Sharp Corner - 2024 film review

Stories which focus on characters who experience gradual psychological disintegration are often harrowing, but if told well, they can be engrossing. Some of Julian Symons's best novels, such as The Narrowing Circle and The Man Who Killed Himself, are good examples. Sharp Corner, a newish film based on a short story by the Canadian writer Russell Wangersky, is another.

This is a slow-burning film, but it's never boring. Josh (Ben Foster) and Rachel (Cobie Smulders - quite a memorable name!) are a happily married couple with a young son, Max, whom they adore. They move out of the city to a new house and everything seems fine. But as Josh and Rachel celebrate their good fortune by making love in the front room, a tyre crashes through the window. There has been a fatal car accident on the sharp bend in the road just outside the house.

One small point I have to make is that the corner that causes all the trouble doesn't actually seem that sharp to me. There's a much more terrifying right-hand bend in a road close to where I live. No matter. This tragedy unsettles the family, and worse is to follow, as it becomes clear the sharp corner is an accident blackspot, and more crashes follow. Josh becomes obsessed with the crashes, and his work and personal life suffer. So, before long, does his marriage.

Josh is in many ways a frustrating character, and although one sympathises with him at first, it becomes increasingly difficult to do so. He is not a 'bad' man - far from it - yet eventually he will do something terrible. The end of the film came a bit unexpectedly and I'm still not quite sure what I make of it. Overall, though, this is a thought-provoking film and I was impressed.

   

Forgotten Book - Sweet Danger

My copy of Margery Allingham's Sweet Danger (1933) is a precious one, despite lacking a dust jacket, because it's inscribed by the author (and her husband Pip) to a friend. It also benefits from endpapers which have a rather splendid map labelled 'The village of Pontisbright where it all happened'. It's taken me a while to get round to reading it but I was amused to find that the prime villain rejoices in the name Savanake (so spelled differently from Rachel, whose name was inspired by Henrietta Savernake in Agatha Christie's The Hollow). 

The description often applied to Sweet Danger is 'romp' and that tells you most of what you need to know about the novel. A disputed territory in central Europe plays a significant part in the plot, so in some ways this is one of those Golden Age novels which have a Ruritanian element - rather like Christie's The Secret of Chimneys, for instance. 

Thankfully, the vast majority of the action takes place in Pontisbright, which is in Suffolk, and the story is particularly significant in the Allingham canon for introducing Albert Campion to Amanda Fitton, who at the tender age of seventeen makes a big impression on him and was to play a key role in several of Allingham's later books. Was this the influence of Sayers' success in introducing Wimsey to Harriet Vane? I tend to think so.

The storyline concerns inheritance and a coded message and it didn't make much of an impression on me. The chapter which made the greatest impact was the one in which Campion ventures to London and encounters Savanake at his HQ: this is very well done, and so is the climactic battle between the men in the mill at Pontisbright. But if anything this book reinforces me in the perhaps controversial view that much of Allingham's finest work was in the short story form, which compelled a discipline not always evident in her novels. 

Speak No Evil (2024) film review

Speak No Evil is a 2024  American remake - written and directed by the accomplished James Watkins - of a Danish film of two years earlier which I haven't seen. Both have enjoyed critical and commercial success. In essence, this is a psychological suspense story which edges into horror territory. But most of the creepier stuff, I'm glad to say, is handled subtly and by suggestion rather than directly graphic content.

The film benefits immeasurably from the presence in the cast of that fine actor James McEvoy. He has the key part of Paddy, a character with hidden (and, it must be said, foreseeably unpleasant) depths, but his ability to move seamlessly and yet with conviction from charmer to villain is impressive. A lesser actor might have struggled to make such an impact.

An American couple living in London, Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and the splendidly named Scoot McNairy) make holiday friends with Paddy and Ciara (McEvoy and Aisling Franciosi, also very good). The Daltons have a daughter, Agnes, who is very anxious, while their new pals have a young boy, Ant, who has a condition which means that he cannot speak. Dan Hough, who plays Ant, is terrific in a tricky role. He has a bright future ahead of him as an actor.

The outgoing and slightly flaky Brits invite the American couple to join them in their remote farmstead in the west country. Obviously, the Americans should run for their lives at this point, but equally obviously they don't. What follows might have been predictable, but a good script and even better acting ensures that the tension ratchets up steadily and is maintained throughout. I wish I could have warmed to Louise and Ben more than I did, but irritating though they are, they don't deserve what Paddy has in store for them.

Announcement - What the World Needs Now - a new mystery anthology

 

I'm delighted to share, at long last, news of an anthology of mine that will be published in the summer. It's called What the World Needs Now: Mysteries Inspired by the Music of Burt Bacharach and it will be published by Level Best Books. It's a very special book for me for a number of reasons, and one of them is that proceeds will go to autism charities in the UK and US. I've been advised by people with expert knowledge of the subject about suitable charities, and all contributors have been hugely generous in donating their stories for this very worthwhile cause.

And what a marvellous list of contributors, what a wonderful and diverse range of stories. We have big international bestsellers like Ragnar Jonasson, Charles Todd, Abir Mukherjee, and Sarah Hilary, alongside people better known in other fields like Simon Guerrier and Rhian Waller. Plus many others, all of them writing at top form. I'll have more to say about the contributions another day.

The foreword was kindly written by Rupert Holmes, the multi-talented crime novelist, playwright, and composer, who just so happens to come from the same Cheshire town as me. In fact, Northwich now holds a very popular annual Pina Colada Festival in Rupert's honour - named, of course, after his famous hit, 'The Pina Colada Song'. 

This is a book that has been a long time in the making. It brings together my twin passions, for Burt Bacharach's music, and for crime fiction, in a way that I'm very, very happy with. And the book is dedicated to a friend of mine from my schooldays, Elizabeth, who sadly died while this book was in the course of preparation. I told her when I visited her in the hospice that I would be dedicating the book to her, and I also promised that I'd give a mention in my own story to her old favourite pop performer from those long ago days when we spent much time together. Who was that? Well, you ought to read the book to find out!

Forgotten Book - The Second Time is Easy

Martin Russell's speciality as a crime novelist was to write about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, confronting intolerable pressures as they became ensnared in webs of deception that were sometimes of their own making. The Second Time is Easy, which dates from 1987, is a good example of his distinctive brand of domestic suspense. 

Like almost all of his books, this one appeared under the famous imprint of the Collins Crime Club. I must say, though, that the blurb writer did him no favours at all. The jacket cover gives nearly the whole story away, not the only time in Russell's career that this happened. I've got no idea why this was done. As was the fashion at the time, there was no biographical information at all about the author, and I feel this would have been rather more interesting than a potted summary of the whole book.

The story is set in Sussex - Russell seldom ventured far from the south of England in his books; here he makes clever use of hang-gliding on the Downs  - and the protagonists are a supermarket manager, Simon Pettifer, and his wife Jo. They have a daughter, Carol, to whom they are both devoted. But Simon is having an affair with a work colleague and Jo takes a shine to a builder who has been hired to build an extension to the house to accommodate Jo's mother.

That's as much as I want to say about the storyline, but it's fair to add that this isn't one of Russell's twistiest stories - there is one puzzling question, but the main focus is on what will happen to the Pettifers. I found this one readable and entertaining, even though I wasn't totally convinced by two aspects of the behaviour of the female characters in the book.  

The Gentleman - 2025 film review

Ron Perlman is a charismatic actor and his presence in the cast is enough to make The Gentleman worth a look. This recent film is set in Basque country and the script is adapted from a novel by Carlo Augustus Casas and directed by Luis Gabriel Beristain. It's a violent film, but is short enough not to outstay its welcome.

The set up is that Perlman's character, the eponymous 'Gentleman', is a retired American soldier now living in Spain. He has no family, and his closest male friend is terminally ill with cancer, but his loneliness is relieved by regular get-togethers with a young woman called Olga. He enjoys her company and pays for her time, and although she's a sex worker with an unpleasant pimp (is there any other sort) she seems to have a genuine enough liking for him.

However, Olga gets involved with a small group of lawyers (always a mistake, a cynic might say) and is murdered for pleasure. The Gentleman - we soon realise it's a term used with some irony in this film - is appalled and decides to embark on a quest for vengeance. It seems that his previous military career didn't equip him for this, and he's soon found out when spying on one of the lawyers and beaten up. But he becomes savvier and more effective in his approach, while making little effort to cover his tracks.

Meanwhile, Olga's murder is investigated by a woman detective whose marriage has fallen apart, and her sardonic sidekick, and this strand of the story culminates in a nice plot twist. The Gentleman's campaign for violence continues in the meantime, with ever more bloody results. This film isn't by any means a masterpiece, but thanks to a very strong and understated performance by Perlman, I found it surprisingly watchable despite an indifferent script which isn't without plot holes.  

Fanny Lye Deliver'd - 2019 film review

I chanced upon Fanny Lye Deliver'd on Amazon Prime, and although I'd never heard of the film, the cast was strong enough for me to give it a go. Charles Dance, Maxine Peake, Freddie Fox, what could possibly go wrong? Well, for quite a while I did wonder if I'd made a big mistake. The opening is glacially slow-paced, with a voiceover that I found less than enthralling.

Luckily, things then began to become more interesting (if quite dark). The film is set in 1657 on a remote Shropshire farm (although I didn't detect anything that was particularly relevant to Shropshire; it might have been anywhere that was deep in the countryside). This was the time when Britain was in the grip of the Puritans, before the return of Charles II and if you wanted an advertisement for the benefits of a monarchy rather than a republic, this film might be it.

Charles Dance is John Lye, a deeply religious, tough farmer, who rules his wife Fanny and young son Arthur with a rod of iron. Their lives are disrupted by the sudden arrival of two naked people, Thomas (Fox) and Rebecca (Tanya Reynolds) who claim to have been robbed. John shows them some kindness - he isn't by any means an altogether rotten person. But soon it turns out that Thomas and Rebecca are not quite what they seem...

After watching the film, I researched it, and was fascinated to find that writer and director Thomas Clay was inspired to write it after reading the work of the Marxist revolutionary historian Christopher Hill. Chris Hill was Master of Balliol when I was there and although I didn't know him well, I found him rather diffident and very pleasant, as indeed, oddly enough, have been all the (very few) revolutionaries I've known. I still have a nice postcard he sent me from France after my Finals.

The film is a mash-up of various ingredients, and it's not entirely successful. But after that slow start, it does pick up speed, and although I have some reservations about several aspects of it, it's worth a look so that you can make up your own mind.  

Spies, Lies and Deception - IWM Manchester

The sad news of Len Deighton's passing coincided with my learning that there was an exhibition at the Manchester branch of the Imperial War Museum, and so I decided to take a look. The museum is located in Salford, a short walk from the Lowry and the BBC (where University Challenge is filmed, among other shows, so a place of fond memories!) but it's a very, very long time since I last went there with my children.

The main exhibition is very good and a special treat was listening to a chap called Ray giving a fascinating talk about a friend of his, Tom Boardman, who was a prisoner of the Japanese during the war, but managed to make a ukulele with which he entertained fellow prisoners, and which is now on display. There are plenty of reminders about the long-lasting nature of the devastation caused by war, which felt very pertinent in current circumstances, as it did a couple of days later when talking to two friends who come from Iran.

The Spies, Lies and Deception exhibition was very good, and even though I've done a lot of reading about spying over the years, I still learned some new things, for example about Agent Zigzag. I went to a spying museum in Washington DC a few years ago, and that was also good, but very different. Here the focus was on the British experience.

It was fascinating, for instance, to see and hear Kim Philby being interviewed on television, and lying through his teeth in a charming way. And to see the pleasant but modest bungalow owned by the Krogers and learn where they hid their spying paraphenalia was quite memorable. One thing I did not know was that Kroger's cover was as a dealer in antiquarian books. Now that has given me an idea for a story...

Forgotten Book - Doctors Also Die

Doctors Also Die is the rather melodramatic title of D.M. Devine's second novel, originally published in 1962. I don't think it ever appeared in paperback in Britain and it's a hard to find book - I was lucky to be lent a copy by a friend. Here, Devine was tackling the notorious 'second book hurdle' after the success of My Brother's Killer, and in my opinion he surmounted that hurdle pretty well.

As so often with Devine, the story is set among Scotland's professional classes. He understood the bourgeois mindset of his characters, and his story casts interesting light on the social attitudes of the time (pre-Beatles) when there was a good deal of prudishness about and any gay man was extremely vulnerable to blackmail, as well as to criminal prosecution.

The story is narrated by Alan Turner, a G.P. whose senior partner, Henderson, died recently in rather suspicious circumstances. The official verdict was accidental death, but Alan makes clear in the very first paragraph of the novel that he sensed Henderson was murdered, though he didn't want to believe it, because he knew whodunit. Immediately, we make the assumption that he is wrong - otherwise, where would the mystery be? But even at this stage of his career, Devine was adept at plotting, and you can't take anything for granted with his storylines.

Some of the key events of the story are revealed in flashback scenes and Devine handles this sometimes cumbersome device fairly well. I did wonder why he didn't 'begin at the beginning' with a description, say, of the discovery of Henderson's body. When all is finally revealed, however, it becomes clear that he has misled us - rather cleverly, I think - about a crucial element of the storyline. This is so neatly done that one can forgive him for making Alan a rather cussed individual who is sometimes a fool to himself and therefore not always the easiest with whom to empathise. Not top-notch Devine, perhaps, but a very good mystery nonetheless.

 

Scandal - 1989 film review

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'It may be false, it may be true, but nothing has been proved.' I've loved the theme song from Scandal for a long time - a great collaboration between Dusty Springfield and the Pet Shop Boys which, astonishingly, wasn't nominated for an Oscar - but I'd never seen the film, until the other day, when it was screened by Talking Pictures TV. The film is about the Profumo Affair, which was the biggest scandal in British politics until the still-unfolding story which has been filling the Press recently, and which no doubt will generate plenty of films and TV dramas in years to come.

Scandal is a terrific film, very effectively directed by Michael Caton-Jones and benefiting from a superb cast led by John Hurt (who manages to make the creepy Stephen Ward almost sympathetic) and Joanne Whalley, as Christine Keeler. Ian McKellen is Profumo and Leslie Phillips is Lord Astor, while Bridget Fonda is very good as Mandy Rice-Davies, one of the few people in the case who seems to have profited from it in the long run. The impressive supporting cast includes such excellent actors as Terence Rigby (once of Softly, Softly), Alex Norton (a future star of Taggart), Trevor Eve (Shoestring), Ronald Fraser, Iain Cuthbertson, Britt Ekland, Daniel Massey, and Keith Allen.

The script by Michael Thomas is strong, and although I'm not convinced that Ward was quite as much a victim as the film suggests, it is compelling viewing from start to finish. The story is in many ways an amazing one, but recent events have shown that this calamitous episode in British history did not spell the end of misbehaviour at the heart of the establishment.

Carl Davis composed the music for the film, but the film also makes clever use of pop songs of the era to underpin some of the central themes. Peter Bradshaw, a very good film critic, regarded Hurt's performance in Scandal as his masterpiece, and who am I to disagree?