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.

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.