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.

Nobody - 2021 film review

Nobody, a film that has enjoyed critical and commercial success, opens with a bruised and battered Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk, who is excellent in the role) being questioned by two FBI agents who want to know who he is. He tells them he is 'nobody'. We then get a series of flashbacks which reveal Hutch as a 'regular guy', married to an attractive businesswoman and with a teenage son and young daughter. He works in a small industrial business which carries out welding and other engineering functions, which is owned by his father-in-law.

One night, two masked intruders, a man and a woman, break into Hutch's home and attack the family. They seem amateurish and desperate and Hutch has a chance to knock out the woman with a golf club after his son, who tried to resist them, has been hurt. But he restrains himself and the burglars get away. His son is disappointed in him, and soon the story gets around that Hutch let his family down.

However, he spotted a tattoo on the burglar's wrist and manages to track the pair down. But - and I think this is a strength of the script by Derek Kolstad - this is only a preamble to the real action in the movie. Hutch goes on a bus trip when a group of vicious young men get on board and start to harass a young woman. He goes to her aid, and after a considerable amount of violence, he saves the day. But his actions have consequences...

I don't want to say too much more about the storyline, because although I felt it owed a bit of a debt to A History of Violence, it develops in a distinctive way. I felt the violence was at times cartoonish and excessive to the point of unbelievability, but there are some clever touches in the script, and one or two moments of humour, as when Hutch corrects the accident board at work, which had previously claimed that there had been no mishaps for over 200 days. Overall, good light entertainment. 

Books, books, and more books...

I'm truly delighted with the first review of What the World Needs Now, which has just appeared in Ellery Queen's MysteryMagazine. Steve Steinbock quotes Rupert Holmes' comparison, in his foreword, between Burt Bacharach's compositional style and the work of Hitchcock, Christie, and Ellery Queen, and says that the stories 'like the songs of Burt Bacharach, have the accessibility of popular music, but each in its own way delivers a profound sting.' Steve mentions that proceeds from the book are being donated to autism charities in the UK and US. Here's a link to the Amazon ebook edition and also the paperback edition Please feel encouraged to support a very good cause!

I spent Saturday in the pleasant Derbyshire market town of Bakewell, at a book fair organised by my friend Louise Harrison, who kindly arranged for me to have a stall where I could sell books and also talk to book lovers and booksellers as part of my research for my next novel. Another friend, Christine Poulson, dropped in and I also met some readers from Liverpool whom I'd last encountered when giving a talk more than a decade ago, as well as a Golden Age fan who told me he'd named his son Ellery. A very enjoyable day.

It was made even more enjoyable when I got home, since an advance copy of Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery had arrived. This is the book to accompany the forthcoming British Library exhibition about Agatha, edited by lead curator Lucy Rowland and myself. The foreword is by Sir Kenneth Branagh and the eclectic list of contributors from around the world includes David Suchet, Zoe Wanamaker, Lucy Foley, Kate Mosse, Dong Han, Ragnar Jonasson, Simon Calder, John Curran, and many more. 

It's fair to say that putting the book together was a challenge. But the effort feels justified, because it's a sumptuous production, and we feel it is the definitive illustrated guide to Agatha's life, writing, and world. I'm very much looking forward to the launch and private view, which will take place the evening before the exhibition opens on 30 October.  

Forgotten Book - The Case of Robert Quarry

I have quite a vivid memory of being on holiday with my parents in Colwyn Bay in the mid-70s when my Dad ran out of books to read. So he bought a paperback from a rack outside a shop, a book written by an author neither he nor I were familiar with. This was Andrew Garve and The Case of Robert Quarry, originally published in 1972. My recollection is that he said he enjoyed it, but I never got round to reading it. Perhaps this was because I'd brought plenty of my own books with me that week. But it may also have been because it seemed, from the back cover blurb, to be a novel based around the industrial strife that was a constant feature of the 1970s, and which I was pretty sick of, not least because the three-day week led to my spending three months on the dole at the start of what was intended to be a 'gap year' prior to going to university.

Only now, therefore, half a century later, have I finally got round to reading it. And I found that the industrial background, although realistically depicted, doesn't intrude too much into the story; it merely supplies a topical and interesting context. And the novel itself is a genuine detective story, and a very good one too. This might now be my favourite Andrew Garve novel.

This is a police novel, with the focus on Detective Chief Superintendent Joseph Burns, who is on the verge of retirement, called in to investigate a high-profile murder. The body of a prominent and controversial industrialist, Robert Quarry, has been found in the boot of a car - with his arm sticking out. Quarry's company is in the midst of a bitter strike and there are indications that his killing may be associated with the dispute. But it soon starts to look as though there is more to it than that, because Quarry's own behaviour in the hours leading up to his death is curious, to say the least.

There is a really clever idea at the heart of this story. So clever that I'm not going to spoil it in this post by saying what it is. I can't recall any other novel using the same idea, though it may be that one of Freeman Wills Crofts's novels verged towards it. But I really liked the concept and the way that Burns doggedly unravels the villainy at the heart of the story. An excellent novel. 

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

On Monday I mentioned Ruth Anderson of Wigtown's Well Read Books. She's not only a great bookseller but also very generous and she gave me a gift, a book written by a fellow Wigtown bookshop owner, Shaun Bythell. Shaun, whom I haven't met, owns The Bookshop, which is Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. I've been inside twice, and it's taken a great effort of will to restrict myself to just one purchase each time. The shop has an eclectic stock, and its crime shelves carry a lot of interesting titles; I've bought books by D.M. Devine and Andrew Garve on my two visits. And - the same is true of Ruth's shop - I could have come away with many more, had I not exercised great self-restraint.

Selling things is difficult, and selling books (if you're not Amazon) is definitely very difficult, whether you're an author, a publisher, or a bookseller. So I was fascinated by Shaun's Diary of a Bookseller, which takes us through a year of his retailing life. It's funny but also packed with insights. It must be said that Shaun cultivates a grumpy old man persona, even though he started bookselling when he was pretty young, but some of his takedowns of difficult and unreasonable customers (of whom there is evidently no shortage) are highly entertaining.

There are so many gems, it's almost impossible to know where to start. I did like very much the character who confused E.L. James with M.R. James and was destined to be shocked to discover that Fifty Shades of Grey isn't a story of the supernatural. There are also some great vignettes about coachloads of visiting pensioners who never buy anything. 

You have to be made of strong stuff to run a bookshop nowadays, and it's very clear that Shaun isn't in it for the money - but he loves books, and enjoys being answerable to nobody. It's also evident that he isn't into crime fiction, so there's very little here that relates to my favourite reading. This doesn't matter in the least, because he has written a marvellous book.

Harrogate, the Lakes, and Scotland

I'm back at home after an eventful few weeks. I spent some time at Harrogate coinciding with the crime writing festival, and had some lovely meals and other get-togethers with my agent, various publishers, and fellow writers. It was mainly a business-focused trip, but there was also the chance for plenty of enjoyable conversations. And I came back in very good heart, since one of the outcomes was agreement on a new deal for my next three novels. I'm excited about the prospect, and I'll talk more about what is in store at a later date.

After that, I was on the road again almost immediately, off to the Lake District. For the very first time in its history, the Detection Club held a meeting in the north of England. This decision was taken at last year's AGM, and so the 2026 AGM was held in the pleasant surroundings of the Castle Green Hotel on the outskirts of Kendal (photo at the top of this post). I also put on an exhibition relating to Reginald Hill, who lived in and sometimes wrote about the Lake District, using materials (letters, manuscripts, books etc) mainly from my own collection but also with two or three items from the Club's own archive. The AGM was great and so was the summer lunch, which was very well attended. The success of the event means that we're almost certain to return to the north again next summer. 

The trip also gave the chance to explore the area. For the first time, perhaps surprisingly, I visited John Ruskin's old home at Brantwood, on one of those lovely fine days we've enjoyed this summer. The house and gardens are equally fascinating, while the location, on the banks of Coniston, is superb. Ruskin, who gets a few mentions in the Coniston-set The Arsenic Labyrinth, was a brilliant man, but his personal life was troubled. My sense of him is that he lived too much in the mind, in the realm of ideas and ideals, and found the real world, and relationships (especially with the women with whom he fell in love), rather difficult, and that's no doubt why his later years were marked by a sad and steep mental decline.

                                         

After that, it was up to Scotland, and the Dumfries and Galloway area, which I really like. I did an event in Wigtown to a sell-out crowd; this was organised by Ruth Anderson of Well Read Books, a quite wonderful bookshop with a terrific Crime Room. And of course I came away with quite a few books. After staying in Monreith for a couple of nights with my old mate Stephen, and visiting places like Whithorn (home to St Ninian's Priory, the old church in the photo above) we headed for Sanquhar, a nice little town with a ruined castle, a Tollbooth Museum, and the oldest post office in the world. There were two particular highlights - a visit to Crawick Multiverse, and a day spent in the splendid environs of Drumlanrig Castle. 

                                       

Wonderful trips, in wonderful company. I have returned refreshed and ready to get writing! And I've started with a new Life of Crime Premium newsletter all about codes and ciphers; you can find it here: https://substack.com/@martinedwardsbooks

Forgotten Book - File on Claudia Cragge

It's more than two years since I last discussed Crime Dossiers on this blog, so it's high time to take another look at one of the most enduringly thought-provoking ways of telling a story about a murder mystery. Today I'm looking at the second Dossier that was written by Q. Patrick (Richard Wilson Webb and Hugh Wheeler), File on Claudia Cragge, which dates from 1938.

The interactive nature of the dossier is emphasised by the publisher. The heading on the front cover of my edition (published by Jarrolds in Britain; the American edition is slightly different) is: 'Be your own detective'. And the front cover text reads: 'Through the novel dossier form of presenting the complete case of a crime to the reader, with actual clews...a new dimension of reality has been brought to the detective-story...the realistic account of a criminal action, exactly as received at Police Headquarters. The crime was a murder. The police solved it. Can you?'

Who can resist such a challenge? Not me! But I have to admit that in this case, I didn't get close to the correct solution, as I managed to lead myself astray by focusing initially on a character to whom I thought suspiciously little attention was being paid and then on someone else whom I thought was a credible suspect; the latter assumption was logical, but I missed the vital bit of information. 

This story can be regarded as a locked room mystery, with murder committed at a seance -at which Lieutenant Timothy Trant is present. There is one extremely good visual clue in the dossier which I missed, though I wasn't quite so impressed by some of the other clues. But it's a pretty good story.

There are two noticeable differences from Q. Patrick's other crime dossier, File on Fenton and Farr. That story is longer, and I wondered whether it was originally conceived as a novel. And it was clearly inspired by a real-life case. This mystery, although it involves that classic Golden Age trope the seance, is less convoluted. The coming of the Second World War killed off enthusiasm for mysteries of this kind and Wilson and Webb never returned to this format. But the tide has turned and crime dossiers are undoubtedly attracting more attention now than in the past. And given that I've been interested in them for many years, I'm delighted about that.   

Men - 2022 film review

British folk-horror appeals to me, although it will probably be a long time before anyone tops the film that really catapulted this type of storytelling into the public eye, The Wicker Man. Men, a 2022 film written and directed by the very talented Alex Garland, is at the surreal end of the spectrum. It opens with a favourite song of mine, 'Love Song', performed by Lesley Duncan, and this is a clue to the central theme.

Jessie Buckley, who can do nothing wrong on the screen, is impressive in the role of Harper Marlowe, who has been traumatised by the apparent suicide of her husband James, after a row when he struck her after she made it clear she was going to divorce him. He'd tried emotional blackmail, threatening to end his life, reflecting a controlling attitude that, the film suggests, is a masculine characteristic. I don't go along with the generalisation, but the story is well made.

In the hope of getting over the tragedy, Harper rents a lovely country house for a fortnight, in a village called Cotson in the west country. The owner, Geoffrey, is an oddball, although apparently harmless. He's played by Rory Kinnear, and it soon becomes clear that all the men in the village are played by him. What's it all about?

I don't want to give too many spoilers, but it's fair to say that this is not a film for the squeamish. Harper finds herself stalked by a naked man, taunted by a youth, and fondled by the vicar as events build towards a tumultuous climax. This film isn't a masterpiece, but if you like folk horror, it's definitely one to watch. If only for the excellent acting of both Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear.

Affliction - 1997 film review

 

Affliction is a bleak film, a study of cyclical violence and psychological disintegration. If you're looking for something to cheer you up, this is one to avoid until you're in the right mood. But it is a very good film, directed by the accomplished Paul Schrader and based on a novel by Russell Banks, which lives up to its considerable critical reputation. It's a crime film, with a suspicious death and a troubled cop at its heart, but it's really a drama about human nature, not a mystery in the conventional sense.

Nick Nolte plays Wade Whitehouse, a cop in a small town in New Hampshire. He is divorced and his wife Lillian (Mary Beth Hurt, who was married to Schrader) has custody of their daughter Jill, to whom he is devoted, although their relationship isn't easy. He's now involved with Margie (Sissy Spacek, who is very sympathetic as she tries to cope with a disturbed lover) and he has a brother Rolfe (Willem Dafoe) who provides crucial information in a voiceover at the end of the film - a device that would usually seem like a real cop-out, but which works quite well here, except for the fact that one crucial event, a killing, would surely have worked better if we were shown it, with some build-up, rather than in effect being told about it.

The death of Wade's mother means that his alcoholic and violent father Glen (James Coburn, who won an Oscar for his performance) comes to live with him and Margie. Meanwhile, Wade becomes fixated with the death of a crooked businessman called Twombley, who was shot while on a hunting trip with a local guide called Jack (Jim True). Jack claims the death was an accident, but Wade isn't convinced.

Wade's behaviour as he unravels becomes increasingly illogical and scary for those around him, and the final scenes are upsetting. I've seen this film described as a 'neo-noir crime drama', but that really doesn't convey the flavour of a movie that deals thoughtfully with the question of violent impulses. I've always had a dread of violence, and perhaps that's why I find it fascinating. So often violent movies are crass, but Affliction, although a mostly understated, slow-burn of a film, is compelling.

Forgotten Book - Panic

Helen McCloy was one of the most interesting American woman crime writers of the twentieth century. I say this on the strength of having read less than half of her extremely varied output, but it's a claim I make with some confidence. Her debut, Dance of Death (1938) introduced her series character Dr Basil Willing and was an extremely impressive performance; it marked the start of a long and impressive career.

Today, though, I'm focusing on a stand-alone novel that she published originally in 1944. This was Panic, a book that I think is not only very unusual but also very well-written. However, the novel wasn't published in the UK until 1972. According to that edition (under the admirable imprint of Victor Gollancz), British publishers turned it down 'on the curious grounds that English readers were not interested in such puzzles'. That edition was also modified to remove some wartime references.

This does seem amazing, but it's a little easier to understand when you discover that a large portion of the novel is devoted to discussion of a complex cipher, created by elderly Felix Mulholland, an expert in the ancient Greeks, whose death from an overdose of digitalis occurs right at the start of the story. Even though McCloy's explanation of how different ciphers work is lucid, the material is challenging, and I must admit I didn't try to solve the cipher.

But there's more to the book than that. Has Felix been murdered, and if so, by whom? And when his niece Alison takes refuge in a remote cottage in the middle of nowhere, is she really safe - or at greater risk than ever before? McCloy combines an ingenious puzzle with skilfully created suspense and a decent whodunit (although some of the information about the culprit's motive was not foreshadowed quite as much as I'd have liked). This is a memorable novel, despite some imperfections, and I plan to talk about it in more detail in a future Life of Crime newsletter.