Forgotten Book - Eighty Dollars to Stamford

Eighty Dollars to Stamford, published in 1975, was Lucille Fletcher's penultimate novel. She was 63 when she produced it, and although she lived until 2000, she only wrote one more novel after this one, a book called Mirror Image which appeared in 1988 and which I haven't read. Perhaps she tired somewhat of crime writing, but there is nothing tired about this novel.

It's a first-rate story of suspense, a verdict with which estimable fellow bloggers such as Kate Jackson, Xavier Lechard, and John Norris (all of whose blogs I strongly recommend in the unlikely event you're unfamiliar with them) concur. I agree with the view that in effect it amounts to a gender reversal on the traditional woman-in-jeopardy trope. This time the protagonist in jeopardy is a man, the naive but likeable David Marks. He is a school teacher who has taken up cab driving in the evening as an odd sort of psychological therapy following the death of his wife in a hit and run accident.

One night he is asked by a beautiful young blonde woman to take her to a house in Connecticut. She offers him eighty dollars for the return trip. One of the problems with writing about sums of money in a novel is that inflation dates the narrative, but in 1975, this was a huge sum of money for such a journey. David is puzzled and becomes suspicious, especially when his passenger asks him to take her on another such journey a few days later.

Before long, David finds himself embroiled in a murder plot. This is a novel of mounting suspense, although it also has an excellent plot twist. Fletcher's taut writing reveals her apprenticeship as a radio writer: she knows how to make each word count. The book was turned into a film in 1982, and renamed Hit and Run (such a forgettable title that it's been re-used several times for other films), alternatively known as Revenge Squad. I haven't seen the film, and judging by comments on the internet, it's barely worth watching. But the book is definitely worth reading.

Forgotten Book - ...And Presumed Dead

There really ought to be a prize for the most excitable blurb for a crime novel. If there were, then a strong contender would be the Corgi Crime paperback edition from 1965 of a book published a couple of years earlier. The author was Lucille Fletcher, ex-wife of Bernard Herrmann and famed for her radio play (later filmed and novelised) Sorry, Wrong Number. The novel was ...And Presumed Dead.

So what did Corgi have to say? The blurb begins in breathless, conspiratorial fashion: "We are pledged to remain completely silent about the plot of this extraordinary novel." Wow! It gets better."So brilliantly constructed is it that even the smallest preview would detract from its shattering, agonising suspense." Gosh! And a few lines later the blurb concludes with the modest claim that the story "establishes an entirely new landmark in the literature of suspense."

I'm not pledged to silence, so I can say that this is an interesting version of the "woman in jeopardy" novel, and it's set in a fictitious town in Switzerland. The events take place in 1951, and this is significant; it wouldn't have been easy to set this particular story in the 1960s, when it was written. We follow the misadventures of Julia, whose beloved husband Russ was an airman who went missing during the war. She has followed Russ' mother to Alpenstadt, and it soon begins to look as though the older woman has something to hide.

Lucille Fletcher was not only a successful exponent of the suspense story, she was also a pretty good prose stylist. Yes, there are one or two overwrought passages, but there are also several memorable and gripping scenes, some of which have a Gothic flavour (there's even a ruined castle). The solution to the mystery of Alpenstadt does indeed take the story in an unexpected, and on the whole satisfactory, direction. Is this novel a landmark of suspense? I don't really think so. That blurb raised my expectations extremely high, and they weren't met. But even if it's not as extraordinary or as brilliant as Corgi claimed, it's still a good story. A period piece, yes, but worth reading, not least as an example of Fletcher's skill in building and maintaining tension.

Forgotten Book - The Girl in Cabin B54

Lucille Fletcher can't be described as a prolific novelist. She produced ten novels over a span of forty years (1948-88) and the first two of these were novelisations, co-written with Allan Ullman, of radio plays - she was a very successful writer for radio. But she certainly had a great deal of talent as a novelist, and The Girl in Cabin B54, from mid-way in her novel-writing career (it was published in 1968) demonstrates her gift for psychological suspense.

This is a cruise ship story, an example of a pleasing sub-genre which has given rise to a host of interesting, and remarkably varied, crime stories over the years. Having mentioned a few that rather underwhelmed me earlier this week, it's a pleasure to talk about a book that I found gripping. Here we are on board S.S. Columbia, making a trip from the USA to Europe. The protagonist - "hero" would be too much of a stretch - is the ship's doctor, Vernon Grove.

Vernon has been sailing for eight years. He's an experienced Casanova, a master of seduction. It's soon apparent that he's perfected his technique for picking up attractive women, but we also learn early on that, a couple of years back, one affair went wrong. The truth about that emerges gradually, as the past comes back to haunt him on one particular trip.

The key to the story is that a pretty young girl, who claims to have psychic powers, has taken up residence in cabin B54, which was the same cabin occupied two years ago by Vernon's ill-fated lover. What she says, coupled with the behaviour of some fellow passengers, makes him increasingly paranoid. The suspense mounts to fever pitch...

I can't say too much more about the plot, but I can say that this story illustrates Fletcher's ability to build suspense. She was a very skilled writer, and in my opinion her novels deserve to be better known.

Forgotten Book- The Strange Blue Yawl

Lucille Fletcher's The Strange Blue Yawl, first published in 1964, is an instructive example of the novel of domestic suspense, and of the author's clever use of writing technique as a means of ratcheting up tension. It's not by any means my favourite of her books, but for any would-be writer wanting to study the craft, it would be well worth reading. The author set herself a very difficult challenge here, and I enjoyed seeing the way in which she tried to rise to it.

The story is a first person narrative. The decision to tell the tale in this way was unusual for Fletcher, but necessary to make the required impact, for a couple of reasons. Our narrator is John Waldo Leeds the Second, a 38 year old musician devoted to composition. He lives in a remote cottage near the mouth of the Chesapeake with his gorgeous young wife Mary, a former TV weather girl.

One night, Mary wakes him. She's heard a woman screaming from a boat in the bay. Groggily, Jack Leeds gets up and looks out. Mary has seen a blue yawl in the water, and is convinced that murder has been done. The couple aren't able to do anything else that night, but then Mary (rather belatedly, I thought) says she'll ring the Coast Guard. In the morning they are duly visited by a Lieutenant Reynolds, who proves to be far from helpful.

Mary convinces her husband that they are in danger and that the killers will seek them out unless they are apprehended first. She sets about some extensive amateur sleuthing and reports back on progress - but it appears that there are several suspicious yawls in the area, and even more dubious characters. The tension builds up to a dramatic climax and a rather extraordinary murder.

It's all very ingenious. However, I have to say that although Fletcher came up with a clever plot, she tested my ability to suspend disbelief to breaking point. I found the Leeds' behaviour odd and unconvincing, and the reports of the various suspects didn't hold my interest as it should have done. I wasn't convinced about the psychology of the characters, and in a novel of psychological suspense, that's quite a drawback. Even so, Fletcher was a dab hand at keeping you guessing, and for that reason, this story is worth reading. 

Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as the rich and spoiled invalid wife of Burt Lancaster. Alone at home, she overhears a phone call which seems to be about a murder plot. It’s a classic set-up and I enjoyed the movie, which is dark both in photography and plot.

The ‘overheard conversation’ is a staple of a good many crime stories, one example being Philip Macdonald’s The Nursemaid Who Disappeared, which predates Lucille Fletcher’s very successful radio play on which the film is based. In the movie, the main story is told through a series of flashbacks, but this doesn’t stop the tension mounting, thanks to Stanwyck’s performance, at her highly-strung best.

The story involves a fraudulent scheme featuring a dodgy guy called Morano – played by William Conrad, who later played Frank Cannon, the rather obese TV gumshoe. Lancaster is in moody, and pretty effective, form, but the film belongs to Stanwyck.

Fletcher turned her story into a novel, and she wrote a number of others, none of which I’ve read. As an aspiring radio writer, she met a young composer, who became her first husband. His name was Bernard Herrmann, and he became one of the best composers for crime films of all time. But his great scores for Hitchcock came after the marriage ended.