Forgotten Book - Who Killed Robert Prentice?

The first Crime Dossier created by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links was Murder off Miami (in the US, File on Bolitho Blane) and it proved to be a huge success, bringing together Golden Age elements such as the 'challenge to the reader' in a dossier format, like a three-dimensional version of books such as The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace. 

A follow-up was inevitable, and it came in the form of Who Killed Robert Prentice? which boasts some intriguing clues as part of the package. Unfortunately, since the clues include a particular perfume on certain correspondence, they don't always stand the test of time. When copies turn up on the second hand market, items are often missing - my first edition lacks an important newspaper cutting as well as some face powder (!) but one curiosity is still present and correct. This is a little wallet of pieces of a torn-up photograph - which turn out to display a topless woman in the company of a man: in other words, it's a compromising picture used for the purposes of blackmail. Racy for 1937, that's for sure.

The British police are baffled by the death - by strychnine poisoning - of the wealthy Prentice. His widow contacts a visiting American detective called Schwab and asks him to look into the case. He soon finds that there are several plausible suspects, including the deceased's step-son and his mistress. 

After some intricate stuff concerning alibis, it eventually becomes clear that the crime turns on a plot device which is by no means original (I associate it with another strychnine poisoning mystery, which in other respects is very different) but which still works pretty well in this context. This was actually the first Crime Dossier I ever read, and rereading it thirty years later was equally pleasurable. 

Cellar Door - 2024 film review

Cellar Door is a fairly recent American film which takes a situation with a number of rather familiar ingredients and and manages to make something quite interesting and entertaining out of them. As a result, I found it more watchable than I might have expected, given that the script does have a number of flaws. In a way, it's a Faustian pact story with a difference. 

A young couple, Sera and John (Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman) who have recently suffered a miscarriage decide to make a new start by looking for a house in the country. An estate agent introduces them to a slightly mysterious chap called Emmett (Laurence Fishburne) who makes them an offer that they find it impossible to refuse.

Emmett lives in a gorgeous mansion which has seen some kind of unspecified tragedy in the past. He offers the couple the chance to acquire the house for nothing, subject to one condition only - they must never open the cellar door. Of course, they say yes, but soon John is itching with curiosity, desperate to find his way past that pesky cellar door.

The plot thickens when a work colleague of John's turns up at the housewarming party and subsequently accuses him of sexual harassment. There's a pleasing twist near the end of the film, and it becomes clear that the primary significance of the cellar door is metaphorical rather than actual. I'm not sure everything in the story made complete sense, but there were just about enough interesting developments to keep me engaged to the rather ambivalent ending.   

War of the Worlds - 2005 film review

I vividly remember reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, aged about 12 or 13, after borrowing the book from my school library. I was so impressed that I was tempted to buy a paperback copy of The Time Machine for myself, and I also read quite a few of his short stories. I even tried his 'social realism' fiction, but at that age, I certainly didn't find it gripping, and I think it's fair to say that today he is much better remembered as a writer of sci-fi than for his non-genre fiction.   

About seven years ago, I enjoyed a BBC TV version of the story - some key scenes of which were shot in Great Budworth, a lovely Cheshire village well-known to me - but I've only just caught up with Steven Spielberg's 2005 film version, set in the United States. This begins and ends clunkily, in my opinion, with a solemn and rather banal explanatory voiceover by Morgan Freeman, but the action in between is very good.

The cast is led by Tom Cruise, whose performances in action films generally strike me as excellent. I know that some people don't like his portrayal of Jack Reacher, partly because of his lack of height, but I thought he did a pretty good job. And under Spielberg's direction, he is on top form here, as Ray Ferrier, a dock worker whose marriage is over and whose ex-wife Mary Ann (now pregnant by her new bloke) has custody of their children, moody adolescent Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young Rachel (Dakota Fanning). At the start of the film, Ray is late to collect his children for a few days, and his lack of attention to punctuality sums up the unreliability that has ended his marriage.

There are news reports of electrical storms in Ukraine, and soon strange clouds form overhead. Before you know it, alien tripods are causing havoc - and their first appearance is quite memorable. The story focuses on Ray and his children, and is well handled, with several moments of very high tension. You can interpret Wells' storyline in a variety of ways, but what matters most is that it really is a very good story, a landmark title in science fiction that has stood the test of time. 

Andrew Shanks R.I.P.

No 'Friday Forgotten Book' today, because I want to pay a personal tribute to my brother-in-law Andrew Shanks, who died on Tuesday. This tragic news came as a great shock, and it will be a considerable time before we come properly to terms with his loss. Andrew was a writer and translator of distinction, although his field was far removed from crime writing; he did, however, provide me with advice several times. He's mentioned in the acknowledgements to Blackstone Fell, having given me a good deal of help with my research for a pivotal chapter in that book, set around a church service. He was a priest (at different times he had rural and inner city parishes and he also served as Canon Theologian at Manchester Cathedral for a decade) and also a philosopher. In a message to Andrew's widow Dian Leppington, his friend Rowan Williams has already expressed his admiration for Andrew's personal qualities with great eloquence and poignancy.

Andrew was the eldest of the four children of Michael and Juliet Shanks: he's on the left in the above photo, with Chris, Roland, and Helena. Michael was a distinguished economist (whose influence continues to the present; his ideas were referenced last week in his column by the economics editor of the Sunday Times) and author. Andrew read History at Balliol, his father's old college, and he and I overlapped there, although he enjoyed Balliol less than I did and we didn't meet until after I'd got to know his sister, whom I first met at the same college. I've often said that Andrew is the cleverest person I know, but even more important than his formidable intellectual gifts were his personal qualities, his compassion, warmth, and playful sense of humour. 

Andrew played an important part in my life, more important than perhaps he realised. Not only did he officiate at our wedding, he guided me through after the death of my mother at the darkest time of my life and delivered a tribute at the memorial service when I simply couldn't manage it. And there was much more: he and Dian frequently hosted us, and my crime writing friend Eileen Dewhurst at their home in Leeds when we stayed en route for northern CWA events in Yorkshire. On one occasion he and Dian looked after our children at short notice while we were away and I'd messed up the arrangements. At different times, when they had homes in Hornby (E.C.R. Lorac country!) and Grassington, we stayed there for holidays. There was a memorable family gathering in Liverpool two years ago when we all spent a January weekend together to celebrate his 70th birthday, visiting the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Wirral, among other things (the below photo). And there was much else besides.

I very much enjoyed our conversations over the years, at family get-togethers or sometimes when we  played chess or watched Match of the Day together. He was never less than fascinating to talk to and it's safe to say that I learned a lot more from him than he did from me. I think we had many shared values, though it's fair to say that our ideas about how society could best implement those values were often very different. On his extremely interesting website Andrew describes himself as a 'neo-Hegelian...politically however (more and more) a sort of anarcho-pacifist.' In the last really lengthy discussion we had, he explained to me his ideas about reforming the House of Lords. These are set out on a page of his website and I think they deserve serious consideration by serious people (even if Andrew's confidence in the charitable sector is greater than mine). In any event, the point is not really whether you agree 100% with his argument: what matters is the quality of the thinking behind it.

Andrew suffered from serious ill-health of various kinds for many years, but it was a tribute to his courage and indomitable spirit that he bounced back so many times, and was able to devote himself to his writing and his happy and fulfilling personal life with Dian right to the end. I cannot deny that books such as his first, Hegel's Political Theology, were too difficult for me, but he achieved something special in recent times with his impressive translation of the poetry of the German Nelly Sachs. She was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, but I confess I'd never heard of her until Andrew explained what an extraordinary individual she was. His translations seem to me to be highly successful and he won two prizes for them. As I've mentioned, his father's legacy endures. So too, I have no doubt, will Andrew's. I shall remember him with gratitude and huge affection.    

 

   

The Scottish Isles

 

I'm just back from a lovely trip to the Scottish Isles, which although overshadowed by other things, provided a scenic reminder of just what a gorgeous part of the world is to be found up the coast from Liverpool, from where the ship did a round trip. First stop was Shetland - not as warm as on my last visit, to Shetland Noir, but still charming.

It was nice to see Lerwick again (and to see a copy of The Life of Crime in the excellent Shetland bookshop!) but the highlight was a guided walk across the sand tombolo to St Ninian's Isle, a look at the ruined chapel, and the rugged scenery. There were also some Shetland ponies.

Next stop was Kirkwall on Mainland, Orkney, an island I've never visited. As with Shetland, Orcadian tourism has definitely benefited from the popularity of Ann Cleeves' books about Jimmy Perez!

The ancient settlement of Skara Brae was an absolute must-see, and the nearby Skail House was also very interesting. A trip into 'downtown Kirkwall', as someone described it, was notable in particular for the chance to look around St Magnus Cathedral - truly impressive.

Next came Lewis, an island which features in Peter May's very successful novels. The Black Houses were fascinating, as were the standing stones at Calanais. A look around Stornoway afforded the opportunity to explore the grounds of Lews Castle. All in all, most enjoyable.

The final sea day afforded vistas of the Dutchman's Cap and Fingal's Cave as well as various other islands, and indeed Ireland. A wonderful place to explore - and no shortage of crime writing associations!

Leave Her to Heaven - 1945 film review

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Now to an interesting old film. Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 movie shot in 'glorious Technicolor', with primarily rural, charming locations, yet it's widely described as a film noir. A contradiction? I don't think so. For me, this is a film which is highly distinctive, yet which can sensibly be discussed alongside, and compared to, more conventional examples of film noir, shot in mean streets and rainy alleyways. After all, Body Heat, my favourite example of film noir (even though it was made in the 80s rather than the 40s or 50s), is a story that unfolds in bright sunshine amid blistering temperatures.

Jo Swerling's screenplay, based on Ben Ames Williams novel (the film rights of which were purchased prior to its publication in 1944, such was the quality of the characterisation), focuses more on people than plot, although there is a teasing preamble, with the arrival of Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) at a lakeside in Maine, when we learn that he has just been released from prison. It would be a stretch to describe this story as a 'mystery', but it's undoubtedly a dark murder story.

Then it's flashback time. Richard is an author, who has the pleasurable experience of travelling on a train in which a beautiful woman is reading his latest novel. This is Ellen Berent, played by Gene Tierney, who had recently excelled in that great film noir Laura. One thing leads to another, as it so often does, and Richard and Ellen get married. She makes a friend of his younger brother Danny, whose ability to walk has been hampered by polio, and domestic bliss beckons.

The trouble is that Ellen's devotion to Richard is excessive, and her jealousy proves to be corrosive, with catastrophic results. I found Richard rather anodyne - I've never regarded Cornel Wilde as an exciting actor, I'm afraid - but Gene Tierney excels. She was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her performance, and the accolade was well merited. There is some debate in academic circles as to whether she truly qualifies for the description femme fatale, but I don't have much doubt about it. What is interesting is that her motivation is not financial greed, as with Phyllis in Double Indemnity for instance. But in this film, Gene Tierney is, in her way, as menacing as the great Barbara Stanwyck. The supporting cast, by the way, also features good performances from Jeanne Crain, as Ellen's adopted sister, and Vincent Price, as a lawyer who was once engaged to Ellen.   

Forgotten Book - A Press of Suspects aka By-Line for Murder

Paul Winterton, himself the son of a journalist who had briefly been a Labour MP, had a successful career in Fleet Street (though he was rather less successful in politics, standing for election, but never making it all the way to Westminster) before becoming a full-time crime writer at around the same time that he was elected to membership of the Detection Club, in 1952. So when he set A Press of Suspects (1951) in Fleet Street, he was writing about what he knew. And this shows, because the setting around the fictional newspaper the Morning Call seems highly authentic, as well as interestingly and wittily described.

The story itself is equally interesting, a blend of inverted mystery novel and detective story. We begin by seeing things from the rather skewed perspective of a journo in the foreign department, Edgar Jessop. Edgar is hoping for promotion, but his dreams are dashed by the editor, who appoints a younger reporter, Cardew, to the plum job of Foreign Editor. This setback (perhaps, although this is not spelled out in any way, along with the recent death of his mother) causes Edgar to suffer a sort of mental breakdown.

Jealousy and rage bubble up and he decides to take revenge on his colleagues, including at least one individual who has always treated him well. Edgar's chosen method is poison, although some details of the plan are - quite skilfully - withheld from the reader. When his first victim dies, and Inspector Haines comes on to the scene to investigate, there are suspects more obvious than Edgar, and Garve juggles things skilfully so as to maintain suspense, even though we know whodunit. The idea of combining a workplace setting with an inverted mystery is a good one.

That said, there are some flaws in the book. In particular, attention shifts from Edgar, and his psychology becomes increasingly difficult to fathom. A bit more depth here might have been welcome. But you can't have everything, and although this is by no means my favourite Garve, I enjoyed the way he built up the tension.  

Good Boy - 2025 movie

With most films, I don't find it too difficult to make up my mind about whether I enjoyed them or not. The other day, for instance, I watched Christopher Nolan's much-lauded film Oppenheimer. I admire Nolan as a film-maker and I'd been saving it up for a treat. But for all its merits (and the brilliance of its stellar cast) I was disappointed, because for me it was over-long and focused far too much on aspects of the story that I didn't much care about. The key issue in the story surely concerns the moral pros and cons of Oppenheimer's work on the bomb, but the endless debate about whether or not he should retain his security clearance in the mid-50s seemed tediously overblown. A minority view, I realise.

Jan Komasa's recent film Good Boy, on the other hand, left me genuinely unsure. It's described as a blend of psychological thriller and black comedy, though there isn't too much humour, black or any other kind, in my opinion. I had no idea which way the story was heading, and the eventual finale came as a a real surprise. This should be a big plus, but I'm doubtful about that, because I didn't find the resolution convincing.

The film begins unattractively, with a deeply unpleasant young man called Tommy (Anson Boon) misbehaving in various depressing ways before we switch to a job interview between mild-mannered Chris (the versatile and talented Stephen Graham) and Rina (Monica Frajczyk). He's recruiting a maid, btu his manner is troubling. But Rina, a migrant worker, is desperate, so she takes the job. Chris, it turns out, lives in a remote mansion with his deeply troubled wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough, also highly accomplished) and their son Jonathan. But Rina soon discovers that someone else is living in the cellar. This is Tommy, and he's chained up.

Very odd, and things get odder still as the story develops and Tommy's attitude towards his captors evolves. I can't say much more without giving too much away, but although I think this is a film with significant flaws, it held my attention from start to finish, in a way that Oppenheimer, so superior in some ways, failed to do.  

No Country for Old Men - 2007 film review

No Country for Old Men, which takes its title from a line in a poem by W.B. Yeats, is a Coen brothers film based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy. It's a highly-regarded film (described as a 'neo-Western crime thriller' on Wikipedia!) which I've been meaning to catch up with for ages. When I finally did, I certainly wasn't disappointed, even though I don't think the unorthodox ending is quite as effective as some critics believe.

The events take place in 1980, and the setting is Texas and the borderland with Mexico. A tough retired welder, Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), is hunting in the desert when he comes across the aftermath of some kind of drug deal which has gone wrong, leaving some dead bodies, a dying man, and a briefcase containing two million dollars. Llewellyn helps himself to the money, but soon finds himself on the run. The bad guys want their cash back.

The bad guys hire an extremely sinister and memorable killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) to retrieve the money, and he proves relentless. A veteran cop, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who is on the verge of retirement, has to figure out what is going on. Also involved is a sinister bounty hunter called Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), whose eyes are also on the money.

There's a lot of violence in this film, but oddly enough some crucial acts of violence (including the killings of two key characters) take place off-screen. I'm not entirely convinced this works as well as the Coens obviously believed, but this isn't a film that one can easily judge in terms of the conventions of film thrillers. To some extent, the real focus is on something beneath the surface of the cat and mouse thriller storyline, namely Bell's uneasy awareness about the fact that he is getting on in years: hence the relevance of the title. Bardem's performance is mesmerising, and it's no surprise that it earned him an Oscar. Kelly Macdonald is also very good as Moss's wife. With actors of this quality, a film is bound to benefit, and the Coens make good use of the star quality at their disposal.  

Forgotten Book - A View to Ransom

I know there are very many well-read people who visit this blog, but I'm fairly confident that few, if any, of them will have read A View to Ransom, a novel by James Arney that was published by Robert Hale in 1983. It is the only published Arney title. And that is because the name conceals the identity of Martin Russell; his friend Betty Telford tells me that his mother's family came from Northern Ireland, and she thinks Arney was a family name.

Apart from one other book published by Hale (written as by Mark Lester), Martin Russell was published in the Collins Crime Club throughout a career spanning more than twenty years. As I mentioned when writing about him recently in The Life of Crime Premium, his editor was the redoubtable Elizabeth Walter. I know from Eileen Dewhurst's journal that she rejected one of his book in the mid-70s, and John Curran points out in The Hooded Gunman that there is some  mystery about The Phillison Project, a Crime Club title of his that was announced but never appeared, for reasons unknown.

A View to a Ransom opens with a confrontation on a TV investigation programme. This isn't the only example of such a device - an earlier example is Julian Symons' The Gigantic Shadow, which I reviewed on this blog  five years ago. I think the appeal of the idea is an element of the dramatic, but personally I think its an idea that tends to date a story quite significantly. The Symons novel is one of his weakest, and this novel doesn't compare with the best of Russell.

The storyline involves ace presenter Duncan Villier, whose increasingly erratic behaviour troubles his pal Simon Wallis, the narrator of the story. There's a political angle to the storyline which again tends to date it, and I struggled to get engaged with either Duncan's plight or Simon's attempts to help his friend. I'm afraid that my guess is that Elizabeth Walter rejected this novel because it wasn't up to Russell's usual standard. It may even have been the book that she turned down some years before this one was published. Hale's books were destined mainly for the public libraries. They published some undeservedly neglected gems over the years, but this is not, alas, one of them.