Martin Edwards's Blog, page 213

P.D. James and the Wallace Case - a Classic Murder Mystery

The murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931 has fascinated people for over eighty years. Raymond Chandler was one of many crime novelists who was puzzled as to where the truth lay. Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr were among the others, and Sayers wrote an important essay about the case, included in the Detection Club book Anatomy of Murder. John Rhode wrote two novels which drew on aspects of the case, and more recently John Hutton wrote
First, a brief recap on the main facts. William Herbert Wallace was a middle aged, respectable and apparently happily married insurance agent who received a telephone message at the Chess Club where he played, from a prospective new client, R.M. Qualtrough. Wallace was asked to call at Qualtrough's home the following evening. He duly et out, but the address given to him did not exist. When he returned home, he found his wife dead. She had been battered to death. Wallace was found guilty and sentenced to death, but reprieved on appeal. However, he died not long after being released from prison.

Research undertaken by Jonathan Goodman and Roger Wilkes seemed to establish that the actual killer was a man called Parry.However,P.D.James has cast doubt on this conclusion. To follow her detailed reasoning, one has to read her essay very carefully(and it is behind a paywall). I think it's a truly fascinating piece of work.

The question she has presented us with is this - was Wallace in fact guilty, after all? She thinks he was. I think it's marvellous that she has reinvestigated the case, and her essay is intensely readable, as you would expect. Even for those who are not true crime fans, it's an engrossing mystery. I want to reflect on P.D. James' arguments before coming to any conclusions - that's the lawyer in me, I guess! - but I must say that my instinctive view is that I still believe Wallace was innocent. Anthony Berkeley said of the Crippen case (I'm paraphrasing, but only slightly) that a man "does not become a fiend overnight", and I think he was right. The psychological profile of Wallace doesn't seem to me to be that of a murderer, and there are one or two other aspects of the latest theory that don't instantly convince me. But - the debate is now reopened, and I would be extremely interested to know what others think about this enduring and extraordinary puzzle.

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives - review

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, is the rather brilliant title of one of the most interesting anthologies of crime fiction that I've read in a long time. Edited by Sarah Weinman, and published by Penguin, the book collects some fine stories by a number of the finest female writers of suspense fiction in the twentieth century. Weinman's introduction is interesting and incisive, but of course, the meat of the book is in her story selection. And what a good selection it is.

Here we find some famous names, and some forgotten ones too. I was particularly pleased to see a story by Nedra Tyre, an author whose name, I suspect, will be unfamiliar to many. "A Nice Place to Stay" made a great impression on me when I first came across it many years ago - in, as far as I can recall, one of the many fine anthologies edited by Ellery Queen. It inspired me to write a story called "A Job for Life", which eventually appeared in print, and is possibly the earliest of my stories to have done so.

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding is represented by a long and very clever story, almost a novella, called "The Stranger in the Car". I liked the twists in this one, as well as the insightful characterisation. Holding was a gifted writer, but even more talented was Margaret Millar, one of whose all too rare short stories is also included here. And we also have some very fine writers, ranging from the superb Shirley Jackson and the often creepy Patricia Highsmith to the subtle Celia Fremlin and the author of fhat very good story "The Purple Shroud", Joyce Harrington (and no, it was not the inspiration for The Frozen Shroud!)

Reviewers have been quick to heap praise on this book, and I'm with them. Among the most interesting assessments, as you might expect, is one from Jon L. Breen, arguably the finest living crime critic in the US. He notes Weinman's suggestion that the writers she has chosen lacked an editorial champion, but points out that their success (and they were highly regarded in their day, even if most have now faded from view) indicates that the feminist crime writers of the 70s and 80s were not breaking as much fresh ground as is sometimes argued. But what matters most is that the stories in this book represent really good entertainment. I look forward to more anthologies from Sarah Weinman.

Agatha Christie's Poirot - The Big Four - ITV review

Agatha Christie's Poirot began its new run on ITV tonight with The Big Four, co-written by Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard. Among other pleasures, the episode reintroduced Hugh Fraser, Pauline Moran and Philip Jackson as Captain Hastings, Miss Lemon, and the world-weary cop Japp, all of whom played an enjoyable part in supporting the great David Suchet in the early days of the series. The main cast members attended one of the most memorable crime events I can recall, the Agatha Christie Centenary Banquet at Torquay' s English Riviera Centre in September 1990. It was a wonderful, unforgettable night, complete with a dramatic firework display over the bay.

Now, although I'm a Christie fan, I'm the first to acknowledge that not all her detective stories are masterpieces. The Big Four was published at a low point in her life, not long after her famous disappearance, and was cobbled together from a series of lurid episodes. As a result, the book is fragementary, and the plot material pretty risible. How do you adapt something like that so as to satisfy a 21st century television audience?

The answer is to do it confidently, but with respect for the strong points in Christie's writing and the characters. Mark Gatiss, a writer I admire, is well qualified to do this, and I felt he and Ian Hallard did a pretty good job, at least until the closing scenes, which were crazier in mood than the earlier part of the story. I sensed the writers' energy flagging a bit towards the end, with Hastings disappearing from the action for no good reason..But anyone who has read the original novel will surely agree that it would be a challenge to adapt.

Some people might argue that in some ways, it is easier to make a success of adapting a poor Christie book than a good one. In support of that view, I felt that, to take just one example, the TV version of The Sittaford Mystery was hugely disappointing. Having said that, the screenplay of The Secret of Chimneys, which was another Twenties thriller in broadly the same vein as The Big Four, was over the top from start to finish. Despite that faltering in the later stages, The Big Four worked better overall..

Of course, the presence of David Suchet is a huge asset to this series. Almost everyone who has responded to my post on Joan Hickson agrees she was the best Jane Marple, and I think there's even less argument about the definitive nature of Suchet's interpretation of Poirot. He was as good as usual in The Big Four.

Zoe Sharp and Priscilla Masters

Two crime writers who are friends of mine have published books recently, and I'd like to give each of them a mention. I've known Priscilla Masters for more than a decade now, and have fond memories of sharing a number of library events with her, two in Lancashire and one in the West Midlands. She's a very entertaining speaker, and though I didn't know her well that time we did our first gig together, she instantly put me at my ease. It's great fun appearing with her, because she is so good at keeping an audience interested and amused. Most recently, she was a very popular after dinner speaker at the St Hilda's conference in August.

Her latest novel, published by Severn House, is The Final Curtain. It's another entry in the long-running series featuring DI Joanna Piercy, and opens with her return to work after her honeymoon. As usual, the Staffordshire setting adds a realistic and appealing background to a story which opens with some apparently insignificant complaints from a woman who used to appear in a television soap opera. A review on the back cover compares Cilla with her friend and mine, Kate Ellis, and I think it's a good comparison.

Cilla works within the field of the police procedural and whodunit, whereas Zoe Sharp is more often associated with the thriller genre, in view of the success of her books about Charlie Fox, who is definitely someone you mess with at your peril. Zoe's another entertaining speaker, whose fields of expertise cover such diverse subjects as guns, motor bikes, and photography.

Zoe has also become something of a guru in the field of self-publishing, and she's brought out her latest, The Blood Whisperer (excellent title, wish I'd thought of it first!) via the imprint of Murderati Ink. The book is available as an ebook, but having received a trade paperback edition, I am pleased to confirm that it's attractively produced (not something that can always be taken for granted with these ventures.) This book is Zoe's first stand-alone thriller, and introduces London crime scene specialist Kelly Jacks. Zoe's a pacy writer (her short stories, one or two of which I've included in anthologies I've edited, are also very entertaining), and I'm confident this intriguing change of direction will further expand her considerable fan base.

The Body in the Library: Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

It seems hard to believe, but almost 30 years have passed since Joan Hickson was first introduced to us as Miss Marple, in a three-part adaptation for TV of The Body in the Library, by T.R. Bowen. I decided to roll back the years and watch it again, to check whether it was as good as I remembered,and whether the view I've expressed (even on breakfast TV!) that Joan Hickson was the definitive Marple was really justified. Well, I can now confirm it was that good, and to me, Hickson is indeed the perfect Marple.

The Body in the Library was one of the first detective novels I ever read as a child, and I was really impressed. It's always been a favourite, although it's not universally regarded as a classic Agatha Christie. But I think the convoluted plot is excellent, even allowing for the fact that it depends on a trick which would, thanks to advances in forensic science, be impossible to pull off today.

Bowen's version sticks pretty closely to the original - a wise decision, I think. The script is first class, and the cast is absolutely superb. We have Gwen Watford as Dolly Bantry and Moray Watson as Colonel Bantry, and that's just a start. David Horovitch is excellent as Inspector Slack, and Raymond Francis a splendid Sir Henry Clithering. Even before I came across Christie, as a small boy, I enjoyed the TV series No Hiding Place, in which Francis played Superintendent Lockhart, and I remember it fondly to this day, even if I can't recall any of the stories.

The rest of the cast includes Trudie Styler, now better known as the wife of Sting, Jess Conrad, and John Bardon, who became a fixture in EastEnders. The acting from start to finish was up to the same high standard as the script - there was none of the hamminess that has disfigured some of the least satisfactory episodes of Agatha Christie's Marple in recen years. But best of all is Hickson's under-stated but totally convincing performance. Great viewing.

Forgotten Book - Escape to Quebec

Milward Kennedy is a writer I've featured several times in this series of Friday's Forgotten Books, and  there is much about his work that I like. He had fresh interesting ideas, a lively style, and a good understanding of people. And yet, he was something of a 'nearly man' who never quite made it as a consistent top-level performer. My choice today,. Escape to Quebec, illustrates both his strengths and his limitations.

This book is one of his later titles, first published in 1948, and one of the very few Kennedy titles which made it into a paperback edition. By this time,he had abandoned classic detection, and was trying his hand a at a different kind of story, really representing a return to his co-written debut, The Bleston Mystery, which is a light thriller. He drew on his experience of diplomacy and international relations - he was a senior figure in the International Labour Organisation - and also his knowledge of Canada, where he spent a good deal of time, in putting this novel together.

After a short prologue, we are presented with a first person narrative. Unusually, the narrator is a prisoner of war, and apparently a German Count, who has just escaped, together with a colleague, from where he was being held in Canada. The pair have been sprung in order to take part in an assassination plot. In some ways, therefore, this book resembles and anticipates the classic Frederick Forsyth best-seller, The Day of the Jackal. Forsyth's originality was much admired in its day, but you could say that Kennedy got there first (though I hasten to add that the books are very different from each other.)

There are a number of interesting and gripping scenes, and the story is very readable - I devoured it quickly, and with some pleasure. On the whole, however, I felt that there were good reasons why Kennedy failed to match the success that Forsyth later achieved. Overall, the level of excitement (given that we know that the leaders of the Western powers survived) is simply not high enough, and the romantic interest that is introduced is tepid in the extreme. Kennedy wins high marks for originality of concept, but not quite as many for execution. The story of his writing career, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I continue to admire his desire to keep trying something new, of which this book is certainly an example.

Raymond Flynn and Dorothy Lumley

In the crime writing world, the increasing number of conventions and events mean that there are many more opportunities for socialising between crime writers than was the case even when I started out as a published writer. As a result, one bumps into people from time to time who may not become close friends but who nevertheless prove to be pleasant acquaintances.

I'm sorry to say that a couple of people who fall into that category as far as I'm concerned have recently died. One is the novelist Raymond Flynn. Ray was taken on by Hodder & Stoughton two or three years before I joined their list and we met at a Dead on Deansgate conference in Manchester at the end of the Nineties. Ray also joined us, as far as I remember, for a very enjoyable Hodder author dinner at which those attending included those very interesting writers Andrew Taylor and Nick Blincoe. Andrew has of course gone on to great things in the crime world, while Nick Blincoe has not (as far as I know) stayed with the crime genre, but has moved on to other literary projects (and I gather he was also once an adviser to Nick Clegg...)

Ray inscribed for me a couple of his books, Busy Body and A Public Body, both of which featured DCI Robert Graham. He had been a career police officer in Nottinghamshire, and his experience strengthened the books. Like me and many others, however, he departed from the Hodder list, and I lost track of him in recent years, though I gather he continued to attend CWA regional chapter meetings in the West Midlands. He is, perhaps, a good example of an enjoyable mid-list writer who faded from sight all too soon because of the vagaries of the publishing world, rather than because of any lack of ability.

Another recent loss is that of Dorothy Lumley, often known just as Dot. I was quite shocked to hear of her passing. A former publisher, she was a literary agent whom I met at a few CWA events and also at the memorable Las Vegas Bouchercon. We once had a meal together and she told me she wanted to submit a short story for a future CWA anthology.I asked her about this a few times afterwards, but she never got round to doing it - too busy representing her clients, I think. She had a loyal set of writers on her books, including that very entertaining crime writer Amy Myers, and they will miss her greatly as agent and friend .

The Tunnel - Sky Atlantic - TV review

The Tunnel, which made a very good start on Sky Atlantic this evening in the first of ten episodes, is an Anglo-French thriiller starring Stephen Dillane as Karl, an amiable British cop, and Clemence Poesy as Elise, his gifted and driven but difficult French counterpart. The case that brings them together starts with the discovery in the Channel Tunnel of a woman's body, exactly at the midpoint of the tunnel. Soon it emerges that the body has been cut in two, and then it turns out that the two halves belong to different women -one a controversial French politician, one a British prostitute.

This story is a re-make, it seems, of The Bridge, the highly acclaimed Scandinavian drama, but as I never saw The Bridge, I'm coming to it fresh. I suspect this is an advantage, given that comparisons are apt to be unflattering to re-makes. I started out by being unsure whether this was a series I'd want to watch beyond the first programme. Suffice to say that by the end, I was very much looking forward to the next instalment.

Dillane is very good, while Poesy is quite compelling, in a totally different role from her part in Birdsong. The script has quite a few witty moments, and some of the filming is quite beautiful. The storyline at this stage is suitably mysterious, with a rather nasty-seeming young British journalist receiving messages from the apparent killer, and enduring a rather memorable near-death experience while trapped in his car.

So, yes, I''ll be tuning in next week. And if The Tunnel maintains the high standard of the first episode, I feel strongly tempted to check out The Bridge as well..

Yvonne Eve Walus - guest blog

Tomorrow, I am planning a post about a couple of members of the crime fiction community who have died recently, but today there's something happier. I've never met Yvonne Eve Walus, which isn't too surprising, since she lives in New Zealand (a country that's quite high on my must-visit list, I might add), but she has contributed more than once to CWA anthologies that I've edited, and I've enjoyed her rather quirky and original approach to the short story form. As a result, I was more than happy to oblige when she offered to write a guest blog post in connection with her brand new novel. Here it is:


'It’s the eve of the release date for Operation Genocide and the first hate review is already in. As its author, I can’t help but feel a twinge of pride: the book is being slammed for being too liberal, too anti-apartheid, too anti-white. That’s a perfect breeding ground for controversy, if you take into account my very pale skin and my very pro-apartheid surname, and controversy is good. Controversy makes readers think. Controversial books are usually the ones that make a difference.

So, what is Operation Genocide about? It’s about loving your country so much, you’re willing to sacrifice your life, your sons, your principles and your basic humanity. It’s about making difficult choices in impossible situations. It’s about circumstances making either monsters or heroes out of ordinary people.

Too vague? Picture this: South Africa 1982. The country is run by a white government voted in by the white population. Other races are second-class citizens. White women do have the right to vote, but they do not enjoy the same privileges as their male counterparts: they need their husband or father’s permission to open a bank account or buy a house. If they earn a wage, they are taxed in a higher tax bracket than their husbands. Just like there are white-only bars, there are men-only bars where women aren’t allowed to enter.

Imagine being a wife in that setting. Imagine staying at home every day, chilling your husband’s beer mug, looking after the children and keeping yourself pretty for him. Imagine your shock when your husband’s murdered and you discover he was an evil scientist plotting to solve the country’s racial problems with one dose of a deadly virus. Imagine your shock when an anonymous note demands you burn the secret files you don’t have. Oh, and meanwhile, you don’t have access to the family bank account because you’re a woman.

Sound like your type of book? Then try the excerpt on my website'.

Dinner with the Sherlockians - and the Gladstones

If, twenty years ago, you'd have told me that one day I'd not only be asked to deliver an after-dinner speech, but would accept the invitation and enjoy the experience. I wouldn't have believed you. For many years, I was a very reluctant public speaker, and although I did a lot of advocacy and gave quite a few legal lectures, public speaking was something I went to some lengths to avoid. I have always felt more comfortable away from the public eye, writing rather than talking. But times change, and life as an author has made me - gradually - increasingly confident about my public speaking. I'm still not a natural, but I cherish some of the kind speaker testimonials that I've put on my website, because this is a skill I've learned slowly and with some trepidation over a long period.

Quite out of the blue, the Sherlock Holmes Society of London approached me earlier this year. They were holding their annual conference in the North West, based at Gladstone's Library, and asked me to give the main speech. After a bit of hesitation, I said yes and started thinking about how to tackle the task. I decided to include in the speech a jokey pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes story, set at the Library and featuring William Ewart Gladstone himself. I ran it by a Sherlockian expert once I'd written it, but when I learned, a few days before the event, that the guests of honour were Sir William and Lady Gladstone, members of the great man's family who are still based at Hawarden Castle, I was a bit daunted!

I did feel a bit nervous, but the evening proved very enjoyable and I met some delightful people, including the Gladstones. And it's abundantly clear that Sherlock is as popular as ever. This Society alone (and there are others) has 1400 members, and the success of the recent films and Benedict Cumberbatch show has boosted numbers. Sherlockians are apparently very active on Twitter and I learned a great deal in pleasant company.

I've always been a Sherlock fan, but this experience has strengthened my enthusiasm especially since by coincidence, I've recently been commissioned to write an essay about Conan Doyle for  a literary book to be published in the near future. I may well write another Sherlockian pastiche before long, time permitting, using an idea that came to me when I visitied a museum in Prague lsat year. And on the subject of speaking, the after dinner speech has led to another speaking invitation, this time to one of the Oxford University Societies. Again, something I never would have imagined, twenty or so years ago.