Martin Edwards's Blog, page 244

On the Christie Trail

A week ago today I had the great pleasure of travelling from Bristol, venue for Crimefest, with a touring party on the Agatha Christie trail. It was a special treat for me, partly because Christie introduced me to crime fiction when I was young, and partly because I spent the trip in the company of John Curran, without a doubt the world’s leading expert on the Queen of Crime.
First stop was the Grand Hotel in Torquay – which I last stayed in during the Christie centenary celebrations in 1990, at a time when my wife was pregnant with Jonathan. I remember more than a few drinks in the company of Reginald Hill, and the excitement of the Gala Dinner on the Saturday evening, attended by the cast of Poirot and many others.
After that, there was a quick visit to the Christie exhibition at Torquay Museum, where one of the famous “secret notebooks” is on display. Then, to Churston (featured in The ABC Murders) and the church with the Christie window. Lunch was at a quite beautiful old pub adjacent to the church.
Then it was on to Greenway, Christie’s old home, now in the care of the National Trust. I visited it with a CWA party back in 1990 and met her daughter, but this time John’s informed commentary made the visit even more meaningful. We also had time to go into the grounds and visit the battery and the boathouse. The boathouse was employed as a murder scene in Dead Man’s Folly, while the battery was utilised for the killing of Amyas Crale in Five Little Pigs. Suffice to say that, for a devotee of classic detective fiction, it was an absolutely memorable day. And by the way, you will see that Blogger has finally allowed me to upload some pictures. But very reluctantly, it has to be said! And I still haven't figured out why the font of my posts keeps changing. No wonder I'm so gripped by technofear that I haven't tried to be more adventurous with social media!

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Reginald Hill's Short Stories

Those two notable bloggers, Margot Kinberg and Rhian Davies, have combined to create a wonderful tribute to the late Reginald Hill, and when they kindly invited me to take part, of course I was glad to accept. I wanted to say a little about Reg's wonderful work with  short stories. They earned him two CWA Daggers, but even so, his short stories are still sometimes unaccountably overlooked. Give them a go - you will be glad you did![image error]

Forgotten Book - The Reader is Warned

The Reader is Warned, by John Dickson Carr writing under his alias Carter Dickson, is my Forgotten Book for today. First published in 1939, it features Sir Henry Merrivale, a formidable sleuth whom some prefer to Carr’s other great detective, Dr Gideon Fell. There is more humour in the Merrivale stories than in those about Fell, and to some extent one’s reaction as a reader depends on how appealing one finds that humour.

The premise of this story is fascinating. A mysterious chap called Herman Pennik turns up at a country house party hosted by a writer and her husband. He claims that he can influence events by “thought waves” and is provoked into predicting the death of the host before dinner. When Sam Constable duly dies, and without a sign of violence upon him, it seems to some that he may have been killed by the power of the mind alone.

The average mystery reader will be reluctant to accept this conclusion, of course. But what exactly is the murder method, if not “Teleforce”? When the deceased’s wife dies mysteriously, again after a prediction by Pennik that she will die, there is a tabloid sensation. Pennik becomes a media celebrity; these passages are the wittiest in the book.

The revelation of what was really going on left me in two minds. I admired Carr’s ingenuity, but felt that the motivation was rather slender, and not entirely convincing. The problem was that there are too few suspects other than Pennik, and to an extent the story seems like an expanded novella in comparison with some of Carr’s other work. All the same, I enjoyed this book, and I think that others who like outlandish plots in the Carr tradition will enjoy it too.[image error]

Crimefest 2012

I’m just back from a few days away, spent in a very sunny Bristol. The main focus of the trip was Crimefest 2012, and the organisers did an excellent job, as ever, with the result that this year’s convention was perhaps the best so far – and I’ve enjoyed them all.
On Thursday I moderated , once again, the panel on Forgotten Authors. Peter Guttridge, Caroline Todd, John Curran and Dolores Gordon-Smith did a great job in enthusing the audience for a range of writers, including Helen McCloy (who is definitely on my must-read list), Ira Levin and R.Austin Freeman. I’m really pleased this panel is so popular  - in fact, I’ve been asked to moderate it yet again next year...
My second panel was on Sunday. This time Peter was the moderator and our theme was “past and present”. Tom Harper, Penny Hancock (whom I hadn’t met before, a very pleasant lady who has made a big splash with her debut novel) and Kate Ellis were my fellow panellists.  Great fun.
Peter featured yet again in the Mastermind quiz – and this year, he was the winner, pipping Peter Rozovsky by the narrowest of margins. Rhian Davies, a blogger of note, and Jake Kerridge, one of our most knowledgeable reviewers, were the other contestants, and all of them deserve congratulation: sitting in that black chair can be a real ordeal, believe me.
On a personal level, I was thrilled that no fewer than four stories which have appeared in books I have edited were short-listed for the CWA Short Story Dagger. My warmest congratulations to Cath Staincliffe, Margaret Murphy, Claire Seeber and Bernie Crosthwaite. Of course, the greatest joy was to meet old friends and make new ones, and my abiding memories will include a host of fascinating conversations with people who –whatever their differences of background – share a love of crime fiction.
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The Third Man

Watching Carol Reed’s superb 1949 film The Third Man again, not long after reading Eric Ambler’s novel of ten years earlier, The Mask of  Dimitrios, I was struck by the similarities between the novel and Graham Greene’s screenplay. Both feature an apparently dead villain whose story is sought after by a rather naive popular novelist, and the two story-lines develop (despite many differences) in a broadly comparable way.
There can be little doubting Ambler’s influence on Greene, yet The Third Man remains a distinctive and enjoyable piece of work, and it is, I think, a very good example of how one story-teller can properly borrow from another, and yet still make his work very much his own. 
The setting in post-war Vienna is highly atmospheric, and of course the famous sewer sequence, as well as the scenes shot near to the Wiener Reisenrad, which long pre-dates The Millennium Wheel, are intensely memorable. The cinematography is complemented by Anton Karas’ zither music, and “The Harry Lime Theme” became an international hit.
Greene’s narrative has plenty of pleasing twists and turns, as well as a downbeat ending, and he and director Carol Reed are extremely well served by the cast. This includes those British stalwarts Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee and Wilfred Hyde-White, as well as Joseph Cotten and, best of all, Orson Welles. It is, at heart, a story about friendship and betrayal, and is a first rate example of how a tale that is very much of its time can nevertheless stand the test of time.


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Forgotten Book - The Grindle Nightmare

My Forgotten Book today is The Grindle Nightmare, by Quentin Patrick, and I have to thank John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books for not only calling it to my attention, but also supplying me with a copy. Very kind of him, and, I must say, typical of the kindness which, I have found, abounds among crime bloggers and fans.

The book was first published in 1935, and was one of two books which Richard Wilson Webb, an Englishman born (like Robert Barnard) in the Essex town of Burnham, and an American journalist, Mary Louise Aswell, wrote under the pseudonym (used almost interchangeably with the name Q.Patrick – the name Patrick Quentin was used extensively in later years). Webb had earlier written with another woman, Martha Mott Kelley, but his major collaborator was Hugh Wheeler, another Englishman who eventually became famous for writing the book of musicals such as A Little Night Music.

The setting is a rather remote New England valley called Grindle, and a helpful map is supplied in true Golden Age tradition. But Grindle isn’t St Mary Mead, but a place where dark and disturbing things are happening. Animals are being mistreated, and then a young girl disappears. The narrator is a young scientist, Dr Doug Swanson, who shares his home with a fellow doctor; their work involves vivisection. Suffice to say that nobody in their right mind would call this book “cosy”. It is very dark by any standards, but especially for the time when it was written. Not one for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.

The plot is complicated, and a genuine whodunit puzzle is supplied. Mention is made of a very famous real life American murder case, which may have been a source of some inspiration for the device at the heart of the narrative. But this is a book unlike any others of its period that I have read – and it really is memorable. Short, snappy, chilling and clever, it deserves to be much better known.[image error]

The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski’s film based on the Robert Harris novel The Ghost, is a very enjoyable thriller. Harris is a master of the high concept thriller (I like Enigma best of his earlier books) and this story draws heavily on his interest in the lives and careers of his friends (but are they still friends, after this?) Tony and Cherie Blair.
Ewan McGregor plays a ghost writer who is hired for an enormous fee to do a rush job – sprucing up the memoirs of a recent Prime Minister. He is flown out to meet the great man (played  by the ultra-charismatic Pierce Brosnan), his wife (Olivia Williams) and his sexy aide – and mistress – a role tailor-made for the stunning Kim Cattrall. But his predecessor has died in mysterious circumstances, and soon the plot thickens.
I was surprised that the story moved, for the most part, at a fairly slow pace, but it warms up steadily and develops into a quite gripping story, especially when our hero starts to discover clues to a sinister truth in the manuscript his predecessor was working on at the time of his death.
Tom Wilkinson, appearing late in the movie, plays a key part as a sinister professor with CIA connections, and does his usual impressive job. I was also very taken with Olivia Williams’ subtle portrayal of a wronged but manipulative wife. Overall, a very enjoyable movie which I can recommend.


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Lewis: The Soul of Genius

The Soul of Genius, with a screenplay by Rachel Bennette, was the first instalment of the new series of Lewis, shown last week. By a happy coincidence, it was screened just before I set off for a week-end in Oxford, and very enjoyable it was too.
Writing for Lewis must, I suspect, be both easy and difficult at the same time. Easy because the basic infrastructure – the characters and setting – are so strong and appealing. Difficult because it is so hard to avoid the trap of formula. I thought Rachel Bennette – not a writer I’m familiar with – rose to the challenge superbly. It’s one of the best crime screenplays I’ve watched for a long time.
I say this even though she used two plot elements – one of them to do with “The Hunting of the Snark”, the other a particular kind of club – that I’ve played around with myself in the past, without doing anything much with them. I felt she used them very cleverly. I feared she was going to come up with the familiar ploy of having the killer turn out to be someone the cop fancied. But her solution was neat and unexpected. Very good.
As for Oxford in real life, it was as enchanting as ever. Among the highlights was a trip to the revamped and deeply impressive Ashmolean Museum. The younger Edwardses are both due to face exams shortly. But the exams, however difficult they may prove to be, are a small price to pay for living such a privileged existence for three years. And thankfully there aren't so many murders there in real life as there are in fiction. 


(By the way, Blogger still isn't letting me upload photos - is anyone else suffering similarly?)
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Forgotten Book - Cain's Jawbone

My forgotten book for today is actually entitled The Torquemada Puzzle Book. It is described on the title page as a "miscellany" of original crosswords, acrostics, anagrams, verbal pastimes and problems, etc, but also includes Cain's Jawbone, "a Torquemada Mystery Novel." And suffice to say, I've never encountered a mystery novel like it.

But who was Torquemada? The pseudonym concealed the identity of Edward Powys Mathers, who compiled crosswords for "The Observer" for 13 years. His puzzles were noted for their fiendish complexity, and although so far I have only tried one or two, suffice to say that I think his reputation and pseudonym are well-earned.

Cain's Jawbone is really a novella. The twist is that the pages are not in the right order. The challenge is to work out the correct page sequence. Easy? Not at all, trust me on this. The snag is that the story is told in a strange and mannered style which makes it almost impossible to work out what is going on.

A prize was offered to whoever could solve it. Apparently only three people got it right, and I'm rather surprised it was that many! Suffice to say that it defeated me with ease. Alas, the solution is not included in the book, which must have driven many of its purchasers to distraction. No wonder this 1934 book had no successors. But it's certainly remarkable. And it could just provoke someone to murder....[image error]

Cop to Corpse by Peter Lovesey

What is the biggest writing challenge facing an established crime writer? (There are various challenges not directly linked to writing, such as the state of the market, relationships with publishers and so on, but that’s a topic for another day.) My answer to the question I’ve posed is this: the challenge of ensuring that one’s work remains fresh and varied, and that the dictates of formula don’t have a deadening effect.
It’s perhaps a challenge that is faced most acutely by established and highly successful authors. They have succeeded by writing a particular kind of story, so there is a temptation to keep writing it. The temptation is all the greater when a series enjoys commercial success. Those novelists whom I admire most are those who have the courage to keep trying something new, even within the apparent strait-jacket of a series with continuing characters.
Peter Lovesey is one writer who rises to the challenge time and again. I’m tempted to say he does so effortlessly, but I’m sure that the smooth readability of his books (like those of another superb entertainer, the late Michael Gilbert whose work I also enjoy enormously) disguises a great deal of effort and hard work.
His latest novel, Cop to Corpse, is an excellent example of his ability to ring the changes. This is another in his long-running series featuring Peter Diamond, the Bath-based cop, but it is rather darker in tone than many of the earlier books in the series, even though police office politics does provide some light relief. The structure is unusual.  The first couple of chapters are told in the present tense, and the main narrative is interspersed with lengthy blog posts written by a youngish woman.
The plot, which involves the killing of three policemen, and an attack on a fourth (plus an attack on Diamond) is extremely elaborate. As a result, the book is longer than some of Lovesey’s earlier books, but the quality of writing remains high. The story may be unorthodox, but it is certainly entertaining, and proof – were it needed – that one of Britain’s most distinguished mystery novelists is still as good at keeping us guessing as ever. Long may he continue to entertain his many fans.
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