The Dorothy L. Sayers Society Annual Conference

I had a fleeting trip to Lancaster this week-end, to the Dorothy L. Sayers Society's Annual Conference. I've been a member of the Society for quite some time, and six years ago, gave their Annual Lecture at Witham in Essex, on the subject of DLS' true crime writing. More recently I worked with them on the publication of Sayers' collected crime reviews, for which I wrote a long commentary: Taking Detective Stories Seriously is a book I'm rather proud to be associated with. This time, I'd been invited to be guest of honour at the conference banquet on Saturday evening.

When the invitation first arrived, my plan was to make the most of the trip by attending the whole conference. Writing commitments made that impossible, alas; a real shame because it was clear from what I heard while I was there that delegates had been treated to several fascinating talks. The venue, incidentally, was Lancaster University, and I was intrigued by the campus, the geography of which seems to a stranger to be rather Kafkaesque. Bemused, I stopped at a map at one point, to be joined by a taxi driver, who said, "I've been coming here thirty years, mate,and I still get lost."

Anyway, I eventually found my way around, and met up with the Society members. The banquet was really enjoyable, and I was especially interested to meet someone who once corresponded with Paul McGuire, a relatively obscure but highly capable Australian detective novelist of the Golden Age, whom Sayers - among others - reviewed warmly. And once I'd given my speech at the conclusion of the banquet, I was able to relax over a drink or two. All very agreeable.

The Society does a great job in engaging with Sayers fans all around the world, and is well worth joining if you're a fan. My thanks to Seona Ford, Chair of the Society, for making my trip such an enjoyable one.

Forgotten Book - Born to Be Hanged

Paul McGuire is an author I'd never heard of until a Golden Age loving friend of mine urged me to read McGuire's Born to Be Hanged, and generously followed up by lending me his own copy. And I'm very glad he did, because his words of praise for this well-written and engaging novel were amply justified. It's a really good read.

McGuire was Australian, and a prominent Catholic, but his writing enjoyed considerable success in the United States. This story, however (and I think many if not all his other crime novels) is set in England - rural Dorset, to be precise, and he captures the intimate nature of life in a small town on the south coast very well indeed.

The story, narrated by a retired academic called George Collins, begins nicely: "There were many reasons, most of them excellent, for Spender's death." I felt there was a touch of Francis Iles or Richard Hull about the narrative style and the sly humour. There are plenty of witty lines, and this is a real strength of the book. The victim (found hanged by lassoo, interestingly enough) is a typical Thirties victim - a really odious chap who devotes his truncated existence to upsetting people for the fun of it. So there are plenty of suspects.

I wondered if there was an Agatha Christie style trick in store for us, but McGuire structures his story quite cunningly. There is not a great deal of action, but he camouflages this pretty well, and although the narrative depends on a single (if complicated) crime, it does not flag until the later stages, when there is an unnecessarily lengthy explanation of the backstory of one of the characters. I don't think the ending, twist and all, lived up to the promise of the excellent start, and for this reason I don't claim the book ranks with the best of Berkeley and Hull. But it is still very entertaining to read, and I am encouraged to seek out more books by Paul McGuire. He was a cut above many of his peers as a writer.