Martin Edwards's Blog, page 198
June 27, 2014
Forgotten Book - Night of the Mocking Widow
John Dickson Carr used the name Carter Dickson for the books he wrote about Sir Henry Merrivale, a detective whom some fans prefer to Dr Gideon Fell. Today's Forgotten Book, Night of the Mocking Widow, was published at the start of the Fifties but is set in an English village - with the excellent name Stoke Druid - in 1938. It's an English village mystery, and has a touch of nostalgia about it, as well as displaying Carr's love of England very clearly.
Stoke Druid is plagued by poison pen letters, and when one of those accused by the letters dies in tragic circumstances, the letters stop,only to start up again. The Mocking Widow (another great name) is a dominant stone in an ancient circle, and there is an "impossible situation" which does not actually involve a murder, with murder only taking place towards the end of the book. Stone circles have often featured in crime novels, and no wonder -they are so often spookily atmospheric.
I can't better the summary of this book to be found in Douglas Greene's biography of Carr, a book I regard as one of the best biographies of a detective novelist ever written. He is largely positive, though he recognises that the novel does not have the power and grip of Carr's best pre-war work. I thought that the ingredients were impressive and appealing, although I find the comedy associated with Merrivale much less appealing than do his biggest fans - for me, the Fell stories are on the whole markedly better.
I didn't guess the culprit in this one, but I felt this was in part due to the fact that the motivation is very thin. Carr made strenuous attempts, especially in the comic scenes, to compensate for the lack of a murder investigation from the outset, but by this time his powers were just beginning to fade. Perhaps the classic example of a village poison pen letter campaign is Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger. Even though that too is not one of her masterpieces, which perhaps explains why I've not mentioned it on this blog before, it is a smoothly accomplished whodunit and, to my way of thinking, clearly superior to Carr's effort. Overall verdict on this one- not bad, but unfortunately anti-climactic.
Stoke Druid is plagued by poison pen letters, and when one of those accused by the letters dies in tragic circumstances, the letters stop,only to start up again. The Mocking Widow (another great name) is a dominant stone in an ancient circle, and there is an "impossible situation" which does not actually involve a murder, with murder only taking place towards the end of the book. Stone circles have often featured in crime novels, and no wonder -they are so often spookily atmospheric.
I can't better the summary of this book to be found in Douglas Greene's biography of Carr, a book I regard as one of the best biographies of a detective novelist ever written. He is largely positive, though he recognises that the novel does not have the power and grip of Carr's best pre-war work. I thought that the ingredients were impressive and appealing, although I find the comedy associated with Merrivale much less appealing than do his biggest fans - for me, the Fell stories are on the whole markedly better.
I didn't guess the culprit in this one, but I felt this was in part due to the fact that the motivation is very thin. Carr made strenuous attempts, especially in the comic scenes, to compensate for the lack of a murder investigation from the outset, but by this time his powers were just beginning to fade. Perhaps the classic example of a village poison pen letter campaign is Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger. Even though that too is not one of her masterpieces, which perhaps explains why I've not mentioned it on this blog before, it is a smoothly accomplished whodunit and, to my way of thinking, clearly superior to Carr's effort. Overall verdict on this one- not bad, but unfortunately anti-climactic.
June 25, 2014
The Devil's Advocate - film review
The Devil's Advocate is a film dating from 1997, but I've only just caught up with it. It's odd that it's taken me so long to do so, given not only that it's a dark thriller with a fantastic cast, including Al Pacino, Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves, but also features one of my favourite subjects - a dodgy law firm. We've had stories about lawyers in league with the Mafia. This one, based on a novel by Andrew Neiderman, a prolific specialist in the supernatural, goes much further....
Reeves plays Lomax, a clean-cut Florida lawyer with a highly religious mother and a beautiful wife, played by Theron. Lomax never loses a case, which seems suspicious in itself, and he soon finds himself lured to New York by the charming but malevolent John Milton (Pacino) whose law firm boasts a dazzling international client list. The lure of the money proves irresistible, but inevitably there is a price to be paid. In particular, Reeves finds himself tempted by a glamorous colleague (played by Connie Nielsen) while Theron begins a descent into hallucinatory paranoia.
Taylor Hackford, the director, faced a tricky task with this movie. A large part of the storyline is set in the courtroom,and although I'd be the first to admit that legal life can have its surreal side, this relatively realistic type of material could easily jar with some of the melodrama. It would be easy to say that The Devil's Advocate is hokum, but if so, it's hokum of a superior kind, because Hackford manages to keep the audience engaged from the start to the pleasing twist at the end.
It helps to have the likes of Pacino, Reeves and Theron on board. I thought Theron in particular handled the development of her character very well indeed. The story may be Grand Guignol, but this was acting of a very high standard. Pacino really enjoys himself as the bad guy, and (by and large) resists the temptation to ham it up too much. All in all, a good watch. And a reminder, if anyone needed one, that you really need to keep your eye on some members of the legal profession...
Reeves plays Lomax, a clean-cut Florida lawyer with a highly religious mother and a beautiful wife, played by Theron. Lomax never loses a case, which seems suspicious in itself, and he soon finds himself lured to New York by the charming but malevolent John Milton (Pacino) whose law firm boasts a dazzling international client list. The lure of the money proves irresistible, but inevitably there is a price to be paid. In particular, Reeves finds himself tempted by a glamorous colleague (played by Connie Nielsen) while Theron begins a descent into hallucinatory paranoia.
Taylor Hackford, the director, faced a tricky task with this movie. A large part of the storyline is set in the courtroom,and although I'd be the first to admit that legal life can have its surreal side, this relatively realistic type of material could easily jar with some of the melodrama. It would be easy to say that The Devil's Advocate is hokum, but if so, it's hokum of a superior kind, because Hackford manages to keep the audience engaged from the start to the pleasing twist at the end.
It helps to have the likes of Pacino, Reeves and Theron on board. I thought Theron in particular handled the development of her character very well indeed. The story may be Grand Guignol, but this was acting of a very high standard. Pacino really enjoys himself as the bad guy, and (by and large) resists the temptation to ham it up too much. All in all, a good watch. And a reminder, if anyone needed one, that you really need to keep your eye on some members of the legal profession...
Miss Potter and the Lake District
Miss Potter was being filmed while I wandered around the Lake District researching the area in the early days of the series, but I have only just caught up with the film. It's a feelgood movie that does not stick precisely to the facts of the life of Beatrix Potter, but is still, I think, pretty successful in capturing the spirit of the woman and her writing, and also the appeal of that wonderful part of England which captured her heart.
Renee Zellwegger plays Beatrix, and is quite captivating in the role. The cast as a whole is very good. Barbara Flynn, so often so likeable in so many roles, is a rather unappealing matriarch, but Bill Paterson is affable as Beatrix's dad. Ewan Macgregor plays the charming publisher (yes, such creatures definitely exist!) to whom she is secretly engaged. His sudden and tragic death is poignantly handled.
Lloyd Owen, son of the late Glyn, a stalwart of so many TV shows in the 60s an 70s, plays William Heelis, the solicitor whom Beatrix eventually marries. The name of Slater Heelis still survives; it's a legal firm respected in the North West to this day. But there's no doubt that the heart of the story is Beatrix's struggle to establish herself as an independently minded woman, and her passion for the Lakes. Zellwegger conveys all this very well indeed.
Heelis comments during the film about the London-orientation of Britain, and of course, nothing much has changed in that respect in more than a century. I like London a lot, but when I talk to friends from overseas, I often find that those who have visited England seldom get beyond London. This is a shame, because for all its merits, London posseses only a fraction of the country's must-see places. These undoubtedly include the Lake District, and it's due in no small measure to Beatrix Potter and the National Trust that the Lakes have been preserved in such a marvellous state for succeeding generations to enjoy. The film's a good one, but inevitably it can't convey the full grandeur of one of the most scenic and appealing areas in Europe. And dare I add, one of the best possible settings for a series of mystery novels!
Renee Zellwegger plays Beatrix, and is quite captivating in the role. The cast as a whole is very good. Barbara Flynn, so often so likeable in so many roles, is a rather unappealing matriarch, but Bill Paterson is affable as Beatrix's dad. Ewan Macgregor plays the charming publisher (yes, such creatures definitely exist!) to whom she is secretly engaged. His sudden and tragic death is poignantly handled.
Lloyd Owen, son of the late Glyn, a stalwart of so many TV shows in the 60s an 70s, plays William Heelis, the solicitor whom Beatrix eventually marries. The name of Slater Heelis still survives; it's a legal firm respected in the North West to this day. But there's no doubt that the heart of the story is Beatrix's struggle to establish herself as an independently minded woman, and her passion for the Lakes. Zellwegger conveys all this very well indeed.
Heelis comments during the film about the London-orientation of Britain, and of course, nothing much has changed in that respect in more than a century. I like London a lot, but when I talk to friends from overseas, I often find that those who have visited England seldom get beyond London. This is a shame, because for all its merits, London posseses only a fraction of the country's must-see places. These undoubtedly include the Lake District, and it's due in no small measure to Beatrix Potter and the National Trust that the Lakes have been preserved in such a marvellous state for succeeding generations to enjoy. The film's a good one, but inevitably it can't convey the full grandeur of one of the most scenic and appealing areas in Europe. And dare I add, one of the best possible settings for a series of mystery novels!
Russell James - guest blog
Russell James is the author of ten books, and is a former chair of the CWA. I've enjoyed many conversations with Russell in the years since I first came across him when I read his novel Underground. He is a varied and thoughtful writer who deserves to be better known. His non-fiction includes an excellent book about fictional detectives. When I last met Russell, I invited him to contribute a guest post to this blog at some point. Here it is:
'Art is fertile ground for crime writers. Huge sums are paid for a single item, a work that can be relatively small and transportable. In the first of my novels to revolve around the theft of an old master (Daylight, now out of print and hard to find) part of the fun lay in how the stolen masterpiece would be smuggled out of what was then the Soviet Union. The story included an art tutorial on the differences between copies, fakes and restoration – distinctions not as clear as you might hope. Great for complicating the plot.In my most successful novel, Painting In The Dark, the art world underpinned the plot – yet it frightened some potential publishers who saw it as politically dangerous. I guess it was controversial: set in 1997 but looking back to the 1930s and 40s, it suggested that Tony Blair’s New Labour Party had bewitched a nation and swept to power much as Hitler’s New Socialists had in Germany. But the book’s main theme was art and the mania of art collectors motivated by more than money, more than sex, by an obsession to acquire and own a unique fetishistic object. They’ll stop at nothing to achieve their ends, making them ideal characters for a crime story. They are driven, they want ‘a brush with genius’. We readers understand and sympathise – even if we wouldn’t kill to gain our ends.Plenty of crime novels allow wrongdoers to achieve their ends, and we law-abiding readers sometimes cheer – though when villains are motivated by cash alone the odds are they won’t get away. But an art fanatic? Why shouldn’t such a so-called villain keep the prize?Remember: these are crime novels, not moral tracts.'
June 23, 2014
The Frozen Shroud in paperback
The Frozen Shroud has just been published in paperback by Allison & Busby, a pleasing boost to morale as I work on its successor, which will be the seventh Lake District Mystery. The new book is set on the west coast of Cumbria, but the events of the The Frozen Shroud take place at Ullswater at Hallowe'en. Three women have been murdered in the tiny hamlet of Ravenbank over the space of one hundred years. The question for DCI Hannah Scarlett and her friend Daniel Kind is, of course: what can possibly connect the deaths?
I'm celebrating publication on Wednesday evening at Formby Books, and I'll be joined at the event by fellow novelists Sheila Quigley and Kate Ellis, who also have new paperbacks out. In writing The Frozen Shroud, I made one or two adjustments from my previous approach, as I'm very keen to keep the series fresh and interesting, rather than just repeating a formula. The reaction from people who have read the book so far has proved to be very gratifying. On my website, there is a whole collection of reviews - I felt lucky to receive so many - but here are four which gave me especial pleasure, given the publications in which they appeared:
"Martin Edwards...makes all the characters real, credible, and in the cases of the heroine, DCI Hannah Scarlett...and the slightly less heroic local historian Daniel Kind, highly sympathetic...Writing with scrupulous exactness, but sparing his readers too many disgusting details, he supplies fair clues, an agreeable setting, and a good, gripping, credible tale, which I highly recommend."
Jessica Mann, Literary Review
"Edwards draws on his knowledge of criminal research to interweave a hundred-year-old tale of a jilted wife allegedly killing her husband’s lover—and the legend of the victim’s faceless ghost—with a five-year-old cold case involving a similar murder of the young lover of a wealthy widower. Daniel Kind is in Ravenbank researching the original case when, following a Halloween dance, a third victim is discovered. DCI Scarlett arrives to investigate and the tension between detective and history professor rekindles. In addition to clever plotting and an evocative atmosphere, Edwards has given us a pair of characters whose mutual attraction and repulsion make a perfect recipe for tension."
Steve Steinbock, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
‘If you like your whodunits with a small list of possible suspects and motives à la Dame Agatha; more than one murder investigation happening at the same time à la Peter Robinson; and important links to the past à la the late Reginald Hill, you’ll love this book... I can highly recommend it.’
Joseph Scarpato Jr, Mystery Scene
‘Layered, atmospheric...creepy premise.’
Publishers’ Weekly
June 20, 2014
Forgotten Book - Death of an Airman
Death of an Airman, which dates from 1935, is today's Forgotten Book,but the fact that it counts as forgotten has nothing to do with its quality - which is high - but everything to do with its scarcity. Most of the six detective novels written by the author, Christopher St. John Sprigg, have been hard to find for more than half a century, though the publishing revolution may change things soon. My copy of this book was loaned by a kind friend. He has a wonderful Golden Age collection, but even his copy of this one is an American reprint rather than the UK first edition.
Sprigg knew a good deal about the world of aeroplanes, and this makes the background - a small, fictitious aerodrome in the south of England - both credible and fascinating. His story involves an apparently impossible crime, and here again his inside knowledge contributed to the plot. But there is more to this story than technical detail - the suspects are not drawn in great depth, but they are at least entertainingly characterised.
One of the main viewpoint characters is an Australian bishop, and he is pleasingly portrayed as a decent man whose presence at the scene of a plane crash, in which a pilot's corpse is discovered, proves the catalyst for a discursive investigation which takes in an elaborate international cocaine smuggling operation. Books - especially perhaps those from the Golden Age - in which cocaine smuggling plays a part tend to have to do a lot to convince me of their merit, but Sprigg does a surprisingly good job of weaving the scam in with a clever whodunit plot.
Overall, there is a great deal to like about this book, and it's the best Sprigg I've read to date. In fact, I enjoyed reading it much more than I expected, partly because of the period detail, but also because Sprigg writes with a light and deft touch. What a tragedy and a waste that this gifted man died before he was 30, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He really could write well..
Sprigg knew a good deal about the world of aeroplanes, and this makes the background - a small, fictitious aerodrome in the south of England - both credible and fascinating. His story involves an apparently impossible crime, and here again his inside knowledge contributed to the plot. But there is more to this story than technical detail - the suspects are not drawn in great depth, but they are at least entertainingly characterised.
One of the main viewpoint characters is an Australian bishop, and he is pleasingly portrayed as a decent man whose presence at the scene of a plane crash, in which a pilot's corpse is discovered, proves the catalyst for a discursive investigation which takes in an elaborate international cocaine smuggling operation. Books - especially perhaps those from the Golden Age - in which cocaine smuggling plays a part tend to have to do a lot to convince me of their merit, but Sprigg does a surprisingly good job of weaving the scam in with a clever whodunit plot.
Overall, there is a great deal to like about this book, and it's the best Sprigg I've read to date. In fact, I enjoyed reading it much more than I expected, partly because of the period detail, but also because Sprigg writes with a light and deft touch. What a tragedy and a waste that this gifted man died before he was 30, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He really could write well..
June 18, 2014
Mavis Doriel Hay
Mavis Doriel Hay's detective fiction seems to be making more impact now than it did on its first appearance in the 1930s. This is thanks to the British Library's very welcome decision to reprint her three long-neglected novels in their Crime Classics series. I've previously talked about The Santa Klaus Murder, and in today's post I turn my attention to the two books that preceded it, Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell. They both benefit, by the way, from nice intros by Stephen Booth, who spoke enthusiastically about them on the Forgotten Authors panel at Crimefest.
Mavis was a student at Oxford at roughly the same time as Dorothy L. Sayers, and although she was an alumna of St Hilda's, rather than Somerville, it may be that their paths crossed. Did this influence Sayers' warmly positive review of Murder Underground? I very much doubt it - Sayers was not someone who said things about books that she didn't mean, and some of her reviews of friends' work were scarily acerbic. Sayers liked "good English", and Mavis was a stylish writer - it is this that lifts her novels out of the common run of Golden Age stories, and helps to explain why the British Library have chosen to republish her books. That said, I don't rate Murder Underground as highly as her two later novels. As the title suggests, the killing of an elderly spinster takes place at a Tube station (maps are provided), and the manner of the story-telling is light and amusing. It's a pleasing period piece. The plot, and in particular the solution, are however rather slight.
Mavis created a fictional Oxford college, Persephone, plainly influence by St Hilda's, for Death on the Cherwell. Again, we have a map of the scene of the crime, and a victim who is an unlovely spinster. A group of young female students find the body of the college bursar in a canoe floating down the river - shades of the beginning of The Floating Admiral. There is a lot to enjoy in this book, and Mavis's light touch is more expertly deployed than in her debut. Again, there is a shortage of suspects (not a mistake she made in The Santa Klaus Murder, which has a dauntingly large cast) and the "surprise twist" is foreseeable. But the story is fun.
In judging this writer, and these books, I think it's important to keep in mind that she was an inexperienced novelist, and this accounts for some of the flimsiness of plot and structure. Given her fluent writing style, I think that, had she kept writing mysteries, she might have developed into a notable contributor to the genre. It was not to be - she seems to have lost interest, although she wrote non-fiction later and lived until the Seventies. But it's marvellous to see these books given a new life, in very attractive editions, and they are being very successfully marketed by the British Library. The Golden Age is in vogue at long last!
Mavis was a student at Oxford at roughly the same time as Dorothy L. Sayers, and although she was an alumna of St Hilda's, rather than Somerville, it may be that their paths crossed. Did this influence Sayers' warmly positive review of Murder Underground? I very much doubt it - Sayers was not someone who said things about books that she didn't mean, and some of her reviews of friends' work were scarily acerbic. Sayers liked "good English", and Mavis was a stylish writer - it is this that lifts her novels out of the common run of Golden Age stories, and helps to explain why the British Library have chosen to republish her books. That said, I don't rate Murder Underground as highly as her two later novels. As the title suggests, the killing of an elderly spinster takes place at a Tube station (maps are provided), and the manner of the story-telling is light and amusing. It's a pleasing period piece. The plot, and in particular the solution, are however rather slight.
Mavis created a fictional Oxford college, Persephone, plainly influence by St Hilda's, for Death on the Cherwell. Again, we have a map of the scene of the crime, and a victim who is an unlovely spinster. A group of young female students find the body of the college bursar in a canoe floating down the river - shades of the beginning of The Floating Admiral. There is a lot to enjoy in this book, and Mavis's light touch is more expertly deployed than in her debut. Again, there is a shortage of suspects (not a mistake she made in The Santa Klaus Murder, which has a dauntingly large cast) and the "surprise twist" is foreseeable. But the story is fun.
In judging this writer, and these books, I think it's important to keep in mind that she was an inexperienced novelist, and this accounts for some of the flimsiness of plot and structure. Given her fluent writing style, I think that, had she kept writing mysteries, she might have developed into a notable contributor to the genre. It was not to be - she seems to have lost interest, although she wrote non-fiction later and lived until the Seventies. But it's marvellous to see these books given a new life, in very attractive editions, and they are being very successfully marketed by the British Library. The Golden Age is in vogue at long last!
June 16, 2014
Christine Poulson - guest blog
I'm glad to welcome my friend Christine Poulson as a guest contributor to this blog, with a charming personal story. Christine is very good company in person and also a very good novelist with whom to spend time. I'm pleased to say that her new book, Invisible, published by Accent Press, is now available in paperback and as an ebook (the latter is an especial bargain) As you will see, the starting premise of the story is a gripping one. Over to you, Chrissie....
‘Had a good break over the summer?’ ‘Great, thanks, spent three weeks touring the cemeteries of southern Sweden.’ ‘Oh . . . lovely . . .’ It was, too. I was accompanying my husband who was researching a book on the great Swedish architect, Gunnar Aspland, designer of, among other things, the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, a World Heritage Site. I came home knowing that I wanted to set at least part of a novel in Sweden. As a young art historian I had been more drawn to Italy and France and was late coming to Scandinavia. With my blue eyes and with a name like Poulson, I almost certainly have a Viking or two among my ancestors. Perhaps that’s why I felt an immediate affinity with Sweden and fell in love with Stockholm. There was another memorable aspect to the trip: in our seven years of marriage this was the first time my husband and I had spent three weeks alone together. When we met he was a widower with two children and we had been a family right from the start. Holidays had been great fun, but busy and full of distractions. On this trip there was plenty of time for ideas to start bubbling over: the long midsummer days, nights that were barely more than twilight, the hours on the road, the waiting while my husband took photographs . . . The character of Lisa began to form in my imagination, a woman who was only ever alone with her lover. No-one knew about him and she saw him for a week-end only once a month. The novel would begin when he failed to show up. I was already committed to writing the third in my Cassandra James series and it was a few years before I got round to writing Invisible. By then I knew why Lisa’s lover had to vanish and why it would be so dangerous for her to search for him. Invisible is a novel that for many reasons is close to my heart and it all began on that wonderful trip.
June 15, 2014
The Craft of Writing - Where Do You Find Your Ideas?
One of the questions writers are asked most often is: "Where do you find your ideas?" In fact, I gave this title to a short story I wrote years ago, about a not very successful novelist who conducts a bookshop event. A member of his small audience asks the question, with alarming results. I got the idea for that story from a real life literary event, as it happens.
There's no easy answer to the question, because story ideas are all around us, all the time. You just have to spot them - or more often, tease them out, if they are hiding. As a teenager at school, hoping that one day I'd become a writer of crime fiction, I worried that I wouldn't be able to come up with a plot idea strong enough to sustain a full-length novel. It wasn't until much later that I realised that it doesn't matter if you don't have the whole concept of your novel clear from the outset. The key is to have an interesting starting point - a setting, perhaps, or a type of person, or an event or incident - that sparks your imagination and gets you going. Then you can ask yourself: "What if?"- always a good technique for a teller of tales.
My idea for "Acknowledgments", the story that won the CWA Margery Allingham Prize last month, came along after I read a couple of books which had rather lengthy and (in my opinion) rather rambling and tedious acknowledgments to the authors' countless acquaintances. I thought it might be possible to create a story out of such material. The spark for "The Bookbinder's Apprentice", which won the CWA Short Story Dagger, came when I looked in the window of a bookbinder's shop in Venice. A couple of days after my recent visit to the North East, I was asked to write a story for an anthology featuring a bookshop. I decided that an imaginary lonely second hand bookshop in Hartlepool, a town which I'd just visited, might be a suitable background. And I mentioned on this blog the other day that, during my recent trip to Berlin, thoughts about the reunification of Germany led me to an idea for a story about a reunion in the city between a couple who have not seen each other for many years.
The very idea of meeting someone again after not having seen them for many years absolutely fascinates me. It is at the heart of the seventh and latest Lake District Mystery (which I'd be writing right now if I hadn't been lured away by the temptation of doing this blog post!) And at the week-end, a very enjoyable experience gave me a premise for another possible story. For the first time in 40 years, my school had a reunion. The school (once a boys' grammar school, now a mixed sixth form college, Sir John Deane's) has changed out of all recognition, although the core of the old building has, happily, been preserved. Reassembling for lunch in the old main hall was a very nostalgic experience. And it was fascinating to meet again a group of men whom I'd not seen for four decades. I was pleased and interested to discover many interesting stories of what they have been up to, and as amused as ever to be asked by someone- yes! - "do you write under your own name?" - although it was poignant to pause and reflect on two or three friends who have died in the intervening years. One of these deaths I'd had no knowledge of previously.
A number of chaps were still instantly recognisable, but that was certainly not always the case. And as I struggled to recognise one or two people, the thought crossed my mind - what if someone came back to such a reunion having assumed a false identity? There could be a story there, couldn't there? Or what if some long-buried grudge was rekindled at such an occasion? Or what if a crime committed forty years ago came to light because of a casual remark dropped at a reunion? Ideas are everywhere, you see. It's simply a matter of using one's imagination to create something worthwhile out of them.
There's no easy answer to the question, because story ideas are all around us, all the time. You just have to spot them - or more often, tease them out, if they are hiding. As a teenager at school, hoping that one day I'd become a writer of crime fiction, I worried that I wouldn't be able to come up with a plot idea strong enough to sustain a full-length novel. It wasn't until much later that I realised that it doesn't matter if you don't have the whole concept of your novel clear from the outset. The key is to have an interesting starting point - a setting, perhaps, or a type of person, or an event or incident - that sparks your imagination and gets you going. Then you can ask yourself: "What if?"- always a good technique for a teller of tales.
My idea for "Acknowledgments", the story that won the CWA Margery Allingham Prize last month, came along after I read a couple of books which had rather lengthy and (in my opinion) rather rambling and tedious acknowledgments to the authors' countless acquaintances. I thought it might be possible to create a story out of such material. The spark for "The Bookbinder's Apprentice", which won the CWA Short Story Dagger, came when I looked in the window of a bookbinder's shop in Venice. A couple of days after my recent visit to the North East, I was asked to write a story for an anthology featuring a bookshop. I decided that an imaginary lonely second hand bookshop in Hartlepool, a town which I'd just visited, might be a suitable background. And I mentioned on this blog the other day that, during my recent trip to Berlin, thoughts about the reunification of Germany led me to an idea for a story about a reunion in the city between a couple who have not seen each other for many years.
The very idea of meeting someone again after not having seen them for many years absolutely fascinates me. It is at the heart of the seventh and latest Lake District Mystery (which I'd be writing right now if I hadn't been lured away by the temptation of doing this blog post!) And at the week-end, a very enjoyable experience gave me a premise for another possible story. For the first time in 40 years, my school had a reunion. The school (once a boys' grammar school, now a mixed sixth form college, Sir John Deane's) has changed out of all recognition, although the core of the old building has, happily, been preserved. Reassembling for lunch in the old main hall was a very nostalgic experience. And it was fascinating to meet again a group of men whom I'd not seen for four decades. I was pleased and interested to discover many interesting stories of what they have been up to, and as amused as ever to be asked by someone- yes! - "do you write under your own name?" - although it was poignant to pause and reflect on two or three friends who have died in the intervening years. One of these deaths I'd had no knowledge of previously.
A number of chaps were still instantly recognisable, but that was certainly not always the case. And as I struggled to recognise one or two people, the thought crossed my mind - what if someone came back to such a reunion having assumed a false identity? There could be a story there, couldn't there? Or what if some long-buried grudge was rekindled at such an occasion? Or what if a crime committed forty years ago came to light because of a casual remark dropped at a reunion? Ideas are everywhere, you see. It's simply a matter of using one's imagination to create something worthwhile out of them.
June 13, 2014
Forgotten Book - Vegetable Duck
John Rhode, like so many of his Detection Club colleagues, was fascinated by true crime, and he was one of those novelists (Raymond Chandler, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and recently P.D. James, are others) who was enthralled by the mystery surrounding the Wallace case. Did the mild-mannered insurance agent William Wallace batter his wife Julia to death with a poker, or was someone else guilty? To this day, there is not a total consensus. Sayers suspected he was innocent, but I'm not sure Rhode took the same view.
He adapted the case for fictional purposes in The Telephone Call in 1944. For good measure, he returned to it again four years later in Vegetable Duck, which is my Forgotten Book for today. Here is where I confess my ignorance - "vegetable duck" is apparently a delicacy of sorts, a marrow stuffed with mince, which happens to be the favourite foodstuff of one of the characters in the novel. I must admit, though, that I'd never heard of it. And it's not on the menu at any of the happily numerous pubs which do meals in this neck of the woods!
Rhode makes explicit reference, more than once, to the Wallace case in this book. The circumstances of the murder are very different from those in the original crime - you guessed it, the vegetable duck is poisoned - and the setting is a reasonably prosperous part of London rather than a northern city. But the type of "alibi" put forward by Wallace is used by the victim's husband here. Dr Priestley utters words of wisdom in the background, but the main detecting is done by a cop, Jimmy Waghorn, who often featured in Rhode stories.
I enjoyed this book. It was crisp and readable, and contained a number of points of interest. Rhode's technique means that I was able to spot the culprit on first appearance, but the means by which the dreadful deed were done remained unclear to me at that stage. "Means" fascinated Rhode rather more than they do me, or most other modern writers. But he was a capable performer, and this is a good example of his post-war work.
He adapted the case for fictional purposes in The Telephone Call in 1944. For good measure, he returned to it again four years later in Vegetable Duck, which is my Forgotten Book for today. Here is where I confess my ignorance - "vegetable duck" is apparently a delicacy of sorts, a marrow stuffed with mince, which happens to be the favourite foodstuff of one of the characters in the novel. I must admit, though, that I'd never heard of it. And it's not on the menu at any of the happily numerous pubs which do meals in this neck of the woods!
Rhode makes explicit reference, more than once, to the Wallace case in this book. The circumstances of the murder are very different from those in the original crime - you guessed it, the vegetable duck is poisoned - and the setting is a reasonably prosperous part of London rather than a northern city. But the type of "alibi" put forward by Wallace is used by the victim's husband here. Dr Priestley utters words of wisdom in the background, but the main detecting is done by a cop, Jimmy Waghorn, who often featured in Rhode stories.
I enjoyed this book. It was crisp and readable, and contained a number of points of interest. Rhode's technique means that I was able to spot the culprit on first appearance, but the means by which the dreadful deed were done remained unclear to me at that stage. "Means" fascinated Rhode rather more than they do me, or most other modern writers. But he was a capable performer, and this is a good example of his post-war work.
