Joseph Goodrich, The Paris Manuscript, and Shooting Script

Joseph Goodrich is a versatile writer whose play Panic won an Edgar award, and whose book about the extraordinary correspondence between the two cousins who wrote together as Ellery Queen, Blood Relations, provided invaluable raw material for one of the chapters in The Life of Crime. His book of essays, Unusual Suspects is also extremely interesting, with rare insights into the work of a range of writers, including that odd but talented character Derek Marlowe. Not content with these achievements, Joe has written short stories and now his novel The Paris Manuscript has been published.

The new book is a history-mystery, set primarily in the French capital shortly after the First World War. It is what Harry Keating used to call a 'looking-back' book, in which Ned Jameson reflects anew on what happened in Paris in the days when he was a young reporter, married to the lovely Daisy, whose brother runs into trouble because of his susceptibility to blackmail.

Murder is committed, and Ned thinks he knows whodunit, but the real amateur detective in the story is none other than Marcel Proust. I must confess that I've never read Proust, but Goodrich presents him as an appealing character. This is an off-beat story that I enjoyed reading. 

I should also mention Shooting Script and other mysteries, a book edited by Joe Goodrich, which gathers short stories written by that splendid duo William Link and Richard Levinson, who are most renowned as the creators of Columbo. I'm quoted on the back cover, enthusing in particular about their debut story, 'Whistle While You Work', and believe me, it is a real gem. All in all, this is another good read, courtesy of those excellent publishers Crippen & Landru.

 

Alibis in the Archive 2021

This past weekend saw the first online version of Alibis in the Archive and what fun it was. Gladstone's Library was closed for eighteen months and only reopened at the start of September, but huge credit goes to the tireless Louisa Yates and Rhian Waller for managing the weekend so brilliantly. When I put the programme together, I was aiming for a combination of quality and variety and I'm enormously grateful to all the wonderful authors who took part.

Lynne Truss and Simon Brett got things off to a great start on Saturday morning with a very witty discussion which included Simon's memorable description of story structure as 'the Lego bit of the writing'. After that, David Brawn of HarperCollins interviewed me about Howdunit and other facets of my crime writing career; we also touched on The Life of Crime, the copy edit of which I'm currently working on.

Then came a wonderful contribution from two American writers whom I've long admired: Joseph Goodrich and Rupert Holmes. It was full of great moments and I particularly liked his story about his contribution to the soundtrack of Arthur (yes, Burt Bacharach wrote the soundtrack, but Rupert did play a part...) On Sunday morning, an American writer currently resident in London, Bonnie MacBird, talked to David Brawn about the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes.

Len Tyler led a discussion with Ruth Dudley Edwards, Michael Jecks and Antonia Hodgson about the timeless appeal of detective fiction. I was amused by Len's explanation of the appeal of Gladys Mitchell despite the fact that her books often fade after a bright start: 'she's worth reading for the first 50% of the book'. The weekend was rounded off with no fewer than four panellists joining us from the US to talk about American traditional detective fiction: Art Taylor, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Tonia Spratt-Williams, and Verena Rose. I loved every moment of the panels and feedback from the audience was just what we'd hoped for. Next year, Alibis will return as a live event over the weekend of 10-11 June, but with an online component as well. Can't wait...

  

Forgotten Book - A Dandy in Aspic

All too frequently, I find I need a nudge to get round to doing something I meant to do ages ago. And this is sometimes true as regards reading books as well as less pleasurable tasks. Take Derek Marlowe's A Dandy in Aspic, for instance. I first read about this one many years ago, in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. I thought it sounded interesting, especially given that he compared it to Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, but somehow I never made much of an effort to track the book down.


The nudge I needed came when Joseph Goodrich asked me to read the manuscript of his book Unusual Suspects with a view to providing an introduction. Joe is an interesting and versatile writer and I was glad to agree. What I didn't expect was that his book would include a long piece about Derek Marlowe's life and career. This was quite fascinating and I went straight out and picked up a paperback of A Dandy in Aspic.

I'm glad I did. This is in some ways a flawed book, but the central idea is appealing, and the execution is, for the most part, highly entertaining. Our narrator is a chap called Eberlin. He works for the government, but it soon become apparent that he is a Soviet agent. Not only that, he is a hitman. The British secret service are concerned that some of their agents are being eliminated. So who better to hunt down the assassin? Eberlin, naturally...

The mannered style of writing is occasionally irritating, but on the whole adds to the enjoyment. My copy describes the book modestly as "the most brilliant spy novel of the decade". Wow! Given that Fleming, Le Carre, and Deighton were hard at work in the 60s, this is the wildest of hype. But the novel was filmed, with Laurence Harvey and Mia Farrow, and my next objective is to watch the movie version. I'm glad I finally read the story, and my thanks go to Joe Goodrich for giving me that all-important nudge.