Slavery, ancient and modern

On my birthday trip round some of Liverpool’s museums and galleries, I was determined to look at the relatively new International Slavery Museum, which is part of National Museums Liverpool, an organisation with which I’ve been associated since its inception just over 20 years ago, and which has under its wing such marvellous places as the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Museum, the Conservation Centre and the Maritime Museum. The new museum is housed in the same building as the Maritime, in the Albert Dock, surely one of the most impressive locations imaginable for any public building.

The exhibits are thought-provoking and Liverpool is a good place for a slavery museum to be established, since the city grew rich partly through its involvement in the slave trade. Even after the abolition of slavery in the UK two centuries ago, Liverpool merchants gave support to the Confederate cause.

Slavery is one of the key background themes in Waterloo Sunset. One of the issues addressed in the book is my belief that, in some ways, slavery is still very much with us, albeit in a very different way from that of the past. I don’t like writing preachy books, and Waterloo Sunset is first and foremost intended to be a piece of breezy entertainment. But in my opinion, that doesn’t mean that such a novel cannot address serious social issues in (I hope) a meaningful way.

Incidentally, I’m glad to say that the book is continuing to pick up very positive reviews. The latest in the UK comes from the Magistrates Association. Magistrates don’t always look kindly on lawyers’ fiction (especially when it comes in the form of a plea of mitigation on behalf of an undeserving client) so I was very pleased by this one.

Lakeland Books

I was delighted to have the chance yesterday to squeeze in the lunch at which the Lakeland Book of the Year award was made. The event took place in the Langdale Chase, a hotel with a wonderful outlook over Windermere. As someone said, the scene was drenched, rather than sun-drenched, but of course that is nothing new in the Lakes.

The judging panel was headed by Hunter Davies, who told me that these are the leading regional book awards in Britain, and included biographer Kathleen Jones and the very polished broadcaster Fiona Armstrong. Almost all of the books in contention for the award were non-fiction, but fellow novelist Sarah Hall was also in the running; her debut novel, the acclaimed Haweswater, won the main prize five years ago. It’s a sign of the enormous popularity of Cumbria as a setting for books of all kinds that there were more than sixty entries for the award. All the more surprising (though nice for me) that British detective novelists have not used it as a setting for a detective series until now.

This time around, the overall winner was a lavishly produced book about the gardens, small and large, were are one of the many attractions of the Lake District; I certainly enjoyed researching them when writing The Cipher Garden and perhaps my favourite was Stagshaw, a National Trust garden not far away from the Langdale Chase.

Among the other short-listed titles, I also really liked the look of a book (boasting a foreword by the Duke of Edinburgh, no less) about the enticing but often dangerous pathways across Morecambe Bay – these feature memorably, by the way, in a Golden Age detective novel by E.C.R. Lorac.

Don't know much about art...

I took a day’s holiday from work yesterday to celebrate (or try to console myself about) my latest birthday. Because of the vile weather forecast, we headed for…well, Liverpool, where I work. A busman’s holiday, perhaps, but a rare chance to wander round and explore some of the city’s riches at leisure.

First stop was Tate Liverpool. I’m ashamed to admit that, since attending the preview when the Tate first opened in the city, I’ve hardly ever returned – even though this great gallery is only a short walk from my office, in the wonderful riverside setting of Albert Dock. But in 2008 there really was no excuse, because the Tate is staging an exhibition of the work of Gustav Klimt, and his Viennese compatriots, to commemorate Capital of Culture Year.

I knew very little about Klimt until recently, but the enthusiasm of others who have visited the show made me delve a little into his life and work, which are certainly interesting. The exhibition lived up to the hype, and I also grabbed the opportunity to take a look at the Tate’s current exhibition of modern(ish) abstract art, which included some brilliant pieces, as well as some that struck me as rather less brilliant.

I really enjoyed my close encounter with Gustav Klimt – his landscapes, for instance, were an unexpected treat - and I’ve decided to think of the whole experience as very pleasurably research. I’m not sure in precisely what way yet, but Gustav Klimt will certainly feature in my next Lake District Mystery. At last, with proof checking and other tasks out of the way, I'm aiming to get on with the new book - at last!

The Incomparable Witness

I don’t often listen to plays on BBC Radio 4, but this isn’t down to lack of enthusiasm. And when fellow blogger Juliet recommended me to listen to a play about Bernard Spilsbury recently, I hastened to make use of the excellent BBC iplayer.

‘The Incomparable Witness’ was written by Nichola McAuliffe, a capable actor who has begun to combine her career on stage and screen with crime writing. Spilsbury is an intriguing subject for study, a brilliant forensic pathologist who was a legendary expert witness, but who was also a deeply troubled individual. He ended his life by his own hand.

Spilsbury made his name as a witness for the prosecution in the Crippen case, and his evidence at the Old Bailey was central to the radio play. His authoritative testimony helped to destroy the credibility of the defence experts, and played a crucial part in nudging Crippen towards the gallows.

I’m fascinated by Spilsbury and his career, but I’m even more fascinated by the Crippen case. More about it soon.

Final Analysis

Final Analysis is a 1992 movie described in some quarters as ‘neo noir’. Certainly, its elements are familiar, with a naïve if charming man falling victim to a glamorous blonde with murder on her mind. Fans of Vertigo will appreciate various references – not just the San Francisco setting, but also a couple of scenes in a lighthouse which call that classic Hitchcock film very much to mind. This time around, the plangent music isn’t courtesy of Bernard Hermann, but rather written by George Fenton, a British composer I first became aware of through his music for that excellent and much-missed tv series ‘Shoestring’.

Richard Gere plays a psychiatrist whose patient, Una Thurman encourages him to talk to her sister. Una’s sister turns out to be Kim Basinger, and Richard immediately becomes infatuated with her. This is understandable, for sure, but unwise, not least because Kim’s husband happens to be a rather unpleasant gangster with a taste for violence.

In a variation on the themes of Double Indemnity and Body Heat, Kim doesn’t persuade Richard to kill the nasty husband, but rather does the deed herself, and then has Richard use his professional expertise to assist her defence attorney get her off – or, rather, obtain a verdict that she was not responsible for her actions because she suffered from ‘pathological intoxication’ (a new concept to me, though it’s just possible I may have known one or two people who suffered from it.)

I enjoyed this film. It isn’t conspicuous for its subtlety, but the star cast does a good job with the twists and turns of the plot, and for the most part I managed to suspend disbelief. Good entertainment.

Humour

Humour is a tricky thing in crime fiction. The comic crime novel is to be approached with caution – very few people pull it off successfully, although over the years Colin Watson, Pamela Branch, Joyce Porter and Simon Brett in the UK and Craig Rice and Kinky Friedman among others in the US have earned loyal followings. But even if the main aim of the book is not to amuse, humour often has an important part to play. Apart from any other consideration, it can provide balance and relief, given that the subject matter of crime, mystery and often savage death can be very grim indeed.

Over the years, many crime writers have recognised this. There are shafts of wit in Conan Doyle as well as in some of the Victorian and Edwardian stories featuring the rivals of Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie is sometimes mistakenly thought of as a humourless writer, but there are a number of passages in her books which prove otherwise. When I’m reading, I enjoy books that blend strong plots, characterisation and settings with a touch of wit. Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of laughs in the work of two writers whom I greatly admire, Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, but certainly, humour plays an enormously important part in the work of such successful novelists as Reginald Hill, Robert Barnard and H.R.F. Keating.

As for my own books, the Harry Devlin novels contain plenty of humour. Waterloo Sunset will, I hope, amuse as well as mystify my readers, despite all the dark goings-on. However, the first Lake District Mystery, The Coffin Trail, was a rather serious affair, and the same was true to an extent of the second, The Cipher Garden. However, by the time I wrote The Arsenic Labyrinth, I was ready to relax the style somewhat and I like to think there is a lot of black humour in the portrayal of the drifter Guy. And Take My Breath Away was meant to be packed with political satire. Unfortunately, not many of the reviewers seemed to notice. An exception was that voice of the ‘Old Left’, The Morning Star, whose perceptive critic ‘got’ exactly what I was trying to achieve.

Natasha Cooper

I’ve written posts about a good many crime novelists since this blog started, but there are, of course, even more talented practitioners whom I haven’t yet got round to mentioning. One of them is Natasha Cooper, a consistently entertaining writer with whom I had an enjoyable lunch recently while we were attending Crimefest at Bristol. She’s been a full-time writer for around twenty years, but before then she worked in publishing, and during our conversation I found her insights into that fascinating (if often maddening) business to be full of interest as well as common sense.

Natasha Cooper is, in fact, a pseudonym, which conceals the identity of Daphne Wright. I’ve known Daphne for a number of years, and I enjoyed her early books some years before we first met. She chaired the Crime Writers’ Association and has also been heavily involved with the Harrogate crime festival in recent years. At Crimefest, she was ‘Toastrix’ at the Saturday evening banquet, and performed that tricky task with her customary unobtrusive efficiency; the speeches were made, and the awards were awarded, with speed as well as grace, and she was one of those responsible for ensuring that the banquet was enjoyable throughout and didn’t become too protracted.

The name of Natasha Cooper is not, I think, generally associated with short stories, but I was gratified a couple of years back when she submitted a short story for consideration for a CWA anthology I was editing, with a theme of ‘crimes of identity’. The story, ‘The People in the Flat across the Road’, was crisp and effective and I didn’t hesitate before accepting it. At the launch of the book in the Pump Rooms at Harrogate, she read the story and members of the audience were as enthusiastic in their reaction as I had been.

The Ice House

The Ice House is the title of one of the outstanding debut crime novels of the 1990s. It was the award-winning mystery that set Minette Walters on the path to fame and fortune. I read the book shortly after it was published – the year after my own first novel came out – and I was impressed. I rather assumed that Walters would use it as the starting point for a series, but she confounded my expectations by following it with a stand-alone, The Sculptress, which was even better.

But what was an ice house? The answer is that it was a cold store used in the days before the advent of the refrigerator. There are the remains of a couple not far from where I live. One is in the grounds of the now vanished Marbury Hall (top photo.) The other, rather different, is in the grounds of Lymm Hall (lower photos.)

The Lymm Hall ice house was used in the eighteenth century. Blocks of ice wer cut and stored in it, between layers of straw. The roof of the ice house was covered with a thick layer of soil which acted as insulation. The ice house fell into disuse and was partially dismantled, but the remains are interesting to look at – and dangerous to fall into.

Lymm and Sherlock

I've written a number of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, but wandering round the grounds of Lymm Hall on Sunday, I discovered that there is a more interesting link between my home village and the great detective. And it's one I wasn't aware of.

The Shippon is in the grounds of the Hall. It is now the ‘yellow courtyard garden’, but it was once transformed into, of all places, Chatham Station for a Sherlock Holmes story featuring Jeremy Brett which was filmed partly in Lymm in 1992. The explanation, I imagine, is that the series was produced by Granada TV, whose home city is in Manchester, not too far away. The grounds of nearby Arley Hall were also used for scenes in one or two of the Jeremy Brett cases.

The Shippon was converted into a house in 1995 and a formal garden was laid out. Nobody looking at this tranquil spot today would guess that the greatest detective of them all was once played here by – arguably – his finest screen interpreter. I must admit that I prefer Basil Rathbone and possibly Douglas Wilmer to Brett as Holmes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t admire what Brett did with the character in the early series, which I thought more successful than the later ones.

Up the garden path

I’m very keen on gardens – although not, I must admit, on gardening: Sitting out in the garden reading a good book on a sunny afternoon is a wonderful way to spend the time, and I’d like to do it more often. Whenever the chance to visit other people’s gardens comes, though, I like to grab it if I possibly can.

Lymm Festival is currently under way and on Sunday, with family and friends (including fellow crime writer Kate Ellis) I wandered round some of the private gardens that were thrown open for the day by their owners. And very impressive they were – ranging from brand new gardens in the middle of incomplete housing estates, to the fabulous grounds of Lymm Hall.

As usual, I found my thoughts wandering to murder. When I wrote the Harry Devlin books and Take My Breath Away, with city settings, there was no scope for exploring gardens. Writing books set in the Lakes, however, presented me with the opportunity to create a mysterious garden in Brackdale, which features in the very first chapter of The Coffin Trail. The secret of the garden is, though, not revealed until the events of The Cipher Garden (it forms a sub-plot, rather than the main mystery, and I’m quite sure readers who come across the second book first will not have their enjoyment spoiled if they later read the first book.)

Quite a number of other crime writers, Ruth Rendell amongst them, have featured gardens in their crime novels. One writer who made a particular speciality of gardening mysteries was the late John Sherwood. I only met him once, at a CWA conference in Tunbridge Wells in the early 90s. He was an amiable chap and I was sorry not to have had the opportunity to get to know him better.