Jonathan Creek Revisited

For me, as for many people, the lockdown has (among other things) meant more time for writing, reading, and, to a lesser extent, watching television. As far as TV is concerned, I've caught up with a few recent series and also had another chance to enjoy some old favourites. I found, to my surprise and delight, that Ian Carmichael's Lord Peter Wimsey series from the 1970s held up much better than I'd expected, but the greatest pleasure has come from revisiting David Renwick's brilliant series Jonathan Creek.

I've rhapsodised about Renwick's writing and this series in particular on this blog in the past, but what strikes me on a second viewing is just how strong and tightly written the scripts are. One recurrent feature of many series nowadays is that they are excessively long and tend to drag. This is true even of strong series that I've watched lately, such as Sharp Objects, based on Gillian Flynn's novel, and The Hour (which I hope to blog about shortly). But with Jonathan Creek, there's never (or almost never) any padding.

The care with which Renwick writes is evident from the early episodes to the recent shows, such as The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, which I watched again last night. I'd forgotten the story, but on looking back at this blog, I see that I gave the episode a rave review on its original showing, more than six years ago. If anything, I enjoyed it even more the second time around, which is saying something.

I've found that I've forgotten the detailed plots of almost all the stories (except the brilliant Miracle in Crooked Lane) but that doesn't indicate a failure on the writer's part. Rather, I think that Renwick's command of detail is such that it compels attention at the time of viewing while not distracting from the overall pleasure of the character of Creek and the bizarre and deftly handled scenarios - and it's that overall sense of satisfaction and indeed delight that lingers in the memory.

I've been thinking about locked room mysteries a lot recently, partly because of the arrival of a new anthology (I'll talk more about this shortly), partly because I've been reading some more John Dickson Carr, and partly because I've been toying with an idea for a new locked room mystery of my own. Watch this space... 

Dark Places - film review

Dark Places, first screened last year, stars (and is produced by) Charlize Theron, and is based on a book by that gifted author Gillian Flynn, whose Gone Girl is (arguably) the finest crime novel of the past ten years. And it is certainly not a bad film. But as that damning-with-faint-praise sentence suggests, it is hardly a masterpiece, either.

In addition to Gone Girl, I've read Flynn's excellent novel Sharp Objects, but I've not got round to Dark Places, so I didn't know quite what to expect as regards the film's storyline. In fact, it offers a great deal of potential. Libby (played by Theron) has survived a sensational killing thirty years ago in which her mother and two siblings died. Her brother Ben was convicted of the crimes, and is still in prison.

Libby is approached by a chap from a "Kill Club", an intriguingly eccentric bunch with a passion for real life crimes, and this prompts her to revisit her past. What she finds there, needless to say, is macabre and distressing. And - you are ahead of me here - it turns out that all was not as it seemed.

The premise is clever, and there is a lot to admire in this film. But Theron's muted performance - she spends almost the whole film looking moody and wearing a baseball cap - sums the film up: an opportunity has been wasted. Instead of a suspense classic, we have a rather protracted so-so mystery, and as a result we don't care very much about the truth of the crime, or about what happens to the protagonists. I came to this film with high expectations, which were to some extent disappointed. A real shame.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

It's taken me a while to get round to reading Gillian Flynn's massively successful best-seller Gone Girl, but I was finally prompted to do so when it was chosen by my firm's book group as our book of the month. And the first thing to say is that I can certainly see what all the fuss has been about. I read Flynn's excellent debut novel, Sharp Objects, and this story, although very different, is even more compelling.

Flynn has written a psychological suspense novel with a story told from (at least) two different perspectives, a man called Nick Elliott, and his wife Amy. The subject matter is their complex relationship, and a sequence of disastrous events which spirals out of control. There's a major twist half way through the book, and I must say that I was pleased to recognise it as a device that was also used, although in a different way, by two Golden Age books that I've covered on this blog in the past year - one by Richard Hull and one by Nicholas Blake. To say any more would be a spoiler, but I am sure Flynn won't have read Hull's very obscure book, and is probably unlikely to have read the Blake In any case, her use of the device is different and distinctive.

There are as many twists and turns as you'd find in a classic whodunit, and this is part of the book's appeal. The personalities of Nick and Amy are, in many ways, unappealing, but that is often the case with characters in books of this kind, and for me it was not an obstacle to enjoyment. There are also plenty of witty lines, as well as a withering portrayal of the way the media treat a cause celebre.

I know some people, including my colleagues at work, found the ending of the book unsatisfactory. Since I am not, of course, going to give anything away about what happens, I will simply say that I agree that the quality of the ending was not in my opinion quite up to the standard of the rest of the book. But I could see what Gillian Flynn was trying to do (although in the lead-up to the finale, I thought she had a different outcome in mind). Some of my colleagues gave it lowish marks (I've begged them not to subject my own novels to their very demanding scrutiny!), but I rate it highly. Overall I must say that for me, this novel lives up to all the hype.

Sharp Objects: review

Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn, won the CWA Debut Dagger three years ago, and having just read it, I can understand why. It’s a very accomplished piece of writing, and a disturbing novel of psychological suspense. If you’re after a comfort read, look elsewhere, but if you are prepared for a dark journey, you’ll be gripped by this book.

It’s the story of Camille, a reporter from Chicago, who is sent to her home town, the splendidly named Wind Gap, to investigate the murders of two young (and, it turns out, not very pleasant) girls. Inevitably, Camille goes back to her mother, the pretty but complicated Adora, and recalls the trauma surrounding the death, some years back, of her sister Marian.

Camille has more than her fair share of demons to exorcise, it turns out. Among her own dark secrets is the fact that she self-harms, and after years spent cutting words into her body, she is terrified of anyone seeing the damage she has done to herself. Yet she is a beautiful woman, and becomes involved both with the out of town cop investigating the crimes, and the prime suspect.

Although the story sags a little in the middle, the beginning and end are outstanding. It’s an original and well-written book, with a memorable protagonist and a splendidly evoked locale. Wind Gap isn’t exactly Stepford, but it’s a place where women are in the ascendancy - and not in a good way. I found the book troubling, but it did impress me.

Making Hay

In the September sunshine, Hay-on-Wye was as appealing as ever yesterday. It was my first visit for eighteen months to the book town on the England-Wales border. I really have to ration myself, not least because I just don’t have the space at home to accommodate too many more books. But Hay does have an irresistible attraction as far as I’m concerned, and I did try to ration my purchases, with a degree of ‘success’.

My impression is that, since it became famous as a booktown, Hay has thrived economically. Whereas the streets of so many market towns in England and Wales have empty retail units and countless charity shops, Hay has plenty to offer quite apart from books. But books, of course, predominate. Even the half-ruined castle has been turned into a rather splendid bookshop – there could be no better use for an ancient monument!

As usual, I made a pilgrimage to the specialist crime shop, Murder and Mayhem, and also to the vast Cinema Bookshop, as well as a wide range of other haunts. One recent book I picked up was Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, which I’ve heard is pretty good.

My other purchases included an obscure (but apparently most intriguing) example of Eurocrime, and a rather fascinating piece of crime fiction- related memorabilia. More about these in future posts. And I hope that soon, Blogger, which has become mysteriously unco-operative, will allow me to upload some of the photos I took in the Hay sunshine yesterday!