The Witness for the Prosecution - BBC TV review

The Witness for the Prosecution, part one of which aired on the BBC tonight, was always going to be one of the main events on this year's Christmas TV schedule. Agatha Christie's short story (originally written very early in her career, more than 90 years ago) was later turned into a play. In 1957, it was famously filmed by Billy Wilder.

Wilder's version boasted a crisp script and a terrific cast, including Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Charles Laughton. It is my favourite movie based on a Christie story. and set a very high standard for any subsequent adaptation. The BBC commissioned Sarah Phelps to write the new screenplay, a sound decision bearing in mind her good work last year with the script for And Then There Were None.

Less obvious was the decision to turn the story into a two hour-long episodes. That choice meant that Phelps was required to add quite a lot of backstory material - rather more than was needed last year. To update a Christie to this extent is always a risky enterprise, and Phelps' solution to the challenge is, in part, to focus on period atmosphere. In the first episode, this worked fairly well, but (pending seeing episode two) I'm inclined to think that a single 90-minute drama might have had more focus, and therefore greater intensity. There's a lot of darkness in this version, but that's not quite the same as intensity.

The BBC cast, if not quite in the league of Dietrich and company, is pretty good, with Toby Jones impressive as usual, playing the part of a down-at-heel solicitor. Naturally I empathised with him, just as Harry Devlin would. Billy Howie takes the role of Leonard Vole, while Andrea Riseborough is Romaine, and Kim Cattrall the older woman who takes up with a toy boy before meeting an untimely end. This version of a classic crime story has not yet displaced Wilder's film in my affections, and probably won't do so, but I will certainly be watching to see how Phelps handles the rest of the story.

And Then There Were None - BBC 1 TV review

And Then There Were None is the finest of all Golden Age detective stories in my opinion- never mind that it lacks a great detective in the mould of Poirot or Marple. Agatha Christie wrote plenty of fine crime stories, but this has been my favourite since I first read it at a tender age. So the question I asked myself when anticipating this evening's first episode of the BBC TV three-part adaptation by Sarah Phelps was - would the TV version do the book justice?

There's been a lot of cunningly contrived publicity in the run-up to this showing which has been designed to generate interest. It has been suggested that Phelps was modernising the story in an inappropriate way, by introducing drug-taking, bad language, and other terribly topical features. Phelps, we were told, had never read any Christie before taking on the task of writing the script. I was rather sceptical about whether the script would prove as shocking as was implied. If you've ever read much Agatha Christie, you will know, for instance, that drug-taking crops up in a good many of her stories. And I devoted a good slice of The Golden Age of Murder to explaining why the perception that Christie's work is "cosy" is  feebly inadequate.

The early scenes, which set up the complex mystery, were well done, I thought. This was probably where a less accomplished screenwriter would have found it easiest to mess up. The book supplies plot, dialogue and characters aplenty, but the challenge of creating the right mood at the outset was an important test, and I felt Phelps passed it with flying colours.From then on, the excellent cast, did the work of keeping me glued to the screen. The filming hasn't been done, as far as I can tell, on Christie's beloved Burgh Island, but I kept thinking back to my own trip to Burgh in September, and my brief experience of being cut off from the mainland for a while, due to the heavy seas....

Phelps has quite an interesting approach to pacing the plot developments, and as I'm starting to study the art of scriptwriting myself, it's helpful to see how an expert does it. Charles Dance, Miranda Richardson, Aidan Turner and Maeve Dermody (who was excellent in the key role of Vera) were all particularly good, while Noah Taylor and Anna Maxwell Martin made splendidly creepy servants. Two members of the cast have met untimely ends so far. The body count will continue to mount tomorrow night. And I will definitely be watching.

Top Agatha Christies

I've been interested in two discussions in recent days on that perenially entertaining (if subjective and inconclusive) topic of "favourite books". Those excellent bloggers Christine Poulson and Clothes in Books started a thoughtful discussion about five favourite Agatha Christies, while Mike Linane, a very knowledgable Golden Age fan, drew attention on Facebook to the thoughts of yet another leading blogger, Crimeficlover, on "top ten Golden Age novels." I couldn't resist the temptation to join in. So today I'll focus on Christie. Thoughts on ten favourites from the Golden Age will follow on Wednesday. As Christine and others have said, however, not only do different people make different choices, one's own views tend to shift on these selections. And I expect mine will before long!

With Christie, however, I'm going to vary things a bit. I really want to choose six titles, rather than five (and I was very tempted to go for ten.) In reverse order, then:

6. Five Little Pigs - this is a Christie that I first read when I was young, and it didn't work especially well for me at the tender age of about nine. I was persuaded by the late Robert Barnard to revise my opinions, and I now think that the image of the murderer watching the victim die is one of the most chilling in  Golden Age literature.

5. Cards on the Table - this is a very clever story, and it's one of those Christies (Three-Act Tragedy, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? and The Sittaford Mystery are others) which strike me as surprisingly under-rated. The idea of confining the suspects to just four is a good one, and the detective work is very nicely done. Even though I don't like bridge, I've always enjoyed this book.

4. Peril at End House - a brilliant spin on a device that is now rather familiar. The clueing is excellent, and the way that suspicion shifts from one person to another - for me, that's one of the tests of a Golden Age classic - is splendidly done. I like the seaside setting, and Poirot and Hastings are in great form.

3. Curtain - because this book was posthumously published at a time when "mere ingenuity" was unfashionable, its cleverness has, I think, generally been under-rated. The central idea is fantastic and it influenced my otherwise very different book, Take My Breath Away. An extraordinary book in many ways, not least because of what Poirot does near the end.

2. The ABC Murders - the best Golden Age serial killer whodunit, and a book whose plot twist has inspired many other wirters, past and present. A gripping mystery, with neat clues and a level of tension and suspense that Christie surpassed only once, in my number one choice.

1. And Then There Were None - I've written several times about my admiration for this book. It is in many ways the ultimate Golden Age whodunit, and yet neither Poirot nor Marple appear. It was one of the first adult novels I ever read, and it made a lasting impression on me.

Yet somehow I've omitted The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder is Easy, Murder at the Vicarage, and Murder on the Orient Express. And... well, go on, then - what are your favourites?

The Craft of Writing: Originality

Originality is something to be prized in any form of writing, and certainly in crime fiction. The snag is that it is very, very difficult to be truly original. Even when you firmly believe you've come up with something absolutely fresh and new, all too often it turns out that you've been beaten to it, generally in a work that you weren't even aware of.

This sense that I needed to come up with something absolutely original held me back when, in my teens (yes, I started early) I thought about writing a detective novel. I didn't know how to create something that wasn't likely to be derivative. Inhibitions of this kind are not helpful, and I only got over them properly when I came up with the idea of writing a number of mysteries about a Liverpool lawyer. Something I knew for sure had never been done. Even then, one reviewer of my debut, All the Lonely People, thought she detected the influence of Raymond Chandler (which I wasn't conscious of, I must say, and I'm not sure she had read much Chandler or indeed much crime fiction).

I also imagined that I'd come up with a great idea for my first book that combined plot development with snappy social comment. A body would be discovered in a municipal waste heap, picked over by impoverished scavengers. Very good - except that, many years later, someone told me that G.D.H. and Margaret Cole also wrote a story about a body in a waste heap....Similarly, one of my early short stories about Harry Devlin included a plot device that I discovered, only very recently, to have been used by Gladys Mitchell.

These things can make you despair, believe me - but there's no sense in despairing. The stories by Cole and Mitchell are little known, but that's not really the point, either. The real issue is that I was trying to do something very different in those two Devlin stories than they were trying to do in their books. There have always been similarities between story ideas that appear in different books. There are said to be Russian and Swedish books that anticipate The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and one American mystery anticipated And Then There Were None. These were not, I'm sure, conscious borrowings, but rather ideas that were somehow in the air and which were developed by writers in different countries. Similarly, one of Dorothy L. Sayers' best plot ideas also occurred to Ronald Knox while she was working on her book. Another resembled an idea used (in a similar setting but in a different style of story) by Freeman Wills Crofts.

The same thing applies when there are overlaps between contemporary books. For instance, there was a vogue a few years back, after a drought in England, for crime novels in which bodies were discovered when the waters receded (very different from England 2014 - perhaps we are in for a spate of 'flood' stories...) I remember one Northern writer being rather cross that Reginald Hill had written a book about 'mystery plays' not long after she had done the same. But it was a mistake to be cross, in my opinion. The books were quite distinct, and I could give many other examples of overlaps which seem to me to be not in the least problematic. The real challenge for a writer is to come up with some element - be it voice, or character, or an aspect of setting - that is fresh. Trying to come up with at totally new storyline is wonderful when it happens - but it is rather uncommon, to say the least.

Agatha Christie, Poirot and The Labours of Hercules

The Labours of Hercules was perhaps an odd choice for the penultimate instalment of Agatha Christie's Poirot, a rather dark rendition of elements from the book of the same name,which in fact brings together a dozen collected short stories. The screenplay by Guy Andrews was well-crafted, especially given the challenge of the task facing him. The production was atmospheric and the cast (as ever) impressive, with Simon Callow really enjoying himself, though the story almost inevitably lacked the tight-woven texture of the best Poirot mysteries.

All the same, it's been quite a week for Christie fans. The CWA celebrated 60 glorious years on Guy Fawkes Night with an event at Foyles, announcing the results of its "Whowunnit" poll of members. And Christie was voted best ever crime novelist, and her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was best detective novel. Best detective was Sherlock Holmes, and given that Poirot, in his early days, was rather derivative of Sherlock, this seems fair enough.

Unfortunately, due to pressure of work, I wasn't able to make it to London for this event, but I agree with the view expressed by Alison Joseph, chair of the CWA, that the result reflects the long and distinguished history of crime writing. There are those who argue that the likes of Jo Nesbo (good writer as he is) should be ranked with the all-time greats, but it's very difficult to make a sensible evaluation of the potential longevity of present day best-sellers. Some of the stars of previous generataions simply haven't lasted well (a great shame, in some cases.) Anyway, the best of Nesbo and other writers of today may still be to come. Christie and Conan Doyle have unarguably stood the test of time .So although all polls like this one have their limitations, because inevitably, one tends to be comparing apples and pears, the results seem to me to make sense.

Having said that, my own feeling is that the best classic whodunit of all wasn't even on the shortlist. My choice would be another Christie novel - And Then There Were None.

Devil - film review

Whilst on holiday recently, I had the opportunity to watch the recent movie Devil and I found I enjoyed it immensely. It’s a modern film, and yet it has some distinctly classic elements. So when, after watching it, I read about the film on the internet, I wasn’t surprised to learn that M. Night Shamaylan, one o the team behind the film, and famous for the spookiness of his work, acknowledged that the story involved a nod to Agatha Christie.

More than a single nod, in fact. The main story is a riff on And Then There Were None, but in the dialogue there is also a hint of the plot-line from The ABC Murders. Suffice to say that I thought the film-makers used the Christie inspiration pretty well.

The story is taut (the film only lasts 80 minutes, and the brevity of the film helps to ensure that the intensity of the narrative is maintained) and compelling. An elevator in a skyscraper gets stuck and it seems that Satan is in there along with the five passengers. One by one, they meet grisly ends.

None of the actors was familiar to me, but they all did a decent job, and I felt that the film was well done, and the story presented in compelling way. The claustrophobic environment of the elevator in particular is beautifully conveyed. Devil is a world away from Fatal Descent, an elevator based novel I discussed here recently. But it’s much better than the Golden Age book by John Rhode and Carter Dickson, and, despite the lurid nature of the plot, it is strangely more credible.

Ten Little Indians movie review

To be perfectly honest, I was expecting to hate the 1965 movie version of Agatha Christie's masterpiece And Then There Were None. Which is why I've managed to avoid watching it until now. But I decided to bite the bullet, and to my surprise found the film surpassed my admittedly low expectations.

The setting is a country house, of course, but this one is to be found at the top of an Alpine mountain accessible only by sleigh and cable car. The servants who greet the guests who have been invited by the mysterious U.N. Owen are locals, and when Owen's voice is played on a tape recording, I discovered that the uncredited actor who spoke the words was Christopher Lee (in a later version of the film, Orson Welles did the same job.)

The cast is pretty good, including Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price and Wilfrid Hyde White, as well as the ultra-glamorous ex-Bond girl Shirley Eaton, who gets to play a sex scene, albeit mild in the extreme, with Hugh O'Brian.

A notable feature of the movie is the 'whodunit break', an updated version of the Challenge to the Reader introduced in the Golden Age by Ellery Queen and also used by the likes of Rupert Penny and Anthony Berkeley. A gimmick, yes, but a pleasing one, at least to my mind. I enjoyed this film more than I should have done, perhaps. It ain't Martin Scorsese, but as light entertainment, it ain't that bad, either.

Three Great Endings to Detective Stories

I was gratified by the interest shown in my last post, on detective story endings, and I thought I'd keep the pot boiling by mentioning a few of my fave endings.

First, a real classic - the closing lines of And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie. Dame Agatha was a dab hand at great endings, but this one, which I read when young, has always stuck in my mind.

Second, an ending that gave me an idea for a very different book of my own - Yesterday's Papers. The great ending was in Margaret Millar's A Stranger in My Grave. What I borrowed from this marvellous book was a structural device, and I was really pleased with the result. Yesterday's Papers remains a personal favourite among my own titles I wish it was still in print.

Third, a bitter remark made by Francis Pettigrew at the end of Tragedy At Law by Cyril Hare. Totally original, and quite marvellous - especially for a lawyer!

If you don't know the Hare or the Millar, I heartily recommend them both.

And Then There Were None - review

I enjoyed Rene Clair’s 1945 film version of my favourite Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The screenplay, by Dudley Nichols – who had previously been the first person to refuse an Oscar – was sound, despite a number of changes from the original.

The set-up is an absolute classic – eight people, along with two staff, are invited to a lonely island by a mysterious stranger. A disembodied gramophone recording accuses those present of having each been guilty of murder. And then, one by one, the guests themselves are murdered...

Apparently, some of the script changes were to fit with the Hays Code of morals on screen that was in force at the time. Christie’s story included a child murder committed by one of the guest, and such a crime was deemed beyond the pale. This plot point is an instance, by the way, of Christie’s work sometimes being darker than her critics tend to allow.

The big cop-out is the ending, which is much less sinister than the brilliant original (even if the original does require a lengthy written confession, a sign of structural weakness in most detective stories, but not here). However, I thought Clair and his cast did a pretty good job on the film and I was glad to catch up with it at long last. My third 'Christie for Christmas'!

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express - review

Murder on the Orient Express, starring David Suchet, the latest Agatha Christie’s Poirot to hit the TV screen, was my choice for Christmas Day viewing. And I’m glad I watched it, since it was one of the best of all the screen versions of any Christie story. Better, certainly, than the film version of the book starring Albert Finney as Poirot, even though the film is not at all bad.

Why was this version so good? The answer lies in the focus on the precise nature of the motive for the crime and the proper response to it. I guess that most readers of this blog are familiar with the central gimmick, but I’m not going to give it away. However, the key theme of the book – as with And Then There Were None – is the idea of doing justice, and in particular the doing of justice in circumstances where conventional legal systems fail to achieve the ‘right’ result.

This is a powerful, perhaps eternal, issue, one that is apt to crop up in all societies, at all times. And Christie’s willingness to take on such issues, in the context of an elaborately and innovatively plotted classic detective story, is one of the reasons for her enduring success. The screenplay homed in on Poirot’s battle with his conscience, and I thought that Suchet’s performance was superb.

The supporting cast, including Eileen Atkins and David Morrissey, was very strong without being over-burdened by star names. The script by Stewart Harcourt was first class, creating a consistently sinister atmosphere. Anyone expecting an entirely cosy experience from watching this version will have been surprised. But also, I hope, impressed.

Forgotten Book - Six Dead Men

Xavier Lechard, a great expert on Golden Age detective fiction, alerted me to the book which I have chosen to feature today in Patti Abbott’s Forgotten Books series. It is certainly forgotten – in fact, I’d never even heard of it. The title is Six Dead Men, and the author Andre Steeman.

The author was Belgian; he was born in Liege, and he was only 23 when this novel was published in 1931. It won the Prix du Roman d’Aventures that year, and was promptly translated by Rosemary Benet and published in the US. The blurb hails Steeman as ‘the Continental Edgar Wallace’. He never became as prolific, but research on the internet suggests he was pretty successful, and several of his books were the subject of screen adaptations.

The premise is appealing. Six young men have agreed to spend five years seeking their fortunes all over the world, before returning to Paris to share equally their gains. But one by one, they are murdered. Who will be next?

Does this remind you of And Then There Were None? I don’t know whether Agatha Christie read this book, but suffice to say that apart from a few similarities, the books are very different in mood and theme. I enjoyed Steeman’s pacy story, and the tension is built up very well. The plot is full of twists and cleverly done. Of course, there is much that is implausible, but it’s a book that deserves to be much better known. Arguably a real landmark in the genre.

Plagiarism and Borrowing

Some years ago, a friend suggested to me that another writer had ‘borrowed’ some aspects from one or more of my novels and utilised them in his own work. I took a look at the ‘offending’ work, and thought I could see what she meant. But it didn’t amount to plagiarism, and frankly it didn’t bother me.

Writers do need to avoid plagiarism. When I gave a presentation at the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Fiction Festival at Harrogate in July, I told the story of the legal case where James Herbert was sued by an author of an author of a non-fiction book who claimed that a Herbert book called The Spear was excessively derivative. The judgment makes rather entertaining reading, but is a salutary reminder that care is required when using research materials. Thankfully, though, plagiarism cases that reach court are rare.

That is as it should be. The fact is that the borrowing of ideas and so on happens all the time, and it is a perfectly healthy activity, as long as it is kept within bounds. Shakespeare is the classic example of a recidivist borrower, but there are plenty of others. Coming up with a truly original idea (or witty one-liner, come to that!) is far from easy. Several writers have used the trick that Christie pulled in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, for instance, but so long as they give it a fresh spin, that seems fine to me. Christie even did it herself, with Endless Night. Sometimes, of course, there is no borrowing at all, conscious or unconscious – two writers just have a similar idea at much the same time. For instance, I doubt whether Christie was influenced, in writing And Then There Were None, by the American mystery The Invisible Host, which appeared a little earlier. And I was startled when my wonderfully original idea of finding a corpse on a waste tip (All the Lonely People) turned out to have been anticipated by G.D.H. and M. Cole, many years before!

It has, though, amused me on several occasions to give a nod, in my own fiction, to some of my favourite stories by other writers. Part of the idea for the main plot of The Devil in Disguise is a sort of spin on Christie’s After the Funeral, though I don’t know of any reader who has ever commented on it (although there is a pretty big clue in the book, which actually mentions the Christie novel.) In the same novel, I recycled a few of my favourite lawyer jokes. And my very first short story, ‘The Boxer’, was a homage to Conan Doyle’s wonderful story ‘The Red-Headed League’, but set in modern Liverpool. This sort of thing seems fine to me, and I enjoy it when I come across it in the books of others. The key to making it work, as so often in life, is not to over-do it.

What Santa Brought

I had a lovely Christmas Day and I do hope you did too. Amongst other pleasures, I was lucky that Santa recognised my continuing fascination with crime fiction, and delivered many good things that will keep me occupied for a long time to come. They will also, no doubt, provide plenty of material for future blog posts.

I’ve already dipped into a lavishly illustrated guide, Agatha Christie’s Devon, by Bret Hawthorne, and read the chapter about Burgh Island, which provided the setting for And Then There Were None, and Evil Under the Sun. I do love islands, and it is a place I am really keen to visit one day.

I also received four audio books on CD featuring Francis Durbridge’s most famous creation, Paul Temple. I’ve enjoyed a good many of the Temple audio books – they are fun to listen to whilst commuting, and the new ones will definitely improve my tedious journey to and from work.

Among the new DVDs, there’s an absolute gem – The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. I received the anthology which inspired the TV series as a Christmas present when I was a teenager, and not long afterwards, I watched some of the episodes on the box. I look forward to seeing the rest of them, at long last, during the course of 2010.

Mystery Islands

I love islands – especially small ones. They seem to me to be tranquil places, yet full of mystery. The best Golden Age detective story (in my opinion) is set on a small island – Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. And the enduring appeal of the island setting is highlighted by the success of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

For years, my favourite island has been Herm, in the English Channel, a marvellous little place, but now it has been displaced at the top of my list by Holy Island, aka Lindisfarne (not to be confused with the 1970s folk/rock group of the same name), off the coast of Northumberland, not far from the Scottish border.

Staying overnight in the Old Manor House, right next to the ancient priory, was a great experience. The weather was glorious and that meant plenty of opportunity to explore the main sights, even though time ran out before it was possible to roam to some of the less visited parts of the island.

Holy Island is a place of pilgrimage, and no wonder. I found it utterly fascinating. I am not aware that it has featured in any mystery novels, though perhaps Ellis Peters or Peter Tremayne may have set medieval stories there. But it would be a perfect setting for a modern day mystery in the classic mould.

Original Sinners

I’ve started work on the paper that I will be delivering at the St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Weekend in August. It’s an event I’m really looking forward to – a chance to revisit old haunts in Oxford and to meet up with old (all right, yet fairly young!) friends. It’s a few years since I last spoke at St Hilda’s, and the last time I attended the week-end I had the delightful experience of meeting up with John Prest, who was a history don at Balliol when I was a student. John has given me help during the intervening years with the character and work of Daniel Kind, the historian in my Lake District Mysteries.

The theme of the weekend is The Wages of Sin. I’ve received a flyer telling me that speakers have been chosen to match the topic, which says something not entirely flattering about my reputation, but I’m in sinfully good company, with such marvellous writers as Robert Barnard, Kate Charles, Christine Poulson, and Andrew Taylor. I’m proud to count them all as friends. Cilla Masters, another good mate, is one of the after-dinner speakers.

I’ve decided that my paper will focus on sinful victims. I can think of quite a few characters who meet that description – for instance in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. But any suggestions from more modern books or authors will be gratefully received!

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie is more than just a mega-selling detective novelist who died more than thirty years ago and still manages to sell vastly more copies than present day scribblers like me. She has become a legend, and a universally renowned point of cultural reference.

Some years back, I presented a paper at a conference at Nottingham Trent University about the Christie ‘brand’, and day after day, there are fresh reminders in the media of the way in which Christie references are employed for a whole variety of purposes – often informatively, sometimes very entertainingly.

I was especially taken by an article called ‘Bodies are Piling Up in this Westminster Thriller’ by Rachel Sylvester in The Times yesterday. She used an analogy blending Christie with Cluedo to sum up the current political crisis in Britain:

‘And then there were none. Politics is starting to look like a murder mystery with more bodies than an Agatha Christie novel. It's death in the duck house with the lead piping, suicide in the moat with the rope. Will it now also be Alistair Darling, killed with the dagger in the grace-and-favour flat?’

Within twenty four hours of Sylvester writing those words, that body count has mounted rapidly. The Home Secretary is to abandon the sinking ship, together with a procession of junior ministers, former ministers and assorted backbench nobodies. I’m reminded of that famous Hercule Poirot mystery when it turned out that everyone was guilty.