The York Book Fair

A major book fair is held at York Racecourse in early January each year. I don't travel there every year, since a trip on the M62 in wintry conditions is not the ideal way of passing the time, but a long week-end in York this year coincided happily with the fair, so I was able to make it. And it was, as ever, fun to look at books that I'll never be able to own but which are nevertheless full of interest.

An example was a thriller called Wheels of Anarchy by Max Pemberton, which dates back to 1908. Pemberton was a well-known writer of his day, and I first came across his writing as a teenager, when a story of his appeared in Hugh Greene's brilliant anthology The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes. What intrigurd me about Wheels of Anarchy was that Pemberton explains in a preface that the idea for the story came from his friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson, who died young, shortly before it was written.

Now Robinson was also the chap who gave Conan Doyle the idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles. It must be very unusual for a writer (and Robinson did write some detective stories of his own) to give publishable ideas to not one but two friends, and still less common for one of them to become an all-time classic. He originated from Liverpool, and in fact I've had a business connection with his family's very old-established firm for many years. He was a remarkable man, and I hope to write more about him at a later date.

There were many other gems on sale, including a set of four books signed by Christopher Bush, and a couple of thrillers signed by Victor Bridge, as well as a signed first of Len Deighton's classic The IPCRESS File. The photos come from James M. Pickard's stand - two early, pseudonymous, Ellis Peters mysteries are in the top photo. All well outside my price bracket, but nice to see,all the same.

Another pleasant aspect of book fairs is the chance to catch up with a few friends. Unexpectedly  on Saturday, I met for the first time Catherine Hawley and her husband Rob, who were trading at a book fair for the very first time. Catherine blogs as Juxtabook and like me is a big fan of Josephine Tey and Reg Hill; I've been enjoying her blog for years, and can recommend it.

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."

Robert Adams R.I.P.

Only a day after I recorded the death of Bob Adey, I regret to say that another crime writing friend, Robert Adams, has died. Robert was, perhaps, less well known in the wider crime writing community than Bob, but I've known him for a similar length of time, more than fifteen years. We first met at the Boroughbridge lunches of the Northern Chapter of the CWA.

Robert was a gentle, softly spoken man and it came as something of a surprise when he told me that he was a former prison governor. Indeed, he was a prison officer at HMP Pentonville at the time George Blake, the spy, escaped from custody. He was also a university professor, and had a very interesting and wide-ranging CV; this obituary from the Writers' Guild gives a flavour. .

He produced a wide range of publications on a variety of subjects, but in the late Nineties, he told me he'd given up most of his academic commitments to concentrate on writing fiction. I was keen to encourage him, and with a little prompting, he wrote "The Hull Executive", which I was glad to include in an anthology produced on behalf of our chapter, Northern Blood 3. It has always been a key aim of mine, when editing anthologies, to provide a mix of well-known authors and those, like Robert, who deserve a share of attention from readers.

Robert continued to write, and in 2005, he sent me a copy of his novel Antman. I hoped that this was a sign that his career as a novelist was developing in the way he'd aimed for, but in recent years I haven't seen him at CWA events, although we kept in touch by post. This Christmas, for the first time in many years, I didn't receive a card from him, and I've now heard that he died on 31 December.

This blog is meant to strike a positive note, yet I've now written two obituaries in successive days. I am, though, very positive about my memories of Robert, and Bob Adey. Tomorrow, I shall write about a Forgotten Book that I very much enjoyed, and that I hope others will too.  

Bob Adey R.I.P.

I was so sorry to learn, a couple of days ago, that Bob Adey died on Sunday. Regular readers of this blog will recall that not long before Christmas, I listed his Locked Room Murders as one of my top two all-time favourite books about the genre.Nobody has ever known as much about "impossible crimes" as Bob, and his love of traditional crime fiction was long-lasting and deeply rooted. He was also very modest and self-deprecating.

Bob had been collecting detective fiction for a very long time, and was very generous about sharing his knowledge. Recently, I got in touch with him to ask for ideas about obscure detective stories for a forthcoming British Library anthology. Not only did come up with some very good suggestions, he even sent me a photocopy of one story so obscure that neither he nor I have been able to find out anything about the author. He said the story deserved reprinting; I agreed, and so more importantly, did the British Library. He was a reliable judge..

One memorable occasion was when I went to visit Bob and his wife at their home in Worcestershire. I'd heard a great deal about Bob's fabled collection, including the treasure trove held in his garage. Several times I asked him if he had a rare book, and he'd go off to hunt around the garage - and usually he came up with the rarity I wanted. Suffice to say that I found that the reality more than lived up to the expectation. He had amassed an extraordinary range of material. I've never seen anything quite like it in the realm of detective fiction. I look back on that sunny afternoon with great pleasure.

Bob made excellent use of the resources he'd gathered. Among many other projects, he wrote regularly for Geoff Bradley's CADS, and he supplied introductions and editorial material for a range of books. He was a long-time friend of many members of the crime writing community, including America's Doug Greene, with whom he co-produced an anthology, Death Locked In (which I recommend unreservedly) and for whose Crippen & Landru imprint he edited a very engaging collection by Joseph Commings. Recently he supplied an intro to a splendid omnibus volume of the works of the late Derek Smith. Another pal of Bob's was Jamie Sturgeon, who has kindly supplied me with the photo above, which was taken a couple of years back.

I never succeeded in persuading him to set up a website so that all his writings could be accessed via Google, but they are absolutely worth seeking out. I enjoyed our years of email correspondence, and as we are both great football fans, they usually included a soccer component (years ago he used to tease me about the form of my team compared to his; the boot had been on the other foot more recently, but this always gave us both great amusement.) My condolences go to his wife and family. He was a lovely man who will be greatly missed.

Broadchurch - season 2, episode 1, ITV 1 review

Broadchurch is back. The stand-out television crime drama of 2013 returned this evening, the storyline of season 2 a secret that writer Chris Chibnall has maintained as a closely guarded secret. The first question, of course, is whether revisiting such a superb show, is a good idea. How can it live up to the standards already set? I suppose that, in this day and age (and probably in any day and age) the crucial factor was public demand. Just as fans wouldn't let Conan Doyle kill off Holmes, so people clamoured for more of Broadchurch.

Holmes was never, though , quite the same man after he returned from the Reichenbach Falls, and the need to do something fresh but equally gripping supplied Chibnall with a huge challenge. During the first few minutes of this episode, it crossed my mind that anyone who hadn't seen season 1 would probably be feeling dissatisfied. I recall watching seasoon 2 of The Killing and, to be honest, wondering what all the fuss was about. It was okay, but didn't seem to me to be remotely close to a masterpiece.I felt missing season 1 was a definite disadvantage.

Broadchurch, however, benefits from great writing, from exceptional acting, and a compelling locale. You can't go far wrong with David Tennant and Olivia Coleman, but now we have new characters thrown into the mix, most notably Charlotte Rampling, playing a senior barrister who just happens to have retired to Broadchurch. When the presumed killer from season 1 decides to plead not guilty to murder, will Charlotte agree to the parents' request for help? We can guess the answer...

There is also a new plot strand, reaching back to the last disastrous case of Tennant's character. This seems to me to be a clever development, a really good way of refreshing interest. There were moments of improbable melodrama at the end, with an exhumation attended, bizarrely, by almost all the main characters in the story. And the defence barristers' chambers seemed pretty unrealistic to me, too. But I loved the mysterious "bluebell" clue - reminscent of Francis Durbridge! All in all, the story buzzed along, and despite some reservations, I'll certainly be watching episode two.

Bodies from the Library

Fresh and exciting evidence of the striking growth of interest in Golden Age fiction is supplied by the announcement that Bodies from the Library, a one day conference, will take place at the British Library on Saturday 20 June. The organisers have set up a website as well as a Facebook page, and I am optimistic that this venture will attract a great deal of interest.

John Curran, the pre-eminent expert on Agatha Christie, is a guiding spirit behind the setting up at the conference. It sprang from discussions at Crimefest last year about the fact that, over the years, Golden Age fiction has not been discussed very often at crime conventions (other than the Forgotten Authors panel at Crimefest and some of the papers given at St Hilda's each year). As a result, John, Mike Linane and fellow enthusiasts including Liz Cooper, Norman Home, and Susan Cooper decided it would be a good idea to set up a dedicated conference. Naturally, I think they were absolutely right. But putting on a conference, especially when starting out, is very hard work. 

John, Mike and company have done a great job, gaining enthusiastic and valuable backing from both the British Library and Harper Collins. They are in the process of finalising what will be a packed programme. The speakers include the pre-eminent publishers of Golden Age-related books, David Brawn of Harper Collins,and Rob Davies of the British Library. Other speakers include Jake Kerridge of the Daily Telegraph, and Barry Pike and Tony Medawar, two of the leading authorities on Golden Age fiction. If you like traditional fiction, the chance to hear Barry, John and Tony really should not be missed.

Contemporary novelists with a strong interest in the Golden Age will be speaking; they include Len Tyler, Dolores Gordon Smith, and me. At least one leading present day crime writer is likely to be added to the list shortly.This is a ground-breaking event, and I'm very glad to be part of it. I hope that some of the GA fans who read this blog will be able to attend. 

A few words from Mike Linane: :"Golden Age is a huge topic and to have a day where true experts talk about their favourite authors and suggest books to read as well as hearing from the publishers what they take into account before republishing out of print titles as well as finding out about todays authors who are carrying on in the GA tradition.   There's something for everyone and I am sure the entire audience will leave at the end of the day with a list of books they are desperate to read  Oh,  and there are goody bags and spot prizes as well!"


   

Before We Met - Lucie Whitehouse - review

Before We Met is a widely acclaimed psychological suspense novel by Lucie Whitehouse that was published not long ago. In the wake of all the publicity about the films of Gone Girl and Before I Go to Sleep., I decided to try another book in broadly the same field. Unlike Gone Girl, however, but like Louise Millar's Accidents Happen, Before We Met is set in England (apart from a few flashback scenes in the US).

I'm a fan of psychological suspense, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who is sorry that Minette Walters has not been very productive of late. Her The Sculptress is one of my all-time favourites in this genre. I also very much enjoyed A Likeness in Stone by Julia  Wallis Martin, another excellent novelist who has sadly been absent from the scene for quite a while. Nicci French, too, has moved away from superb stand-alones to the greater orthodoxy of a series. There's no shortage of other writers working in the same field, and achieving similar success. Sophie Hannah, to name but one - even though, interestingly, she has just digressed into the very different world of Hercule Poirot.

In Lucie Whitehouse's book, Hannah is a young woman who seems to have it all. She's recently married Mark,a wealthy businessman, who is devoted to her, and although she's not found a new job since marriage brought her back home from the States, that is surely only a question of time. But one day she goes to meet Mark at the airport - and he doesn't show up. What has happened, and is her lovely marriage all it seemed? No prizes, I'm afraid, for guessing the answer to the second question.

I was interested that Whitehouse chose to tell her story in the third rather than the first person. This risks some loss of immediacy, but I found the first half of the book gripping. Once one particular secret was revealed, I felt the story became relatively conventional, and certainly more orthodox than the best-sellers by Gillian Flynn and S. J. Watson, but it's still a decent read from start to finish. .

My Name is Julia Ross - film review

My Name is Julia Ross is a 1945 film based on Anthony Gilbert's novel The Woman in Red, published four years earlier. The story does not features Arthur Crook, the solicitor who usually crops up in Gilbert's novels, and the film is a "woman in jeopardy" story that I found a cut above the average. Joseph H. Lewis directs, and the screenplay is by Muriel Roy Bolton, and between them they fashioned something short, snappy, and suspenseful.

NIna Foch plays Julia Ross, an attractive young woman who has struggled to find work since recovering from ill health. She rents a room in an unlovely London house, and the man she fancies has just gone off to marry someone else. She answers an advert placed by a new employment agency, and they put her in touch immediately with a prospective employer and her son. She is offered a live-in secretarial job with suspicious rapidity, and duly accepts. When she goes back home to pack her things, she finds that the man she cared for has decided not to get married after all. They arrange to meet - but Julia doesn't show up.

In fact, Julia has been kidnapped, and finds herself the victim of a monstrous conspiracy which involves taking her off to an eerie house in Cornwall and giving her a new identity. What on earth can be going on? The answer doesn't take long to emerge, but it's fun to follow the twists and turns of the plot. The old lady is played by Liverpool-born Dame May Whitty, surely one of the more unlikely Scousers, who is best known to crime fans as Miss Froy in Hitchcock's version of another "woman in jeopardy" film, The Lady Vanishes.

 Apart from Dame May, the cast members are mainly unfamiliar to modern viewers,and the acting of the chap who played the weird son struck me as less than convincing. But overall, the film is well made,and I liked the way it raced along. Apparently, it was loosely remade by Arthur Penn in 1987 as Dead of Winter, but I haven't seen that. Whether or not you're not an Anthony Gilbert fan, I think this film is well worth a look, a period piece that is a nice blend of Gothic and British noir, and anyone seeking a more in-depth analysis might like to take a look at the excellent review by John Norris..

Forgotten Book - Disgrace to the College

I was tempted to make a new year resolution to read all the Golden Age books that I've acquired over the years, and shamefully failed to get round to reading, before I tried to add any more to my collection. But I knew it's a resolution I'd fail to keep. I did toy with the idea of listing some of them and seeking recommendations from readers of this blog as to which to prioritise, and perhaps I'll do that one of these days. In the meantime, my Forgotten Book for today is one I've laid my hands on only recently, and which has jumped the queue, partly because of its brevity.

Disgrace to the College, written by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, and first published in 1937 is unusual on at least three counts. First, it's a novella, rather than a full-length novel. Second, it's a locked room mystery; the Coles wrote one or two short stories featuring locked room puzzles, but as far as I know, this is their longest locked room story. Third, their most regular detective, Superintendent Wilson, is absent, and the detecting is done by one of their second string characters.

The book is divided into two parts. "Michaelmas Term" is set at St Mark's College, Oxford, and we are presented with a fictitious version of the Senior Common Rooms that Douglas Cole, himself an Oxford academic, knew very well. A good deal of scorn is heaped on college politics, which are presented credibly, if in a rather long-winded way. Someone who ought to know told me that, if college politics are frequently vituperative, Oxbridge college politics tend to be ten times worse, and that seems to have been Cole's view.

Two issues are vexing the College authorities. First, a South African Rhodes scholar called Sam Barrett is making waves with his misbehaviour and laziness. Second, an elderly and irascible Estates Bursar is presiding over a mysterious decline in the College's wealth. These two narrative strands occupy the first part of the book. In the second part, "Trinity Term", things have moved on, and Sam's life has undergone a remarkable change. On to the scene comes the Honourable Everard Blatchington, who features in a number of books by the Coles. His arrival conveniently coincides with a death by shooting in a locked room....

The puzzle is quite nicely done. I think it was a wise decision not to pad the story out into a full-length novel; perhaps a decision the Coles might have benefited from taking more often (but then, getting novellas published was far from easy before digital publishing changed the landscape.) The Oxford setting is captured competently, if not with dazzling flair. There is interest in the passing glances at covert homosexuality (at a time when homosexual acts were criminal offences) in college life, and the use of local pubs as brothels catering for male students who were frustrated by college rules designed to prevent hanky-panky with the opposite sex. All in all, one of the better Coles stories that I've come across (though I have numerous gaps in my reading of them.); This one was drawn to my attention some time ago by a Golden Age expert, but proved far from easy to track down. In true Oxford manner, it merits at least a middle Second, if not quite a First..  

2015: the year ahead

A very happy new year to all readers of this blog. You can never predict what a year may have in store, but one thing is for certain. 2015 will see more new books of mine, of one kind or another, than ever before in a single year. Never mind for a moment whether that's really such a good thing! Let me tell you about them.

I regard myself as a novelist, first and foremost, but the main event will be the publication in the UK and US by Harper Collins of The Golden Age of Murder. It can, I suppose, be described as "narrative non-fiction" - I've used one or two novelistic techniques to turn the factual account of the creation of the Detection Club by a small group of talented and innovative crime writers into a story that tells readers something about the people, their books, and the times in which they lived. I'm hoping above all that the book will interest people in Golden Age fiction even if they've never had much time for it previously.

Still with the Golden Age, I have three anthologies due to be published by the British Library. They are collections with differing themes, and each book includes a couple of stories, at least, which I think will be unfamiliar even to most dedicated fans. Resorting to Murder is a book of holiday mysteries, while Capital Crimes gathers stories set in London. There will also be an anthology of Christmas stories - I'm just about to finish work on this. I've also written a stack of introductions for new books in the Classic Crimes series. Not all of the titles have yet been publicly announced, but they include some very interesting novels.

Turning to fiction, The Dungeon House is ready for editing now, and I'm hoping it will see the light of day in the autumn. It's the seventh Lake District Mystery, and the setting - around the coastal village of Ravenglass - plays a key part in the story. I've structured it rather differently from other books in the series, but I'm hopeful that it will go down well. I feel it's the best book in the series so far.

During the course of the year, I'll be publishing an ebook of short stories, some old, some new, and the provisional title is The Bookbinder's Apprentice and other stories. Jessica Mann has kindly written an introduction. As it happens, I've written a number of short stories recently, and of course I'm hoping that these will find a publisher. Among other projects, I've teamed up with members of Murder Squad and some "accomplices" to write a story inspired by a photo taken by Pembrokeshire photographer David Wilson. At the time of writing this blog, I'm just revising my story, provisionally titled "Through the Mist".

Back to non-fiction. I've just written an intro to a Sherlock Holmes book, and in April, the new CWA anthology will appear. This is Truly Criminal, to be published by The History Press. We have a really good line up of original contributions, and I like to think it's the most significant anthology of true crime essays to have appeared in quite a few years. My piece deals with the "Blazing Car" murder of 1930, and several contributions feature cases that influenced novels of the Golden Age. Peter Lovesey (with a unique take on the "brides in the bath" case), Catherine Aird and Andrew Taylor are among the other authors, and there is a foreword by the best-selling author and former CWA chair, Peter James.

At the moment, I'm working on a book which includes all the detective fiction reviews that Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in a remarkable burst of activity at the height of the Golden Age This project is undertaken on behalf of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and we have yet to sort out publication details. But the Sayers reviews are brilliant and full of insight, and still read very well. The reviews written by Sayers and a few of her contemporaries are, incidentally, valuable sources of ideas for my Forgotten Books, and they deserve a wider readership.

There are one or two other projects in the works, including one for the Detection Club, and a very exciting non-fiction project. These will not appear in 2015, but they will take up some time during the year. And in case any of my faithful readers are wondering if I mean to fit in a holiday or two in the midst of all this activity, the answer is very definitely...yes!