Forgotten Book - Death Knocks Three Times

Lucy Malleson was an interesting and capable writer who enjoyed a good deal of success without ever, really "breaking through" into the literary big-time. After her death in 1973, her work quickly faded from view, but she'd had a long career, writing under a variety of pen-names: J. Kilmeny Keith, Anthony Gilbert, and Anne Meredith. The Gilbert name became the best-known, but last year I was delighted to write an introduction for her first Anne Meredith novel, Portrait of a Murderer, when it became the Christmas title for the British Library's Crime Classics series. The book did well- so well, in fact, that although the main focus was on the paperback edition, I gather that the hardback edition swiftly sold more copies than the original first edition! Who would have expected that?

I've read a few of the Anthony Gilbert titles over the years, and I've had mixed feelings about them. She was a capable writer, and she had the important strength of caring about her work which meant that she was not content to stick rigidly to a single storytelling formula. Her main protagonist, Arthur Crook, is a rascally solicitor, so you might think he has a particular appeal for me, but in truth I'm not much of a Crook fan. Sometimes he seems to get in the way of the story, and to me, it's no surprise that a good film made of one of her books, My Name is Julia Ross cut him out of the storyline altogether. So did the remake, Dead of Winter.

All of which brings me to Death Knocks Three Times, a novel she published in 1949. The date is significant, because a key element of the story is the period setting: we really get a feel of life in post-war austerity Britain, although some of the political comments seem a bit delphic to a modern reader. The story begins, like others such as The Nine Tailors, with the detective hero - if one can call Crook a hero - stuck in the middle of a car journey due to bad weather, and taking refuge somewhere just before a mysterious sudden death occurs.

It's not quite clear whether murder has taken place (though the reader will suspect it has...) and the action then shifts to a sequence of poison pen letters, sent to a rather unpleasant elderly lady, who summons help from another woman, who is very nicely characterised and whose name is Frances Pettigrew (was Gilbert referencing Cyril Hare's Francis Pettigrew? Given the number of literary and specifically crime fiction allusions in the book, it is possible). Anyway, as the book title suggests, two more deaths fall to be considered, but an unusual air of mystery pervades the story. It's far from clear what is really going on until Crook comes up with an explanation - which, to be honest, I didn't find wholly satisfying, especially in relation to the first death. 

This is a novel that has earned rave reviews from good judges such as John Norris. For my part, I admired Gilbert's ambition, and her attempt to do something different and unusual, but I felt that the narrative was too diffuse to be altogether successful, and Crook's muted role also felt rather unsatisfactory. An interesting book, though, and despite my reservations I'm glad I read it.

Dead of Winter - 1987 film review

As seasonally chilly as its title suggests, Dead of Winter is a 1987 film directed by the capable Arthur Penn, who is best known for Bonnie and Clyde and Night Moves. It's a loose re-make of My Name is Julia Ross, which I reviewed back in January. Oddly, the earlier film is not credited. Nor is Anthony Gilbert, author of the book on which the screenplays were based. John Norris recommended the re-make, and he's a good judge of films, as he is of books Some of the Gothic touches in the later stages of the film are excessively melodramatic, but overall this is an entertaining film.

In the opening scenes, a woman is murdered, and her finger cut off, just after she has collected a large sum of money. The action then switches to the life of Katie McGovern, a struggling actress, played by Mary Steenburgen. Katie auditions for a lucrative role and makes an immediate hit with the chap doing the casting, a Mr Murray (Roddy McDowall, in one of his more eccentric roles.) He explains that an actress called Julie Rose has had a breakdown in the middle of a film, and a lookalike needs to be cast to replace her so that the movie can be completed.

On getting the part,. she finds herself driven by Murray to a remote and spooky house in a pine forest. The place belongs to a Dr Lewis, who is wheelchair-bound, and - it soon becomes apparent - not a film director at all. Katie soon realises that Lewis and Murray are lying to her and that something unpleasant has happened to Julie Rose. Can she avoid a similar fate?

I enjoyed this one, largely because I am keen on storylines based on impersonations and doppelgangers. Although the screenplay is radically different from the original Gilbert story, it offers some creepy moments and genuine excitement, as well as plenty of hokum. Roddy hams it up rather to excess, but Mary Steenburgen tackles no fewer than three roles with a good deal of panache. Definitely worth watching..

My Name is Julia Ross - film review

My Name is Julia Ross is a 1945 film based on Anthony Gilbert's novel The Woman in Red, published four years earlier. The story does not features Arthur Crook, the solicitor who usually crops up in Gilbert's novels, and the film is a "woman in jeopardy" story that I found a cut above the average. Joseph H. Lewis directs, and the screenplay is by Muriel Roy Bolton, and between them they fashioned something short, snappy, and suspenseful.

NIna Foch plays Julia Ross, an attractive young woman who has struggled to find work since recovering from ill health. She rents a room in an unlovely London house, and the man she fancies has just gone off to marry someone else. She answers an advert placed by a new employment agency, and they put her in touch immediately with a prospective employer and her son. She is offered a live-in secretarial job with suspicious rapidity, and duly accepts. When she goes back home to pack her things, she finds that the man she cared for has decided not to get married after all. They arrange to meet - but Julia doesn't show up.

In fact, Julia has been kidnapped, and finds herself the victim of a monstrous conspiracy which involves taking her off to an eerie house in Cornwall and giving her a new identity. What on earth can be going on? The answer doesn't take long to emerge, but it's fun to follow the twists and turns of the plot. The old lady is played by Liverpool-born Dame May Whitty, surely one of the more unlikely Scousers, who is best known to crime fans as Miss Froy in Hitchcock's version of another "woman in jeopardy" film, The Lady Vanishes.

 Apart from Dame May, the cast members are mainly unfamiliar to modern viewers,and the acting of the chap who played the weird son struck me as less than convincing. But overall, the film is well made,and I liked the way it raced along. Apparently, it was loosely remade by Arthur Penn in 1987 as Dead of Winter, but I haven't seen that. Whether or not you're not an Anthony Gilbert fan, I think this film is well worth a look, a period piece that is a nice blend of Gothic and British noir, and anyone seeking a more in-depth analysis might like to take a look at the excellent review by John Norris..