Forgotten Book - Hand of Fate

Are there any other Michael Underwood fans out there? Underwood was a prolific writer of mysteries which usually had a legal element. His long career began in 1954 and came to an end with his death in 1992. He produced a number of series, the most extensive featuring the solicitor Rosa Epton, together with stand-alones, and he was Secretary of the Detection Club and served as Chair of the CWA. I think it's fair to say that he was predominantly a writer for the library market, but although he seldom scaled the literary heights as a novelist, he was an accomplished entertainer.

My forgotten book for today is one of his stand-alones, Hand of Fate, which appeared in 1981. It's a good story, which showcases Underwood's strengths, as well as his limitations. We begin with a scenario suggestive of the Crippen case. Frank Wimble is a rich, self-made man whose wife refuses him a divorce at a time when he wants to marry his mistress. Elspeth Wimble duly disappears in mysterious circumstances. Local gossip comes to the attention of the police and their investigations take a fresh turn when a severed hand is found in local woodland, bearing Elspeth's ring. Frank is duly charged with murder.

The murder trial takes up the bulk of the novel. Underwood, whose real name was John Michael Evelyn, was a barrister who worked in public prosecutions, and his command of detail is extremely convincing, even if sometimes the information is presented in a slightly dry way. We veer into Verdict of Twelve territory, with Underwood presenting us with insight into the jurors' lives, rather as Raymond Postgate did. This is fascinating, although many of the threads here are left undeveloped. We also learn about the female judge, and I presumed that what was going on in her personal life (her daughter-in-law is having an affair) would somehow link in with the plot. It's not really a spoiler to say that it doesn't. Here, I think, Underwood missed a trick. Postgate was more ambitious with his novel, and that's why it is better remembered.

Nevertheless, I kept turning the pages, wanting to find out what the truth was (I did guess most of it, but the twists are clever.) Underwood had a very smooth, readable style. What he lacked in terms of literary ambition, he made up for by telling a good story. In real life, he was gay, and my guess is that the discretion that evidently characterised his life influenced his approach to writing. He didn't want to give too much away about himself, although there's an interesting development in the closing paragraphs of the novel. This is a light, pacy read, and even if the characterisation isn't too sophisticated, it's well worth reading.

Forgotten Book - Somebody at the Door

The British Library has done crime fans a service by republishing Raymond Postgate's admirable crime novel Verdict of Twelve, but today I want to talk about that book's much less renowned successor, Somebody at the Door, first published in 1943. It's a story which shares some features in common with its predecessors, and again Postgate uses fiction to illustrate his belief that our personal histories determine what happens in our lives..

The story begins at Euston Station, one Friday evening in January, 1942. A cashier called Grayling, who also serves on the local council at Croxburn, is travelling home with a suitcase full of cash - wages to be handed out to the staff on Monday. Grayling shares a carriage with a group of people, several of whom are known to him personally. That evening, he dies at home, and it becomes clear that he has been the victim of a highly unusual murder. One possibility is that he was poisoned by one of his fellow passengers.

Postgate devotes most of the story to a series of accounts of the lives of some of those passengers. Although the killer's m.o. is unorthodox, it seems - amazingly - possible that it may have been employed by a number of people who have motives to wish Grayling harm. For Grayling, it turns out, was a nasty piece of work, a mean-minded hypocrite who was involved in local government corruption (the description of his various scams is quite fascinating).

Postgate's radical political views, and his atheism, inform the narrative. No character with conservative attitudes or religious beliefs comes out of the story unscathed. At times the political digressions are over-done, and as a result, of this, and one or two structural flaws, the book isn't as compelling as Verdict of Twelve. It's also a bleak book, not remotely comfort reading. But it's extremely interesting nonetheless, and deserves to be better known.

Bodies from the Library

Not so long ago, to suggest that a group of volunteers could set up from scratch a conference about Golden Age fiction that would attract a large and near sell-out audience at one of the country's most prestigious venues would have seemed fanciful. Yet that is exactly what happened with the Bodies from the Library conference at the British Library on Saturday. And the first thing to say about the event is that Mike, John, Mark, Liz, Susan and company who worked so hard to make the dream a reality deserve the utmost praise. The event was a huge success.

I was glad to be heavily involved with the day's events. First, Jake Kerridge and I talked about what and when was the Golden Age, and later in the morning Simon Brett and I discussed the Detection Club, including its collaborative books. In the final session, all the participants talked about books they thought ripe for a reprint - I sneaked in several titles, though my ultimate choice was Raymond Postgate's Verdict of Twelve. Simon, witty as ever, suggested that I'd contrived the whole event as a grandiose launch for The Golden Age of Murder, and really it was wonderful to sign so many copies . But there was much else to celebrate.

Barry Pike, doyen of Golden Age experts, spoke about Sayers and Allingham, and it was also a great pleasure for me to meet for the first time John Cooper, another great expert, who co-authored with Barry two superb and lavishly illustrated books, Collecting Detective Fiction and Artists in Crime. Both strongly recommended. Other speakers included John Curran on Christie, Dolores Gordon-Smith on Crofts, Tony Medawar on locked room mysteries, and Len Tyler on modern day GA fiction. Along with America's Doug Greene and Marv Lachman, Barry, John and Tony have done so much for so many years to keep the flag flying for GA fiction, and the audience loved listening to them.

That wasn't all. Richard Reynolds discussed Oxbridge crime, and we also listened to a John Dickson Carr radio play. David Brawn of Harper Collins and Rob Davies of the BL discussed editing issues with GA fiction; I very much enjoy working with both David and Rob and they were the ideal choices for that particular panel.

The social side of these events is always important, and I was delighted to meet a number of people for the first time with whom I've corresponded in the past. In fact, the only snag was that there simply wasn't enough time to have much of a chat with the many interesting people who were there. One thing I can say for sure, though, is that the buzz in the Library was fantastic, and that everyone hopes the event can be held again next year.

Forgotten Book - At the Villa Rose

At the Villa Rose is the name of a very good blog, run by Xavier Lechard. It derives its name from my Forgotten Book for today, the 1910 mystery novel written by A.E.W. Mason, which I've just re-read after very many years. And the book is as enjoyable and thought-provoking as Xavier's blog.

I was first introduced to Mason, and his detective Inspector Hanaud, when I was a schoolboy. I used to borrow from the local library titles in a Hodder series, edited by Michael Gilbert, which reprinted classics of mystery and adventure. It was through this series that I first came across Anthony Berkeley's Trial and Error, and Raymond Postgate's Verdict of Twelve. Two masterpieces. In other words, Michael Gilbert had excellent taste, and was a man whose judgment could be trusted.

I can't recall now much of what Gilbert had to say about Mason, but I do remember that he admired The House of the Arrow very much, and although that is, I think, a better book than At the Villa Rose, both are of a high calibre. It's worth noting that At the Villa Rose was published in 1910, before the "Golden Age" got under way, but it boasts a great version of the Holmes-Watson pairing in Hanaud and Julius Ricardo, and a clever plot, with numerous neat touches, plus a classy, cosmopolitan setting.

Mason based the story on a real life murder case, but he injected imagination into the true crime scenario. Where he erred, I think, was in revealing the solution too soon. Too much of the latter part of the book is devoted to explanation. This was a structural weakness absent from The House of the Arrow. All the same, At the Villa Rose is great fun, and Hanaud a truly appealing example of "the Great Detective."

Fogotten Book - Verdict of Twelve

I've mentioned before Raymond Postgate's Verdict of Twelve, but I wanted to read it again before featuring it as a Friday Forgotten Book, and this I've now done. In all, I've read it three times - first in an edition with an excellent intro by Michael Gilbert, who selected some splendid crime classics for a series published by Hodder. He is far from alone in admiring Verdict of Twelve. Postgate was the brother in law of G.D.H. Cole, but his novel was very different from Cole's work - it owed much more in its ironic style to Anthony Berkeley.

The book has three parts plus an epilogue. In the first part,we are introduced to members of a jury about to hear a murder case. One or two of the jurors have dark secrets of their own, and Postgate provides a series of vivid portraits that I found gripping. One character, a dry academic, reminded me a bit of Douglas Cole, actually, though Postgate wisely made sure that there were differences as well as similarities in the man's CV and personality.

The second part of the story tells us about the murder. But who is to be the victim, and who the killer? It's a rather grim story about cruelty to a child, and it has a literary inspiration that is not explained until the later stages of the book. Then comes the third part, which takes us inside the jury room,and shows how the debate about guilt and innocence shifts - often according to prejudice, rather than reason. If you are sceptical about juries - and I always have been - this book does nothing to make you share the view of such great lawyers as Lord Denning and Lord Devlin that the jury is an essential bulwark of freedom and justice.

There is a nice twist in the epilogue, but I guess the big question about this novel is - what does it tell us about justice? Nothing comfortable, that's for sure. Postgate's Marxist take on things won't be to everyone's taste, but I enjoyed this book as much on a third reading as I did previously. I really must try again Postgate's two later crime novels - when I first read them, I felt they were a let-down, but maybe they are worth another look. In any case, Verdict of Twelve remains a must-read for any fan of classic crime.

Forgotten Book - Double Blackmail

The blurb of the American edition of the Golden Age mystery Double Blackmail, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, is rather enticing: ‘”Double Blackmail” only in part describes the double-ness of this detective mystery. There are, of course, two cases of blackmail. But there are likewise two murders; two bigamies; two detectives; the two Coles for authors; and twins….’

Two bigamies – blimey, you don’t find that in many murder mysteries nowadays! The Coles were a husband and wife team who were prolific producers in the Golden Age. They were prominent socialists, and G.D.H. (like Robert Barnard, many years later) was a Balliol man who rose to prominence in the Fabian Society. Margaret was the sister of Raymond Postgate, who wrote that brilliant crime novel Verdict of Twelve (and who also devised The Good Food Guide), and aunt to Oliver Postgate, creator of Bagpuss.

The Coles wrote books of the kind disparagingly described as ‘humdrums’, and their regular sleuth Superintendent Wilson was notoriously characterless, but I’m led to believe from comments on the excellent Golden Age Detection discussion group that this novel, which features Wilson, is one of their better efforts.

I have not yet read the book, having only just bought it, as a treat for myself after a few fun-free weeks. The appeal of this particular volume was not just the mystery (though I do find that idea of a story about double bigamy weirdly intriguing) but the fact that this book was presented to the Detection Club, and signed by, Margaret Cole herself. So it’s a small piece of crime fiction heritage, and I’m very happy to have it on my bookshelf.

Who Killed Mrs De Ropp?

H.H.Munro used the pen-name ‘Saki’, and earned a considerable reputation as writer of elegant, often gleefully cruel short stories prior to his death while serving in the First World War. BBC 4 recently put together three of his best tales under the title ‘Who Killed Mrs De Ropp?’ in an hour-long programme that I thought beautifully done.

The stories are ‘The Storyteller’, ‘The Lumber Room’ (which I was introduced to as a schoolboy one English lesson long ago) and, best of all, ‘Sredni Vashtar’, in which the killer of Mrs De Ropp is revealed.

Saki was not, in any meaningful sense, a crime writer, but ‘Sredni Vashtar’ is a story about a sort of crime. I first came across it as a result of a reference in a classic crime novel, Verdict of Twelve, by Raymond Postgate. Postgate’s book is, arguably, the best novel ever written about the workings of juries, and is one of my favourites. Postgate’s other crime novels were, by comparison, a disappointment, although some people rate them more highly than I do. He became much better known through his Good Food Guide, and he also had a family connection to those crime-writing Fabians of the Golden Age, GDH and Margaret Cole.

As for Saki, he was clearly a complex character (his mother was the aunt of Dornford Yates, another popular yet enigmatic writer.) It’s suggested by some who have studied his life that he was gay, but unable to come to terms with, or at least publicly acknowledge, his sexual orientation. These days his name is, if not forgotten, far from well-known. But to my mind he is one of the best short story writers.