Forgotten Book - Night's Black Agent

John Bingham's seventh novel, Night's Black Agent, was published in 1961. In Michael Jago's excellent biography of Bingham, it doesn't get a particularly warm write-up, as Jago focuses on aspects of the story that test the suspension of disbelief. There are indeed some coincidences and unlikely incidents. Julian Symons, however, greatly admired the novel, and I think that it's my favourite of all the Binghams I've read.

We're told right from the start who wishes to kill whom and (at least in part) why. The would-be killer is a journalist (as Bingham once was) and the proposed victim, a man known as Green, is not only a blackmailer who ruins lives, but also a sociopathic sex killer. In other words, it's a book in the tradition of Francis Iles' Malice Aforethought. But the story follows an unusual path, effectively with two major digressions to explain the background before a climax in Norway. It's a relatively short book, and I found it compelling.

I was lucky enough to acquire a copy that Bingham had inscribed to Joe Gaute, a publisher and expert on true crime. The dust jacket bears a laudatory quote from none other than Francis Iles, in respect of one of Bingham's earlier novels, and I'm sure Iles must have been impressed with this one too, since Bingham tackles a favourite Iles theme - how can we do justice, when the legal system proves inadequate to meet the task?

The title of the book is taken from Macbeth, but it's also a punning reference to Bingham's secret service work - he was a member of Maxwell Knight's team of spies, known as Knight's Black Agents. But this isn't a spy novel. It's a study of crime and character, and even if the Bad Guy is thinly characterised, the portrayal of his victims is done with considerable skill. I really enjoyed this book, and I recommend it warmly, coincidences and all.

Malice Aforethought - BBC TV - 1979

I was sorry to learn recently of the death of Hywel Bennett. I've mentioned him several times on this blog, and I always felt that he was a first-class actor, perhaps under-rated simply because in youth he was very good-looking. But he had tremendous range, and was equally good in Twisted Nerve and in Agatha Christie's Endless Night. He was also successful in comedy. But my favourite performance as his was his portrayal of Dr Bickleigh in Malice Aforethought.

I first watched that four-parter when it was screened originally in 1979. I was impressed then, and watching it again, in a grainy version on Youtube (there doesn't seem to be a DVD) I was equally impressed. Of course, it's a very fine story, which made the name of Francis Iles famous, even though nobody knew he was really Anthony Berkeley Cox, already a leading detective novelist. But Philip Mackie deserves much credit for an excellent screenplay which captures the essence of the book.

Mackie was an excellent television writer, whose other credits included The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Praying Mantis. I've often wished I could see the latter again; it's a gripping psychological chiller, - what a shame that it, too, isn't available on DVD. Mackie also wrote successful crime plays, but I've not seen them. His writing gave Bennett the chance to present Bickleigh ia a three-dimensional way. He's not a likeable man, the doctor, but his capacity for self-deception is quite fascinating.

The cast is excellent. Judy Parfitt plays the disagreeable Mrs Bickleigh, while Cheryl Campbell is the woman the doctor becomes obsessed with, and Harold Innocent is the vicar. I'd forgotten that the inspector was played by James Grout, who went on to become Superintendent Strange, John Thaw's boss in Inspector Morse; this role was almost a rehearsal for the later part. Overall, an excellent show, and a reminder of Bennett's charisma, even when playing someone unattractive.

Forgotten Book - Until She Was Dead

Richard Hull, author of today's Forgotten Book, was one of the most interesting Golden Age detective novelists. He was strongly influence by the work of Anthony Berkeley, writing as Francis Iles - it was as a result of reading Iles' instant classic Malice Aforethought that Hull decide to try his hand at writing a crime story. And Iles' cynicism and ironic view of the world is matched by Hull's.

What I like about Berkeley/Iles is that he was always keen to try something different. He showed courage as a writer, and even though some of the risks he took didn't come off, it seems to me that a writer who pushes the boundaries, and isn;t content to write the same book over and over again is to be admired. Following a formula, as many notable crime writers do, is all very well, but it's not really as exciting or inspiring.

Hull was an innovator, and was especially keen on playing tricky games with story structure. Again, it's undeniable that some of his tricks fell rather flat, and also that in his later work he began to struggle to match the originality of his earlier work. But even his weaker novels generally boast points of interest as far as a modern reader is concerned.

This is so with Until She Was Dead, which was first published in 1949. Again, Hull experiments with structure - we know from the outset that there is to be a murder trial, but we don't know who the victim was. So it's a form of "whowasdunin" story We then flash back in time, and see the build up to a crime committed, I have to say, by a rather chancy and unlikely means. In his personal life, Hull was keen on wine and philately, and both play a part in this story.

Unfortunately the small cast of suspects doesn't contain characters we care about - a recurrent weakness of this interesting and unorthodox author. The police detective, who sees the best in everyone, is a pleasing invention, but I felt the story flagged far too soon. So although I enjoyed its unusual features, overall I can't claim that it's a neglected masterpiece. A minor work from a writer of talent.

Forgotten Book - The Martineau Murders

The Martineau Murders is the last novel published by Richard Hull. An obscure and hard-to-find title, It appeared under the Collins Crime Club imprint in 1953, and it marked the end of an interesting literary career. I've mentioned my enthusiasm for Hull (real name Richard Henry Sampson) several times on this blog, and I've been trying to find out more about him for years..

In  his day, he was much admired, and he continued to play an active part in the Detection Club, of which he was Secretary, for a long time after he gave up writing. It seems to me that he lost enthusiasm for fiction, as there is a touch of weariness evident in some of his post-war books. None of them lived up to his famous debut, The Murder of My Aunt. But The Martineau Murders represents a return to that book. Not because there are any common characters or a shared setting, but certainly some story elements are to be found in both novels.

"My doctor has just left me" is the opening sentence. Alas, the medic has brought bad news to the narrator, the eponymous Martineau, or so it seems. But Martineau is a rather unreliable narrator, and much of the pleasure of the story comes from the reader's recognition of the gulf between Martineau's perceptions and reality. Some of this is, perhaps, rather laboured for modern tastes, and this is a book that (like one or two of Hull's other books) could have done with a meatier plot, but it is still quite entertaining.

By the time this book was written, more than a decade had passed since the appearance of the last book by Francis Iles, the author whose Malice Aforethought was a profound influence on Hull. The two men laced their work with a good deal of irony, and the law of unintended consequences plays a central part in their fiction. So it is with The Martineau Murders, a village mystery with a pleasing if foreseeable twist in the final chapter.

Writing about the Crime Genre

I'm fascinated not only by crime fiction, but also by books about the genre. This stems from my teens, when I first read Julian Symons' Bloody Murder, and learned a great deal about my favourite form of entertainment reading. One of the many strengths of the book is the pointers that Symons gives to titles worth reading (including many that took me a very long time to track down - one or two I've still never seen) and I continue to refer to it regularly. Another great merit of the book, by the way, is that Symons' prose is lean and highly readable.

The book prompted me to write a letter that was the closest I've ever come to sending a fan letter. Shortly after I left university, I had the temerity to drop Symons a line, and tell him how much I admired his book - but I questioned one or two things he'd said about Francis Iles' books, and suggested that he might have mentioned C.S. Forester's Payment Deserved, which somewhat anticipates Malice Aforethought, To my delight (and surprise) he responded with a charming and very thoughtful letter; he was well aware of Forester's book, and in fact he included it in a revised edition of Bloody Murder. He had a reputation in some quarters as being a rather grumpy chap, but I found him delightful, and did so all over again, when I  met him in person two or three times, many years later.He was clearly happy to debate opinions that conflicted with his own, as long as they were expressed in a courteous and measured way, and that is surely one of the marks of a civilised mind.

Since then, I've devoured scores and scores of books about the genre in all its aspects. On Thursday, I plan to write a post about ten favourites, but now let me just mention some new or forthcoming books by friends that are quite excellent, although like many other fine books, they are not in the list. I'll be covering B.J. Rahn's The World of Sherlock Holmes shortly, and I'm very much looking forward to an ebook reissue of Jessica Mann's Deadlier than the Male which will become available soon - details to follow.

And then there's Peter Lewis's Eric Ambler: a literary biography, a revised edition of which is now available from Endeavour Press as an ebook and via Createspace in print form..Peter contributed a guest blog about the book recently, and I was delighted by its new incarnation, almost a quarter of a century after it first earned acclaim. He makes the telling point right at the end that Ambler did so much to blur the boundaries between "the novel" and "the spy novel" or "the thriller". I would add that one thing that can be wearisome in books about the genre (if overdone) is extensive discussion of distinctions between, say, "thrillers" and "detective novels" or prolonged agonising about the precise definition of a "crime novel" or a "mystery". These are all useful terms,and they have their place, but they can also assume undue importance. Focus too much on such detail, and you risk losing sight of the big picture, or becoming uncertain of its true nature. I'm not sure, for instance, whether the great Julian's thesis that the detective novel had transformed into something superior, the crime novel, was really as helpful as it may have seemed when Bloody Murder first appeared. But to say that does not diminish his overall achievement. Just as the perfect novel can't be written, nor can the perfect book about crime fiction.

Last week, Curt Evans included on his blog an interesting piece which focused on writing about the Golden Age, and mentioned The Golden Age of Murder in very positive terms. As Curt anticipates, my views differ from those of Symons and Colin Watson (whose Snobbery With Violence is nevertheless a very good read) in numerous respects. Both men had a clear and credible point of view, but it led them to overlook some of the more interesting sub-texts in Golden Age fiction. Or at least, that's what I think, and that's what The Golden Age of Murder is -in part - about. In the run-up to publication, I'll discuss a number of aspects of my approach to writing the book. It was quite a departure for me, and one that has taken a great deal of work over a good many years. But now, thank goodness, the manuscript has been copy-edited (by another writer about popular culture, in fact) and best of all, Harper Collins have agreed to take on the task of preparing the index! .

Forgotten Book - Top Storey Murder

Life's too short to read all the books that one would like to try. And it's certainly too short to re-read books that are somewhat disappointing. But my Forgotten Book for today is a title which I felt was a bit of a let down originally, but which I liked rather better the second time around. Perhaps that it is because the author was Anthony Berkeley, who confounded my expectations originally, but whose contradictory way with story-telling I've come to value highly.

The book in question is Top Storey Murder. It was written at around the same time as Berkeley produced his masterpiece, Malice Aforethought, under the name of Francis Iles,but it's a very different book .As often, the detective is Roger Sheringham, the most engagingly fallible of all "great" detectives of the Golden Age. Roger is outsmarted by Moresby of the Yard nearly as often as he triumphs over him. And this book is a case in point.

Sheringham, cheeky as ever, involves himself in Moresby's investigation into the murder of Mrs Barnett, someone who (like so many victims in Berkeley's books) dies unmourned. Her niece Stella is one of the suspects, and Roger finds himself attracted to her, while wondering if she is a killer. A range of other people who live in Monmouth Mansions, where the dead woman was found, also come under suspicion.

This novel is a good example of the way Berkeley liked to play games with the detective story. Not just the game of "whodunit", but tricks with plot and perpectives on the nature of justice. When I first read Top Storey Murder, I felt that the ending was a bit of a cheat, and I'm still sure that the nature of the resolution of the mystery is a key reason why this book is not one of Berkeley's best. But it's more interesting than I gave it credit for, the first time I read it. Berkeley set out to be different, and this is one more story when he succeeded in his aim.

Forgotten Book - No Walls of Jasper

Few crime books by notable writers are as forgotten as my Forgotten Book for today, No Walls of Jasper by Joanna Cannan, first published in 1930. Yet the book's neglect is in many ways astonishing, because not only was it ahead of its time, it is also very well-written, and reads extremely well more than 80 years after it first came out. I can only blame its lack of fame on the title, which is taken from a poem by Humbert Wolfe (who? you may ask - he was apparently very popular in the Twenties), and which is rather off-putting and inappropriate.

In some ways, the book is in the same vein as Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles. Yet the Iles book came out a year later, so it was hardly derivative. Another comparison might be with C.S. Forester's earlier novel, Payment Deferred, or possibly Lynn Brock's later Nightmare. But Cannan's book is distinctive, because of its stylish and readable prose, and because a competent plot is in many ways subordinate to a study of character.

Julian Prebble works for a publishing house, and is fed up with his pretty but down-trodden wife, Phyl. He has two sons, of whom he is a proud but distant father, and he does not earn enough to be able to impress a coquettish author on his list, the glamorous Cynthia. However, he does have a rich and rather disagreeable father, and when it occurs to Julian that his Dad's demise would solve all his problems, his thoughts turn to murder.

I really enjoyed this one. It's a book to savour, because Cannan's description of people and relationships, and Julian's desperate quest for respectability ring so true, even so many years later. Joanna Cannan wrote other mysteries, which I haven't read, but if they are half as good as this book, they must be worth reading. She became better known for children's books, and her daughters became famous writers of pony stories. And perhaps that's another reason why No Walls of Jasper has for so long been overlooked. Writers so easily get pigeon-holed, and that is a real shame.

Forgotten Book - Murder of My Aunt

Murder of My Aunt was the debut novel of Richard Hull, and is my Forgotten Book for today. Published in 1934, it was extremely successful - in fact, Hull struggled in a writing career that stretched for almost twenty years to match it. Arguably, Excellent Intentions and My Own Murderer were better books, but the ironic wit and cleverness of his debut were what made it stand out. The trouble, as far as a modern reader is concerned, is the key plot twist is foreseeable. How much that matters depends on how much you enjoy Hull's style of writing.

I'm one of those who do. Hull was working, very clearly, in the same vein as Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles, and I do find those stories that play ironically with the reader's expectations to be very entertaining, provided one makes allowances for the passage of time. This is one of those relatively uncommon crime novels set in a remote part of mid-Wales. The narrator, Edward Powell, is a fat and unpleasant idler who is forced by circumstance to live with his Aunt Mildred, whom he hates, at her house on the outskirts of Llwll.

Edward decides that he needs to do away with Mildred, and the book recounts his various attempts to achieve his ambition. There is some degree of uncertainty in his characterisation - he is effeminate, but not above trying in vain to seduce a maid - but his loathsome selfishnes is consistent throughout. So one does not identify with him in the way that some readers may, possibly, identify with Dr Bickleigh in Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles. That's a weakness in the story, I think, but by no means fatal to enjoyment.

Over the years, I've managed to track down all the Hull books, and it's fair to say that they are a mixed bag. I go along with the general view that his post-war work was largely sub-standard, and his career petered out in the early 50s. Yet at his best, he was capable of coming up with interesting and amusing story-lines, and this book offers a good example. The fact that his idea has been re-used so many times since means that it's not easy to imagine how fresh it may have seemed in 1934. But it's a book that I enjoyed re-reading, even though I knew what was going to happen.

Forgotten Book - Nightmare

My Forgotten Book for today really is forgotten. I'd be surprised (almost disappointed!) if more than two or three of you have read Lynn Brock's 1932 book Nightmare. Yet Brock was quite a successful author in his day, and his elaborate mysteries featuring Colonel Gore are discussed from time to time. He has, however, been criticised, both for dullness (in places) and occasional racist remarks.

I've read a couple of Brock books before, and thought him quite interesting, but they did not prepare me for Nightmare. It is a stand-alone novel of some distinction. His publishers, Collins, said it was "“an entirely original novel, which will arouse great interest and discussion. It is really a character study of a normal man turned murderer, a most fascinating study in psychology...We think Nightmare is one of the most remarkable books we have ever published."

I can see why they thought this - yet they, and Brock, were to be disapppointed. This was the first of his crime novels not to appear in the US, and yet I would argue that it is a very good novel. Flawed, yes, but ambitious and genuinely distinctive. Certainly, it's no mere imitation of Payment Deferred or Malice Aforethought.

Briefly, the story follows the misadventures of Simon Whalley, an Irishman whose career as a playwright and novelist bears some resemblance to that of Brock, who was also Irish and whose real name was Alister McAllister. Driven to madness by the cruelty of a small group of people, he sets about taking murderous revenge.

Why did this book fail to win admirers? I'm not entirely sure, but the downbeat ending, with no real twist, was probably a mistake. However, I'm fascinated by the way that Brock matches the action in the story with what was happening in society at the time. A very intereesting book. I'm glad I read it,and I hoipe that others can track it down too. I'd be surprised if any of Brock's other books are as good as this neglected gem.

A Shock to the System

A Shock to the System is a 1990 film starring Michael Caine based on Simon Brett’s stand-alone novel of the same novel. Before writing the book, Brett was associated, in the crime genre, with a string of witty whodunits featuring the actor Charles Paris, so this represented a considerable departure.

I read the book at the time, and enjoyed it. One of the interesting aspects of the book is that it can be seen as a modern spin on the idea of Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles – a put-upon chap resorts to murder to solve his problems, and various complications ensue.

A striking feature of the film is not just that the screenplay was written by Andrew Klavan, a notable thriller writer himself, but that the action was transplanted to the USA. Furthermore, the ending was completely changed. I don’t know why this was done, or what Simon Brett thought about it, but it means that really one has to judge the film quite separately from the book.

On the whole, taking the film by itself, and trying to put the book out of my mind, I thought Klavan just about got away with it. Caine dominates with his usual smooth efficiency, and in effect the result is a crisp piece of black comedy that makes for pretty reasonable entertainment. Worth a watch.

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....

Forgotten Book - The Second Shot

Anthony Berkeley’s name has cropped up several times in my contributions to Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books, sometimes in relation to the work of his alter ego, Francis Iles. My choice today is the book he wrote immediately before Iles launched his distinctive career – The Second Shot, which was published in 1930.

Historians of the genre have often drawn attention to Berkeley’s preface, addressed to his literary agent. This is where he set out his manifesto for the future of crime fiction, emphasising his belief that the story based purely on puzzle was ‘in the hands of the auditors’, and that the future lay in exploring the psychology of his characters.

The thinking was ahead of its time, yet disappointment has often been expressed in the fact that The Second Shot was not truly ground-breaking. Julian Symons, for instance, rather dismissed it. True, it is really a tricksy whodunit, and the psychological forays are relatively shallow. And the setting, in an English country house (there is a map of the scene on the endpapers) is very much in the classic tradition.

Yet it is a clever piece of work, with Roger Sheringham proving even more fallible than ever in his role of interfering amateur sleuth. You can see that Berkeley was groping towards a different kind of story-telling, and in the following year, with Malice Aforethought, as by Iles, he made a real breakthrough. But The Second Shot is still worth a look.

By the way, a couple of years later, Berkeley married his literary agent's ex-wife. A bold step for any author, I would have thought.....

Forgotten Book - The Man Who Killed Himself

My admiration for the late Julian Symons is almost unbounded, and my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is a novel he published in 1967, The Man Who Killed Himself.

This is a novel that I read perhaps three years after it first appeared. Symons was one of the first contemporary crime writers whom I read after I ran out of Agatha Christies to devour. Now, some may say that Symons, an advocate of the ‘psychological crime novel’ had little in common with Christie as a writer. But although they belonged to different generations, and had different literary preoccupations, Symons could plot quite brilliantly, and the plot of The Man Who Killed Himself really gripped the youthful Martin Edwards.

It’s the story of a timid, hen-pecked man called Arthur Brownjohn, who metamorphoses into the caddish Major Easonby Mellon. It’s a means of escape for him. But when murder occurs, the double identity seems to offer not merely escape, but salvation.

The opening line is: ‘In the end Arthur Brownjohn killed himself, but in the beginning he made up his mind to murder his wife.’ Symons is strong on irony – you might almost say that this book is a Sixties update of Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles (which I first read around the same time), though there are many differences in the story-lines. Like Iles, Symons tends not to go in for too many sympathetic characters, and some readers find this off-putting. But I thought this was a clever book when I first devoured it, and I haven’t changed my mind since.

The ABC Files

I shall keep you in suspense no longer! The answer to my quiz question yesterday was A.B.Cox, alias Anthony Berkeley, alias Francis Iles. It was the publication of his masterpiece, Malice Aforethought, under the Iles name, that provoked such interest in his identity. Anthony Berkeley Cox had already established a reputation under the name Anthony Berkeley as an accomplished writer of detective fiction. (He also wrote one exceptionally difficult to find novel as A. Monmouth Platts.)

Malice Aforethought is a genuine classic, even if the twist ending was anticipated by C.S. Forester in Payment Deferred. I am fascinated by the range of names suggested as the author of the book, and I was pleased that so many of you had a go at answering my question. Thanks again.

The first two Berkeley books were originally published anonymously, and he was a man who guarded his privacy jealously. He was not unsociable, and co-founded the Detection Club, but he gave up writing crime novels with the advent of the Second World War, retaining the Iles name for his incisive crime reviewing.

I obtained the details of the speculation about the identity of Francis Iles from a book I acquired last week from a London book-dealer, George Locke. The Anthony Berkeley Cox Files: notes towards a bibliography is the work of ‘Ayresome Johns’ – but that is itself a pseudonym, for George himself.

George’s book first appeared in 1993. It was an edition limited to 300 copies, and a unique feature was that each had, tipped in, an original typed manuscript by Cox. George’s idea was to ensure that each purchaser had the chance to own ‘the original typescript of an A.B.Cox short story, article or other piece of writing’ and this seems to me to be a very pleasing feature. The manuscript in my copy is of a light-hearted little piece, ‘Our Fire’.Cox-Berkeley-Iles is a writer I’ve long admired and it’s fascinating to encounter one of his original typescripts.

Forgotten Book - Payment Deferred

My latest contribution to Patti Abbott's series is a book by C.S. Forester, who is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower. As well as his swashbuckling maritime stories, however, he wrote a couple of crime novels. The first was Payment Deferred, which came out in 1926. For me, it is a book that was way ahead of its time – it anticipates, for instance, the brilliant Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles. And its relentless bleakness also makes it seem rather modern (so do the references to economic woes, unfortunately...)

I first read the book as a teenager, and found it both dark and intensely gripping (it also has the merit of being short and brisk in pace.) The basic premise is simple. Mr Marble, a bank clerk, is desperately short of cash. Unexpectedly, a rich nephew from Australia comes to visit his seedy suburban home. Marble sees in him the answer to all his troubles. He poisons the nephew and buries him in the garden. It seems like the perfect crime – but, needless to say, things prove to be much less straightforward than the wretched Marble anticipated.

The irony of the story set a pattern not only for Iles, but also for various other writers of a similar bent, such as Richard Hull and Bruce Hamilton. Forester returned to crime genre a few years later with Plain Murder, but on the whole this book, although very readable, did no more than repeat the themes of its predecessor. Soon Forester decided to concentrate on Hornblower. But his pioneering contribution to the genre is too often overlooked – it’s time he got the credit he deserves.