (by me, at least!) return of Harry Devlin in Waterloo Sunset.

The photographer asked me to drive up to the beach at Waterloo (a coastal suburb of Liverpool), where a couple of key scenes in the new novel take place. The big attraction at Waterloo and neighbouring Crosby these days is the unforgettable Another Place, 100 cast-iron figures scattered along a mile or so of beach. This is the work of artist Antony Gormley, creator of ‘the Angel of the North.’ I like Another Place very much and the photos above have been taken on occasional visits over the past two and a half years. The mood the figures create on the shore-line changes with the weather, and the tide. Often the figures are half-submerged by sand or sea. I find them thought-provoking, and so does Harry Devlin. And on a sunny day, like yesterday, Waterloo was a good place to be, even if only for a few short minutes.