The Sketch Artist - 1992 film review

The Sketch Artist is an unpretentious American thriller dating from 1992 and written by Michael Angeli, a capable screenwriter whose other credits include Monk. The film also benefits from the presence in the cast of two highly accomplished actors, namely Sean Young and Drew Barrymore. The lead actor, however, is the much less well-known Jeff Fahey, who plays a sketch artist called Jack Whitfield who is working for the police.

When a prominent fashion designer is murdered, a witness comes forward. She believes she can identify a woman at the scene who was involved with the crime. Jack's job is to sketch this person from the witness's description. Unfortunately, as he works on the drawing it becomes clear that the woman who is being described bears an uncanny resemblance to his own wife Rayanne (Sean Young).

Jack challenges Rayanne, who is defensive but persuasive. She knew the deceased and, given that her marriage to Jack is going through a rough patch, he is fearful that she knows more about the murder than she is prepared to admit. But the complications increase when he goes to the witness's apartment late one night and she isn't there. Before long, she turns up dead.

I thought the plot twists in this film were well above average. The storyline pre-dates the extensive deployment of DNA testing but it's quite gripping. In contrast, I started watching an eight-part TV crime series just before watching this film, which was a rather tedious experience, and I was glad of the pace of Angeli's script. A good time-passer.

Blow Out - 1981 film review

Popular culture is awash with homages of varying merit. In the film world, Brian de Palma has long been renowned for paying tribute in his own movies to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and because I'm a Hitchcock fan, I've long been drawn to de Palma's work, although it is much more variable in terms of quality. With Blow Out, he combines various hat-tips to the Master of Suspense, but even more significantly this film is a riff on Antonioni's Blow Up, a memorable movie from the Swinging Sixties.

The premise is fairly simple. John Travolta plays Jack Terry, who works on sound effects at the trashier end of the film business. While working on a slasher film, he goes out one night to play around with sound effects, and finds himself witnessing (and recording) a car crash. The car plunges off a bridge and into a creek. Jack jumps into the water and rescues an attractive young woman, but her male companion is dead.

It turns out that the dead man was a prominent politician, who was regarded as a potential President. The girl (Nancy Allen, who was at the time de Palma's wife) is an escort. When Jack checks his recording, he discovers that there was a gun shot prior to the car crash. The story that the crash was caused by a blown out tyre was a cover for a political assassination.

De Palma doesn't get involved in the politics of the storyline. Instead he focuses on melodrama, and this is a pretty good decision. A bond develops between Jack and the woman he saved, but it soon becomes clear that dark forces are at work and that someone is desperate to avoid the truth coming out. There are some good action scenes and an ironic finale. This isn't a masterpiece - it's markedly inferior to Coppola's much subtler The Conversation, for instance - but it's become something of a cult favourite: Quentin Tarantino is a big fan, for instance. I'd say it's one of de Palma's better films.  

Forgotten Book - His Own Appointed Day

His Own Appointed Day, first published by Collins Crime Club in 1965, was D.M. Devine's fourth crime novel. The paperback edition came out three years later and the back cover included this review from Julian Symons in The Sunday Times: 'A real detective story in the classical tradition...The answers in the final chapter came as a total surprise.' High praise from someone who was supposed not to be keen on classical detective stories.

So I had high expectations when I started reading and I can say right away that I was not disappointed. This is a book which shows not only Devine's considerable skill as a writer of whodunits but also his ability to create interesting characters and unusual scenarios. It really is surprising to me that his work is not better known. The only explanation that springs to mind is that he was writing at at time when ingenious plotting had fallen out of fashion. He also (like Symons) perhaps suffered from the lack of a regular series character.

We begin with a sixteen year old schoolboy called Ian Pratt. He's clever but difficult, and there are some indications that his behaviour has changed recently for the worse, although we don't know why. He is determined to leave school and home behind him, but then he disappears. The lack of interest in his disappearance at first is quite striking, but once a cop called Nicolson takes an interest in the case (and also in Ian's sister Eileen). a puzzling set of circumstances emerges. 

Devine is very good here - as he was in The Sleeping Tiger - at shifting suspicion from one suspect to another, and doing so quite credibly. He published thirteen novels prior to his relatively early death at the age of 60, first as D.M. Devine and then writing as Dominic Devine. I've read less than half of them so far, but I've enjoyed everything of his that I've read and I'm keen to discover the rest of his work.  

Forgotten Book - The Death of Amy Parris

T.R. Bowen, also known as Trevor Bowen, has had a successful career as both an actor and a screenwriter. He has written scripts for the Miss Marple, Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and Lovejoy series among others. And in 1998 he became a novelist with The Death of Amy Parris. This book was published was Penguin, who described it as 'a tense, atmospheric mystery in the tradition of Ruth Rendell'. Penguin also published Black Camel, its successor, which I haven't read but which also featured the main detective characters John Bewick and Gio Jones.

After that, there were no more Bewick books and as far as I'm aware Bowen never wrote another novel. My guess (and it's no more than that) is that he's an example of an author who obtained a good publishing deal and a two-book contract from an excellent publisher, but found that sales and reviews were not what had been hoped. Perhaps he wasn't offered another deal; perhaps he became disillusioned, perhaps both. 

What is clear to me is that Bowen had the literary skills to have become a reasonably successful novelist. The Death of Amy Parris is capably written and his experience as a scriptwriter helped him to create some vivid set-piece scenes. However, even though the setting of this book is Rendell territory, East Anglia, he wasn't in quite the same league as a writer. Then again, few people are.

Unfortunately I think he needed a much more ruthless editor. This story struck me as too long. It could easily have been pruned and it would have held my interest better than it did (after a reasonably good start). I also found Bewick less entrancing than did his creator, who gives us not one but two gorgeous women who swoon over the man, while his old pal Gio is full of admiration for him. All this is overdone. As for the plot, it's serviceable, but I'm afraid I spotted the culprit right away; three hundred plus pages it turned out that my assumption was correct. It's almost as if Bowen had a checklist of ingredients that he thought would work, perhaps hoping for TV adaptation, and threw all of them into the book, when a more selective approach might have worked better. A pity, but on this evidence - and despite the merits of the book - I won't be in a hurry to read Black Camel.

Eureka - 1983 film review

The murder in 1943 of Sir Harry Oakes remains unsolved. It was a gruesome and sensational crime, committed in The Bahamas, where Oakes (an American by birth, but made an English baronet to reward his philanthropy) was the richest inhabitant. The case has been the subject of several books - one of them by the spy writer James Leasor - and Marshall Houts' account is the basis for the 1983 film Eureka.

When I learned that the director of Eureka was none other than Nicolas Roeg, I guessed that the film would be visually stunning (it was) and that it was likely to be far from a straightforward retelling of the events surrounding Oakes' death. And it's fair to say that Paul Mayersberg's screenplay strays a long way away from reality. 

The early part of the film is set in the snowy wastes of the Yukon. Jack McCann (Gene Hackman, at his best) is prospecting for gold. And eventually, in strange and dramatic circumstances, he finds it. We then fast-forward twenty years to find him on his island, complete with wife (Jane Lapotaire) and married daughter (Theresa Russell, at her most glamorous). Unfortunately he hates his son-in-law Claude (Rutger Haute). McCann is the film's version of Oakes, while Claude is a version of Alfred de Marigny.

The film was a flop at the box office but now it's something of a cult classic and Danny Boyle rates it very highly indeed. Viewed simplistically as a true crime story, it's hopeless - the courtroom scene in which Claude cross-examines his wife is risible. But this is a film which looks really good and which explores character and the corrupting effect of the love of money in quite an interesting way. An interesting failure, I'd say. 

The Day of the Jackal - 1973 film

I recall reading The Day of the Jackal as a teenager, just after it came out in paperback. I'd read the reviews and the book sounded fascinating. What's more, it lived up to the hype. Soon the story was filmed by Fred Zinneman, and in due course I went to see what he'd made of Frederick Forsyth's debut novel. Suffice to say that he did Forsyth - who, arguably, never matched the brilliance of his first novel - justice.

I decided to give the film another watch, to see how well it stood up, more than half a century after its original release in 1973. The short answer is that it is still extremely entertaining, partly because of the excellent cast, partly because of the pacy direction. And credit must also go to the writer of the screenplay, Kenneth Ross, about whom I don't know much. He did a great job. 

Edward Fox is exceptionally good as the assassin known as the Jackal whose doomed task is to kill Charles de Gaulle, just as Eddie Redmayne was in the recent TV version of the story. The Jackal is a shadowy figure in many ways, but Fox captures his ruthlessness as well as his meticulous attention to detail. It's a compelling performance. 

The cast includes such notable names as Alan Badel, Tony Britton, Cyril Cusack, Derek Jacobi, and Eric Porter. There are small roles for Terence Alexander, Ronald Pickup, Anton Rodgers, Donald Sinden, Bernard Archard, and Timothy West. With actors of that calibre, you can't go far wrong, and Zinneman doesn't. A word, too, for the two main female cast members, Delphine Seyrig and Olga Georges-Picot, both of whom make the most of relatively limited parts; it's sad to think that the lives of both women ended far too soon. All in all, the film still offers first-class entertainment.

 

Forgotten Book - Hall of Death

I've mentioned before my long-term interest in the writing of Nedra Tyre, whom I first discovered through her short stories published by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Tyre (1912-90) was at one time a social worker, and - like Ann Cleeves, who also spent some time in a similar job, but is a different sort of writer - she made good use of the knowledge about human nature that she gleaned through her work.

Tyre published six novels between 1952 and 1971, but she wasn't prolific enough to become well-known, but at her best she was an incisive writer, capable of evoking menace through relatively low-key descriptions of everyday lives. Thankfully, Stark House Press have done her proud in recent times, reprinting much of her work, including Reflections on Murder, a fascinating collection of her stories which I discussed in August and a single volume of two of the novels, which contains both her debut, Mouse in Eternity, and the 1960 book Hall of Death.

Hall of Death is a good read, but it's definitely not a book that you could describe as comforting, let alone cosy, and it's sobering to learn from the introduction that the story had its roots in certain real life events. The setting is a reform school for teenage girls and the narrator is a new member of staff, Miss Michaels (we never learn her first name, and this isn't an affectation; it contributes to the chilly nature of the story). She has been hired to assist the woman who is in charge, Miss Spinks.

It soon becomes clear that Miss Michael's sympathies are with the girls rather than her fellow staff members and it's fair to assume that this reflects Tyre's own attitudes. There are a few disturbing moments in the early pages, and before the book is done, there have been four deaths. I don't want to say too much about the way the plot unfolds, for fear of spoilers, but although this novel focuses on psychological suspense, the 'whodunit' element is also fairly strong. A strong book, quite short, and another great find by Stark House Press.

Douglas Stewart, Deadly Descent - and an insight into casinos

I'm nervous about gambling and I've never put on a bet in a casino. However, I have visited a couple of casinos in the company of my good friend Doug Stewart (seen above a few years back, when he and I travelled around Arizona together). Given the subject matter of his latest novel, I asked if he'd be willing to contribute a guest blog about casinos. Here's what he came up with:

'Just the city’s name conjures up exciting images for many and abhorrence for others. I lived there for seven exciting years. Ironically, when I started writing my international thriller Deadline Vegas I had no idea I would ever live there. Now I live on the Isle of Man – rather different from the neon, glitter and noise of The Strip.

On 18th November, Deadly Descent, the follow-up to Deadline Vegas is being released. This is my 18th book. The main character is Finlay “Dex” Dexter. In Deadline Vegas, following a vow made to his murdered sister to destroy a Las Vegas casino after she was cheated big-time, Dex is thrown into the middle of a massive international fraud where only murder can suppress the truth. The fall-out from the havoc he created in Sin City is carried over to Deadly Descent.

Deadly Descent, although starting with dramatic action in Africa, takes Dex from his London home to France and Istanbul and … to Las Vegas where some people have neither forgiven nor forgotten. The theme involves an unexplained helicopter crash. Eerily, fiction follows truth and truth follows fiction. You can pre-order now on Amazon UK and USA.

'Do Casinos cheat?' This is one of the most frequent questions I get asked. The short answer is that today, in most countries, casinos are heavily regulated to prevent cheating. However, gamblers do get duped when playing in poorly regulated countries.

After Bugsy Siegal created the Flamingo in the late 1940s, organised crime had a substantial grip on Vegas casinos. It was only in the 1980s that the Mafia were cleared out. Certainly, in the early days, there was cheating. One of my oldest friends worked in a Downtown Vegas casino where he was briefed on how the roulette was fixed.

One of his jobs was also to play a fruit machine specially selected by management. This was always close to an entrance. It was primed to pay out frequently. In those days, the noise of clattering money, bells and whistles encouraged hopefuls to come in and use the other machines around him. Strangely enough, they were usually cleaned out. Those machines were set out at a very low pay-out level!

Online gambling, again, is okay when the virtual casino is operating from well-regulated centres like the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the UK or Malta etc. However, playing casino games operating from fringe countries is a risk I would not take. It is very easy for games to be rigged or to be hard to get your winnings paid out - if you are able to win!

In online poker, the danger can be that two or three of the players may be in league with each other against you as the mug punter. Beware!'

You can find out more about Doug and his crime and adventure thrillers at: https://www.douglasstewartbooks.com/

The Psychopath - 1966 film review

Robert Bloch was a prolific and highly capable writer who made his name by writing Psycho. A few years later he cashed in on the success of that Alfred Hitchcock film by writing the story for a movie made by Amicus, which was a film company ploughing much the same furrow in the horror market as Hammer. This film had the somewhat unoriginal title of The Psychopath, though apparently it's also known as Schizo and it was released in 1966.

It's an odd movie, because it works quite well as a macabre thriller, making good use of that great trope of macabre movies, creepy dolls. Unfortunately, the story does descend into the same sort of barminess that affects the titular serial killer. However, the director, Freddie Francis, was adept at camera work, and some of the visual effects are impressive.

The film opens with the murder of a musician in London. He's run over repeatedly by a car and a doll bearing his likeness is found at the scene. It turns out that he collaborated with a number of other musicians who had a dark secret in their past and - guess what? - one by one, they are eliminated. The daughter of one of them, Louise, is played by the extremely attractive Judy Huxtable, making her film debut. She happens to be involved professionally with doll-making and personally with a rather wooden chap called Loftis (played, not very plausibly I'm afraid, by Don Borisenko).

Soon the trail leads to the home of a strange old woman in a wheelchair ('hysterical paralysis' is diagnosed) called Mrs Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston who succumbs to the urge to act hysterically). She lives with her weird son Mark (John Standing, a very good actor who certainly isn't seen at his best here). All in all, there is some indifferent acting and script-writing, but one of the redeeming features of the film is a strong performance by Patrick Wymark as the investigating detective. I think this film could have done with a better final twist and the latter stages were too over-the-top to be effective. And that's frustrating, because there are some good ingredients here, and a subtler approach could have paid dividends. 

Forgotten Book - The Uncounted Hour

A few years back, I acquired a copy of The Uncounted Hour (1936) by Herbert Warner Allen, inscribed to the wine buff, merchant, and writer Charles Walter Berry, but I've only this year got round to reading it. Warner Allen himself was a wine expert who wrote several books about the subject. He was evidently an interesting character, who seems, among other things, to have developed an interest in mysticism. But our concern is with his contribution to detective fiction.

Part of that contribution was to encourage his friend (and fellow journalist) Edmund Clerihew Bentley to write a belated follow-up novel to Trent's Last Case. Trent's Own Case appeared under their joint names in 1936; my guess is that the bulk of the plotting was done by Allen and the bulk of the writing by Bentley, but I might be mistaken; it just seems a logical assumption. A wine merchant called Mr Clerihew, who featured in Allen's other work, appears in the story. Presumably encouraged by the experience, Warner Allen promptly published The Uncounted Hour, described on the jacket as a 'murder story', although for much of the story the characters debate whether Sir Godric FitzWaren committed suicide.

This is in some ways an odd book, which starts out as a conventional country house mystery, narrated by a doctor called Kenelm Kinglake, and develops into something rather different. There are some interesting ideas in the story and also some excellent turns of phrase: Warner Allen was an intelligent man, of that there is no doubt. But his storytelling methods in this book were a bit clunky, clues to his inexperience as a novelist. To some extent, this results, I think, from the ingenious (if by no means original) plot idea at the heart of the book. But he handles it unevenly.

Indeed, at one point in the story, I found my attention drifting away because of the number of rather self-indulgent digressions. But Warner Allen redeems things, to some extent, in the latter part of the book, as more deaths occur, with some unusual plot twists. I must say that I didn't like his portrayal of one Jewish character, which resorts to some of the tedious stereotypes that were a regrettable feature of some Golden Age fiction. Yet despite the book's flaws, by the end of the story the author had at the very least recaptured my attention. I commend the ambition of the concept, even if I'm a bit lukewarm about the way it was executed.     

Bad Influence - 1990 film review

Curtis Hanson was a highly capable movie director and I belatedly caught up with a film of his from 1990, Bad Influence. Thirty-five years on, it is still a good watch, and one of its incidental pleasures is seeing David Duchovny in a small part before his career took off with The X-Files. The lead actors, Rob Lowe and James Spader, are very good in their respective roles, and the script by David Koepp is strong. Koepp takes a familiar premise and shakes it up very effectively; he has, in the intervening years, developed into a top-class screenwriter and Bad Influence is clearly the work of a young and high-calibre writer.

Spader plays Michael, a highly-paid young man who is expert in high finance. He is engaged to a pretty and rich (if irritating) young woman but there seems to be a void in his life. It doesn't help that his older brother is a clueless guy with a drugs conviction who keeps borrowing money from him. Into Michael's life comes Lowe, playing Alex, a handsome and charismatic guy who introduces him to a life of hedonism.

At first Michael is excited to join in Alex's fun, but it's foreseeable that Bad Things Will Happen, and sure enough they do. What I liked about Koepp's screenplay was what happened as Michael's life begins to unravel. So often a film of this sort begins well and then deteriorates. That's not the case here. I wondered how some of the moral dilemmas Koepp had set up would play out, and I think the way he handled this was first-rate. My one reservation is that I'd have liked a deeper psychological understanding of Alex's character. The final scene in the film, although low-key, struck me as highly effective.

Reviews have often compared this movie to Strangers of a Train, and there's no doubt that the idea of a strong man exerting his will on a weaker associate has enduring appeal. For me, one of the finest examples of this kind of story is a book I've written about more than once - Hugh Walpole's The Killer and the Slain. Bad Influence is a very different story, but it also makes for good, and occasionally though-provoking entertainment.

The House at Devil's Neck by Tom Mead - review

The locked room mystery has played a significant part in the evolution of the detective story. The very first detective story proper (by general consent), 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' was a locked room mystery, and even before that there were a couple of notable tales involving a locked room/impossibility element which I discussed in The Life of Crime.

Locked room mysteries and impossible crime stories have continued to be written ever since, and the late Bob Adey, the supreme expert on the subject, listed over two thousand of them. But the inherent artificiality of the locked room puzzle has meant that at times, it's been in the doldrums, at least so far as critics are concerned. Howard Haycraft, a generally shrewd critic, was advising writers against this type of story way back in the 1940s, even at a time when John Dickson Carr was still at his peak!

Fortunately, despite the vagaries of critical fashion, people have continued to enjoy reading locked room mysteries - and indeed writing them. And now they are very much back in favour - so much so that publishers scramble to label crime novels as 'locked room mysteries' when really they are no such thing! I've written some locked room/impossible crime short stories (a couple of them long ago, before the current vogue for them) and I've also included locked room sub-plots in a couple of the Rachel Savernake novels, Blackstone Fell and Hemlock Bay.  

But I've never written a full-scale locked room mystery novel. One young writer has, however, emerged in the past few years who does just that. This is Tom Mead, author so far of four novels as well as some equally entertaining short stories - I wrote an introduction to his enjoyable collection The Indian Rope Trick, published by Crippen & Landru. He also wrote an excellent story which I included in Midsummer Mysteries.

His latest novel, The House at Devil's Neck, published by Head of Zeus in the UK, is possibly his most accomplished book to date. It's another case for Joseph Spector and again the plot is extremely intricate - but fairly clued, and with cluefinder footnotes, I'm delighted to say. Like John Dickson Carr, Tom achieves many of his most successful effects through the creation of a suitably macabre atmosphere, and the eerie nature of the eponymous house and its setting on an island with a causeway to the mainland is well evoked. He also shows considerable skill in misdirecting the reader's attention away from vital information in the text. I've often thought that the locked room concept works best in the short form, but this novel shows that, as in Carr's day, there are some very agreeable exceptions to the 'rule'. Great fun.

Forgotten Book - Of Unsound Mind

When Harry Carmichael's Of Unsound Mind was published in 1960, the blurb writer for Collins Crime Club didn't stint on the hype: 'This is an original novel of exceptional ingenuity. Seven human documents have been woven into one...It is a story that grips and never lets go, a story which displays Harry Carmichael's rare talent for mystery at its best.'

I found the story highly readable and entertaining. Insurance man Peter Piper comes across a sequence of apparently inexplicable suicides and enlists the help of his friend Quinn, a journalist, to make sense of the puzzles. I did figure out quite a lot of the plot early on, although this didn't detract from enjoyment, as the pace is lightning-fast from start to finish.

One reason I was able to make sense of the puzzle so quickly was that, in some key respects it resembles the central puzzle in a very good novel by John Bingham, NIght's Black Agent - but Bingham's book was published in 1961. Did Carmichael's central idea influence Bingham? It's possible, but it's also fair to emphasise that in other respects the books are totally different. And I enjoyed both of them.

Another thing that the two stories have in common is that the culprit is thinly characterised. I'd have liked a bit more about the murderer's character in both books, but this isn't a major complaint. Carmichael specialised in page-turners and although, when viewed in the cold light of day, his books often have flaws, they make such smooth reading that those weaknesses are easy to forgive and, sometimes, to overlook completely.

The Wasp - 2024 film review

The Wasp is a film with a script by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, who adapted her own stage play. Those theatrical origins are fairly evident, given that there are only three significant characters (and one of those is only lightly sketched) and much of the action takes place in one location. But this is not something that detracted from my enjoyment of a movie that supplies a number of unexpected twists and turns.

Thirty years ago, Heather (Naomie Harris) and Carla (Natalie Dormer) were, for a short time, school friends. However, a shocking incident in which Carla killed a pigeon heralded the collapse of their relationship, with profound consequences. And then, Heather gets in touch with Carla, wanting to meet her urgently.

Since their schooldays, the pair have led contrasting lives. Heather is married to Simon (Dominic Allburn); they are wealthy but childless, and his behaviour is concerning. Heather is also bothered by the presence of a wasps' nest in their posh house. Carla is a mother of four who works on a till in a supermarket and is now pregnant again and very short of money. But Heather has a proposition for her that could change her life forever.

This is a dark film, well directed by the very talented Guillem Morales, and it benefits from a superb performance (in a challenging part) by Naomie Harris; Natalie Dormer is also very good. One slight weakness is that Simon is pretty much a cipher; I'm not sure I believed in him as a collector of obscure and rather unpleasant insects. Malcolm's real interest is in the shifting power dynamics of the relationship of the two women and she handles this very well. I like the way she avoids the obvious in the storyline, and the film is consistently watchable. 

AI, eh?

Artificial intelligence has the potential to change our world for the better in any number of ways. It's here to stay, it can't be uninvented, and governments should make the most of it for the good of their people. That's a point I've made several times recently when asked about it at events (and the fact the question keeps cropping up shows how important it is). But as I've also said, it would be folly to overlook the dangers that AI brings with it. And in particular, it would be crazy to allow the use of AI to damage creativity.

Yet that is what is happening, in all sorts of ways, and in this country as in others. No wonder everyone from Paul McCartney and Elton John to Richard Osman and Val McDermid have spoken very publicly about the threats. None of these famous creative people is a Luddite - far from it - but they recognise the threats, and I'm delighted they (and many others) have spoken up, especially given the UK government's approach to forthcoming legislation - see what the Society of Authors and their members say about it.

Let me give a couple of examples from my own experience of the misuse of AI. Like many authors, my email inbox and various social media platforms are now inundated each day with AI-generated garbage. I get tons of it, mainly because I've written and edited and introduced so many books. A typical example is an email pretending to come from someone who runs a 'book group' and telling me that my book is the best thing since sliced bread. It's a prelude to making dishonest money out of anyone naive enough to be tempted to respond. 

Offers of positive reviews on GoodReads and Amazon are also commonplace. I received one as I was typing this post. Authors are only human and we all want and need good reviews, so I'm sure some people succumb. So if you see deeply obscure books with zillions of five star reviews, it's worth asking yourself whether all those reviews and rankings are genuine (they may be, of course, in some cases). Incidentally, good writers often get more than their share of mysterious one star rankings, no doubt many of them from dodgy sources. So online rankings, especially when anonymous, need to be treated with caution and some scepticism.

Sometimes the message is almost plausible, sometimes it's laughably stupid ('Hi Edgar Wallace', I was greeted in one email, simply because I once wrote an introduction for a Wallace book, of which the email said: "your ability to turn stage drama into gripping narrative fiction while keeping that eerie, suspenseful atmosphere is something rare and powerful. The fact that it launched Collins’ Detective Story Club in 1929 already cements its place as a cornerstone of crime literature. But here’s the challenge: even with its rich legacy and gripping plot, it doesn’t yet have the volume of reader voices that match its importance".). And sometimes it's just horrible. While I was preparing this post, one writer friend of mine posted about a vile blackmailing message she'd received from these criminals, making all kinds of threats. 

I delete all this stuff permanently, but I worry for inexperienced and therefore often vulnerable writers who may not be as cynical about gushing flattery as I am. A common variation on this theme is an approach purporting to be from a famous author, expressing interest in my books. One week, I got no fewer than four emails from James Patterson! It is absurd, but one has to remember always that there are devious and ruthless scammers behind all this rubbish. 

The second point relates to this blog. Pageviews have been rising for a long time, but they have gone through the roof lately. Last month there were over 700,000 pageviews and I suspect that many of these involve AI piracy of posts that I've written. This kind of theft is commonplace. I make the point on the front page of the blog that use of it for AI purposes is not permitted, but this is no doubt ignored. I like to think that in the fullness of time, class actions will mean that litigation destroys at least some of the pirates and that the Anthropic settlement proves to be the first of many. Meanwhile, I am thinking about ways I might be able to protect myself and genuine readers. One option is for an increasing amount of content to appear in my newsletter instead of here, and I'd welcome your thoughts.

As Val McDermid said of AI piracy, 'I am a crime writer. I understand theft'. Me too. And I'd encourage all readers of this blog - the real readers, the ones I treasure - to hold governments throughout the world to account for any failure to do the right thing about the misuse of AI, misuse that can only devastate the creative world. 

 

Forgotten Book - This is the House

I've mentioned the crime fiction of Shelley Smith (the pen-name of Nancy Bodington) admiringly on this blog quite a few times over the years. Yet for some reason I've never got round to reading her third book, which dates from 1945 - even though I must have owned a copy for twenty years or more. This is the House was the first of her novels to be published in the Collins Crime Club, following two which appeared under a less prestigious imprint. The publishers describe her here as an author of 'outstanding merit', and I agree.

This is the House is an ambitious detective novel, full of interesting ingredients, especially by the standards of its time. Yet one has to bear in mind that it is, to an extent, an apprentice work, and I'd be the first to admit that it has several flaws. It has, however, earned rapturous reviews from such good judges as John Norris as well prompting a rather mixed reaction from Kate Jackson and Steve Barge

The title comes from the nursery rhyme 'The House that Jack Built', a rhyme which supplied a title for a very different detective novel, much later, by Eileen Dewhurst. However, I wasn't convinced that the use of the rhyme was much more than a gimmick. There's also a 'sort of' locked room mystery - the second murder in the book - which had a rather unsatisfactory explanation.

There's a pleasing amateur detective, Quentin Seal, who happens to write detective novels, and above all an unusual if fictitious setting in Apostle Island, most southerly of the Windward Islands. The local colour is well done, although now it's extremely dated. One of the characters has a pet gibbon and there's a Ukrainian refugee in the cast of characters. A mixed bag in more ways than one. But Shelley Smith would continue to develop her crime writing skills over the next decade, to considerable effect.

Camels, Cricket, Ian Fleming - and a new series about Q - guest post by Vaseem Khan

Crime writers are a diverse bunch, but over the years I've noticed that friends of mine who enjoy enduring success tend to be not only highly intelligent but also very hard-working. To name but a few, the list includes Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, Andrew Taylor, and the late Peter Lovesey and Peter Robinson. And also Vaseem Khan, whose latest novel will, I'm sure, rocket up the bestseller lists. I'm looking forward to reading it soon. Vas is always good company and someone with lots of interesting ideas. It was great to spend time with him in the Isle of Wight recently (below) and here's a guest post from him:

'I first became friends with Martin Edwards on the back of a camel.

A decade ago, we were both invited to speak at the Emirates Literary Festival in Dubai where the organisers took us out into the desert and mounted us atop camels for a photoshoot. I was newly published back then, while Martin was already eminent as the Chair of the UK Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). We became friends, discovering a mutual like of historical mystery fiction and cricket.

Wind the clock forward and, having followed in Martin’s footsteps and completed a stint as Chair of the CWA, we both find ourselves as stalwarts of the genre. The focus of this guest blog – which Martin has been kind enough to allow me to pen – is to entice you with the publication of my latest book, the first in a traditional mystery series featuring Q from the Bond franchise, whilst taking a whistle-stop detour through the annals of espionage fiction.

In Quantum of Menace, Q – aka Major Boothroyd – finds himself unceremoniously booted out of MI6. A man at sea, he decides to return to his small hometown – the fictional Wickstone-on-Water – to reinvestigate the mysterious death of his childhood friend, a quantum computer scientist.

Quantum of Menace is not a spy novel, though Q’s past remains a lurking presence. This is a book about a man who has lost his bearings, contemplating a lonely future where he has become superfluous to requirements. It’s also a book about what modern Britain stands for and what fighting the good fight now means. Q has fought that fight for more years than he cares to remember. Now he must call upon his intellect to solve a more local crime.

Whilst writing the book, I reflected on the history of spy fiction, ever since James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy, published in 1821, (arguably) kickstarted the phenomenon. In the late 1800s, several Sherlock Holmes novels involved espionage-heavy plots, giving the genre a shot in the arm. In 1907, Joseph Conrad, of Heart of Darkness fame, penned The Secret Agent, an anarchist spy story heavily cited after the September 11 attacks in New York due to its terrorist theme. John Buchan’s The Thirty-nine Steps (1915) remains an enduring classic.

Spy fiction flowered during, between, and after the world wars. A standout offering: Eric Ambler who introduced gritty realism to his spy fiction, especially in Epitaph for a Spy (1938). The post-war period saw a battle between two giants: Fleming and John Le Carré. Fleming’s Bond was charismatic, ruthless, and more of an assassin than a spy. In the films, he behaves a tad eccentrically for a secret agent, routinely announcing his presence to those hellbent on rooting him out. In contrast, Le Carré’s characters were grounded, subtler in their assessments of self and others, and often struggling with the ethical dilemmas of their actions.

Quantum of Menace combines what we love about the Bond canon – for instance, the prickly relationship between Bond and Q – whilst bringing in everything a sophisticated traditional mystery audience has come to expect i.e. dry wit, quirky personas and an emphasis on the puzzle rather than, say, rocket launchers fired from the tops of speeding trains. We also, at long last, get to see the man behind the myth. The tone of the novel lies somewhere between Mick Herron’s Slow Horses and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. There's real insight into Q's life at - and post - MI6, his messy past, and, yes, Commander Bond puts in an appearance. How could he not!

I would be delighted if you gave the book a go. In the meantime, Martin and I will ponder the future of the genre and England’s chances in this year’s cricket Ashes tour down in Australia…' 

 

 

Fedora - 1978 film review

I don't find it easy to make up my mind about Fedora, the 1978 film that was a late entry in the illustrious career of director Billy Wilder, whose earlier triumphs included Double Indemnity, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, and - most relevantly to Fedora - Sunset Boulevard, a film about a reclusive actress which stars William Holden. And guess what? Fedora stars William Holden as 'Dutch' Detweiler, who is on the trail of Fedora, a reclusive actress with whom he once had a brief fling.

Fedora displays Wilder's trademark cynicism, and as in Sunset Boulevard, a great deal of that cynicism is aimed at the film business. It's not in the same league, though. Apparently, Wilder wanted Marlene Dietrich to play Fedora and Faye Dunaway to play her daughter. Had he got his way, they might have delivered performances more memorable than those of Hildegarde Knef and Marthe Keller, who are both perfectly competent but not really compelling enough to bring complete conviction to a storyline that really does require disbelief to be suspended.

And yet, there is plenty to enjoy in this film if one's expectations are not too high, and it begins well. I don't want to give away the plot twists, but suffice to say that after the initial, tantalising air of mystery - what is going on at Fedora's hideaway? - dissipates, the story loses its way to some extent, because it's highly melodramatic and far from convincing. And bringing Michael York - playing himself - into the plot really didn't work for me.

So overall, Fedora doesn't come close to matching Wilder's greatest achievements.But if you can forget that it's a Wilder film and just look on it as straightforward, and not too serious, entertainment, then you will probably find it a decent watch, as - on balance - I did.   

Death in the Dales 2025

 

I'm back home after my third weekend festival in successive weeks. This time it was up the M6 to Sedbergh to take part in Death in the Dales. Jean Briggs and her team did a great job with the first of these festivals last year and I was delighted to be invited back. The number of attendees was up (a reward for the success of 2024 and also a tribute to good marketing) and the atmosphere from start to finish was terrific.

Sedbergh is set in delightful countryside, and I did a bit of exploring as well as enjoying the festival. Sedbergh is also England's Book Town but it tends to fly somewhat under the radar, especially compared to somewhere like Hay-on-Wye (which is just over the border in Wales), so events like this will, I hope, given the town and the Book Town Trust a welcome fillip. Events got off to a good start on Friday night with a showing of that excellent film noir Scarlet Street, hosted by Matthew Booth. Pizza and wine made an excellent accompaniment.

On Saturday morning Mike Craven and I and our wives had breakfast together as Mike and I were in conversation as the first event of the day and needed to catch up; but we decided not to over-prepare! We have been on a panel together before, at Cockermouth some years ago, and again the conversation flowed very nicely. We talked about many things, not least Mike's The Final Vow and Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife - hence the photo at the top of this post. 

The other events of the festival were highly enjoyable. I was on a Golden Age panel with Dolores Gordon Smith, Matthew Booth, and Steve Barge, which was good fun, though it had felt a bit like And Then There Were None in the run-up, since no fewer than three of our friends and fellow panellists had to cancel their participation due to a variety of health-related misfortunes. The programme was very varied and the speakers consistently interesting: and that's the recipe for success. It was also great to see so many old friends again. I do hope the popularity of the weekend will prompt Jean and her colleagues to run the festival again. If they do (and I'm very optimistic!) please feel strongly recommended to attend. You won't regret it.

Forgotten Book - Dewey Death

Dewey Death, originally published in 1956, was the first crime novel of Charity Blackstock; this was one of several pen-names used by Ursula Torday (1912-97), others including Lee Blackstock and Charlotte Keppel. She was born in London, daughter of a Hungarian father and Scottish mother, and studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and the LSE. During a varied and prolific writing career, she had a crime novel nominated for an Edgar award, while one of her romances won the Romantic Novel of the Year award. At one point she worked as a typist in the National Central Library in London, and her experience there clearly informs Dewey Death.

This is a 'workplace mystery novel', as are Sayers' Murder Must Advertise and Forester's Plain Murder, which are set in advertising firms, where both those authors worked. As with those books, Dewey Death gains a great deal from the authenticity of the setting, even if the Inter-Libraries Despatch Association is a fictional creation. The protagonist, a typist called Barbara Smith who moonlights as a romantic novelist, was presumably, in part at least, a self-portrait. We gain insight into a very different time, before the advent of computers, which render obsolete much of the work done by the characters in the story. We also get a picture of very different social attitudes, and relationships between the sexes are portrayed in a way that would be unthinkable now.

This is a well-written book, with nice turns of phrase, and a genuine interest in character (even if I found it inexplicable that so many women swoon over the handsome and brave but often deeply unpleasant war hero Mark Allan). The first half of the story is especially strong, with tensions mounting between colleagues as one member of staff makes more enemies than is wise. When murder occurs, the investigation is conducted by two amiable, low-key cops, who seem smart enough but are by no means quick to unmask the killer.

And that is odd, because the mystery at the heart of the book isn't especially baffling. I get the impression that the author was more interested in her characters and the background than the plot, which is competent but not as striking as some other aspects of the novel. However, this was my first experience of Charity Blackstock's work, and it was a positive one. An interesting writer, for sure.

The Isle of Wight and elsewhere

 

The past week has been as hectic as it's been varied, and above all it's been great fun. A lunch in London with my editor Bethan and my agent James to celebrate Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife was very convivial and the discussion turned, excitingly for me, towards a variety of possible future projects. Having a supportive editor and agent really does make a difference to a writer. That afternoon Bethan took me around various bookshops to sign books and it was good to see Miss Winter taking her place alongside the big names - as in Hatchards, pictured above, and Goldsboro, where Bethan is beside the pile of books to be signed.

After a short pit stop in Cheshire, I was on my travels again, this time to the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. Along the way we stopped in Romsey, at a country inn beside the River Test (fictionalised as the Didder in Cyril Hare's Death is No Sportsman). There was a chance to visit Mottisfont Priory, a lovely country house that was converted from a religious institution during the Reformation. The last owner was Maud Russell, a fascinating woman who was a lover and mentor of Ian Fleming, and the National Trust were staging an exhibition devoted to the artwork of Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Next day it was off on the car ferry to Cowes, and a pleasant dinner in the opulent surroundings of the Royal Yacht Squadron, where I had the chance to chat with Angela Buckley, a very good writer of non-fiction in the crime genre, and meet Marc Thompson of Seabourn Cruises, with whom I travelled earlier this year. On Saturday I visited Lyndsey Greenslade, whom I've known for quite a long time and last met at the London Book Fair. Lyndsey sells detective fiction on eBay (as colliejack) and his list is always well worth studying. This was a chance to inspect his fantastic collection, including lots of jacketed first editions of Lorac and Carol Carnac, and much more beside. 

We had lunch together in Brighstone and then, after looking in at Ventnor, it was back to Cowes for a drinks reception in an art gallery. En route I called in at an Asda supermarket, and for the very first time in my entire writing career, I had the pleasure of seeing a hardback novel of mine for sale on the supermarket shelves. (It's also available at Sainsbury's).

On Sunday, following an enjoyable breakfast with Vaseem Khan, I was involved with two events at Northwood House, a terrific venue. Both were run, with quiet expertise, by Angela. One was an interview with me, the other a panel with Vaseem and Graham Bartlett, both of whom were excellent. It was also great to meet Mary Grand again. We first crossed paths the last time I was at the Isle of Wight Literary Festival, before she was a published novelist. Since then, she's gone from strength to strength, which has been wonderful to witness. 

On Monday it was time to leave the island and head for Salisbury, a city I've always loved, and catch up with family - but there was also time to look around the city centre and sign books in Waterstones. All in all, a terrific trip, and after the long drive back home on Tuesday I was able to reflect on many pleasant encounters - as well as to start planning the next journey - on Friday, as it happens, to Death in the Dales.

Death on the Nile - adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig - review

It's ages since I last went to the theatre. Not through lack of enthusiasm, but simply due to lack of time. However, some friends proposed a trip to see the new version of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile, as adapted by Ken Ludwig, at the Lowry in Manchester. I've visited the Lowry several times over the years (most recently to mooch around the exhibition the day after recording the final of Christmas University Challenge at nearby Media City) but the only other time I've been to a performance there was to see Dionne Warwick in concert, ages ago.

The whole experience was a novelty, because we dined in the restaurant at the Lowry before the first act and ate our desserts during the interval. The latter was a bit rushed, but overall it was most enjoyable and the cuisine was excellent. A good start to the evening!

Now to the show itself. Ken Ludwig is an American playwright who has achieved huge commercial success over the years, although I've not seen his work previously. Nor, indeed, have I seen Agatha's own stage version of the story, known as Murder on the Nile, though the book is of course an old favourite. The set was excellent and imaginative, a real highlight of the show for me.

The script was radically different from the novel. Only one murder and some significant changes to the cast of characters. I thought that overall, the dialogue and structure were perfectly serviceable, although not outstanding. The acting was mixed. I'm afraid the actor who played Hercule Poirot had a nightmarish time, forgetting his lines and jumbling some of them up; the stress caused his accent to falter, too. I felt sorry for him and he had to be helped out at one point by the actor playing Colonel Race. A pity, because Poirot is such a central figure in the story. All the same, it was a fun evening out. 

Forgotten Book - Underhandover

Here is a little mystery for bibliophiles, concerning the now-forgotten author Kenneth O'Hara. I first came across 'his' name on reading the first edition of Julian Symons' Bloody Murder, which said: 'Under the name Kenneth O'Hara, the talented, neglected author Jean Morris...has written four tangled and extremely intelligent crime stories about power and corruption, of which Underhandover (1961) is the most successful.' High praise indeed, although I should add that O'Hara's name is missing from later editions of Bloody Murder. 

However, I recently acquired an inscribed copy of a later Kenneth O'Hara novel, The Bird-Cage (1968), signed 'with love from the authors Michael and Jean, "Kenneth O'Hara"', which clearly indicates the book as a joint effort. But was that the case with the other O'Hara novels? I don't know, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised. Jean Morris (1924-96) was a talented and versatile writer, but is it possible that she married someone with experience of intelligence work which informed books such as Underhandover? I'd be interested to learn more about her.

Underhandover is set in an unnamed East European country during the Cold War. In style and concerns, it's much closer to the work of John le Carre than to that of Ian Fleming. The narrator is an Englishman called Bron Armine, who has been sent to the country to advise on policing. He is a shadowy figure, and I found it difficult to identify with him, which was a pity.

The story gets off to a good start when Bron is visited by an unnamed character who is on the run, accused of killing a man called Pauly. We then get a long flashback before the action really kicks in. The quality of the writing is quite high, but I think the book suffers because - despite the author's literary gifts - it's not easy to get excited about what happens in the story. A problem with a thriller. Did I miss something when reading this book? Quite possibly. Perhaps, also, I simply wasn't in the mood for it. Events in Ukraine and elsewhere in the present day are quite enough to contemplate without altercations in an unidentifiable place sixty odd years ago. But O'Hara was (or were?) a good writer, and I'm hopeful that I'll get more out of The Bird-Cage.

Ann Granger R.I.P.

I was very sorry indeed to learn from her sons that Ann Granger died last month. Ann and I had been friendly for more than thirty years. I first met her at a Crime Writers' Association conference, and later saw her regularly at Detection Club events. In fact, the last time we met was a couple of years or so ago when she came to a Detection Club AGM and lunch at Balliol College.

Born Patricia Ann Granger in Portsmouth in 1939, she studied modern languages prior to working in a number of embassies overseas. Whilst engaged in this diplomatic work, she met John Hulme, and they married in 1966. John regularly accompanied Ann to crime writing events and was another popular figure at Detection Club events (which are always enhanced by the presence of pleasant guests invited by the members). Were John - and, indeed, Ann - involved in spying? John enjoyed teasing me about this every now and then, but he was very discreet indeed, so the short answer is that I have no idea. What I do know was that they were good company. 

When I was a young member of the CWA in the 1990s, I faced the challenge of combining work life, writing, and family life. I tried to square the circle by taking my long-suffering family with me to CWA events, and Ann was always very kind to our children - as indeed were the other writers we met.

Ann turned in 1991 from writing historical romances to a life of crime. Say it with Poison (1991) introduced Mitchell and Markby, who appeared in a total of sixteen novels. In the course of a long and prolific career, she wrote three other series and enjoyed particular success in Germany. There's more info about her life and work in a first-rate obituary in the Daily Telegraph here.

 

Henley and elsewhere

I'm in a sort of 'if it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium' kind of state of mind at the moment, as I dash around the country, mainly (but not exclusively) doing events to promote Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife. I'm just back from Henley Literary Festival, where I hosted another murder mystery evening to a large sell-out audience in pleasant surroundings. Again, the story came alive thanks to the delightful cast of volunteer 'suspects': Kelly, Joey, Alexandra, and Piers. My thanks to Terry Grourk for the below photo of Alex as Lady Cynthia.

Thursday evening saw another appearance on Radio Warrington's Culture Show with Andy Green and Brian Spooner, and it was good to meet Julie Clegg and Jane Banks from Livewire - Jane was one of the very first women players to be inducted into rugby league's hall of fame. Later this week, I'll be travelling south to take part in the Isle of Wight Festival; I'm doing a couple of events next Sunday, one of them an interview, the other a panel, and having greatly enjoyed my last appearance at this festival, I'm very much looking forward to the return trip.

Other activities have included an online Q and A with Bede College students who are, lucky things, studying crime fiction as part of their A Levels, and a zoom with Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, to help promote the book in the US. American publication is scheduled for tomorrow.

Also tomorrow I'll be down in London having a celebratory lunch with my editor Bethan and my agent James, whose support regarding the book has been so important. A chance to discuss future plans as well. And I've also been to see a classic detective play, which I'll discuss on this blog before long. 

Forgotten Book - The Sea Mystery

My copy of Freeman Wills Crofts' fourth novel about Inspector French, The Sea Mystery (1928) once belonged to Helen Simpson, and although it lacks the original jacket, it bears her ownership inscription, dated 'Christmas 1928'. My guess is that, at the time, she was studying the detective novel prior to co-writing Enter, Sir John! with her friend Clemence Dane. She may also have intended to review it. I say this because she included a few handwritten notes, including one on the very last page, which mainly highlight flaws in the story.

There are only a few flaws, however, because Freeman Wills Crofts was, along with Richard Austin Freeman, the most meticulous detective writer then at work. Interestingly, given that identity confusion is a key part of the story, two mistakes concerned his giving the wrong names to characters. You may wonder how such a mistake can be made, but believe me, it is very, very easy. Good writers check their work endlessly prior to publication - yet still errors creep through. Sometimes it's because one reads what one thinks one wrote, rather than what actually appears on the page. I've done it myself, even with books that have had extensive checks by editor, copy editor, and proof reader as well as me.

To a limited extent this story reworks elements of Crofts' bestselling debut, The Cask. Indeed, we learn that Inspector Burnley, who solved that case, is now retired and is friendly with French. Alas, Crofts does include spoilers about the plot of The Cask, which to my mind is a more heinous mistake than those with Helen Simposn picked up. In this novel, as in the earlier one, human remains are found in a crate (by a father and son out on a fishing trip in south Wales), and the hard-working Scotland Yard man has to trace how they got there. 

Most of the action, it must be said, takes place in Devon rather than at sea, not that it matters too much. There's a lot of pleasure to be had in following French's careful investigative process. I must say that one key deduction of his, early in the story, was foreseeably mistaken, but even so I enjoyed seeing how he finally got on the right trail. Crofts was probably at or close to the peak of his powers when he wrote this one. And it shows.

A memorable week

I like to keep busy, but by any standards last week was full-on - and full, fortunately, of interesting and varied activities as I continue to promote Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife as well as developing other projects for the British Library and Crippen & Landru. I very much enjoyed returning to Bromley House, a delightful independent library in a Georgian building, with a garden, last Wednesday. Matt Dolman interviewed me about the book and I was pleased to meet some delightful readers - including a Mrs Winter (although she wasn't armed with a knife...) who is pictured with me below.

Next day, it was back in the car and off to Cumbria, where I hosted murder mysteries on three successive evenings in three splendid libraries. The mystery in question was set in the 1920s and my publishers had kindly produced Miss Winter-themed answer sheets as well as offering a discount code for library users who want to buy the book. There were great audiences each night, and I was delighted with the feedback, sent over by Kinga from Kendal, who organised this mini-tour and who was as hugely supportive as always.

First came a visit to Penrith, a town (and library) I really like, and then on Friday I headed to Keswick to check out some bookshops and also do some research for the next Rachel Savernake novel, which is set around Derwent Water. It's always good to get the real feel of a location, and I believe it does make a difference (for the better) to one's writing. Then it was off, via Kendal, to Barrow-in-Furness, and another excellent evening ensued. The actors this time were members of the Ulverston Outsiders am dram group (photo at the top of this post). Like the library volunteers who took the suspects' parts on the other two evenings, they really got into the swing of things.

Saturday was devoted to Kendal, and lunch with Jean Briggs, who is organising Death on the Dales at Sedbergh later this month - a terrific festival. Logistics for the murder mystery were slightly complicated by road closures for a torchlit procession (no, not organised in my honour😄) but the staff were extremely helpful and it was another truly enjoyable evening.