The Whodunit Dinner and The Sinking Admiral

Right at the end of The Golden Age of Murder, I make passing mention of a new Detection Club project. This is a novel in the tradition of the Club's 1931 classic The Floating Admiral, a round-robin story written by "certain members of the Detection Club". The new book is to be called The Sinking Admiral, and again it is written by "certain members of the Detection Club" - including me.

This project has been masterminded by Simon Brett as President, and participating in it has been hugely enjoyable. I'm glad to say that the book has now been completed, and that it will be published next year by Harper Collins, who have already enjoyed great success in recent years with reissues of earlier Detection Club books, including Ask a Policeman and The Anatomy of Murder.

When Simon first mooted the project, a group of members volunteered to take part, and although one had to drop out for health reasons, unfortunately, someone else stepped in to take her place.The early stages of planning took a considerable time, but once we had the publishing contract signed, the deadline concentrated our minds, as it usually does with writers. We've had a number of meetings to discuss the project as it proceeded, and when the summer arrived, the book was in a pretty decent state.

We did not, however, know whodunit! So Simon, who has put a great deal of energy and skill into the whole exercise, organised a wonderfully enjoyable Whodunit Dinner at the Groucho Club - not far away from the site of the Detection Club's original premises in Gerrard Street - and as well as having a highly convivial time, we worked out a solution, and who would write it. (The menu above is signed by the contributors who were present, although a few could not make it.) It must rank as one of the most memorable occasions of my writing career. Wild horses would not, of course, drag any more information out of me about the story at this stage, but it's fair to say that we are both relieved and happy about the way the project has turned out. It's been tremendous fun, and we are very much hoping that readers will find the book is a lot of fun, too.

Forgotten Book - Called Back

A very, very long time ago,I reviewed Hugh Conway's novel Called Back for Geoff Bradley's magazine CADS. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoyed it all over again when I was asked to contribute an introduction to a welcome republication of the book by Harper Collins. It's just been published, and I hope that before long, it won't be possible to describe Called Back as a Forgotten Book any longer.

This novel was first published in 1883, so it preceded the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, although it post-dated the best work of Wilkie Collins. The storyline is admittedly very melodramatic. A blind man inadvertently stumbles across a murder - and when he later regains his sight, the plot thickens rapidly. As usual, I don't want to say too much about the detail of the mystery, but if you make allowances for when it was written, I think that - even though the contemporary comparisons of Conway to Collins were over-done - you will see why it did well. Fargus could tell a good story.

The book's impact was massive. Apparently over 300,000 copies were sold in twelve months, the story was adapted for the stage, and burlesque versions were produced. Conway's name was made. In fact, Hugh Conway was a pen-name adopted by Frederick Fargus. He was born in Bristol in 1848 (perhaps Crimefest should celebrate him?) but died at the age of 37 before he'd had enough time to show that he could sustain the story-telling promise of this book in the long term. A great pity.

Harper Collins have issued this book along with a couple of others, in a new Detective Story Club edition, with a facsimile of the jacket used when the book was published under the Club's imprint in 1929. The relaunch of the Detective Story Club follows Harper Collins' earlier success with the reissuing of Detection Club books such as The Floating Admiral and Ask a Policeman, and I'm very much hoping that this will prove to be a long-running venture. The more forgotten books that are made available for present day readers, the better, above all when they are lively affairs such as Called Back.

The Detection Collection

The Detection Collection is the latest book produced under the aegis of the Detection Club to be reissued by Harper Collins. It's a splendid anthology of short stories that was first published in 2005, under the editorship of Simon Brett, President of the Detection Club. And the list of contributors reads like a roll call of leading British crime writers.

Although I've written a couple of intros for earlier books in the series, Ask a Policeman and The Anatomy of Murder, I didn't have any involvement with this one, and the first thing to say is that Simon did a terrific job. His intro updates the foreword he wrote when the book first appeared, in 2005, and he explains that the book was put together to mark the 75th anniversary of the Club's foundation. At the time he first wrote the intro, there was some debate as to whether the Club did indeed come into existence in 1930, but I'm sure it did, and that the anniversary date was correctly calculated.

Simon mentions that sadly, four of the contributors, Margaret Yorke, Reg Hill, Bob Barnard and Harry Keating are no longer with us, (and even more recently, the great P.D. James has also died) but as he says, "they do live on through the quality of their work." I count it as a real privilege to have dined with all of them at Detection Club meetings, as well as on a few other memorable occasions, and I can only add that they were all as companionable and gracious in person as they were gifted. Simon also contributes a concise history of the Club, which appears at the end of the book.

In addition to the luminaries I've already mentioned, Colin Dexter, Lindsey Davis and John Harvey are among the contributors. Three writers who do not very often write short stories, Robert Goddard, Michael Ridpath and Clare Francis, also feature. As you would expect with writers of such calibre, their work stands the test of time. Ten years on, the stories read very well. I'm a fan of short stories, and enjoy collections of them, in any event, but even if anthologies aren't your usual cup of tea, I think you will find plenty in this book to entertain you..

Murder in the Library

I've been meaning for ages to visit the British Library, and I finally achieved this ambition the other day, although I only had time to pop in very quickly before catching a train from nearby Euston. However, the brief visit was not only long enough to whet my appetite for this impressive place, but also to allow me to look round a small but interesting exhibition, Murder in the Library: an A to Z of Crime Fiction.

As the title suggests, the exhibition is organised on alphabetical lines, rather than thematically or chronologically. This is a perfectly sensible idea for a small-scale look at the genre. It goes without saying that it cannot hope to be comprehenive - even a multi-volume set of books about the genre could not be. But I found it entertainingly and sympathetically presented, with some fascinating items and rare manuscripts, including one from Conan Doyle..

Above all, I was pleased to discover a number of items that were completely unfamiliar to me. These included The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, and a modern Georgian equivalent of the Dennis Wheatley "crime dossiers", called Mr Deaxley's Silent Box. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who has come across either of these fascinating-looking works.

I also had a bonus when I went into the British Library shop - and found plenty of copies of All the Lonely People on display. That doesn't happen so often that I'm indifferent about it! And there were also copies of the new edition of Ask a Policeman. Yes, my first visit to the British Library was entirely positive, and I hope to spend more time there before too long.

Ask a Policeman

I've blogged ,previously about the Detection Club's collaborative novel Ask a Policeman, and now I'm delighted to say that this fascinating book is to enjoy a new life in an edition to be published by Harper Collins on 30 August. This edition is reproduced from a first printing and beneath the appealing new dust jacket (see above) the binding replicates that of the original edition. It follows on from Harper Collins' extremely successful reissue last year of The Floating Admrial.

I'd be glad to see the book reappear in any circumstances, but there are a couple of features that I'm especially happy about. First, this edition contains an essay written by Agatha Christie about her fellow detective novelistss, which is truly insightful, especially as she writes with an unexpected candour (the essay was written for publication in Russia and did not appear in the UK at the time).

And second, the book contains a brand new introduction, commissioned by Harper Collins - and written by me! Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that this truly was a labour of love. I'm delighted to be associated with a book that is a classic of its kind and which will, I hope, amuse a new generation of readers as much as it did on its original appearance.

The contributors to the narrative, by the way are some of the great names from the Golden Age: Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, Helen Simpson, Milward Kennedy and John Rhode.  

A New Floating Admiral?

Round robin detective novels fascinate me. I’ve mentioned before the round robin books produced by the Detection Club, such as The Scoop, Behind The Screen, Ask a Policeman and most notably The Floating Admiral. These were stories written by a group of writers, with one person kicking off the book with an opening chapter, and then others developing the story in turn.

I’ve now fulfilled an ambition by participating in a round robin book of this kind. It’s not complete at present, though, and subject to confidentiality, so I can’t say too much about it – but it’s not a product of the Detection Club this time.

A question that is often asked is whether such books are planned in advance. Certainly, the project in which I’ve participated has not involved pre-planning – everyone has made it up as they have gone along! I was asked to contribute the sixth of ten projected chapters and I found it a very enjoyable experience. The fact that I have in the past finished The Lazarus Widow, which Bill Knox began, stood me in good stead.

Will the project see the light of day? I really hope so, and all being well it will happen, because a number of much more eminent writers than me are involved. But one thing is for sure. I really don’t envy the person who has to write the final chapter and bring all the strands of the story together!