Island murders

I’ve never visited the Shetland Islands, but reading Ann Cleeves’ breakthrough novel Raven Black made me want to. It was the first book I’d ever read about Shetland and it made a great impression on me. Now, there’s a positive flurry of Shetland-based crime novels. Ann’s follow-up novel, White Nights is due out soon. Meanwhile, there’s a new author to look out for She is S.J. Bolton, whose debut novel Sacrifice is also set on Shetland.

Sacrifice looks as though it may venture into territory occupied by one of my favourite horror films, The Wicker Man. The author says she is fascinated with British traditional folklore, and the story is apparently based on an eerie Shetland legend, about the story of the ‘Kunal Trows’ of the most northerly Shetland island, Unst. It’s high on my to-read list.

White Nights is right at the top of that list, after the success of Raven Black. Ann’s a fellow member of Murder Squad who has been writing thoroughly enjoyable mysteries for about twenty years, but her career received a real fillip when Raven Black won the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger for best novel of 2006. The book combines atmospheric writing (the traditional fire festival Up Helly Ya provides a vivid backdrop to the latter stages of the book) with a neat plot and an engaging detective, Jimmy Perez. Originally Ann conceived the novel as a one-off, but its popularity prompted her to sign a contract to write three more Shetland books, one for each season of the year. Quite apart from good sales in this country, the award of the Dagger has raised her profile overseas, and she’s now a best-seller in Scandinavia, in addition to have signed deals to publish in a variety of other countries around the globe.

The Shetland setting, I think, is probably the feature that caused this particular novel to achieve more recognition than its predecessors, even though such books as The Sleeping and the Dead really are very good indeed. There’s something fascinating about islands, and they do make excellent settings for crime novels (think And Then There Were None and P.D. James’ The Lighthouse.) Maybe island magic will work wonders for S.J. Bolton’s career too.

Tell No Lies and Presumed Innocent

I’ve been reading a debut novel by an American lawyer, Julie Compton, called Tell No Lies. It’s strange that so many attorneys write crime novels, whereas in the UK there are only a handful of lawyer-novelists. Why is it? I’ve never understood. I do, though, know a number of English solicitors who tell me that they mean to write a book ‘when they have a bit more time’. Can it really be true that our colleagues in the States are, in comparison, under-worked? Doesn’t seem likely, somehow.

Certainly, the protagonist in Tell No Lies is kept fully occupied. Jack Hilliard is a trial lawyer with an apparently happy all-American family life who runs for D.A. at the same time as embarking on a dangerous liaison with a sexy attorney called Jenny Dodson. Poor old Jack finds it all too easy to compromise his principles, not least in relation to his stance on the death penalty. When Jenny is accused of murder, he finds himself in the embarrassing position of being aware that she has an alibi – it seems she was frolicking with him at the time the victim was shot to death.

As ever with an American novel about a murder trial, the publishers are making comparisons with Scott Turow. However, it’s better to judge Julie Compton’s book on its own merits. Turow is, as far as I’m concerned, in a different league from all other American lawyer-novelists, or at least all those I’ve read. Presumed Innocent is a genuine masterpiece – one of the most gripping thrillers I’ve ever come across. It is one of the few books that literally kept me up half the night, so keen was I to find out what was going to happen. Nothing by John Grisham (and I’ve enjoyed a number of his books, especially the first half of The Firm and The Rainmaker) comes close. I’ve not read everything Turow has written, but it must be open to doubt whether he can ever surpass that brilliant first novel. It combines a great plot with superb characterisation, a wholly credible portrayal of the legal system, and very good writing. What more could anyone ask?

Florence Maybrick

When I first embarked on the Harry Devlin books, I was surprised that no fictional whodunit series had previously been set in Liverpool. One of the reasons why this seemed odd was that not one, but two of the most extraordinary and fascinating real life murder mysteries of all time occurred in Liverpool. I mentioned the Wallace case recently in connection with the death of Jonathan Goodman. The other case was that of the murder (if it was murder) of Florence Maybrick.

The Maybrick case has, in recent years, attracted renewed interest because of the purported diary of Florence’s husband, James Maybrick, who is believed by some people to have been Jack the Ripper. That’s another story (also fascinating, since whether you believe that the diary was fabricated or not, it’s an extraordinary piece of work) which I’ll talk about some other time.

Florence was an American who married a cotton broker (whose brother was a well-known composer) and settled in Battlecrease House at Aigburth, Liverpool, across the road from the cricket ground. The marriage wasn’t perfect; James had various mistresses, one of whom bore him five children, and Florence had a fling of her own. When James suffered an illness and then died, arsenic was found in his body. Florence was thought to have had motive, means (she’d bought arsenical fly-papers) and opportunity. Amidst massive publicity, she was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The judge who presided over the case eventually went insane. Florence was reprieved at the last minute, but not before she’d heard the sound of hammering outside her prison cell as her gallows were constructed. She spent fifteen years in prison before being released and promptly wrote a book about her experiences and went on the lecture circuit. More than half a century after being sentenced to hang, she finally died in impoverished obscurity in her native USA.

And that’s only a much-condensed summary of an amazing story. It’s long fascinated me and, some years ago, I had the rare privilege of being taken around the hugely atmospheric Maybrick house by its owner – a memorable experience. The Maybrick case has inspired a number of novels – some say it even influenced the Sayers classic Strong Poison. There’s a much closer connection with Joseph Shearing’s Airing in a Closed Carriage, and The Wychford Poisoning Case by the marvellous Anthony Berkeley. For some reason, I’ve not said anything much about Berkeley on this blog. But he’s one of my favourite detective story writers of the past; more about him soon.

Sequels

A re-make is never as good as the original movie (well, hardly ever; I suppose there are exceptions to the general rule, though none spring to mind as I type.) What about sequels? Do they ever surpass the first work?

The question is prompted by recent comments on this blog about sequels to Rebecca, and also by a couple of other things. Over the week-end, I watched Children of the Damned, the sequel to Village of the Damned, which I posted about recently. The second film owes nothing to its predecessor apart from John Wyndham’s original idea of spooky children with uncanny and terrifying powers of mind control. It’s very much a film of its time, with a heavy Cold War influence. The cast is excellent, and includes not only Alan Badel, but also Ian Hendry (who was originally the main star of ‘The Avengers’, believe it or not, Patrick Macnee being his sidekick), and Alfred Burke, later to star in perhaps the best of all British p.i. television series, ‘Public Eye’.

The first half-hour is brilliantly creepy, but the rest of the movie doesn’t quite live up to that initial promise. One of many differences from the first film is that there’s no personal connection between the main characters and the children, and lack of such immediate involvement is a real weakness in the closing scenes. I think the sequel was worth doing, because it contains some thought-provoking ideas, but overall it doesn’t adequately resolve them, and isn’t as good as the earlier film.

‘The Sunday Times’ carried a story yesterday about the ‘mystery of the missing Da Vinci sequel’ – the fact that Dan Brown has not yet produced the promised follow-up to his mega-seller. The story says that The Da Vinci Code has earned him ‘an estimated £125 million.’ Perhaps there is no mystery, and Mr Brown is simply enjoying his enormous wealth. Meanwhile, I'm striving to resist the temptation to call my next Lake District Mystery The De Quincey Code!

The really amazing aspect of the story is nothing to do with sequels, but rather a suggestion that authors never have to endure Deadline Hell. Dan Brown’s British publisher is quoted as saying ‘there is never any clause from a publisher to a novelist that they have to deliver at a certain time. We would not impose such a thing on a contract.’ This observation will, I think, startle a number of authors, as it did me.

Philip Macdonald

Like Shelley Smith, Philip Macdonald had a book chosen by Julian Symons for inclusion in the Collins Crime Club Golden Jubilee Collection. Like her, he is a writer of the past whose work deserves to be read today. I’d rate him as one of the most interesting crime novelists to emerge from the Golden Age. Even though many of his books have flaws of one kind or another, he had the gift of creating fascinating situations that keep you turning the pages.

His usual detective was Colonel Anthony Gethryn. Gethryn was in spirit a character of the 1920s, and he featured in The Maze, which kicked off the Crime Club list in 1930, but he appeared as late as 1959, in a weird but entertaining serial killer story, The List of Adrian Messenger. This is the book that, in its 1963 film version, included fleeting appearances from such unlikely Golden Age figures as Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster. George C. Scott was cast, rather improbably, as Gethryn.

There is something intensely cinematic about most of Macdonald’s work and it’s no surprise that he finished up working in Hollywood. He was associated with the screenplays of Rebecca and Forbidden Planet (and he wrote the novelisation of the latter, under a pseudonym.) These are credits that most writers would kill for. Oddly enough, he did not write the screenplay for Twenty Three Paces to Baker Street, a very good 1956 movie based on a Gethryn novel. The script came from the pen of Nigel Balchin, a writer of considerable literary gifts who sometimes ventured into criminal territory. Balchin's own work is of great interest, and I'll post about him separately one of these days.

Macdonald wrote two lively multiple murder books, X v Rex and Murder Gone Mad, long before The List of Adrian Messenger. He tried his hand at impossible crimes and wrote a few good short stories. Michael Gilbert, an even better crime novelist than Macdonald, said that the cleverly conceived denouement to The White Crow, an early Gethryn story, influenced the resolution of his play A Clean Kill. If you enjoy Golden Age detective stories, do give Macdonald a try.

Questions of Identity

Questions of identity – and not just ‘whodunit?’ - lie at the heart of many of the finest crime stories ever written. Ten years ago I wrote an article about impersonation which was included in the Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing. Now Cambridge Scholars Publishing have produced a book of erudite essays called Questions of Identity in Detective Fiction, edited by Linda Martz and Anita Higgie. My copy has just arrived.

A quick glance suggests that the book contains a good deal that is of interest. Gillian Linscott, a very capable writer, is the subject of a study of her ‘suffragette fictions’ featuring the feisty Nell Bray. One chapter addresses Christie’s work for the stage, another tackles Tony Hillerman, yet another (by Suzanne Bray) examines ‘a new generation of Anglican writers’ – the books of Kate Charles, D.M.Greenwood and Phil Rickman are among those considered.

Sharon Wheeler asserts, provocatively but intriguingly, that ‘in the 1980s crime fiction was a tired and stale-looking genre.’ She argues that it was rescued by feminists, some of whom were lesbian writers, notably Val McDermid, who is now widely acknowledged as one of the leading crime novelists in the UK, and indeed the world, and (a novelist I feel deserves to be better known) Katherine V. Forrest. Her main subject is the work of someone I've never read, the American gay writer John Morgan Wilson, and she says of the books: ‘the plotting is of a high standard, but Wilson’s focus is on his central character and how a man who has lost everything can survive.’

Opinions vary about the merits of taking an academic approach to the genre. It can be over-done and in the past I've read some essays which gave the impression that the authors had neither read widely in the genre nor enjoyed what little they had read. But there are some academics whose work is thought-provoking and worthwhile even for those who read crime simply for entertainment. And one benefit of works of crime reference which is, to my mind, indisputable, is that they draw attention to writers who might otherwise go more or less unnoticed. I’m looking forward to finding out which hidden gems the various contributors to this volume recommend.

An Afternoon to Kill

Reprinting neglected classics of crime fiction is a great service performed by a small number of admirable publishers. It’s still a great service, even if the books turn out, in the cold light of day, not to live up their reputations. In the field of short fiction, Doug Greene’s Crippen and Landru have done a marvellous job in resurrecting innumerable splendid stories that would otherwise still be gathering dust. I’ve mentioned Rue Morgue Press recently in connection with Dorothy Bowers, and their books are always worth a look Ramble House have reprinted the weird yet unforgettable Harry Stephen Keeler, as well as some books by such interesting and varied authors as Rupert Penny and Joel Townsley Rogers.

I’d like to think that one day, someone will reprint the hard-to-find books by C. Daly King that I mentioned the other day. Obelists Fly High was reprinted in the UK in 1980, to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Collins Crime Club (a great imprint, sadly no more – killed off by the accountants, I guess.) Symons chose and introduced twelve titles in all. Some were familiar – such as Christie’s The ABC Murders. Others were competent but unexceptional – books by Freeman Wills Crofts, Elizabeth Ferrars and Andrew Garve. And there were one or two gems.

Best of all, I thought, was Shelley Smith’s An Afternoon to Kill. Smith was a very good writer, whom Symons plainly admired, but who seems to have given up on crime fiction prematurely after producing some very good books (the same is true of Margot Bennett, again someone I read and enjoyed on Symons’ recommendation.)

An Afternoon to Kill is such a terrific story that I don’t want to say much about it, for fear of giving the game away. But it really is very enjoyable, as well as clever. Time for another reprint, perhaps?

A different kind of crime

Yesterday, on the spur of the moment, a colleague at work suggested that we take half an hour to visit Liverpool Town Hall – a stone’s throw from our office – and have a look at an exhibition relating to Holocaust Memorial Day. So I went along, and I was very glad I did.

The exhibition is called RESPECTacles. It’s a quite extraordinary work of art consisting of innumerable pairs of second hand spectacles (some donated by celebrities ranging from Elton John to Ronnie Corbett, to say nothing of Tony Blair) and it’s inspired by photographic images taken during the Holocaust. I found the record of the Nazis’ terrible crimes very moving – as much so as when I visited Anne Frank’s house nearly twenty years ago, and that’s saying something.

The setting for the exhibition is utterly magnificent. The Town Hall is impressive externally, but even better on the inside. Yet although I pass it every day, I’d only ever been inside the Town Hall once before. This too gave me pause for thought. It’s so easy to take things for granted – to assume that ‘we’ll get round to them sooner or later’. And sometimes we never get round to it.

Since Christmas I’ve been labouring over the tedious task of proof-checking, hating the unpleasant weather and the traffic queues on the motorway, reading tedious financial documents, and sometimes feeling fed up. The January blues, and I suppose plenty of other people succumb to them. But seeing those dreadful photographs of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and learning about the lives of people who were sent there, never to return, made me realise how absurd it is not to appreciate to the full all life’s pleasures while one can. I knew that already, but it did no harm to have such a poignant reminder of a fundamental truth.

Thrones, Dominations...

When I posted recently about Dorothy L. Sayers, fellow blogger Jilly asked if I’d read Thrones, Dominations. This is the book that Sayers started and abandoned. The writing wasn’t interrupted by her death; she simply gave up on writing detective fiction. Eventually, the estate selected a writer of distinction, Jill Paton Walsh (who has tried her hand at detective stories in the past) to complete the book. It can have been no easy task, but I was impressed with the result; she did the job as well as it could have been done, and that the book, read as a whole, was better than, say, Whose Body? or Five Red Herrings. Encouraged by this success, Paton Walsh produced A Presumption of Death, utilising some of Sayers’ material. I felt this was not quite as gripping as the earlier book, but still a likeable read.

Finishing a book written by someone else is a fascinating challenge. Almost everybody seems to have had a go at The Murder of Edwin Drood - Dick Stewart has even written a book, End Game, devoted to listing all those who have done so. Unfinished novels by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Cornell Woolrich are amongst those that have been completed by other hands.

On a slightly less exalted level, I had the privilege of completing the late Bill Knox’s last Thane and Moss story, The Lazarus Widow. I’ve written about this elsewhere, so I won’t go on about it at length right now – but it was certainly one of the most interesting experiences of my writing career. The fact that it worked out happily in the end (and, most important, for Bill’s family, who have become friends) was intensely rewarding. I’m not surprised that Jill Paton Walsh found the invitation to complete Thrones, Dominations impossible to resist.

The trouble with ingenuity

I’m someone who loves elaborate plots in crime novels, and as I mentioned the other day, I started Fear and Miss Betony, by Dorothy Bowers, with high hopes, given the claim that ‘The Golden Age of detective fiction was known for elaborate plots. This may well be the most ingenious one of them all.’ Now I’ve finished the book, I’m reflecting on both its strengths and its weaknesses.

Bowers’ writing style is literate and appealing. Here, the encounter between the eponymous Emma Betony and a sinister fortune teller called The Great Ambrosio is highly atmospheric and memorable. The setting (the book was published in 1941) is nicely done; the story gives a reminder that, albeit changed, life in England still went on while the Second World War raged. And Bowers understood the importance of character. Right at the end, Inspector Dan Pardoe makes the point that: ‘The key to this was character – as to so much else. The impact of character on circumstance, circumstance on character.’

The structure of the book is unusual. Emma is brought in by her former pupil, Grace Aram, to help understand an apparent campaign to murder a patient run at the nursing home-cum-school that Grace runs. Pardoe only appears near the end of the book, after murder is done. But the victim is not the person whom one has been led to expect: shades of Christie’s Peril at End House.

However, there are shortcomings. The detective work seems a bit perfunctory and at least one clue is withheld from the reader – not exactly fair play. More important, there are too many characters (this is a subject touched on in a recent post and comments.) This means that one quickly comes to the conclusion that the culprit is likely to be one of the few individuals in the story who is truly memorable. Worst of all, I still can’t understand why the murderer went to so much trouble. It seems to me that the objective might have been achieved more easily and at much less risk.

This is the trouble with ingenuity – much as I admire it. Sometimes the whole exercise is over the top. Ultimately, the reason I like the book is not because of the plot (because I’m afraid I figured out the solution some time before the end) but because Emma Betony is a splendid character, depicted with skill. One can see that the author really liked her, and with good reason. My favourite Bowers book remains Deed Without a Name, but Rue Morgue Press have done whodunit fans a real service by reprinting all her five novels. Each of them has elements of distinction and her early death was a tragedy that robbed us of a writer of genuine talent and rich promise.