Wednesday 28 February 2024
Felicia's Journey - 1999 film review
Monday 26 February 2024
Crippen & Landru's 30th birthday
Friday 23 February 2024
Forgotten Book - The Murders Near Mapleton
Steve Barge, who blogs as The Puzzle Doctor, has done Golden Age mystery fans a big favour by reviving interest in the books of Brian Flynn and working with Dean Street Press to reissue a good many of the novels. Steve's intros are a model of their kind: concise, informative, and readable. I've read several of the books now and I must say that they contain some excellent ideas, several of which are genuinely ingenious and definitely pleasing.
This is certainly true of The Murders Near Mapleton, which dates from 1929. The story gets off to a tremendous start. The setting of the first chapter, a country house dinner on Christmas Eve, is conventional enough, but there are interesting undercurrents in the dinner table conversation and Flynn wastes no time in getting down to action. By page 34, the master of the house has gone missing, a threatening message has been discovered in a Christmas cracker, two dead bodies have been found (one on a railway track) and one of the deceased, believed by everyone to be a man, turns out to be a woman. Oh, and quite apart from various other minor excitements, somehow the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Austin Kemble, has got involved.
I was impressed by all of this and it's fair to say that, when all is revealed, there are some very clever touches indeed. But - you knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you? - this book also displays Flynn's characteristic weaknesses. The first of these is that his brilliant amateur detective, Anthony Bathurst, is smug and (in this book more than the others I've read) frankly irritating. One also wonders how Sir Austin got such a plum job - he seems to be so useless as to make Francis Durbridge's Sir Graham Forbes seem like Poirot. Flynn's over-ornate writing style also makes me groan. For instance: 'The realisation flooded his brain with pellucid certainty that once again the clutch of circumstance had summoned him to cross swords with one who was undoubtedly a master criminal.' Steve wonders why Flynn was never elected to the Detection Club; I'm pretty sure the answer is to be found in Dorothy L.Sayers' reviews of two of his 1934 novels - she notes the ingenuity, but flays the prose.
In any elaborate mystery of this type, the author hopes (believe me, I know!) that the reader will be generous in terms of suspending disbelief. Fair enough. However, I was completely baffled by the fact that the transvestism was almost ignored by the detectives, even though inevitably it played a - wholly unconvincing, I'm afraid - part in the story. Sir Austin and the almost equally hapless Inspector Craig hardly mention it and even Anthony seems to take the deception for granted.
As Steve Barge points out, Gladys Mitchell used a very similar idea in a novel also published in 1929 - a notable coincidence, but I agree with him that there's no reason to suspect plagiarism; it's clearly just an idea that occurred to two writers at much the same time, something that happens in reality with quite depressing frequency, perhaps as a reaction to a topical news item. But I do think better use could be made of this idea than Flynn managed. For some time, inspired by the Mitchell novel, I've been wondering if the concept could become an ingredient in a Rachel Savernake mystery and used in a fresh way. Maybe reading this book is the spur I needed!
This novel has been widely discussed on the blogosphere, and although the review on The Grandest Game in the World is pretty crushing, the overall consensus of the reviews is definitely favourable - see, for instance, this one at Murder Ahoy! Despite my reservations, and my sense that this book could have been terrific and didn't live up to its early promise, I did enjoy reading it, something that without Steve's efforts and his advocacy for Brian Flynn simply wouldn't have been possible.
Wednesday 21 February 2024
The Usual Suspects - 1995 film review
I've mentioned The Usual Suspects a number of times on this blog over the years, although I've never discussed it in any detail. It's a film I enjoyed watching not too long after its release and I decided to take another look at it, to see how well it has held up, twenty-eight years on. The short answer is that it still seems pretty good to me.
Christopher McQuarrie won an Oscar for his screenplay, while Kevin Spacey won for 'best supporting actor'. Both Spacey and the director, Bryan Singer, have had well-documented issues in recent years, but I think it's fair to say that this movie remains a major highlight in their careers. Spacey plays the part of 'Verbal' Kint, a talkative guy with a limp who is a confidence trickster.
Most of the story is told via flashback and it's not always easy to follow. In essence, Kint is explaining to a sceptical cop the circumstances surrounding a fire on a ship in California, which followed a sequence of gangster killings of those on board. Kint and a severely injured Hungarian criminal are the only survivors. The tale unfolds suggests that the person responsible was a master-criminal called Keyser Soze whom nobody can identify.
There's a brilliant twist ending, which I enjoyed again even though I knew it was coming. Really, it's the twist that lifts the film out of the ordinary, even though there are excellent performances by Gabriel Byrne and Pete Postlethwaite as well as Spacey, and a number of good lines and visual images. A very clever idea, nicely executed.
Monday 19 February 2024
Bill Knox, Sue Ward, and The Lazarus Widow
When my father sadly died her practical nature chose to
focus, in part, on the completion of his last book. He had dedicated his
working life to journalism and it seemed unjust to her that a work of his
should remain uncompleted. It was the ending or closure that she needed to see
a job well done and to do his considerable talent justice.
That was not to be as easy a task as it seemed. The chosen
writer would need a certain style and to be a fan of my dad’s work if the right
feeling was to be present in the completed novel.
An additional challenge would be the lack of directional
and plot planning evidence left for the brave creature who, once chosen, agreed
to such a task. Not a single clue as to the intended ending or chain of events
to reach that end was available. It was simply not the way he worked.
To read the completed work was a seamless and thrilling
experience. A mixture of job extremely well done and a pleasing feeling of
closure and completion.'
Friday 16 February 2024
Forgotten Book - The Stylist
The early members of the Detection Club, notably Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Agatha Christie, were all exceptionally interested in the study of true crime cases, and that enthusiasm informed their own work in many ways. I talked about this in some detail in The Golden Age of Murder and it's a subject I plan to return to at a later date. In the meantime, I'm researching widely and I've just read an interesting novel by a Detection Club member of later vintage, Guy Cullingford (whose real name was Constance Taylor) which, in its later stages, reveals the influence of some of the same real life cases that fascinated Berkeley, Sayers, and Christie.
The book in question is The Stylist. It was published in 1968 and was the penultimate Cullingford crime novel (although she also wrote a historical novel a decade or so later). The Stylist is a seriously obscure book. It was never published in paperback or in the United States. I've never read any discussion about it anywhere online, although I have managed to find one contemporary review, from Edmund Crispin, in the Sunday Times. I'd have been unaware of its quality had I not chanced upon an inscribed copy (complete with a photo of the author and a letter from her husband) that caught my fancy.
The jacket describes the book as a 'thriller', but if you're looking for slam-bam action from the get-go, this one is not for you. It's a slow-burn novel, very much character-driven. One ingredient in the story, local government corruption, calls to mind Michael Gilbert's very different The Crack in the Teacup, published two years earlier. Another element is suggestive of yet another very different book, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley. And the true crime cases which are name-checked late on in the story are those involving Edith Thompson and Alma Rattenbury, which have inspired quite a few crime novels. This one, however, is distinctive.
Laura Chance is a wealthy woman in her fifties married to a dodgy self-made man. She's bored, but when she encounters a new hair stylist, Pierre (an Englishman called Peter) who is half her age, she finds a new interest in life. Slowly, slowly, Cullingford deploys an interesting range of characters in Laura's circle, and in Pierre's, but one can neve be entirely sure where the story is heading. Not much happens for ages, but I was kept gripped by the quality of writing and characterisation. It's subtle and occasionally witty and I really enjoyed it.
And if that isn't enough to encourage you, then I should add that Edmund Crispin, who likened the writing to Trollope, was also enthusiastic. So was Francis Iles, who described it as 'comfortably disturbing throughout...a book not to be missed by the discerning' (with thanks to Arthur Robinson for highlighting the Iles review). What a pity that the book made so little impact - the author must have been very disappointed, because it's clear to me that she took great pains over the writing, and to very good effect.
Wednesday 14 February 2024
The Secret of Seagull Island - 1982 film review
'Bizarre but watchable' is the verdict of one website on The Secret of Seagull Island, and you couldn't sum this film up much better in three words. I say 'film' but in fact its origin was a five-part Anglo/Italian TV serial and the jumpy editing that seems to have taken place in the process of adaptation contributes to the off-kilter feel of the enterprise. I was drawn to the film mainly because it stars Jeremy Brett, always an interesting actor. Suffice to say that he's not in Sherlock Holmes mode here...
We begin with a brief underwater scene, which ends violently before switching to Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) arriving in Italy to search for her missing sister Marianne, who is blind. A chap called Lombardi seems to know more about Marianne that he admits and Barbara enlists the help of a British cultural attache (Nicky Henson) who soon becomes smitten with her.
Barbara's investigation leads her to an encounter with David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett) who owns his own island, lucky chap, which he shares with a female admirer and...someone else. There are quite a few twists and turns, and although I should have seen the major twist coming, the truth is that I didn't.
It's an odd film, and certainly no masterpiece, but it's always fun to watch Jeremy Brett, particularly when he goes into OTT mode. It made a nice change to see Nicky Henson playing a wholly likeable if slightly bumbling character, appropriately called Martin, although I felt Prunella Ransome struggled a bit with a very demanding role. One of the co-writers was Jeremy Burnham, an interesting chap who - uniquely - both acted in and wrote episodes of The Avengers, as well as scripting one episode of Inspector Morse. It rather sums up the eccentric nature of this film that the soundtrack was written by Tony Hatch, better known for writing the theme to Crossroads.
Monday 12 February 2024
Finishing a Novel
Friday 9 February 2024
Forgotten Book - Die All, Die Merrily
In recent years I've become a big fan of Leo Bruce's detective novels. His characteristic blend of humour and ingenuity appeals to me, although it was somewhat out of fashion by 1961, when he published Die All, Die Merrily (the title is a quote from Henry IV, Part One), one of 23 novels featuring his amateur detective Carolus Deene. Before I read the Deene books, I tended to assume that they were inferior to his Sergeant Beef novels. But they aren't - at their best, they are truly entertaining.
This book illustrates Bruce's strengths. Deene is urged to get involved with a mystery involving the family of Lady Drumbone, who would nowadays be described as a political activist, and whom Bruce mocks mercilessly. The case concerns a tragedy - the apparent suicide of her nephew. The dead man left behind a tape recording in which he confesses to strangling an unnamed woman - but who was the supposed victim?
It's a teasing set-up and Deene embarks on a long series of interviews, a couple of which are very funny indeed (one interviewee, a woman who is obsessed with featuring in the newspapers, is especially memorable). Bruce was very good on dialogue and it dominates his novels. Of course, one has to suspend disbelief, but the writing is usually engaging enough for the unlikely developments to be a source of pleasure rather than irritation.
The solution to the mystery is cunning and quite complex and I didn't see the key twists coming. Inevitably the characterisation isn't in-depth, and I don't think the culprit's cruelty and ruthlessness - because, as is sometimes the case with Bruce, there is quite a bit of darkness about the crimes - were adequately foreshadowed. For once, however, I didn't mind this, because I had so much fun along the way before all was revealed.
Wednesday 7 February 2024
Paranoiac - 1963 film review
If you were going to make a Hammer Horror movie, I don't think that a novel written by Josephine Tey would spring to mind as obvious source material. Yet her excellent story Brat Farrar was turned by Jimmy Sangster into Paranoiac, and what is even more surprising is that he made a pretty good job of it. Some Tey fans may hate the over-the-top elements, but the film was definitely more enjoyable than I expected.
Directed by Freddie Francis - who won two Oscars for other work - the film moves at a sprightly pace, opening with a church service in memory of members of the Ashby family. The death of the parents, followed by the subsequent suicide of their oldest child Tony, meant that the remaining children, Eleanor and Simon, have been brought up by their Aunt Harriet.
But they are a troubled group, to put it mildly. Eleanor (Janette Scott) is haunted by Tony's death and Simon (Oliver Reed, at his most crazed and menacing) is trying to have her committed to an asylum so that he can inherit the whole of the family fortune. Eleanor is being 'looked after' by a glamorous French nurse who is having a torrid affair with Simon, while Harriet (Shelia Burrell) has plenty of issues of her own. The family solicitor and trustee (Maurice Denham) fights a losing battle to maintain order, not helped by the villainy of his son and junior partner. Elisabeth Lutyens' music adds to the mood of melancholy and melodrama.
The quality of the cast contributes to the success of the film. There are incestuous sub-texts that would have startled Tey, and although the 'returning prodigal' character is played rather woodenly by Alexander Davion, there are enough plot twists and moments of drama to satisfy most viewers looking for a Sixties horror movie that is better written than most.
Monday 5 February 2024
A Reflection of Fear - 1972 film review
A while back, Scott Herbertson drew my attention to the books of Forbes Rydell, a pen-name for two women, DeLoris Stanton Forbes and Helen B. Rydell. I'm hoping to read and review at least one of their books before long. Forbes (1923-2013) also wrote books under other names - Tobias Wells, DeLoris S. Forbes, and Stanton Forbes. One of the Stanton Forbes novels was Go to Thy Deathbed, which was filmed just over half a century ago as A Reflection of Fear. So when this popped up on Talking Pictures recently, I decided to watch it.
The film has a strong cast, led by Robert Shaw, who plays a writer called Michael. At the start of the film, he has long been estranged from Katherine, who is the mother of his child, Marguerite. Katherine is played by Mary Ure, a very beautiful woman who was married to Shaw but who suffered from alcoholism and died in tragic circumstances in 1975 at the age of just 42. This is, sadly, the last film she made. Marguerite is played by Sondra Locke, whose own life was somewhat troubled, and who in this role plays a character aged 15, even though she was in her late twenties at the time.
It's clear from the start that Marguerite is strange and perhaps disturbed. She lives with Katherine and her grandmother (Signe Hasso) in a remote mansion and spends much of her time talking to her dolls and even amoeba collected from a pond. She has grown up apart from her father but seems to have developed an obsession with him and longs to see him again. When Michael turns up, with his girlfriend (Sally Kellerman) in tow, bad things begin to happen...
This is a strange, unsettling film. The final twist is extraordinary, but not foreshadowed (unlike the majority of the plot developments, which are fairly predictable) and it is introduced in a bizarrely off-hand way, via a telephone message. Apparently the film was severely mangled in the editing process, resulting in various oddities which detract from one's viewing enjoyment. So it's a curiosity rather than a masterpiece. Even so, there's something hypnotic about some of the photography (the director, William A. Fraker, was noted as a cinetographer) which makes it worth a look. And I'd be interested to read the source novel - which presumably follows a much more logical path.
Friday 2 February 2024
Forgotten Book - Bricklayer's Arms aka Shadow of a Crime
Bricklayer's Arms is a novel by John Rhode first published in 1945. It's an engaging story and I should say right away that is one of the most enjoyable books that I've ever read by this astonishingly prolific author. All too often the ingenuity of his murder methods is matched only by the flatness of his writing, and in some of the books it can be a real slog to get to the explanation for the unlikely m.o. and the revelation of a culprit whose identity was predictable, even if the howdunit element wasn't. In Bricklayer's Arms, however, Rhode shuffles his story ingredients with real skill. Even the title is a rather pleasing joke (which was denied to American readers, who were presented with the commonplace alternative Shadow of a Crime).