Forgotten Book - Saturday Games

A long time ago, probably back in the mid to late 70s, I read a rave review or recommendation somewhere of Brown Meggs' Saturday Games, which was published in the UK by Collins Crime Club. I borrowed a copy from the library and thought it was pretty good, if not quite living up to the hype, and I also read Meggs' second and last crime novel, The Matter of Paradise.

Fast forward to 2024, and I acquired an inscribed US first edition of the novel. Meggs' day job was as a music executive with Capitol Records and famously he signed the Beatles in the US. Paul McCartney even named one of his puppies 'Brown Meggs'. His inscription is to Mickey Diage (Mary Diage), a colleague at Capitol who was also closely involved with the Beatles in the US, and he thanks her for 'all kinds of moral support and encouragement'. 

The novel was a big success and was nominated for an Edgar, although it was pipped by Gregory Mcdonald's very enjoyable Fletch. There's an excellent review here by the late Ed Gorman, who was a really shrewd judge of crime fiction. Read today, it's very much a book of the 70s, with an emphasis on sex that reflects the so-called Permissive Society. I think it was intended to be a combination of a slick murder story and a meditation on the male mid-life crisis, and as such it casts an interesting light on social attitudes in upmarket California at the time.

But what's it like when judged purely as a mystery? Reading it now was a different experience from reading it forty or more years ago, because my experience of writing novels now gives me a rather different perspective on the craft. I admire the way Meggs structures his story - it's really clever - and not only had I forgotten the clever twist at the end, I enjoyed it even more than I did originally.