Forgotten Book - The Body in the Beck

I decided to read today's Forgotten Book, The Body in the Beck, for two good reasons. First, the author, Joanna Cannan, was a good writer, as her excellent early novel No Walls of Jasper shows. Second, as the title of the book suggests, this is an early Lake District mystery story The book was first published in 1952, more than half a century before Hannah Scarlett was a gleam in my eye.

The story begins with a well-known Oxford don and mountaineer, Francis Worthington, discovering the eponymous corpse. However, he carries on fell-climbing, and only alerts the police when he returns from his ascent. This is rather typical of Francis, who is just surfacing from an unsatisfactory affair with a married woman. He really doesn't behave as well or as sensibly as he should do.

The body turns out to belong to a nasty piece of work called Hawkins, and Inspector Price from Scotland Yard is summoned to investigate. Price is a memorable character, verbose, puritanical and left-wing. It's plan that Cannan's sympathies were very different from his. Yet Francis really isn't much more likeable and it's small wonder that he becomes the wreteched Price's main suspect. This is rather tedious, since we know he is innocent.

I found Price entertaining and rather different. I also felt Cannan captured the Lakeland atmosphere well. But there is a snag. The detective puzzle itself is hopeless. There are no interesting suspects, the victim is a cipher, and the solution is unpleasant and unsatisfactory. I find it odd that a genuinely gifted writer should have produced a book that is quite so flawed. You guessed it - I was deeply disappointed. I remain an admirer of No Walls of Jasper and I don't rule out reading more of Cannan. But one good character and a great setting are not enough to make a good novel.

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.