The 8.55 to Baghdad

I’ve just come across a book first published four years ago by Andrew Eames, a London-based journalist. The 8.55 to Baghdad is a travel book with a difference, in that it follows in the footsteps of Agatha Christie’s journey to the Middle East in 1928 – a journey that changed her life. Eames was in Aleppo when he heard that Christie had stayed there about three-quarters of a century earlier. He knew next to nothing about the detail of Christie’s life and had, like so many people, thought of her ‘as someone who belonged in the heart of English village life’.

Eames became fascinated by the idea of a thirty-something single mother travelling out on her own to Iraq, and falling in love with the place to such an extent that ‘thereafter she spent thirty winter seasons living in testing conditions 3,000 miles from home, in a land of Kurds, Armenians and Palestinians, doling out laxatives to help the sheikh’s wives with their constipation.’

Eames writes vividly and, as a long-time Christie fan, I like the idea that he came to realise that there was much more to this remarkable woman than her detractors seem to appreciate. It is not mere chance that Christie has become a global publishing phenomenon – there are reasons for it, and they lie in the books, and in the character of the woman who produced them.

I haven’t got far into Eames’ book yet. But so far it is excellent.

The Pleasures of Research

When I was at work on The Arsenic Labyrinth, the research in Coniston was great fun (the BBC TV regional news even filmed me wandering around the jetty, where the climactic scene takes place.) I was also fortunate to be shown around the Bagshaw Museum in Yorkshire, which provided me with ideas for the fictional Museum of Myth and Legend, which I plonked down on the main road into Coniston. The curator at Bagshaw is Kathryn White, wife of Sherlock Holmes expert David Stuart Davies; it’s a marvellous place, and I recommend a visit if you are ever in the area.

When I was researching into the history of arsenic labyrinths, I received help from an archaeologist called Adam Sharpe, who has been involved with the restoration of the labyrinth at Botallack in Cornwall. In the story, historian Daniel Kind is working on a book about John Ruskin, and the director of the Ruskin Foundation, Howard Hull, gave me some very useful info about Ruskin’s relations with the people of Coniston. CSI experts Helen Pepper and Andy Barrett gave me a lot of help with forensic stuff, Roger Forsdyke guided me on police procedure and John Prest, a former Balliol history don, gave me insight into the world of historians that helped me to develop Daniel. I didn’t know John when I was a student, but I got to know him after I contributed an article on Balliol’s detectives (e.g. Wimsey and Gideon Fell) and crime novelists (too numerous to mention) to the college magazine, which John edited. And as a result of that article, Tim Heald – about whom more in the future – got in touch.

But I digress. The point I was trying to make is that, before I gained experience as a writer, I thought of research as a chore, and something to avoid. I was wrong. It’s not only hugely enjoyable, it’s a way of getting to know people and places you would never otherwise encounter. And, like many other writers, I never cease to be amazed by the generosity of the people whom I consult. When watching the latest news on tv, it’s easy to become despondent about the way some individuals behave, but the reality is that the vast majority of people are decent. Trouble is, you can’t write a crime novel with a cast of entirely decent suspects….

The all-rounder

John Creasey was a legendary figure in the history of British crime fiction. Few writers can have matched him either for determination or the almost infinite capacity to come up with ideas. He is famed for having received 743 rejection slips before his first novel was accepted, but once he became a published author in 1932, there really was no stopping him. He proceeded to turn out, under a bewildering assortment of pen-names, well over 500 novels, and many short stories.

Creasey was a man of amazing energy. Quite apart from his books, he found time to conceive and set up the Crime Writers’ Association, to establish his own mystery magazine and even to found a political party. When I was asked to edit an anthology to mark the CWA’s Golden Jubilee celebration, I wanted to include a story by Creasey, and my researches led to a meeting with one of his children, Richard, who has himself achieved considerable success in the media world. We met at the BBC, where Richard was working at the time, and he told me fascinating stories about his father’s dynamism.

More recently, I’ve been in touch with Val Edwards (no relation), one of the people who used to type the manuscripts that Creasey produced in long hand. Her reminiscences were interesting too. She said that it was Creasey’s speed that impressed her most. He wrote remarkably quickly, and he walked very quickly too – despite the fact that he had a limp.

Creasey was no great stylist, and he felt bruised by the lack of critical acclaim for his work, even though it was commercially very successful. I once heard Julian Symons give a talk in which he described how Creasey wanted Symons removed from the CWA for having the temerity, in his reviews, to be less than ecstatic on occasion about the CWA’s founder’s work. Symons was always a tough judge and Creasey was perhaps an over-sensitive man, but the rift was eventually healed. A good thing, too. Whatever Creasey’s literary shortcomings, he was to my mind an admirable man - and those who have spoken to me about him over thirty years after his death have always done so with affection and respect. He realised that life is short and he filled his life with practical accomplishment. His personal story is one of triumph over adversity, whether in the field of writing – or even the apparently simple matter of walking at a rapid pace.

The not so small world of murder

I spoke recently about the rise in popularity in the UK of translated Scandinavian crime fiction. In the last few years, a couple of trends have been quite marked. First, there has been an increasing number of British writers setting their books overseas (examples include Donna Leon and the sadly now deceased Michael Dibdin and Magdalen Nabb.) Second, more and more writers from overseas have been published with success in this country.

These are not brand new developments – Christie wrote several books set in the Middle East, and there are other examples even pre-dating the Golden Age, while a number of foreign writers, such as Leblanc and Simenon, appeared in English translation many years ago – but nevertheless, the scale of the change seems to me to be undeniable.

I’ve just received two new books written by a Welsh-born journalist and crime novelist, Matt Rees. He has produced non-fiction about the Middle East in the past, but now he has begun a series featuring ‘crime-fighting Palestinian history teacher Omar Yussef’. The Bethlehem Murders appears in a paperback edition, while The Saladin Murders is a brand new hardback. I see that the first book earned very good reviews, and has sold in 16 countries, quite an achievement.

We hear a lot (too much?) about ‘globalisation’. Some of its effects are good, some not so good. But as far as crime fiction is concerned, I think the change is for the better, since the effect has been to enrich our literature. Incidentally, for up to date news on ‘Eurocrime’, and much more, you can’t do better than take a look at Karen Meek’s excellent blog and website of that name. Because they were set up by someone with a passion for the subject, they exemplify internet resources at their best, with commentary that is both insightful and highly informative.

Stay of Execution

Edward D. Hoch, who died in January, was the most prolific writer of short mystery stories. I’m not sure who is the British author who has published most short mysteries, but Michael Gilbert must certainly be a contender. His output in the short form even justified the publication of a useful bibliography by Barry Pike; it covers stories which appeared up to 1997, and was published as a supplement to Geoff Bradley’s CADS.

Opinions vary as to which of Gilbert’s short story collections was the best. Many would choose Game Without Rules, his first gathering of spy stories featuring Calder and Behrens. Ellery Queen, no mean judge, ranked this book alongside Somerset Maugham’s classic Ashenden.

My own favourite is Stay of Execution, a collection of varied stores of legal practice that is at least as successful as another fine book, Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare – which happened to be edited by Michael Gilbert, not long after Hare’s sadly premature death. There are some terrific twists in the stories, as well as a good deal of humour. The very short ‘Back on the Shelf’ is a gem.

In his later years, Gilbert turned out a number of first rate stories – he kindly allowed me to include the excellent ‘Judith’ in an anthology called Mysterious Pleasures – and in addition published collections of stories he’d written many years earlier, featuring his London detective Patrick Petrella. There was a sound collection featuring a lawyer called Jonas Pickett, Anything for a Quiet Life, and Even Murderers Take Holidays was published less than a year ago. Crippen and Landru have published two more collections, and a third is on the way. The fact that there is clearly a market for these books, even though many of the stories in them date back to the 1950s, is a tribute to Michael Gilbert’s gifts. As a story-teller, he was outstanding.

Twenty-five Sanitary Inspectors

In any list of bizarre whodunit titles, Twenty-Five Sanitary Inspectors would surely rank high. The book was written by Roger East in 1935 and reprinted half a century later in a series called ‘The Disappearing Detectives’, each of which included a useful introduction from H.R.F. Keating. As he says, even such an intriguing title failed to save the book, its detective Superintendent Simmons, and its author from obscurity.

This is so despite a number of factors which should have played in East’s favour. First, his career got off to a successful start with Murder Rehearsal, which earned a rave review in the Manchester Evening News: ‘…he seems likely to become of the small band of really first-class detective story writers.’ And when I tracked the book down, I found that it is indeed an enjoyable mystery, with an excellent, quirky premise, although the resolution of the puzzle is not quite up to the same high standard.

Second, East did not fade quickly from the scene; after taking a break from Simmons with the advent of war, he continued to write occasional crime novels until the 1960s. Third, he had genuine talent and wrote scripts for film and television, including the Maigret series.

But to write sporadically is seldom enough to maintain a reputation unless one truly is in the top flight. As Keating says, ‘I have been unable to find the name Roger East in any of the who’s-whos and encyclopaedias, and his books proved almost untraceable…’ Sobering. But on the evidence of the few books by East that I've read, I agree with Keating that his neglect is undeserved.

The Indispensable Julian Rathbone

The Indispensable Julian Rathbone is a very good introduction to the work of a gifted writer whose death at the age of 73 has just been announced. The book was published by The Do-Not Press (excellent name, yes?) in 2003; Do-Not was the brainchild of Jim Driver, with whom I worked on three crime anthologies a few years back. Jim is someone who really cares about both literature and music; sadly, he found that publishing crime didn’t really pay and now he focuses on music, so it’s now a case of Do-Not Publish. But while the business was running, Jim turned out some excellent books and I’d say that the Rathbone collection is as good as any of them.

The book contains not only a generous sampling of Julian Rathbone’s work, but also plenty of information about an interesting life. He came from the same family, apparently, as Basil Rathbone, arguably the greatest Sherlock Holmes of them all, was a Cambridge contemporary of Sylvia Plath, and was taught by F.R. Leavis. He was twice nominated for the Booker Prize – a unique achievement for someone generally associated with the crime/espionage genre. His debut novel Diamond Bid was well reviewed by Francis Iles, something he recalled with appreciation many years later. Iles, aka Anthony Berkeley, was a very different writer, with very different political leanings, but a critic smart enough to recognise real talent.

Rathbone’s left wing views influenced his attitudes, and certainly his work, but although he had a disdain for privilege, he avoided the trap of didacticism, and he had a flair for producing intelligent entertainment. Of the books published in his later years, A Very English Agent stands out as a highly successful novel of historical espionage.

Julian Rathbone and I briefly shared the same publisher; I met him two or three times, but only fleetingly, and although I found him charming (for some reason, I’d expected someone rather fierce) we never had a lengthy chat. And now we never will. A pity. I have little doubt he would have been a fascinating and incisive conversationalist.

Sons of Simenon

I've mentioned before that such successful and prolific writers as W.J. Burley andAlan Hunter, creator of Charles Wycliffe and George Gently respectively, were disciples of the late Georges Simenon. Lately I’ve discovered that the legendary Belgian’s work has had a significant influence on John Banville, since he turned to writing crime fiction as Benjamin Black.

Banville says that it was not so much Maigret as the non-series books like Dirty Snow that impressed him: ‘I found them just extraordinary – I was astonished by how good they were. He had a genius for setting scenes. The first three or four pages of Monsieur Monde Vanishes are superb…very odd, very dark. Men and women readers interpret the leading character’s actions quite differently.’

Long before he encountered Simenon, Banville had read most of classic crime fiction’s usual suspects: ‘Agatha Christie, of course, and those other polite English ladies with murder in their heart, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey. Then I moved on to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Later I read James M. Cain. The Postman Always Rings Twice is very dark, very hard, very truthful. More recently, I’ve enjoyed the Richard Stark books, such as Point Blank, written by Donald E. Westlake. The recent Parker titles are as good as the early ones. Reading the stories is almost like reading a Capablanca chess game. I met Don Westlake last year and he told me that he didn’t plan out his books. But you can’t tell. They really are very fine.’

Point Blank also made a superb film, starring Lee Marvin and the under-rated Angie Dickinson. I saw it again last year, after a gap of three decades, and was even more taken with it the second time around.

The Number 23

I don’t associate Jim Carrey with ‘dark psychological thrillers’, but that’s what you get with the recent Joel Schumacher movie in which Carrey plays a dog-catcher called Walter Sparrow. Walters’ wife buys him a battered, apparently self-published book called The Number 23. The book features a detective called Fingerling who has a dark secret. As Walter reads on, it becomes evident that there are similarities between Fingerling’s life and his own. And when he finishes chapter 22, the story suddenly. Stops.

At first the film is brightly lit, but the mood quickly darkens, along with the lighting, as Walter’s world and the work of fiction collide. The key to the story lies in the omnipresence of the number 23. It gets everywhere, it seems. Example after example of its sinister significance are fired at the viewer. No wonder Walter becomes obsessed. This fixation with the mystique of numbers gives the film a good deal of appeal (at least for trivia buffs like me) and Schumacher plays endless clever games with it.

The excellence of the premise is not, in truth, matched by the overall quality of the plotting. There are frustrating loose ends – for instance, I never figured out: why did Walter’s wife choose that particular book? Worse, although the denouement is bravely counter-intuitive, I think most people will find it rather unsatisfactory.

Nevertheless, it’s a short, snappy film that I was pleased to have seen. And this obsession about the number 23 is definitely catching. Take today, for instance. Day 2 of month 3. 23!! Oh no, now the number’s taking over my life too. Aaaaaagh….

The Headhunters

I’ve just received a ring-bound proof of the latest novel by one of my all-time favourite crime writers – it’s The Headhunters, by Peter Lovesey. The book is due for hardback publication in the UK on 1 May and it features DCI Hen Mallin, whom many readers will recall from an earlier Lovesey novel, The Circle.

This is Lovesey’s thirtieth novel (I take the publishers’ word for this; I haven’t counted up myself.) It’s quite a landmark, therefore, and an appropriate moment to take stock of his achievements. No fewer than thirteen of his books have either won or been short-listed for major awards, while ten (if one includes a short story) have been televised or filmed. The majority of the latter were entries in his original Sergeant Cribb series. I enjoyed those books, which made Lovesey’s name, but I missed the television series and I’m hoping to catch up with it through the wonders of satellite televison re-runs before too long.

Peter Lovesey is to be honoured at this year’s Malice Domestic convention in Washington D.C., with a lifetime achievement award. This is richly deserved. A couple of years back, I had the privilege of being with Harry Keating and his wife Sheila when he received the same award. Unfortunately, other commitments prevent me being there to join in the celebration when Peter accepts his award. But I have absolutely no doubt that he’ll be a hugely popular honoree.

Meanwhile, I have The Headhunters to look forward to.