Forgotten Book - Shadow Run

Desmond Lowden is a writer who interests me more as I find out more about the man and his work. He was far from prolific, publishing just eight novels between 1969 and 1990, as well as several screenplays. He achieved considerable success, and today's Forgotten Book, published in 1989, won the CWA Silver Dagger (an award that no longer exists). In other words, it was judged to be the second best crime novel of the year. When you consider that the winner was Colin Dexter (with The Wench is Dead) that is quite something. Yet after publishing just one more book, in the following year, he never published another novel. I do find that hard to understand.

The Shadow Run is a thriller which counterpoints two sets of relationships. One concerns a 'fat boy', a young lad at a private school called Joffrey, and his school friends. Joffrey has a troubled family background and he tells a lot of fibs. So when he spots blood coming from a van, nobody believes him. But this time he is telling the truth.

The other relationships involve a hardened criminal called Haskell. He's a man who uses people for his own ends and is determined to make a lot of money from an ambitious robbery. The details (which explain the title) are complex, but since they are related to the technology of the late 1980s, they are also now out of date. This lessens the impact of the later stages of the story for a modern reader, I think, as the worlds of Joffrey and Haskell converge.

The first part of the book is excellent, as Lowden establishes his characters in short, snappy chapters, with crisp dialogue and intriguing incidents. Lowden also makes good use of his great interest in music (Joffrey and some of his pals are members of a choir that sings in a cathedral). I can see why the book attracted such favourable attention at the time, but like so many books which rely on cutting-edge technical detail, it has lost a bit of its allure. Nevertheless, I was glad to read it, and I'm definitely curious as to why Lowden gave up on writing novels so soon after this one earned the Silver Dagger.

The Lake District Mysteries are back!

I'm absolutely delighted to say that Joffe Books have agreed to republish my Lake District Mysteries, and the first title in the series, The Coffin Trail, appears tomorrow, 31 July. The other titles will come out, I gather, month by month. I'm excited by this development, not least by the new artwork and the prospect of an infusion of energetic marketing and sales savvy.

I'm also very glad to say that this move reunites me with Kate Lyall Grant, who was the editor at Hodder who acquired my sixth and seventh Harry Devlin novels, The Devil in Disguise and First Cut is the Deepest, back in the late 90s. I've worked with Kate since, on a Murder Squad anthology for Severn House, but not in relation to my own novels.

The Coffin Trail was an important book in my writing career. The idea for a new rural series was suggested by David Shelley, when he was my editor at Allison & Busby, and my great friend the late Peter Robinson gave me a lot of encouragement. The novel was shortlisted for the Theakston's Prize for best first crime novel of the year - in very illustrious company, it must be said. I enjoyed creating Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind, though of course as time passed my ideas about the development of the series evolved. So, for instance, originally I thought Daniel would retain close links with Oxford, but that hasn't happened...yet.

I'm often asked if you need to start reading my series from the beginning or whether you can start with any book. I do work very hard to make sure that you can start anywhere, but I know that a lot of readers prefer to begin at the beginning. So I'm hoping that plenty of people will want to give The Coffin Trail a try. It seems quite amazing to me that it was first published twenty-one years ago, but I think that, by and large, the passage of time has been pretty kind to it, and I'm hoping that others will agree.

 

The July newsletter

My July newsletter is now available. It includes links to more information and the first part of an interview with Gold Dagger winner John Cornwell. Please do sign up if you're interested - it's free of charge. Here is the link (which can be pasted into your browser): https://substack.com/@martinedwardsbooks/

Ilkley Book Fair

Friday was a fun day at the Ilkley Book Fair. A couple of years ago, friends in the PBFA (Provincial Booksellers' Fairs Association) kindly invited me to have a stand at the bi-annual crime and detection book fair at Harrogate. I had a lovely time and they invited me back this year, but I was already committed elsewhere. So as an alternative Louise Harrison of TP Books generously offered me the chance to take part in Ilkley Book Fair, which I enjoyed visiting on a quite memorable day more than a decade ago.

I was also given the chance to pop into the Grove Bookshop in Ilkley - a very good shop where I once did an event to celebrate the reissue by the British Library of two of Gil North's Sergeant Cluff novels - to sign copies of Hemlock Bay. Then it was back to the fair and organising my stand. Ilkley is a generalist book fair, unlike Harrogate, so I didn't know what to expect.

As it turned out, I had the chance to talk to a lot of nice people, including old friends such as the Sherlockians John Hall and Paul Charles, and several of the excellent booksellers, notably Phil Woolley of Black Cat (who had some impressive inscribed books by Stephen Maddock, an author of thrillers whose work I'm not familiar with), Stephen Conway, Rob and Catherine Hawley, and Jeremiah Vokes. Not to forget Louise, who went to great lengths to make sure all went well.

I really enjoyed seeing a book fair from an insider's perspective. It is indeed a different experience and watching potential buyers is psychologically fascinating. The time flew by to such an extent that I didn't have much chance to look at other stalls. The setting, in the King's Hall/Winter Gardens, was pleasant and rather atmospheric. I did well in terms of selling books, which was nice (and there was, slightly to my surprise, no pattern at all to which titles were purchased) but more than that, it was good to be part of a world that has long intrigued me. Even if only for five and a half hours.  

Forgotten Book - Body Blow

Last year, I acquired a book called Body Blow by Kenneth Hopkins inscribed to John Arlott. Readers of a certain vintage may recall John Arlott as a famous (and very good) cricket commentator - his voice rippled through my younger days - but he was also a poet and bibliophile. Hopkins was a multi-talented writer, primarily a poet but, like so many poets over the years, he dabbled in detection, publishing seven books between the late fifties and early sixties along with a final book under a pen-name, Christopher Adam.

To be honest, I wasn't familiar with Hopkins, and the purchase was motivated mainly by the charming inscription, which reads 'and no prizes for recognizing the original of Dr Blow'. Dr William Blow is an elderly eccentric (and a big fan of Robert Southey) who, together with the slightly more worldly Professor Manciple, featured in three novels, of which Body Blow (1962) was the last.

The book joined the Himalayan range that is my to-be-read pile, but I was motivated to read it by a series of interesting emails from Paul Roberts. Paul was a friend of Kenneth Hopkins (who sounds like a delightful person) and he told me quite a bit about his life and work. I was, for instance, intrigued to learn that the model for Dr Blow was actually the writer E.H. Visiak, who was a good friend of Hopkins. This was yet another example of the fascinating correspondence that I'm fortunate to receive, and from which I learn so much.

The story begins with Blow buying a large quantity of books by Robert Southey at auction. But when he expects delivery, what in fact he receives is a large and heavy box containing the body of a dead woman. Strange! And it's even stranger when the box disappears again, almost immediately. There are quite a few funny lines and situations in this story, and if the plot is rather barmy, this isn't untypical of humorous crime fiction. I'm very grateful to Paul for drawing Kenneth Hopkins to my attention. 

Emily the Criminal - 2022 film review

Emily the Criminal is a fairly recent film which tells a pretty good story while also making some interesting points about modern society. It's all the more effective because those points, although made with clarity, aren't hammered home in a crude and tedious way. Emily is played, exceptionally well, by Aubrey Plaza (the inspiration for whose first name apparently came from a song by Bread). She is a flawed character, to say the least, but Plaza manages to enlist our sympathy for her.

Emily is weighed down by student debt. It's very sad that, around the world, there are many people like Emily, who have in effect been conned into taking out heavy student loans only to wind up in jobs that are less than rewarding. At the start of the film, we see Emily caught out in a lie to a prospective employer, and later in the story we see a ruthless employer trying to get her to do a six month unpaid internship.

Although Emily is driven to try to make a better life for herself, she finds herself lured into criminality in order to make it happen. We may not approve, but the script is good enough to make us understand and - at some points, anyway - root for her. John Patton Ford, who wrote and directed the movie, is a real talent.

Emily gets involved with a couple of brothers who are involved in credit card scams. She proves herself to be alarmingly adept at lying and cheating her way out of trouble, but there are occasional dark moments which get darker as the film goes on. From start to finish, we see people making 'bad choices'. I don't think this film sets out to justify crime, but it does quite a good job of showing how so many get sucked into it. Thought-provoking.

Dangerous Waters - 2023 film review

Ray Liotta was a compelling actor and he makes his presence felt in the later scenes of Dangerous Waters, a thriller which was the last movie he made before his sudden death in 2022. In many ways, though, the performance of Eric Dane is equally impressive. And so is that of a young Israeli actor, Odeya Rush, who has the central role in the story. She plays Rose, whose mother Alma (Saffron Burrows) has recently begun a new relationship with a man called Derek (Dane).

Derek has invited them to join him on a boat trip to Bermuda, but it's clear that Rose has reservations about her mother's choice of boyfriend. He works in the security business, a sector that covers a multitude of sins, but he does have a certain charm. Alma is impulsive and naive; Rose is much smarter. However, things take an unexpected turn when two villains board the ship. They kill Alma and shoot Derek. He survives, and so does Rose, who hid during the attack, but it's very clear by now that he has something to hide. What is it, though?

There's an entertaining review of this film in the Guardian by Phil Hoad, who said: 'Claustrophobic family drama, survivalist ordeal and balls-to-the-wall action barnstormer – any one of these would have amply filled out a single film. But director John Barr chucks all three into an unsubtle and faintly ludicrous outing that at least is never boring.' Faint praise, perhaps, but praise nonetheless. . I also liked Hoad's comparison of the 'offbeat intensity' of Liotta's performance to that of a 'deranged William Shatner'.

Hoad is right. Dangerous Waters isn't boring and despite the mounting implausibilities, I kept watching. This was partly because of the acting, but the script moves with pace, and that's generally essential in a thriller. Overall, I'd class this as decent, undemanding light entertainment. 

Forgotten Book - Ring of Terror

Ring of Terror was the last book by Michael Gilbert to be published by Hodder, who had published his novels since his debut, Close Quarters, in 1947. The novel appeared in 1995, and introduced a new character, the likeable Luke Pagan, but when Gilbert wrote another Pagan book, Hodder turned it down. Eventually, the book was taken by Robert Hale, essentially a library publisher; they also published the third Pagan novel, which was Gilbert's last. Quite a come-down, to be honest, although I mean no disrespect to Hale, who published some good books over the years.

Thirty years ago, I was astonished and rather indignant - naive as it now seems - that a publisher could treat a loyal author in this way. I recall talking to the late Carolyn Caughey, a senior Hodder editor and a very pleasant person whom I knew for many years, about it. She said the second Pagan book read like 'an old man's novel', and maybe it did (it's next on my list to read), but even so I think it's sad that Hodder dumped him. 

Ring of Terror had a very small print run in the UK, I think. At the time of writing, there was no UK first edition for sale on Abebooks, and as far as I know there was no paperback edition. That's why, for all my enthusiasm for Gilbert, it's taken me so long to acquire a copy and read it. This copy is inscribed to Gilbert's fellow Detection Club member, the former spy Kenneth Benton, in gratitude for lending him a book about espionage written by Christopher Andrew, which perhaps Gilbert used when researching the later Pagan books. Ring of Terror is actually dedicated to Don Rumbelow, former policeman and CWA Chair, whom Gilbert describes as 'the only man I know who talks and writes sense about the Siege of Sidney Street'.

And Ring of Terror is unlike Gilbert's earlier novels in being, very clearly, based on a real life case - the Siege and the events that followed it, not long before the First World War. There are also glancing references to the Steinie Morrison case. Among other real life people, Winston Churchill has a cameo role in the story. 

Gilbert did his homework on the case, and he handles the thrillerish material (and the societal issues associated with immigration) with his customary polish. As usual in his novels, there are several different viewpoints, but Luke is at the centre of things and is in many ways a typical Gilbert hero, brave, modest, and intelligent. The main problem is that I've never been hugely interested in the Siege of Sidney Street, and so I found Luke's investigations into Russian anarchists less inherently interesting than most of the storylines in Gilbert's earlier novels, although as ever the action scenes are well done. I'd have preferred more emphasis on mystery. However, it's a readable story and I'm glad I finally caught up with it.

Forgotten Book - Charteris Royal

Long before there was Casino Royale, there was Charteris Royal. First published by Gollancz in 1941, this is an obscure book that I'd probably have remained unaware of if it hadn't been for Jamie Sturgeon, who drew my attention to the work of the author, Hubert Phillips. I hadn't heard of Phillips (though I'd come across one or two of his pseudonymous short stories) but the front cover of the dustjacket proclaims that he 'has been famous for many years as one of the most ingenious of men, as well as one of the most versatile'.

He was a renowned maker of puzzles, published in the News Chronicle, and also an expert in bridge, and a noted chess player. These gifts seemed to equip him splendidly to become a writer of detective fiction in the classic mould, but perhaps unexpectedly, Charteris Royal is a thriller, set in the run-up to the Second World War, rather than a cerebral whodunit. 

Jonquil Tatham, the attractive young secretary of writer Gerrard Davenall, is kidnapped. It soon becomes clear that she has fallen into the clutches of Nazis based in England and that they want to blackmail Davenall into giving away secrets. Davenall's response is to call on the services of Rusty Bendore, who runs a small organisation called Rho Beta, which aims to combat crime and Bad People, and is comprised of a variety of people who are skilled in different fields. This is, I think, a pleasing concept and has been used in modified forms plenty of times since.

The action develops over the course of twenty-four hours. The race-against-time is a good way of ratcheting up tension in a thriller. Unfortunately, Phillips' inexperience as a novelist is all too evident. There is far too much chit-chat between the different members of Rho Beta, and not enough variety in the action for my taste. As a result, the story seems drawn-out rather than tense and attention-grabbing. This is a pity, because Phillips had a good idea here (and he may have contemplated writing more books about Rho Beta), but I don't think he developed the story well enough. Perhaps significantly, he never published another novel, which may well indicate that he was disappointed by the outcome. I'd rate this an interesting curiosity.

Calibre - 2018 film review

As he has shown in Slow Horses, Jack Lowden is a terrific actor and his presence in the cast prompted me to take a look at one of his early starring roles in the film Calibre. This is a fairly low-budget thriller written and directed by Matt Palmer, whose work is otherwise unknown to me; but on this evidence, Palmer too has a good deal of talent.

The premise is straightforward and cut from familiar cloth. Lowden plays Vaughn, whose partner is pregnant, and who goes off on a hunting trip in the Scottish Highlands with his old school friend Marcus (Martin McCann), who is a rather cocky and self-assured, as well as wealthy, businessman. They head off to a small and remote village called Culcarran and meet an assortment of locals who seem faintly sinister. It's entirely predictable that Something Terrible will happen. 

So it does, but the strength of the film is that it doesn't follow an entirely formulaic pattern. This isn't - despite one or two red herrings - a rip-off of The Wicker Man. Palmer is interested in the moral choices made by his two protagonists. Unfortunately, most of those choices turn out to be extremely unwise. Nor does the film wallow in gore; I'm glad Palmer resisted this temptation, because the under-stated nature of some crucial scenes is effective.

I was confident from the outset that there would at some point be a chase through a dark wood and I wasn't disappointed. Overall, though, the relatively low-key approach of the film works well, and I'm not surprised that it has been well reviewed. I agree with those who said that it was a good decision not to make the incomers to Culcarran crude and boisterous and English. Lowden's presence in the film ensures that the two young men's essential vulnerability comes over well. This is essentially a story about the duality of Scottish life, the tensions between the moneyed urban world and the rural communities struggling for survival. But it's not preachy - and that is always a plus.