Forgotten Book - A Corpse for Charybdis

A Corpse for Charybdis was the fourth novel published by Susan Gilruth, and the first to appear under the imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. This marked a step-up for her after being published by Robert Hale. In saying this, I mean no disrespect to Hale, who did a good job for many, many years, producing books for library readers. Many of their titles were very enjoyable. But print runs were small, and I suspect the editing was minimal. 

For many authors coming towards the latter stages of their career, Hale provided a decent enough home (perhaps the major British detective writer they published in his later years was the great Michael Gilbert), but for a younger and ambitious writer, the opportunity to move on to a major firm like Hodder must have been welcome, as well as (relatively) more remunerative.

The novel appeared in 1956 and there was no paperback edition, nor (as far as I know) any overseas edition, although the story was adapted for BBC Radio. So, like most of Gilruth's seven novels, it's quite a rare book - I've never seen a physical copy, only a pdf. I decided to read it while on a cruise, because it is set on a cruise, and one of the fascinating elements of the story is the light it casts on cruising in the post-war era - suffice to say that it was a very, very different experience.

Another historical point of interest is that the story is set during the Cold War, and the ship in question is a Yugoslav cargo ship, which is only carrying a handful of passengers. These include Liane Crauford, who again narrates, and her husband (I'm tempted to say, her long-suffering husband, but to be honest he is a bit dull, if pleasant enough) Bill. Gilruth's interest in true crime is reflected in her reference to the James Camb 'porthole murder' case from real life, while her knowledge of detective fiction is evidenced by a pleasing 'red herring' about the m.o. in Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. There's also a plot device slightly similar to that in another holiday whodunit, Christie's A Caribbean Mystery.

One of the merits of a cruise mystery - and quite a lot of them have been written over the years- is that the setting provides a 'closed circle' of suspects. Helpfully, there is a plan of the passenger deck and Gilruth also includes a cast of characters at the start of the book. This reveals that Liane's chum Hugh Gordon of Scotland Yard will make an appearance at some point. I don't think this is a spoiler of any meaningful sort, though I did wonder how Gilruth would work him into the story. Suffice to say that she does so in a more or less plausible way. This is a teasing mystery, and although Gilruth didn't focus on 'fair play' in the Golden Age manner, there's an undeniable charm about her writing. 

Rogue Agent - 2022 film review

What a terrific actor James Norton is. I first came across him in the first series of Happy Valley, in which he was superb as a villain, and I've followed his career since then with interest as well as admiration. When I saw that he had the lead role in Rogue Agent, a Netflix film inspired by a true story of crime, I was keen to watch it, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

Norton plays Robert Freegard, a seemingly likeable and definitely plausible individual. When we first meet him, he's posing as an MI5 agent and conning three naive young people into abandoning their old lives. Years later, he's selling posh cars and when an attractive lawyer, Alice (Gemma Arterton) passes by, he chats her up. Before long, they are living together. 

Alice checks into Robert's background and learns from a private detective that the man she has fallen for seems not to exist. When she confronts Robert, he tells her that he works for MI5, and she believes him. He also persuades her to start up a business venture with him. When he drains the account, she doesn't seem to realise the legal implications of a joint account until a policeman explains them to her, which I thought was rather odd for a supposedly hot-shot lawyer. The scenes in her office I didn't find convincing, but overall, the script is strong and the story really interesting, in this particular case all the more so because of its real life origin. 

I didn't know much about Robert Freegard until I watched this film. As a general rule, I'm wary about films that dramatise recent events involving living people, because they can embellish the facts in a way that seems deeply unfair. But as far as I can tell, even though significant elements of the storyline are invented, there's actually nothing unfair about Rogue Agent. If anything, it flatters Freegard, a cruel conman, by having such a charismatic actor portray him.   

The Names by Florence Knapp - and Italy

I planned September this year as a month mainly devoted to holidays, and celebrating various publications, before things were disrupted, but a trip to Italy in the company of Kate Ellis and her husband Roger Bullock proved very relaxing, a chance to unwind away from home. And for once I decided that for my holiday reading I'd focus on a novel that isn't a work of crime fiction. There are certainly crimes committed in Florence Knapp's much-acclaimed debut The Names but they are incidental to the main story - or, I should I say, stories.

The premise appealed to me greatly (even if I don't think it's actually true): the idea that one's path through life is affected by the name one is given at birth. Florence Knapp traces a boy's development in seven-year stages, according to whether he is called Gordon (after his bullying father, a doctor), Julian (a name favoured by his mother Cora, as a sort of compromise), or Bear (a name chosen by his sister Maia). I did wonder if the cover quote saying that the novel is 'life-affirming' was a euphemism for 'twee', but it proved to be anything but. 

I really enjoyed this book. The writing is excellent from start to finish and I'm fascinated by the structural premise, one that has always appealed to me - there's a Sliding Doors moment at the start of the book, when Cora is going with Maia to register the birth, and the ways in which Florence Knapp takes the stories from there is consistently engaging. She really is a fine writer and the only question now is: how does she top this achievement?

As for my own writing, my British Library anthology Eat, Drink and Be Murdered was published while I was away, and the previous anthology in the series, Puzzles of the Parish received a wonderful review in Barry Turner's final column on classic crime in the Daily Mail: 'Edwards makes an excellent start with G. K. Chesterton’s sharp-witted Father Brown exposing a religious charlatan who is also a murderer.
The challenge for Edwards is to maintain the standard for the rest of the book. This he achieves magnificently with a rich assortment of astute priests including an amateur detective who recovers a church treasure and a rector who, having disposed of a blackmailer, takes advantage of an open grave made ready for another funeral. While the masters of crime fiction such as Michael Gilbert and Edmund Crispin are well represented, there are rarer names of the genre here. And very good they are, too.'

The Italy trip started in Lucca, a wonderful old walled city that appealed to me greatly; a climb up a tower was rewarded with fantatstic views. There was a trip to Pisa; I've been there twice before, but this was the most enjoyable visit of the three. Moving from Lucca to Genoa involved a stop in Porto Venere; we managed to fit in a climb to the church before having lunch during a prolonged and truly spectacular thunderstorm. 

My daughter Catherine had told me that Genoa was well worth a visit and she was proved right. I liked it a lot and felt that, despite getting around the city a good deal, there was still more to explore. A trip to upmarket Portofino, by boat from Rapallo, was very enjoyable, as was the climb to the church, museum, and lighthouse. Weather conditions prevented a boat trip to Cinque Terra, despite the fact that the sea was quite calm, but we visited Monterosso and Vernazza by train; charming places. I'd like to go back there another time, should the opportunity arise.  

Dream Lover - 1993 film review

Dream Lover is a thriller written and directed by Nicholas Kazan (son of the legendary director Elia Kazan, and himself an Academy Award nominee). I assumed the famous Bobby Darin song 'Dream Lover' would feature, but it was not to be, and this is certainly a film that confounded my expectations in quite a number of ways. 

It's a strange film in some respects, and over the years it has attracted both admiration (from the eminent critic Roger Ebert, for instance) and scorn. I can see both points of view and I find myself rather undecided on whether its strengths outweigh its flaws. I don't want to say too much about the flaws, because that would entail spoilers, but suffice to say that the sudden and melodramatic ending of the film seemed to me to be very unsatisfactory as well as unexpected (and I admit that I didn't expect it). I'm all in favour of twist endings, but this was one I didn't care for.

I was completely unfamiliar with the cast of the film, but James Spader, who plays a wealthy and charming young architect has evidently had a successful career. His character is called Ray Reardon, which added to the strangeness, since that's a name I associate with the famous snooker player. At the start of the film, Ray is getting divorced from his wife; although he struck her in a moment of anger, she still seems devoted to him. 

Soon Ray develops an obsession with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman, Lena Mathers (Madchen Amick). Their passionate relationship leads to marriage and children, but Lena is a mysterious character and Ray becomes increasingly puzzled about her, and for good reason. There were one or two elements of the film that reminded me of the brilliant Body Heat, in which another naive professional man becomes besotted with a gorgeous woman, but there's no doubt that Body Heat has stood the test of time much better. 

Forgotten Book - Who Killed Robert Prentice?

The first Crime Dossier created by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links was Murder off Miami (in the US, File on Bolitho Blane) and it proved to be a huge success, bringing together Golden Age elements such as the 'challenge to the reader' in a dossier format, like a three-dimensional version of books such as The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace. 

A follow-up was inevitable, and it came in the form of Who Killed Robert Prentice? which boasts some intriguing clues as part of the package. Unfortunately, since the clues include a particular perfume on certain correspondence, they don't always stand the test of time. When copies turn up on the second hand market, items are often missing - my first edition lacks an important newspaper cutting as well as some face powder (!) but one curiosity is still present and correct. This is a little wallet of pieces of a torn-up photograph - which turn out to display a topless woman in the company of a man: in other words, it's a compromising picture used for the purposes of blackmail. Racy for 1937, that's for sure.

The British police are baffled by the death - by strychnine poisoning - of the wealthy Prentice. His widow contacts a visiting American detective called Schwab and asks him to look into the case. He soon finds that there are several plausible suspects, including the deceased's step-son and his mistress. 

After some intricate stuff concerning alibis, it eventually becomes clear that the crime turns on a plot device which is by no means original (I associate it with another strychnine poisoning mystery, which in other respects is very different) but which still works pretty well in this context. This was actually the first Crime Dossier I ever read, and rereading it thirty years later was equally pleasurable. 

Cellar Door - 2024 film review

Cellar Door is a fairly recent American film which takes a situation with a number of rather familiar ingredients and and manages to make something quite interesting and entertaining out of them. As a result, I found it more watchable than I might have expected, given that the script does have a number of flaws. In a way, it's a Faustian pact story with a difference. 

A young couple, Sera and John (Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman) who have recently suffered a miscarriage decide to make a new start by looking for a house in the country. An estate agent introduces them to a slightly mysterious chap called Emmett (Laurence Fishburne) who makes them an offer that they find it impossible to refuse.

Emmett lives in a gorgeous mansion which has seen some kind of unspecified tragedy in the past. He offers the couple the chance to acquire the house for nothing, subject to one condition only - they must never open the cellar door. Of course, they say yes, but soon John is itching with curiosity, desperate to find his way past that pesky cellar door.

The plot thickens when a work colleague of John's turns up at the housewarming party and subsequently accuses him of sexual harassment. There's a pleasing twist near the end of the film, and it becomes clear that the primary significance of the cellar door is metaphorical rather than actual. I'm not sure everything in the story made complete sense, but there were just about enough interesting developments to keep me engaged to the rather ambivalent ending.   

War of the Worlds - 2005 film review

I vividly remember reading H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, aged about 12 or 13, after borrowing the book from my school library. I was so impressed that I was tempted to buy a paperback copy of The Time Machine for myself, and I also read quite a few of his short stories. I even tried his 'social realism' fiction, but at that age, I certainly didn't find it gripping, and I think it's fair to say that today he is much better remembered as a writer of sci-fi than for his non-genre fiction.   

About seven years ago, I enjoyed a BBC TV version of the story - some key scenes of which were shot in Great Budworth, a lovely Cheshire village well-known to me - but I've only just caught up with Steven Spielberg's 2005 film version, set in the United States. This begins and ends clunkily, in my opinion, with a solemn and rather banal explanatory voiceover by Morgan Freeman, but the action in between is very good.

The cast is led by Tom Cruise, whose performances in action films generally strike me as excellent. I know that some people don't like his portrayal of Jack Reacher, partly because of his lack of height, but I thought he did a pretty good job. And under Spielberg's direction, he is on top form here, as Ray Ferrier, a dock worker whose marriage is over and whose ex-wife Mary Ann (now pregnant by her new bloke) has custody of their children, moody adolescent Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young Rachel (Dakota Fanning). At the start of the film, Ray is late to collect his children for a few days, and his lack of attention to punctuality sums up the unreliability that has ended his marriage.

There are news reports of electrical storms in Ukraine, and soon strange clouds form overhead. Before you know it, alien tripods are causing havoc - and their first appearance is quite memorable. The story focuses on Ray and his children, and is well handled, with several moments of very high tension. You can interpret Wells' storyline in a variety of ways, but what matters most is that it really is a very good story, a landmark title in science fiction that has stood the test of time. 

Andrew Shanks R.I.P.

No 'Friday Forgotten Book' today, because I want to pay a personal tribute to my brother-in-law Andrew Shanks, who died on Tuesday. This tragic news came as a great shock, and it will be a considerable time before we come properly to terms with his loss. Andrew was a writer and translator of distinction, although his field was far removed from crime writing; he did, however, provide me with advice several times. He's mentioned in the acknowledgements to Blackstone Fell, having given me a good deal of help with my research for a pivotal chapter in that book, set around a church service. He was a priest (at different times he had rural and inner city parishes and he also served as Canon Theologian at Manchester Cathedral for a decade) and also a philosopher. In a message to Andrew's widow Dian Leppington, his friend Rowan Williams has already expressed his admiration for Andrew's personal qualities with great eloquence and poignancy.

Andrew was the eldest of the four children of Michael and Juliet Shanks: he's on the left in the above photo, with Chris, Roland, and Helena. Michael was a distinguished economist (whose influence continues to the present; his ideas were referenced last week in his column by the economics editor of the Sunday Times) and author. Andrew read History at Balliol, his father's old college, and he and I overlapped there, although he enjoyed Balliol less than I did and we didn't meet until after I'd got to know his sister, whom I first met at the same college. I've often said that Andrew is the cleverest person I know, but even more important than his formidable intellectual gifts were his personal qualities, his compassion, warmth, and playful sense of humour. 

Andrew played an important part in my life, more important than perhaps he realised. Not only did he officiate at our wedding, he guided me through after the death of my mother at the darkest time of my life and delivered a tribute at the memorial service when I simply couldn't manage it. And there was much more: he and Dian frequently hosted us, and my crime writing friend Eileen Dewhurst at their home in Leeds when we stayed en route for northern CWA events in Yorkshire. On one occasion he and Dian looked after our children at short notice while we were away and I'd messed up the arrangements. At different times, when they had homes in Hornby (E.C.R. Lorac country!) and Grassington, we stayed there for holidays. There was a memorable family gathering in Liverpool two years ago when we all spent a January weekend together to celebrate his 70th birthday, visiting the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight in Wirral, among other things (the below photo). And there was much else besides.

I very much enjoyed our conversations over the years, at family get-togethers or sometimes when we  played chess or watched Match of the Day together. He was never less than fascinating to talk to and it's safe to say that I learned a lot more from him than he did from me. I think we had many shared values, though it's fair to say that our ideas about how society could best implement those values were often very different. On his extremely interesting website Andrew describes himself as a 'neo-Hegelian...politically however (more and more) a sort of anarcho-pacifist.' In the last really lengthy discussion we had, he explained to me his ideas about reforming the House of Lords. These are set out on a page of his website and I think they deserve serious consideration by serious people (even if Andrew's confidence in the charitable sector is greater than mine). In any event, the point is not really whether you agree 100% with his argument: what matters is the quality of the thinking behind it.

Andrew suffered from serious ill-health of various kinds for many years, but it was a tribute to his courage and indomitable spirit that he bounced back so many times, and was able to devote himself to his writing and his happy and fulfilling personal life with Dian right to the end. I cannot deny that books such as his first, Hegel's Political Theology, were too difficult for me, but he achieved something special in recent times with his impressive translation of the poetry of the German Nelly Sachs. She was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, but I confess I'd never heard of her until Andrew explained what an extraordinary individual she was. His translations seem to me to be highly successful and he won two prizes for them. As I've mentioned, his father's legacy endures. So too, I have no doubt, will Andrew's. I shall remember him with gratitude and huge affection.    

 

   

The Scottish Isles

 

I'm just back from a lovely trip to the Scottish Isles, which although overshadowed by other things, provided a scenic reminder of just what a gorgeous part of the world is to be found up the coast from Liverpool, from where the ship did a round trip. First stop was Shetland - not as warm as on my last visit, to Shetland Noir, but still charming.

It was nice to see Lerwick again (and to see a copy of The Life of Crime in the excellent Shetland bookshop!) but the highlight was a guided walk across the sand tombolo to St Ninian's Isle, a look at the ruined chapel, and the rugged scenery. There were also some Shetland ponies.

Next stop was Kirkwall on Mainland, Orkney, an island I've never visited. As with Shetland, Orcadian tourism has definitely benefited from the popularity of Ann Cleeves' books about Jimmy Perez!

The ancient settlement of Skara Brae was an absolute must-see, and the nearby Skail House was also very interesting. A trip into 'downtown Kirkwall', as someone described it, was notable in particular for the chance to look around St Magnus Cathedral - truly impressive.

Next came Lewis, an island which features in Peter May's very successful novels. The Black Houses were fascinating, as were the standing stones at Calanais. A look around Stornoway afforded the opportunity to explore the grounds of Lews Castle. All in all, most enjoyable.

The final sea day afforded vistas of the Dutchman's Cap and Fingal's Cave as well as various other islands, and indeed Ireland. A wonderful place to explore - and no shortage of crime writing associations!

Leave Her to Heaven - 1945 film review

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Now to an interesting old film. Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 movie shot in 'glorious Technicolor', with primarily rural, charming locations, yet it's widely described as a film noir. A contradiction? I don't think so. For me, this is a film which is highly distinctive, yet which can sensibly be discussed alongside, and compared to, more conventional examples of film noir, shot in mean streets and rainy alleyways. After all, Body Heat, my favourite example of film noir (even though it was made in the 80s rather than the 40s or 50s), is a story that unfolds in bright sunshine amid blistering temperatures.

Jo Swerling's screenplay, based on Ben Ames Williams novel (the film rights of which were purchased prior to its publication in 1944, such was the quality of the characterisation), focuses more on people than plot, although there is a teasing preamble, with the arrival of Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) at a lakeside in Maine, when we learn that he has just been released from prison. It would be a stretch to describe this story as a 'mystery', but it's undoubtedly a dark murder story.

Then it's flashback time. Richard is an author, who has the pleasurable experience of travelling on a train in which a beautiful woman is reading his latest novel. This is Ellen Berent, played by Gene Tierney, who had recently excelled in that great film noir Laura. One thing leads to another, as it so often does, and Richard and Ellen get married. She makes a friend of his younger brother Danny, whose ability to walk has been hampered by polio, and domestic bliss beckons.

The trouble is that Ellen's devotion to Richard is excessive, and her jealousy proves to be corrosive, with catastrophic results. I found Richard rather anodyne - I've never regarded Cornel Wilde as an exciting actor, I'm afraid - but Gene Tierney excels. She was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her performance, and the accolade was well merited. There is some debate in academic circles as to whether she truly qualifies for the description femme fatale, but I don't have much doubt about it. What is interesting is that her motivation is not financial greed, as with Phyllis in Double Indemnity for instance. But in this film, Gene Tierney is, in her way, as menacing as the great Barbara Stanwyck. The supporting cast, by the way, also features good performances from Jeanne Crain, as Ellen's adopted sister, and Vincent Price, as a lawyer who was once engaged to Ellen.   

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