Forgotten Book - Vintage Murder

Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder, first published in 1937, is a good example of the well-crafted Golden Age whodunit. It gains strength from being rooted in two worlds with which Marsh was very familiar - New Zealand, her native country, and the world of the theatre. Inspector Roderick Alleyn is travelling on North Island for the good of his health, but of course, wherever a Great Detective goes, murder is bound to follow.

Alleyn finds himself mixed up with a company of actors - the Carolyn Dacres Comedy Company. The company is run by two partners, Alfred Meyer and George Mason, and the leading lady is the lovely Carolyn, who just happens to be married to Meyer, and is an object of admiration for one of her fellow actors. An incident on board a train seems to suggest that Meyer's life may be at risk, and before long, at a celebration of Carolyn's birthday, he is killed in a very original fashion. A jeroboam of champagne was due to descend from the ceiling as part of the festivities. But someone has tinkered with it, and it duly crashes down, killing Meyer.

So -whodunit? Alleyn is only a bystander, but he soon finds himself drawn into the investigation. The local police come very close to tugging their forelocks when confronted by the great man from Scotland Yard. "We've all been trained on your book," they tell him. "It's - it's a great honour to meet the author." Ah yes, a footnote reminds us that Alleyn is responsible for a little tome called Principles and Practice of Criminal Investigation.

Marsh switches the focus of suspicion from one character to another with considerable ease. I felt that the psychology of the culprit wasn't exactly clear (or am I just miffed because I didn't figure out who was responsible?) but the writing style is easy and pleasant, and Marsh conveys her love of theatrical life very well. All in all,a good read. It will be fascinating to see what Stella Duffy, who shares a good deal in common with Marsh, will make of her forthcoming "continuation novel" based on an incomplete manuscript.

Forgotten Book - The Nursing Home Murder

These are happy times for fans of Forgotten Books. There is much more interest in them now than there was a few years ago, no doubt due to the success of recent reprints. The media has cottoned on, and I've had the unfamiliar experience of talking about the Golden Age three times in the past week. Once for Channel 4 TV's Sunday Brunch - to be screened on 27 December - talking about The Golden Age of Murder, the Detection Club and Sherlock.. Once for a Japanese TV documentary, talking about Agatha Christie. And, yesterday, for Radio 4's Open Book, about Silent Nights and other Christmas mysteries. I shall never be a truly confident performer, yet these things really are fun to do - in small quantities, that is, as they are certainly time-consuming.

Now to Ngaio Marsh. She has long been regarded as one of the "Queens of Crime", and I started reading her in my teens, after I ran out of books by Christie and Sayers. I read and enjoyed quite a few of them, but a couple rather sagged in the middle,and in the last twenty-five years I've read little by Marsh. I decided it was time to give her another go, and The Nursing Home Murder, first published in 1935, is my Forgotten Book today.

According to Margaret Lewis, author of a superb biography of Marsh, this was her best-selling book, and although I've read mixed reports about this story, I enjoyed it. There was no mid-narrative sag, and on the contrary the story gained from brevity, and was crisp and uncluttered. Social conditions and preoccupations of the time feature strongly, and are integral to the plot, not mere window-dressing. Definitely a cut above most of the crime fiction being written in the mid-Thirties.

I say this even though Marsh dips a toe into politics, which is so often a mistake (although one quite often made by authors then and now.) Her treatment of political issues is extremely superficial, but not as inept as is sometimes found in Golden Age novels. Sir Derek O'Callaghan is the Home Secretary, tasked with piloting through Parliament some anti-anarchist legislation, making him a target for political assassins. He collapses with peritonitis and is rushed into a nursing home for an operation. Here he has the peculiar misfortune to be surrounded by members of a medical team who wish him ill. He meets his end as a result of a lethal dose of hyoscine.

Suspicions switches briskly from one suspect to another. This is one of those classic crime novels which focus on a single crime, but Marsh's handling of the material is assured, and my interest never flagged. Incidentally, the book was originally published under her name and that of Henry Jellett,a medical man who advised her on the technicalities of the storyline. Sad to say, my paperback edition of the novel contains no mention whatsoever of Henry. Rather a shame - he deserves credit for contributing to an enjoyable traditional mystery.

Forgotten Book - Dictator's Way

Thanks to the sterling efforts of Ramble House, a very likeable publisher indeed, a few of E.R. Punshon's long-forgotten books have become available again to modern readers. Dictator's Way, first published in 1938, is among them, and it is notable above all for the insight it gives into the issues preoccupying thinking men and women like Punshon at the time - the grim state of international affairs and the threat posed by totalitarian dictators.

This is an entry in the Bobby Owen series, and another reason why Dictator's Way is of note is that it introduces Olive, a resourceful young woman who was to become the love of Bobby's life. The path of true love does  not run smooth at first, but it seems to me that Punshon, like Margery Allingham, Nicholas Blake, Ngaio Marsh and others was following the lead set by Dorothy L. Sayers in having a youngish male detective meet, during the course of his cases, the woman whom he would marry. In each case they are strong women, not content to sit on the sidelines of life, and this helps the reader to appreciate them.

Punshon had liberal/leftish political views, and takes the opportunity to show his contempt for Hitler, Mussolini and Oswald Mosley in the course of a story dealing scathingly with the so-called "Redeemer" of Etruria. This political perspective gives the book spice, and also gives the lie to the often repeated but false claim that Golden Age writers were just a bunch of cosy reactionaries. Why have so many otherwise sensible people made such a claim? I suspect it's because, for the most part, the really successful Golden Age writers were conservative in outlook, although I'd describe some of them at least as questioning conservatives.

Anyway, on to the book. It contains thrillerish elements and a loveable working class rogue whom I found rather irritating. The whodunit element of the story isn't especially memorable. You can see why Punshon fell into neglect - but you can also see why good judges found something to admire in his work. It's often a mixed bag, but his thoughtfulness makes him a Golden Age writer about whom I'd like to know much more. But my knowledge of his life doesn't extend far beyond what's to be found on the internet. I don't suggest he's a superstar, but I do think he deserves to be remembered.  Ramble House are doing a great job in bringing some of his books back to life.

Forgotten Book - Deadlier Than The Male

Jessica Mann is an accomplished novelist, and I plan to write about her fiction in a future blog post, but my choice today for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is a non-fiction work dating back to 1981. Deadlier Than The Male was written at a time when reference volumes about the crime fiction genre came out in a trickle, rather than (as now) a flood. But nearly three decades on, it stands up to scrutiny very well indeed.

The book is sub-titled ‘An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing’, and it seeks to answer the question: ‘Why is it that respectable English women are so good at murder?’

Mann displays her formidable knowledge of the genre throughout. The heart of the book is devoted to an in-depth look at the work of Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Tey and Allingham, but many other authors are considered (including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, one of whose forgotten titles I featured last week.) I was pleased to see mention of Nina Bawden – it’s now seldom noted that, early in her career, she wrote detective stories of real merit.

This is such a good book that I’m sorry Mann has not written further works of crime-related criticism – although she remains a highly regarded reviewer. One of her many interesting observations is that ‘Crime novelists…are particularly reticent about their own personal lives’. I think it’s fair to say that this is less the case today than it was in 1981, thanks to the pressures on authors to promote themselves, coupled with the rise of the internet, social networking, and, yes, blogging. It’s not at all easy for modern crime writers to maintain their privacy as did the likes of Sayers, Christie and their contemporaries. But whether the change is wholly a good thing is an interesting subject for debate.

One final point. Mann acknowledges the help of that delightful writer Catherine Aird, and refers to Aird's proposed biography of Josephine Tey. It's a matter for regret that the biography has never appeared, and I still hope against hope that, one day, it might.

Ngaio Again

Further to my post in August about the collection edited by B.J. Rahn, I’ve found another relatively obscure book, this time dating back to 1996, which discusses the work of one of the most notable writers of the Golden Age. Murder Most Poetic: the mystery novels of Ngaio Marsh, is a fairly short but pithy survey by Mary S. Weinkauf.

Weinkauf makes the point that Marsh’s first love was always the theatre, but it was writing detective fiction that gave her financial freedom. (Those were the days, huh?) She makes a number of interesting points. For example: ‘Character is the greatest single factor in Alleyn’s investigation. It is not why one person murders another which fascinates him, but whose personality is most likely to turn homicidal – in the right conditions.’

This is an interesting perspective for a whodunit writer, although for me it is the ‘why’ that is crucial – in fact, the starting point for most of my fictions. I agree with Weinkauf that it is a flaw that ‘Marsh’s characters tend to kill others for the convenience of her plot.’

This is a book full of spoilers, which are nevertheless rather entertaining. For instance, one appendix lists ‘actors and others associated with the theatre who are killers in Marsh’s fiction’. Fourteen people are named. Another appendix lists references to Shakespeare’s plays in Marsh’s work. A whole chapter is devoted to ‘theatrical devices in Marsh’s fiction’.

All in all, this is a worthwhile study of a good crime writer. Weinkauf does not make excessive claims for Marsh, and recognises (I think this is unarguable) that Christie was much better at plotting, but highlights her strengths, and analyses her work with a care that encourages me – after a long gap - to read more Marsh in the future.

Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh was one of the great names of the Golden Age of detective fiction, but I I’ve seldom if ever mentioned her in this blog. The omission isn’t due to disregard. In my teens, I read quite a few of her books, but although I thought her a smooth writer, the plots didn’t match up to those of Christie or Sayers, and before long I focused my attention on more contemporary writers, such as Michael Gilbert and Julian Symons.

But every now and then I’ve dabbled in Marsh. For instance, I watched one or two of the Inspector Alleyn mysteries on television, and I recently treated myself to the box set (when I’ll ever find time to watch all the episodes is a conundrum I haven’t solved as yet.) And I very much enjoyed Margaret Lewis’s biography of Ngaio. It’s a substantial work, tirelessly researched, by an academic with a huge love of detective fiction. In fact, Margaret, along with her husband Peter, preside over Flambard Press, an excellent small press who brought out Dancing for the Hangman late last year.

Margaret also helped me to include a short article by Ngaio which I featured in a collection of Northern crime writing called Northern Blood. How I managed to justify including something by a New Zealander in a book focusing on the North of England is another story!

I’ve now obtained a copy of Ngaio Marsh: the woman and her work. This is a collection of essays edited by B.J.Rahn – who, is, like Margaret, an academic whose passion for the genre is matched by her knowledge and understanding of it. The contributors include Margaret, Julian Symons, Catherine Aird, Harry Keating and Doug Greene. I’m looking forward to reading it.