Forgotten Book - Bother at the Barbican

Judy Piatkus was a publisher with an eye for talent. I say that slightly with tongue in cheek, since she took me on when I was a new writer, but it's still true. Among others, she took on Judith Cutler and Kate Ellis at the start of their careers, and the Piatkus name is now a respected imprint of Little, Brown. My first novel, All the Lonely People, appeared in 1991 and in the very same year Judy published Guy Cullingford's final novel, Bother at the Barbican, although she did tell me a while back that she could not, after so many years, actually recall it.

I've mentioned my enthusiasm for Cullingford before. She (the name was a pseudonym for Constance Taylor) tried to do something different with every book. And here, she mines her own experience of life in a flat in the Barbican complex in London to interesting effect. Oddly enough, I have some knowledge of flat life in the Barbican since back in the late 70s, Michael Shanks, a lovely man whose daughter later became Mrs Edwards, and who had a flat in the Barbican, kindly let us stay there for a week while we explored London. Very memorable.

So what about the story? We begin in what you might call Celia Fremlin territory. Bertha Harris, recently widowed, leads a solitary life in her flat, but finds her niece and three nephews suddenly taking an interest in her. She suspects, quite rightly, that they have inheritance in mind. Her anxieties grow, and before long she wonders if one of them might be contemplating her murder.

This is a slow-burn novel. Cullingford was born in 1907 and this is a book about an old lady that is evidently written by an old lady. And yet, there's something insidiously seductive about the storyline. Eventually, I realised that this is the closest thing I've ever read to Francis Iles' story about a born victim, Before the Fact. Except that it's much more obscure - I've never even come across a review of the story. The ending is perhaps rather too peremptory, especially considering the very steady pace of the build-up, but this is an interesting and unusual story which I enjoyed reading. Like so much of Cullingford's work, it deserves to be better knonw.

Deadly - and a quiz at the British Library...

 

I'm back home after a flying visit to the British Library on Saturday, when I took part in Deadly, the Library's first festival dedicated to women crime writers, and organised by Bee Rowlatt. Why, you may ask, was I taking part? Well, it's a good question, but I was very glad to be invited and only sorry that other commitments meant that I couldn't be there for longer.

The event was great fun. I was asked to captain 'Team Marple', comprising myself, Victoria Dowd, and Library curator Lucy Rowland, and our opponents were 'Team Vera', comprising Henry Sutton, Nicola Upson, and Sam Blake. The quiz mistress was the top TV screenwriter Sarah Phelps, whom I'd never met before, but who proved to be very entertaining and extremely interesting to chat to.

Somehow or other, we managed to win the quiz. I'm not indulging in false modesty when I say this was down to the excellence of Lucy and Victoria, whose knowledge of tiny details of the Christie canon was deeply impressive. My main contribution was pretending to look as though I knew most of the answers.

Despite the relative lack of time (because I've just started a new Rachel Savernake novel and that is demanding a lot of attention at the moment) I was glad to have the chance of conversations not only with my fellow quizzers, but also the likes of Sophie Hannah, Ann Cleeves, and Abir Mukherjee, as well as members of the audience such as Ayo Onatade, the podcaster Joyanna, and Tina Hodgkinson (who took the above photo, which appears on her Bluesky account). Deadly was a sell-out and congratulations to Bee and everyone else who made it such a success.

Forgotten Book - The House on Tollard Ridge

The House on Tollard Ridge, first published in 1929, is regarded by some authorities as one of John Rhode's best detective novels. It is one of the two Rhode titles that was published as a green Penguin, so you might think that it's relatively easy to find. However, at the time of writing this post, only five copies on the book were on sale on Abebooks, at prices ranging from £50 (for the paperback) to over £1000 for the first American edition. 

Rhode is a highly collectible author, as these figures demonstrate, even if the reasons for his massive popularity with collectors, as compared to other, equally talented, writers has never been entirely clear to me. But there's something about his books that obviously has considerable appeal. I was extremely lucky to be offered the chance to buy the signed Detection Club copy of this book (again the American edition) from a kind person at a price that didn't break the bank, despite being rather more than the price for which it was auctioned off when, alas, the Detection Club sold its library twenty years or more ago.

The eponymous house is lonely and rather forbidding. It's the home of a wealthy man called Sam Barton, who is likeable but highly reclusive. The death of his wife and estrangement from his son have had a severe impact on him, and he has become interested in spiritualism, in the hope of making contact with his late wife 'on the other side'. So far, so very conventional in traditional detective fiction, but an up-to-the-minute touch involves Sam's interest in the wireless.

When Sam is found dead - murdered with a marline-spike - Superintendent King, a likeable and industrious country policeman, leads the investigation. He is almost as meticulous in his approach as Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French, and bit by bit, he builds a case against one particular individual. But when Dr Priestley takes an interest in the case, he wonders if there's more to it than meets the eye.

Rhode's technical expertise and ingenuity are central to this novel. One can see that he came up with one particular idea, no doubt deriving from his knowledge as an electrical engineer, and built a story around it. There's some decent writing in this story, but the problem with it, from my perspective, is that Rhode's lack of interest in criminal psychology means that he doesn't foreshadow the culprit's motivation and personality adequately. Viewed as a howdunit, this is a good mystery. As a whodunit, it's rather lacking in the element of surprise.

Who Killed Lamb? - 1974 TV review

I stumbled across Who Killed Lamb? on YouTube the other day. It's a TV police story dating from 1974, an hour long and self-contained, starring that excellent actor Stanley Baker as a tough Scotland Yard cop called Jamieson. He is called in to investigate the killing of a seemingly likeable businessman in his flat in Oxford.

At the time this show aired on TV, I was working in a factory, a job I hated, to earn money before I was due to go to Oxford the following October. When I got home I was usually too shattered to watch much television, which may be why I missed this one. But of course, seeing a crime story set in Oxford would have been of great interest, had I been aware of it. And bear in mind, this was the year before Colin Dexter published his very first Inspector Morse novel.

I don't know whether the writer, Anthony Skene, envisaged this as a pilot for a potential series. Quite possibly. It's striking that Scotland Yard are called in as soon as the murder is discovered - what would Morse make of that, I wonder? There are some good exterior shots of Oxford, but overall it's mainly studio-based and the production values are far, far below those of the TV incarnation of Morse. It looks like a cheaply made programme, but the cast is good. As well as Baker, we have a variety of good actors, ranging from Cheryl Hall and Peter Sallis to Dennis Lill and Barbara Leigh-Hunt.

The great merit of the screenplay is that it is pacy. The story has plenty of twists and turns, although character development is necessarily limited. Jamieson is very grumpy, for no obvious reason; Baker captures his strength and determination, but we don't really empathise with him. 

I suppose that if Jamieson had caught on as a character, the course of detective fiction and TV history might have been different. There wouldn't have been room for two Oxford-based TV series, though maybe the Scotland Yard angle might have meant that Jamieson would be seen in a variety of settings. As it is, Dexter came on to the scene, and Baker died just two years after Who Killed Lamb? aired. It's watchable, if dated, but it's not in the same league as the TV version of the Dexter stories. 

Earth to Earth by John Cornwell

Today I'm revisiting a true crime book of the past which is due to be republished in the near future; John Banville, no less, describes it as 'chilling and thrilling'. Earth to Earth won for John Cornwell the 1982 Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and I can see why. This account of the lives and deaths of three members of an old Devonian farming family, the Luxtons, is crisp and well-told. It does leave open a number of questions, but that is, I think, preferable to the approach of those meretricious books which constantly claim to 'solve' the case of Jack the Ripper - and never do.

Frances, Robbie, and Alan Luxton were all unmarried. Alan's attempts to find himself a wife had been effectively obstructed by Robbie, who was a not particularly benevolent patriarchal figure. There were conflicting stories in the local village of Winkleigh about the Luxtons - including unsubstantiated rumours of an incestuous relationship between Frances and Robbie - and many people disliked them, though some were sympathetic. They lived isolated, claustrophobic lives until the end came in September 1975, when their bodies were found. They had all been shot and the likelihood is that Alan killed himself, prompting Robbie to kill Frances (possibly with her consent) and then himself.

It's a harrowing tale. The bleakness put me in mind of Georges Simenon (was that part of the appeal for Banville, a great Simenon fan?) What is so good about Cornwell's approach is that he gets under the skin of the enclosed community, not just at the farm, but in the village as a whole. Farming folk are often misunderstood - not least by politicians - and there is something about the nature of their life that tends to set them apart from others. But I grew up knowing farming people and I have always found them warm and generous, if you make an effort to understand their concerns and priorities.

Cornwell's approach was not universally admired - even Ted Hughes, of all people, was hostile. There is a fascinating article by Andrew Chamings which is well worth reading alongside Cornwell's book, because Chamings has an insider's perspective that Cornwell lacked. Nevertheless, Earth to Earth is an example of high calibre true crime writing and remains as interesting to read today as it was on its first appearance more than forty years ago.

Forgotten Book - The Lift and the Drop

Geoffrey Valentine Galwey, who wrote as G.V. Galwey, was one of the many people who worked in advertising who also tried their hand at writing crime novels. Galwey sounds like an interesting man and is described in his obituary in The Independent as a 'Dickensian character'. He only published three novels, but two of them were reprinted as green Penguins - quite an achievement. The Penguins aren't hard to find, though I've never seen a hardback edition of any of his books.

I was drawn to The Lift and the Drop (1948) by the blurb, which makes clear that this in an unusual variation on the 'whowasdunin' type of mystery. Here, a lift in a large office building is tampered with so that it crashes to the floor, killing several (but not all) of the passengers. Who was the villain trying to kill? A nice premise, for sure.

This novel has two strengths. First, the chief investigator, Inspector Bourne, is an intriguing, three-dimensional character. Galwey evidently enjoyed writing about him. Second, the writing generally is of a high standard, so that even when the story wanders off in unexpected (and, it must be said, not entirely satisfactory) directions, it remains pleasingly readable.

There's an insightful review by the late William F. Deeck here. I share his reservations and I think that this book is clearly the work of an amateur (but definitely talented) crime writer rather than a professional. Galwey spends too much time exploring aspects of the story that he finds interesting rather than focusing on narrative drive. The off-hand way in which the culprit's identity is an example of his casual approach. He appears to have given up writing novels after producing three books; perhaps his heart wasn't really in it. But he was someone with genuine literary gifts and although the plotting of the story doesn't live up to the potential of the premise, I enjoyed it as something a bit out of the ordinary.

The Critic - 2023 film review

The Critic is a film scripted by Patrick Marber and based on a novel from 2015 with which I'm unfamiliar, Curtain Call by Anthony Quinn. It's an intriguing drama with thriller elements, set in 1934, and dealing with interesting questions about the role and responsibilities of a critic. In this case, we're talking about a theatre critic, but similar principles apply to other forms of criticism, I'd say. And I found it thought-provoking as well as decent entertainment.

Ian McKellen plays Jimmy Erskine, a long-time critic for a right-wing tabloid newspaper. Erskine's smugness is something that McKellen conveys extremely well. He is comfortable and selfish, and despite the fact that he is a gay man in a potentially hostile environment, he is accustomed to having his own way. Things seem likely to change, however, when the newspaper baron dies and his son (played by Mark Strong, who handles a tricky role with great sensitivity) takes over.

Erskine has a history of giving negative reviews to Nina Land (Gemma Arterton) and he takes malicious pleasure in crafting his venomous words so as to inflict maximum misery on his wretched target. My feeling is that a critic's starting point should always be to try to understand what the subject of his or her criticism is trying to achieve, and make judgments accordingly, but with as much compassion as is compatible with expressing a fair and honest opinion. Erskine takes a different approach.

The plot thickens as Erskine begins to form a strange bond with Nina, only to exploit her cruelly when he finds his position threatened. Some of the crime elements of the story are plotted rather perfunctorily, I think because Marber's main interest lies in the issues he is tackling. But the story is strong enough for this not to matter too much. The excellent cast includes Lesley Manville, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai, and Claire Skinner, all of whom do good work.

Playing Dead - a new Detection Club anthology

Everything's been in a bit of a whirl since I got home from New Zealand, and it's only today that I'm getting round to celebrating my latest publication. This is Playing Dead, an anthology of brand new short stories written by members of the Detection Club to raise funds for the Club (all contributors kindly donated their work for this purpose) and to celebrate this year's 80th birthday of our President Emeritus, Simon Brett.

Simon was my predecessor as President of the Club, and he's been extremely supportive of me since I took over from him in the latter part of 2015 - almost a decade ago, how time flies! I felt that a book of this kind (we did something similar to celebrate Peter Lovesey's 80th, and there were earlier collections to celebrate Julian Symons and H.R.F. Keating before I joined the Club) was the ideal way for us to express our appreciation of Simon.

Many of the contributors referenced Simon and his wide range of works in their stories. I did so myself in 'Sanctuary', a jokey homage to classic crime. There are stories with a political edge (of very different kinds) from Ruth Dudley Edwards and Abir Mukherjee, and a wide range of excellent, imaginative contributions from writers as different as Lynne Truss and Andrew Taylor. Peter may have given up writing novels, but his story is superb. John Harvey gives us a Charlie Resnick story, much to my delight. There is a bittersweet element to the book, however. Three of the contributors, David Stuart Davies, Catherine Aird, and Christopher Fowler, are no longer with us. But their stories are wonderful reminders of their talents.

Simon's contribution is twofold. There is a long and excellent new Charles Paris mystery, a story to be savoured. And he has included his memories of membership of the Club, which are wickedly entertaining and not to be missed.

This is a book I'm proud to have produced, following my previous Detection Club books, Motives for Murder and Howdunit.. Early reviews have been great, and I'm hugely grateful to all the Club members who helped to make this one of the Club's best collections of stories.

I'm also glad to say that Anneli Meeder of a newish independent online bookseller, Gumshoe Books, tells me that she is offering the book at a discounted price with free shipping: https://www.gumshoebooks.com/products/playing-dead-by-martin-edwards-9781448312962

 

Forgotten Book - More Dead Than Alive

Roger Ormerod (1920-2005) was a member of the first panel of crime writers in which I ever took part, in a local library in Liverpool, quite an unforgettable occasion even if it was more than three decades ago. I remember him as a pleasant, quiet individual, but I never got to know him well. We did, however, have a mutual friend in Eileen Dewhurst and I now have a copy of a book he inscribed to her, More Dead Than Alive (1980), which I feel is a pleasant memento of that long-ago evening we spent together.

Despite the clues on the dust jacket cover, I hadn't realised that this is a locked room mystery until I took a closer look at it. This was the penultimate book in his series featuring private eye David Mallin (who drives a Porsche!), and the story is narrated by Mallin's wife Elsa, but in many ways - in particular because of the focus on plot rather than character or setting - this is a book that is in the Golden Age tradition.

Elsa has been staying at Kilvennan Castle, an eerie old pile on the coast, with her old schoolfriend Clarice, who happens to be married to Konrad Klein, the renowned escapologist, whose act has fallen on hard times. Elsa forms part of a house party in the Golden Age country house tradition, but the socialising is rudely interrupted by Konrad's sudden disappearance from a closed room high above the cliffs. Has he thrown himself out? Is he pulling some kind of stunt? This is the problem that David and his business partner George have to solve.

Roger was a very different writer from, say, John Dickson Carr. Whereas Carr enveloped his puzzles in all kinds of macabre adornments, sometimes with lashings of humour, Roger had a plainer style. But there's no denying that this is an ingenious story, told at pace. The fact that the book was published by Robert Hale, who focused on the library market (he later created two new series and moved to Constable) probably meant that this one soon disappeared without trace, rather like Konrad Klein. But it deserves a better fate than Klein's.   

 

The Menu - 2022 film review

As anyone who knows me well will readily confirm, I'm not one of the world's great gourmets. Far from it. Give me a steak and ale pie with chips and I'm happy; exotic cuisine (with some exceptions, admittedly!) leaves me cold. But on one of my recent flights, I was tempted to watch The Menu by the presence of Ralph Fiennes in the lead role. Fiennes is not only a very good actor, he has a great range: I find him appealing in all the different roles he undertakes. Though he's far from likeable in this one, playing the part of that most irritating of creatures, the egotistical celebrity chef.

The premise is simple. A group of people travel by boat to a small private island for a very special meal served up by celeb chef Julian Slowik (Fiennes) and his staff. The guests are, by and large, an unappealing bunch and it soon emerges that the apparent protagonist, Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult), is accompanied by someone who was not his originally intended guest. This is Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy, who was so good in The Queen's Gambit, and who is another actor of high-calibre). 

Slowik introduces each course of the dinner with a monologue - the contents of which become increasingly disturbing. There's a dramatic moment, probably the best in the whole film, where for the third course, tortillas are served which carry laser prints depicting regrettable aspects of the guests' lives. What on earth is going on?

This is a highly regarded black comedy horror film and it's certainly watchable, not least because of the quality of the lead actors. However, I feel that it's rather over-rated. The script struck me as pretty average, with a bit too much silliness, and if there was an explanation given as to why all Slowik's staff went along with his plan, it escaped me. A case of style over substance, like so many posh meals.