CADS 63

CADS 63, edited by the tireless Geoff Bradley, has just been published, and once again it’s packed with interesting and often esoteric information about crime fiction past and present, but predominantly past. I can’t remember a single issue – and I’ve read them all – when I haven’t been introduced to a book or author that I’ve enjoyed, yet otherwise might not have bothered with. The joy of CADS is that you have so many encounters with the unexpected.

These include – for instance – two assessments by John Cooper of a selection of books by writers who are today under-rated, Francis Beeding and Clifford Witting; this highlighted a number of books I’m keen to seek out. Tony Medawar contributes a nice little article about Jacques Futrelle, who died on the Titanic, and there are good pieces by a range of the usual suspects, including Bob Adey, Barry Pike and Liz Gilbey.

Curt Evans’ latest piece of mystery scholarship, an attempt to puzzle out which of the ‘joint’ books by G.D.H. Cole and his wife Margaret were written as solo efforts by one or other them inevitably depends on a mixture of logical deduction and guesswork,  but the arguments are well presented, and may be as close as we come to finding out the truth about this slightly odd collaboration. I'm looking forward eagerly to reading Curt's new book about three relatively neglected Golden Age mysteries - more about this in due course.

On a personal note, I was grateful for Chris Simpson’s review of Waterloo Sunset, and also to Geoff and to Bob Cornwell, for including me in their long running feature, the CADS Questionnaire. By their kind permission, the Questionnaire will also appear on the ‘interviews’ page of my website. But really, if you’re keen on the genre and its history, there is no substitute for buying the magazine. An absolute bargain, unreservedly recommended.    

The Grinning Man

No question about the highlight, for me, of the holiday season television schedules. It was last night’s episode of Jonathan Creek, a two-hour humdinger called The Grinning Man. It’s the first new Creek show for five years, but David Renwick, the brilliant writer who created Creek, has lost none of his flair for combining sharp wit with baffling murder mysteries. I’ve watched every Creek case, and I felt this was the best ever.

Alan Davies, of course, reprised the title role, but there was no sign of either Caroline Quentin or Julia Sawalha, his previous co-stars. No matter – he was soon involved in a complex puzzle involving the Nightmare Room in a spooky old mansion. Back in 1938, when the house was owned by one Jacques Futrelle, a Harvard professor spent the night in the Nightmare Room, which was duly padlocked and rendered totally inaccessible – but he disappeared, never to be seen again. It’s a classic set-up, which John Dickson Carr would have loved. Renwick also nods to one of the early masters of the locked room mystery by using the name of Jacques Futrelle – as fans of classic mysteries will know, the real Futrelle wrote a number of celebrated impossible crime stories featuring a cerebral sleuth known as ‘the Thinking Machine’.

The eponymous Grinning Man is a painting by Bosch, which hangs in the Nightmare Room. But even when the mystery of the fate of the professor (and of others foolhardy enough to overnight there) is solved, there is another apparently impossible puzzle to be unravelled.

For a 21st century television writer to display such mastery of the craft of the classic detective puzzle is in itself deeply impressive. But Renwick’s skill extends far beyond the technical – he knows how to entertain a modern audience and to keep viewers hooked from start to finish. This cunningly contrived story deserves to be recognised as a modern classic.