Forgotten Book - No Tears for Hilda

No Tears for Hilda was Andrew Garve's first book to be published by Collins Crime Club. This was in 1950, and Garve was a new pen-name for Paul Winterton, a journalist who had previously published crime novels under the name Roger Bax (he'd later write a few books under another name, Paul Somers). Garve novels would appear regularly until 1978, when Winterton was 70. After that, he retired from the scene, although he lived until just short of his 93rd birthday. 

Garve was evidently an interesting individual, a member of the Detection Club and a founder member of the CWA. He stood for election to Parliament in 1931 as a Labour candidate, but since that was the year that Labour were wiped out in a landslide, his political career never got going. It's not easy to find out much about his personal life, though I understand that he wrote a (regrettably unpublished) autobiography. Signed Garve books are hard to come by, and when I came across his personal copy of this title on eBay, I was keen to snaffle it. Now I've read it, I'm glad I did. 

This is one of those novels in which a man is charged with murder, but someone close to him insists that he is innocent, and tried to prove it. A familiar scenario, but Garve handles it with a touch of originality, focusing on the psychological make-up of the victim. Although Francis Iles had focused on a 'murderee' almost twenty years earlier, in his extraordinary novel Before the Fact, Garve's approach is very different. The setting and storyline are in keeping with the rather grey mood of the post-war austerity era.  

George Lambert's wife Hilda is found dead. At first sight it looks as though she has gassed herself, but it's soon evident that someone killed her. George appears to be the only suspect. He has no alibi, while an affair with a young nurse gives him a motive. His war-time pal Max Easterbrook can't believe that good old George could have committed such a crime. But there are no other suspects.

To find the truth, Max needs to learn more about Hilda's personality. It soon becomes evident that nobody did shed any tears after her death and Garve's attempt to present a rounded psychological portrait of an unpleasant woman is interesting if not, to my mind, wholly successful. But Max's search for the real culprit is interesting and Garve's smooth and accessible prose style kept me turning the pages. 

Forgotten Book - The Getaway

Because of my keen and lifelong enthusiasm for Golden Age detective fiction, people sometimes express surprise when I mention the American hardboiled books that I admire. But there's nothing inconsistent about liking both types of writing, far from it. I like good crime fiction of all kinds, and today's Forgotten Book is an example. It's The Getaway, by Jim Thompson.

Thompson was an interesting character, and not long ago I read his biography, Savage Art, by Robert Polito, which is informative and very well-written. Although he died in obscurity, Thompson predicted that he'd become famous, and there was a great revival of interest in his work a few years after his death. Several of his novels have been filmed, and indeed The Getaway was filmed by Sam Peckinpah while Thompson was still alive.

It's a book that I find quite remarkable. The central story concerns a bank robber, Carter "Doc" McCoy, who is married to a former librarian called Carol, who takes to the criminal life with gusto. Doc is unwise enough to collaborate with a villain called Rudy Torrento, and inevitably "the perfect job" goes wrong. Doc and Carol end up fleeing for their lives, with the forces of law and order after them, as well as Rudy.

The story of their fugitive experience is gripping, but Thompson has up his sleeve a final chapter that is, by any standards, quite stunning. I can't think of anything quite like it in the crime genre. Not even Sam Peckinpah, incidentally, was up to the task of trying to film it (rather like Hitchcock's failure to master the dark finale of Francis Iles' Before the Fact - you knew I'd get a Golden Age reference in somewhere, didn't you?!) I really enjoyed this book.

Recently, by the way, I've also read Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet. This is another good and highly readable book, narrated by a strangely sympathetic psychopath, though I wouldn't rate it as highly as The Getaway.

Forgotten Book - Laura

Laura, by Vera Caspary, is a famous crime novel that became an even more famous film noir, as well as a stage play, and haunting song. The book was originally published in 1942, and it made an instant impact. Caspary was a talented mainstream writer, whose memoirs, The Secrets of Grown-Ups, make fascinating reading. She makes it clear that she wasn't really a mystery fan, but it's noteworthy that her favourite crime writer was Cornell Woolrich, her favourite crime novel Francis Iles' Before the Fact. Suspense appealed to her, in other words, and Laura is a novel of suspense as much as it is a detective story.

When, many years ago, I first saw the film, and read the book, I enjoyed them without fully appreciating them. That was because I paid too much attention to the plot, and although the story has one excellent plot twist, Caspary's strength didn't lie in plotting. On rereading the book after having done some research into Caspary's life, I got more out of it than I did the first time around.

Mark McPherson is called in to investigate the murder of Laura Hunt, a very attractive woman who works in advertising. She is engaged to be married, and her fiance becomes a suspect. McPherson becomes intrigued by Waldo Lydecker, a rather effete older man who was close to Laura, and who is one of the narrators.

In telling her story, Caspary borrowed the narrative device favoured by Wilkie Collins - using different points of view, so as to conceal as well as reveal. It's a device which, when employed with skill (and Caspary was highly skilled), I find engrossing. I've never written a "casebook" novel, but it's something I'd certainly consider at some future date, because the form has a great deal of potential for the crime writer. It's fair to say that Caspary never surpassed Laura, but her other books are also intriguing and well-written, and I'll talk about one or two of them in the future.

Forgotten Book - The Walking Stick

The Walking Stick is a novel written by Winston Graham at the peak of his powers and it's very good news that Bello have reissued it, along with many other of his books. I'd seen the film based on it and made in 1970, starring Samantha Eggar and David Hemmings, and really enjoyed it. The book, published three years earlier, was just as good, and even though it is to some extent of its time, it seems to me to have worn very well, as so many books written by really good storytellers do.

By the time he wrote this book, Graham was a very experienced crime writer. If you compare it to Take My Life, which I blogged about recently, it's got more depth and more subtlety. It's a mark of his confidence that he felt able to write in the first person, as a young woman suffering from a disability (her leg has been badly damaged by polio, hence her need for the titular walking stick) and to do so in a way that carries conviction .Deborah, one of three daughters in a wealthy family, compensates for a sense of insecurity with a rather brusque approach, and the way she rebuffs an attractive young man, Leigh, who evidently fancies her, may seem unlikely to some readers, but I found it credible. In the end, however, she succumbs to his advances.

Leigh, unfortunately, is a bit of a dodgy character. He's an artist - but how good are his paintings? And how reliable are his accounts of his previous life? From the outset, it's clear that there is more to him than meets the eye. Graham's portrayal of Leigh reminded me of Francis Iles' portrayal of Johnnie in Before the Fact, and I did wonder if the earlier book was a slight influence, even thought the plots are very different, and the build-up here is slower than in the Iles classic. Even so, I gulped the story down..

Graham is interested in the moral choices that people make, and through careful character-building, he makes us believe in the choices - both good and bad, wise and foolish - that his narrator makes. Yet there's nothing preachy about this story - it's a straightforward yarn, yet told so fluently that it also makes you think a bit. Not too much, though - first and foremost, Graham was an entertainer. And a very accomplished one too.

A Mother's Son

A Mother's Son is a two-part crime drama screened earlier this week, and I've just caught up with it. I saw a newspaper preview which likened it to Hitchcock's film Suspicion (based on, but not as good or as dark as, Before the Fact by Francis Iles) and thought I ought to take a look at it. But interested as I was, I didn't expect such excellence. It really was gripping.

The setting - evocatively photographed - is East Anglia. The attractive but brittle Hermione Norris has recently married Martin Clunes, an affluent solicitor, after divorcing the rather less affluent Paul McGann. The new relationship brings two families together; two groups of children, and two adults still feeling their way as a couple. Then a 13 year old girl who goes to school with their kids goes missing. Soon her body is found in reed beds. But what is even worse for Rosie (Norris) is that she starts to worry that her son Jamie (superbly played by Alexander Arnold) may know something about the girl's death.

Suspicion is a fascinating subject for a crime story. Before the Fact is a masterpiece, even though it has a major flaw as regards the characterisation of drippy potential murder victim Lina Aysgarth. One of the finest crime novels I've ever read, Red Leaves by Thomas H. Cook, deals with the same issue very differently but quite brilliantly. And I had a play with it in my second whodunit featuring Harry Devlin, Suspicious Minds.

In this story, there were various clues and plentiful red herrings, but a plot twist that I anticipated never materialised. The real focus of the story was on the corrosive nature of suspicion (something Cook's book handles superbly) and the complex nature of family life. The dilemma of whether Rosie should tell the police about her suspicion was nicely handled, though I must say I sided with Clunes on this one rather than Norris. A really good television drama, one of the best I've seen in a long while.

Forgotten Book - I'll be Judge, I'll Be Jury

Continuing with my Milward Kennedy binge, I've chosen for today's Forgotten Book a novel from 1937, I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury. Despite the title, there is no real Lewis Carroll theme. But it's still an unusual piece of work.

The book’s opening is daring for its date, with none of the sluggish build-up often found with Kennedy. Mary Dallas sneaks out from the hotel where she is staying with her husband very early one morning for a tryst in a beach hut. Under her short beach-coat, she is topless. But before encountering her lover, George Needham, she stumbles over the corpse of her guardian, while the murderer hides behind a curtain.

In a panic, Mary and George contrive to make the death look like an accident, and their hurried interference with the crime scene succeeds in confusing the police. All very foolish, and almost inevitably their behaviour leads inexorably to disaster.

An interesting feature of this book is that it references the classic Francis Iles novel, Before the Fact, and gives a fresh slant to the situation Iles devised. But whereas the Iles book was filmed by Hitchcock, Kennedy's really is well and truly forgotten. Undeservedly, I suggest.

Forgotten Book - Before the Fact

Francis Iles’ second book, Before the Fact, is my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books. In truth, I hope it isn’t a forgotten book, and it certainly should not be, but the reality is that it hasn’t been available in the bookshops in the UK for far too long – my reprint dates from 1991 and may have been the last mainstream edition here.

Francis Iles was the name of a notorious smuggler, an ancestor of Anthony Berkeley Cox, who first found fame as the innovative Anthony Berkeley. The first Iles book, Malice Aforethought, was hugely influential. Before the Fact is also much admired, and it is memorable, although flawed.

It is the story of Lina Aysgarth, a born victim. She marries the charming Johnnie, but slowly becomes aware that he is a rogue. In time, she realises that he does not scruple at murder. And in the end, she discovers that he means to kill her.

This book was filmed by Hitchcock as Suspicion, but the master of suspense bottled out and changed the ending. It is a very bleak story indeed – the flaw, though, is that Lina is maddeningly passive. You end up wanting to scream at her to save herself. Even so, this is a remarkable story by a unique innovator.

Anthony Berkeley again

A striking number of readers of this blog were as intrigued as I confess I am. by the fact that Anthony Berkeley married his agent’s ex-wife. This may actually be a unique event in the history of British literature!

Berkeley does fascinate me, for many reasons. He was a very clever writer, and also an intriguing man. Malcolm Turnbull wrote a good biography, Elusion Aforethought, which is well worthe seeking out.

Some of the books are dated, but all of them have something a little unusual about them. You may also be entertained by this brief time-line:

1930 – Berkeley dedicates The Second Shot to his agent.
1931 – Berkeley dedicates Malice Aforethought to his first wife – and proceeds to divorce her.
1932 – Berkeley marries his agent’s former wife, and dedicates Before the Fact to her.

It’s not just the sequence of events, I think, it’s the pace of change that is remarkable...

His second marriage failed, too. But Berkeley, a complicated and rather mysterious fellow who claimed to dislike everyone, remained on surprisingly good terms with both his exes. He left money in his will to his first wife. And his second wife moved into a London flat on the floor just below his. As well as continuing to do his washing....