Forgotten Book - Shadow Show

Shadow Show, published in 1976, was the final book of Pat Flower's career. I've talked about Flower a few times in my blog, because although today she is an obscure figure, she is an author who interests me. Born in Britain, she spent most of her life in Australia, and after a number of detective novels she concentrated on novels of psychological suspense. Even in her hey-day, she was never high profile in her native land, but her later books appeared in the Collins Crime Club and Edmund Crispin was among the critics who admired her work.

Shadow Show is a novel of suspense and paranoia. Richard Ross, the protagonist, is essentially an innocent who finds himself entangled in a web of crime and coincidence. He is a young accountant in an export business and he suspects one of his colleagues, Athol Cosgrove, of corruption. But he dithers, characteristically, before doing anything about it, and his hesitation proves costly.

Before long, he is being treated as a prime suspect in a murder case. He tells a number of lies to try to protect himself, and inevitably sinks deeper into the mire. He has a lovely wife, Laura, but their marriage has been affected by the death of their young daughter, and although he is good at his job, and liked by his boss, his involvement - and growing obsession - with the deeply unpleasant Cosgrove is investigated by a shrewd and painstaking cop called Forrest. 

Kate Jackson has previously reviewed this book and I agree with her that Ross is something of a wet blanket. His irritating naivete is the reason we don't sympathise with him quite as much as would be desirable if we were to become deeply absorbed by his troubles and deeply anxious about his fate. The challenge for an author writing a book of this kind is to persuade us that the unwise choices made by the protagonist were somehow inevitable, and this is easier said than done. Several times during the story I found myself groaning about Ross's errors of judgement.

And yet. This book does have something that kept me engaged throughout. Pat Flower was a highly capable storyteller and the very last sentence in the novel, nicely under-stated, is genuinely chilling and impressive. It is a terrible tragedy that, the year after the book appeared, Pat Flower - who had long been troubled by poor health - took a fatal overdose. Her work is definitely worth a look. 

Forgotten Book - Cobweb

Two novels that Pat Flower wrote towards the end of her career in the 1970s, Crisscross and Cobweb, re-work ideas and themes from her 1962 novel Hell for Heather. Of these three titles, I think the earliest book was the best, and Crisscross the least compelling. Cobweb, published in 1972, is pretty good. In Britain it appeared under the Collins Crime Club imprint, but doesn't seem to have made much impact. Indeed, she was an under-rated writer in her native country, although in her adopted homeland, Australia, she was known as a successful scriptwriter as well as a novelist.

By the time Cobweb appeared, Flower had dispensed with her series cop, Inspector Swinton, although this story features a shrewd and persistent detective called Fisher who is cut from much the same cloth. But Flower's main interest lay in the exploration of the criminal mind, and the protagonist is Martin Briggs, who at the start of the story is dissatisfied with his marriage to the lovely and wealthy Ellie.

Like many of Flower's lead characters, Martin is, beneath a superficial charm, cold and selfish. He murders Ellie, but the crime proves not to be the solution to his problems in life. He is attractive to women, and has a fling with a casual acquaintance before falling for someone else. This is Valerie, who comes into his life unexpectedly, breaking the news that she, rather than he, has inherited Ellie's money. To his delight, however, she seems susceptible to his charms...

The surprise solution is foreshadowed quite neatly and Flowers charts Martin's collapsing self-confidence with clinical precision. There is, however, a sad touch of irony about the storyline. Martin is tormented by insomnia and takes capsules to try to get a decent night's sleep. Flower herself experienced similar misery and in 1978 she took a fatal overdose of her pills. It was a tragic end to a career of some distinction.

Forgotten Book - Hell for Heather

Pat Flower was a British author who spent most of her life, and preferred to set her books, in Australia. Some of her later books were published in the Collins Crime Club, but even in her heyday, she was never well-known in her native country. Her work is rarely discussed and my guess is that only a handful of this blog's regular readers have come across her. But what little I'd heard of her made me interested, and when I discovered that my agent also represents her, or rather her estate, I managed to borrow a few of her books, which I promptly devoured.

Her first book appeared in 1958 and her fifth, Hell for Heather, was published in 1962. Like her other early novels, it featured Flower's regular detective, Inspector Swinton, but this is an inverted mystery rather than a conventional whodunit. The central character is Peter Baxter and we know from the outset that Baxter is determined to kill his rich wife Heather. But will he achieve his aim, and if so, will he get away with it?

Flower is a very readable writer and I raced through this book. My guess is that it marks a turning point in her career, a move away from more conventional fiction in favour of psychological suspense. There are some echoes of Patricia Highsmith and, perhaps especially Julian Symons, in her portrayal of mental disintegration. She wasn't quite their equal as a literary stylist - she has an odd habit of switching viewpoint mid-scene - but the quality of her writing is well above average.

In Australia, she was a successful writer of radio and TV scripts as well as novels, but there seems to have been a dark side to her life, as there was to many of her books; she committed suicide at the age of 63, a tragic end to a career of considerable achievement. I think her crime fiction deserves to be more widely read.