Forgotten Book - The Keys of Death

George Sims (1923-99) was an extremely interesting writer (as indeed was his namesake, George Robert Sims, who died the year before he was born). He was first and foremost an antiquarian book dealer, but he wrote a dozen novels that were widely admired, and he was elected to membership of the Detection Club. Two of his books, The End of the Web and The Last Best Friend (which he felt were, in his lifetime, his most commercially successful titles) were republished nine years ago in the British Library's Classic Thriller series, for which I wrote introductions. (Although the Classic Thriller series is in abeyance, I still have hopes that it will spring back to life at some point, but who knows?)

The Keys of Death (1982) is a very good example of his strengths as a writer, though it also displays one or two of the weaknesses that recur in his books. Writing to a friend in 1991, he said, 'I am always less than satisfied when I read or re-read one of my books, but I am reasonably pleased with The Keys...In a strange way and to a certain extent some experiences were used in that book though it seems far-fetched.'

The protagonist is a rare book dealer called Jack Quinn, who also appeared in a later Sims novel. He is, I think, to some extent based on Sims himself, and although he's a big, dangerous man with a fondness for drink and, in particular, a woman called Cathy to whom he isn't married, he also has a sensitive and cultured side. The novel concerns his reaction to Cathy's abrupt and unexplained disappearance and his attempts to find out what has happened to her. There's some very interesting writing in this book, as well as some intriguing ideas, while the final revelation is quite memorable.

However, the first chapter is devoted to Cathy, and her terror when she is attacked by a violent man, so we know rather more than Jack does right from the outset. I can see why Sims started the book in this way, because it's a dramatic scene, but from a writer's perspective, it seems to me to be a dubious choice, because it cuts away quite a bit of mystery and suspense. There's some discussion about a modern version of the Hell Fire Club, but we see the Club at one remove, and I found that a bit surprising. To put it crudely, there is rather too much 'tell' and not quite enough 'show' as regards the inciting events of the novel. Sims was really more interested in character than in anything else, and he was able to write extremely well. He inscribed one copy to a friend with the description 'an odd tale without a happy ending', which is a fair summary, though too modest. I liked this book a lot, while feeling that it could have been even better.