Death in the Dales

Sedbergh is England's Book Town - not as well-known, perhaps, as Hay-on-Way (Wales's Book Town) but a lovely place and I've just returned from a delightful weekend there, taking part in the town's first crime fiction festival, Death in the Dales, organised by the trustees (including my good friend Jean Briggs, former Vice Chair of the CWA) and supported by a hard-working group of volunteers and Westwood Books, an excellent bookshop in the town, which I always enjoy visiting: they have a large and varied stock and plenty of interesting rarities.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and the opening event was a film show, hosted by Matthew Booth, featuring the classic film noir The Big Heat. On Saturday morning, Kate Ellis and I kicked off the day with a conversation about crime fiction and I was also involved in the afternoon, talking to Jean about collecting crime fiction, a subject which I hope was very suitable for a book town. I brought along various items that I've picked up over the years and also discussed the connections between my research into the genre and collecting.

Matthew concluded the day's events with a one-man show about Sherlock Holmes and then a group of us went off to a delightful dinner to celebrate the birthday of another good friend, Dea Parkin. Among the writers present were Antony Johnston, Fiona Veitch Smith, Marsali Taylor, David Beckler, Harry Navinski, Frances Brody, and Jason Monaghan. A lovely evening.

On Sunday, I took part in the concluding event, moderated by Marsali, a discussion about setting with Frances and Malcolm Hollingdrake. I'm very glad that the hard-working team who put on the festival were rewarded with good audiences who showed a great deal of enthusiasm for all the sessions. It was an absolute pleasure to be part of it.

Forgotten Book - Death of a Train

The more books by Freeman Wills Crofts I have read, the more I have come to appreciate the scale of his ambition as a detective novelist. Of course he had limitations as a writer; his prose was serviceable but unexciting and seldom evocative, while his characterisation straightforward and often unsubtle. But, having established himself early on as a master of the police investigation mystery, he wasn't content to keep turning out the same-old, same-old, and for that he deserves a good deal of credit. His 'inverted' mysteries in particular were often excellent, and his plotting was consistently meticulous.

Death of a Train, written late in his career, shows Crofts trying to do something different while still featuring Chief Inspector French in a central role. The title is, I think, pleasing and tantalising. The book was published in 1946, but is set in the summer of  '42, when victory over Hitler was far from assured. Essentially, this is an espionage thriller with detective elements grafted on. The result is a curious mixture of the interesting and the banal.

We begin with discussions within the War Cabinet. Vital supplies are needed in North Africa, but it's essential that the enemy doesn't get wind of the plan to send them over, for fear of interception. So a detailed plan is formulated to send the supplies by train. My Penguin paperback describes the elaborate set-up as making for 'wholly engrossing reading', but I'm afraid I found it tedious. When, on page 46, Crofts writes that 'the shunting seemed to drag out interminably', he might have been writing about his own method for starting a crime novel. His love of railways led him astray: there's simply too much technical detail. Things only get going once an attempt to derail the train takes place: 'the enemy within' is the obvious suspect.

French is called in to investigate, but because of the need for secrecy, he pretends to be looking into the abduction of a senior officer, a fake plan which complicates the story without adding much to it. Nevertheless, the book has some merits, and it's sobering to get a clear reminder of how desperate and anxious people were when the future of the country was at stake. There's some good detective work, plus action scenes in the closing pages, but the baddies are two-dimensional and again there's a lot of less than exhilarating technical stuff about how their nefarious schemes were carried out. I was, however, fascinated to read of French's admiration for R.Austin Freeman and Dr Thorndyke - we're told that he read the Thorndyke stories 'for what they could teach him'. Quite a tribute. 

A Man Called Harry Brent

As a small boy, I loved the Francis Durbridge TV series which were stand-alone mysteries. I preferred them to the Paul Temple shows which weren't based on Durbridge's original material. One series that sticks in my mind, but which I've never been able to track down is A Man Called Harry Brent. This has now surfaced on YouTube and I've devoured it with enthusiasm.

The set-up is terrific. The eponymous Harry (Edward Brayshaw, an Australian actor) takes a train trip to see his fiancee Carol (Jennifer Daniel). A fellow passenger is a woman who is carrying a bunch of flowers. Harry meets Carol, who is a secretary, and her boss Tom Fielding. Carol is leaving her job to marry Harry, and Fielding is interviewing potential replacements (one is described as having a 'big bust', a line that you wouldn't find in a script today). The latest candidate is the woman from the train. But she has come to shoot Fielding. And it turns out that she'd previously laid those flowers on the grave of Harry's parents.

A dramatic start, to put it mildly. DI Alan Milton investigates the shooting. He is Carol's ex - their relationship broke down because he is a workaholic. He is played, with considerable aplomb, by Gerald Harper, who was a very successful actor at the time (he later took the lead in Adam Adamant!), and is still alive. He soon finds out that Harry's account of events doesn't add up. What is Mr Brent up to?

Brayshaw's performance is rather wooden, it must be said, but there are some very reliable names in the supporting cast, including the estimable Judy Parfitt as a mysterious actress, John Horsley as a sinister caretaker, and Brian Wilde as an enigmatic chap with an equally enigmatic wife. The cliff-hangers that end each episode are brilliantly done. This is a six-part series with barely a wasted word - quite a contrast to so many modern offerings. And each episode is only 25 minutes long. Great nostalgic viewing.   

Shedunnit and The Poisoned Chocolates Case

One of my favourite Golden Age detective novels, a book that to my mind ranks with the very best of Christie, Sayers, and Wade, is Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case.  It was one of the honours of my literary career to be commissioned by the British Library to write a fresh solution to the mystery, and the extremely positive critical response to my coda to this classic novel, from the national press, bloggers, and other readers, has been heartwarming. 

So when I was asked to talk about this book on Shedunnit, you can guess that I needed no second invitation! Over the past few years, Caroline Crampton has steered Shedunnit so ably that it is now one of the most successful of all crime fiction podcasts, and is available on BBC Sounds. Caroline is an intelligent and thoughtful commentator and we agreed that, as she doesn't live too far away from me, she'd record the episode in my home.

Shedunnit is running a series of episodes about old green Penguins, and the collectability of these books is one of the topics that will come up for discussion when I talk with Jean Briggs about collecting crime fiction at Death in the Dales, a festival to be held in Sedbergh, England's book town, next weekend. Jean and her team have organised a great programme and I'll be doing two other panels. Do come along if you're in the area! 

It was great to have the chance of a long conversation with Caroline in addition to our chat during the podcast recording, and to show her my own collection. She also was kind enough to present me with inscribed copies of her two books (not about crime fiction). I've started A Body Made of Glass and it's very well-written. Meanwhile, I did enjoy taking part in Shedunnit and reflecting on the strange brilliance of Anthony Berkeley. 

 

Forgotten Book - Death under Snowdon

Frank Showell Styles was an extremely prolific author and also a noted mountaineer. His two interests coalesced when he wrote detective novels, and most of his work in the crime genre appeared under the name Glyn Carr and featured Sir Abercrombie Lewker (known as 'Filthy' - filthy lucre, geddit?) as a rumbustious amateur detective. The Glyn Carr hardbacks are now quite hard to find and copies in nice condition are highly collectible.

Over the years, I've tended to steer clear of Glyn Carr over the years, since mountaineering holds no great interest as far as I'm concerned. But I thought it was high time that I took a proper look at his work and where better to start than with a novel set in Snowdonia, a part of the world which the author loved, as I do. Death under Snowdon fitted the bill perfectly.

Lewker is about to receive his knighthood, and is contacted by an acquaintance who is due to be similarly honoured. This chap, David Webhouse, is an unappetising politician (aren't they all? some would ask) whose left-wing leanings were not, I suspect, shared by the author. He wants Lewker's help, knowing Filthy's taste for solving puzzles, but is rather mysterious about the precise nature of the problem he faces. Lewker accepts an invitation to a house party in Snowdonia but Webhouse is killed in an explosion, apparently the result of a booby-trap. Was he murdered and, if so, whodunit?

This is a pretty good traditional mystery and the setting is a bonus. There are some technicalities involved in the solution that call to mind the likes of John Rhode and Freeman Wills Crofts; given that this novel was published in 1954, when the Golden Age had lost some of its glitter - certainly so far as publishers and critics were concerned - Carr was swimming against the tide of literary fashion. But this is a well-crafted novel and I enjoyed it enough to want to read more of his work. 

The Isle of Man

After returning from one festival in Richmond last week, I headed straight off to another, on the Isle of Man, somewhere I've visited quite a few times over the years. It's an island I'm very fond of, and I've been remarkably lucky with the weather, which always helps. My last two visits, in 2011 and 2019, saw me hosting murder mystery evenings in the company of Jan Macartney of Douglas Library. This time, I was a guest of the Manx Literary Festival - whose arrangements, by the way, were admirable - and although other commitments meant I couldn't get together with either Jan or Doug Stewart, I did have the chance to catch up with some other friends.

I arrived on Friday and had an enjoyable lunch with Rakie Bennett, a local crime writer and festival committee member, before checking into my hotel. Then it was off to Peel for a meal with Caroline England, whom I've known for some years but not previously had the chance to have a long chat with. We were in conversation at a 'Crime and Rhyme' event with Christy DeHaven, a radio presenter who proved to be an extremely skilled interviewer. During a pleasant book-signing interval, I had the chance for a chat with local resident Alan Bradley. It was great to see Alan again; his first novel about Flavia de Luce is about to be filmed with a glittering cast - very exciting and definitely something to look forward to. After the interval, the Bookshop Band entertained us royally with some highly enjoyable book-related songs.

On Saturday morning, it was off to St Ninian's Church in Douglas, where I conducted a writers' workshop, and then Caroline and I had a conversation with Rakie about the craft of crime writing. I always enjoy these workshop sessions and it was a great pleasure to be part of such a very successful festival. 

After lunch, I met up with my old pal Tony, one of my closest friends from student days, and his wife Dalila. They took me on a tour of the island, followed by a terrific walk along a beach and then through the countryside. Then we had a lovely meal at their fantastic house just outside Douglas. It was a rare treat to be able to spend plenty of time in their company. I'm conscious that I've had a lot of good fortune in my writing career and this past week has been a good example - invited to take part in two splendid festivals, with the chance to meet nice people and explore glorious scenery as well. I often talk about the ups and downs of the writing life but although the downs are certainly not to be under-estimated, I can honestly say that in my experience the ups far outweigh them. And that's why I urged the workshop participants to keep faith in their own work, even when they encounter setbacks. 

Richmond and the first Peter Robinson Memorial Lecture

I've had an exciting week, with a memorable trip to Oxford followed by two extremely enjoyable festivals. The first of these is the subject of today's blog post. I was invited to the Richmond Walking and Books Festival and it was a great honour to be asked to give the inaugural Peter Robinson Memorial Lecture. Peter was a patron of the festival for many years and some years ago he invited me along, only for a conflicting commitment to make it impossible. We agreed that the event should take the form of a conversation between me and James Gravenor of the Festival committee, with introductory remarks by Peter's friend Alexe and a slide show of Peter over the years.

Richmond is a charming market town in north Yorkshire and we decided to turn the visit into a trip with plenty of sightseeing. This is definitely my preferred approach with festivals and conventions, when the opportunity arises. And we were very lucky with the weather. So there were stops in Sedbergh, Hawes, and Leyburn, all of them pleasant towns, as well as a walk to see the impressive Aysgarth Falls.

The organisers arranged for accommodation at Millgate House, which has been described as 'arguably the finest guest house in the country'. I thought this was a bit over the top until I arrived there to find an incredible house with an equally fantastic, award-winning garden. The historic Georgian house is full of clocks, antiques, paintings, and books. The garden, on a slope going towards the River Swale, is terrific, even at this time of year. I've never stayed anywhere quite like it. Here's a video about the garden which gives a good idea of its quality There are also some great shots of the house, interior and exterior.

I enjoyed listening to a great talk by Nicholas Royle about book collecting and was glad to have a chat with Nick, whom I hadn't previously met, and to buy his latest book Shadow Lines, which looks great. We discovered a shared enthusiasm for the work of Derek Marlowe and Nick was kind enough to send me a Marlowe novel that I've never come across before.

The next day was also fine, and there was a great guided tour conducted by a former mayor dressed as Richmond's first policeman, who ended up being murdered by navvies who were in town to build the (now abandoned) railway. The station is now a very impressive community hub, and there's a lovely looping walk along the Swale to Easby Abbey.

It was fun to chat to James, Alexe, and others, and a privilege to launch the Peter Robinson Memorial Lectures - I hope it's a series that continues for a long time. As for Richmond, although I'd visited the town, and looked round the castle in the past, there really is a great deal to see, more than I'd realised. A lovely part of the world.

Forgotten Book - The Ten Teacups

The Ten Teacups is the UK title of The Peacock Feather Murders, and it was first published in 1937. The author was Carter Dickson, the pen-name under which John Dickson Carr wrote over twenty novels featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. This is one of the most widely acclaimed.  Indeed, back in 1981, it made tenth place in a list of all-time classic locked room mysteries voted for by a panel convened by Edward D. Hoch at the time he compiled his locked room anthology All But Impossible...

The Ten Teacups is a very good ‘impossible crime’ mystery, written when Carr was at his peak. There are two distinct and equally baffling puzzles to solve. The first concerns a death by shooting in a locked and guarded room. The second involves murder by stabbing, committed by an invisible murderer. But there's more to the book than these teasing and ingenious situations.

In particular, the opening premise of the story is one that strikes me as quite wonderful. Masters, the CID detective who serves, in effect, as Merrivale's sidekick, is aghast to receive an anonymous message which reads: 'There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested.’ It seems absurd, but two years earlier, the arrival of a very similar message had presaged an extraordinary murder that had Scotland Yard baffled. And guess what? This message is also followed by a murder, despite the presence of a reliable detective outside the locked room in which the crime takes place. When shots are heard, the policeman breaks in, only to find a dead man and a gun - but no murderer...

A tantalising beginning, so marvellous that I imagine Carr found it rather hard to keep up the same standard throughout the book. I wouldn't say this is Carr's masterpiece, because the middle section is just a touch ponderous (this was one of his failings as a novelist, I must admit, and illustrates the challenge posed by writing a full-length locked room mystery novel) while the solution to the main crime does require suspension of disbelief on a heroic scale. There are some excellent discussions online, especially - albeit inevitably with spoilers - on Jim Noy's Invisible Event blog. But there is a lot here to enjoy nonetheless - including an excellent cluefinder in the form of more than thirty footnotes!

Memory Lane

I had a marvellous weekend back in Oxford, at a college reunion organised by the Balliol Society. Not for the first time, it struck me that, had I known when I first arrived there what the future held in store, I would have been amazed and incredulous. In a good way, I hasten to add. The surreal aspects of the return were heightened by the fact that I had long conversations with two guys who were on either side of me when the College matriculation photo was taken, Matthew Reisz (son of the great film-maker Karel) and John Foley. And three of my fellow law students, Neil, Tim, and Robin, were there among the crowd as well, it was marvellous to catch up with them.

The college library had arranged a very interesting exhibition of items from its archive relating to the interwar years at Balliol. The archive is held in the striking surrounds of the St Cross Church, which is partly but not entirely deconsecrated. There were some great items on show, including a letter from Mahatma Gandhi to the then Master of Balliol. Great credit goes to those who organised this informative display. If you want to take a look for yourself, the details are here.

I had a vivid flashback to that long ago day when I arrived in Oxford for my scholarship interview at the college. I recall being overwhelmed by anxiety, by a sense that my life was about to change in an unknowable way, from the comfortable routine that I was familiar with, and all of a sudden I felt I could not cope with it. I stayed for about three quarters of an hour at the station, trying to compose myself before I got up the nerve to move. That was the day I first met Neil and we've been friends ever since. A number of us reflected on the values of the friendships gained, as well as the many other pleasures of student life. That life had its difficult moments, of course, but overall the experience was overwhelmingly positive and it is great to go back.

John Foley has shared with me an excellent film he made recently which I think captures the nature of Oxford life very well - it's a very good watch and can be seen here. And while I was in the city I took the opportunity to look at the Kafka exhibition (excellent) and sign a few books of mine at Waterstones. When I was a student I dreamed of a day when I'd see my own novels on the bookshelves of Oxford. It seemed a remote prospect at best, but sometimes even impossible dreams come true. 

Eye of the Needle - 1981 film review

What a terrific actor the late Donald Sutherland was. Such an enjoyable performer, full of verve, and extremely versatile. My favourite Sutherland movie is Don't Look Now, but I was impressed by his handling of a very different role, as a baddie in The Eye of the Needle, based on the bestselling thriller written by Ken Follett when he was still in his twenties. I've never read a Follett novel, but this film is so good that I feel I should give him a go.

At first I wasn't entirely sure about Sutherland's interpretation of Henry Faber, a German spy masquerading as a pukka Englishman, but he soon won me over. At first he's characterised quite simply as a ruthless assassin ('the Needle') but eventually we get hints of a more rounded individual. When he is given a message to travel to remote Storm Island, in the north of Scotland, with a view to making a getaway from England by U-boat, the scene is set for a chase sequence very much in the tradition of The Thirty-Nine Steps.

The chase is exciting, but it proves to be merely the prelude for the story at the heart of the film, an unlikely romance between Faber and the wife of a disabled former Spitfire pilot. David Rose lost the use of his legs in a car crash on his wedding day, and the horrific experience has soured him. He and his wife Lucy live with their young son on a sheep farm on remote Storm Island (Storm Island was the original title of the novel), which is Faber's destination.

Kate Nelligan, as Lucy, gives an outstanding performance. She was once nominated for an Oscar for another film role, and she really manages to capture the emotional nuances of the part. Christopher Cazenove plays David, while the very impressive cast includes Ian Bannen, John Grieve, Faith Brook, and such notable actors as Bill Fraser, Sam Kydd, Bill Nighy, and Rik Mayall in small parts. A very entertaining, action-packed film, warmly recommended.