Martin Edwards's Blog, page 251
January 20, 2012
Remembering Two Stars
A time for reflection, today. Along with Jessica Mann, I was interviewed for Radio 4's obituary programme, Last Word, which aired this afternoon and which featured a tribute to Reg Hill. There were some quotes from interviews with Reg himself, and it was sad and strange to think that I won't be hearing that distinctive, civilised voice again.
And today, Etta James died. Evidently someone who had a very troubled life, to put it mildly, but a great singer. My favourite of her recordings, although it was never a hit, and is little known, is Waiting For Charlie To Come Home. It's a superb song, and you can hear it on Youtube - there is also a very good version by Trinitje Oosterhuis, and quite a good one by Karima, but Etta James' original remains definitive. How sad, again, that we won't be hearing that voice again, but at least we have the recordings.
And today, Etta James died. Evidently someone who had a very troubled life, to put it mildly, but a great singer. My favourite of her recordings, although it was never a hit, and is little known, is Waiting For Charlie To Come Home. It's a superb song, and you can hear it on Youtube - there is also a very good version by Trinitje Oosterhuis, and quite a good one by Karima, but Etta James' original remains definitive. How sad, again, that we won't be hearing that voice again, but at least we have the recordings.
Forgotten Book - Dorothy and Agatha
My Forgotten Book for today dates back just 20 years. It is an American mystery, Dorothy and Agatha, and the author is Gaylord Larsen. The eponymous ladies are, needless to add, Sayers and Christie, and the supporting cast includes various prominent members of the Detection Club.
Regular readers of this blog can probably guess at my delight when I learned of and tracked down this novel. Larsen's lovely idea of setting a story around the Club offers terrific potential, and I wish I'd been the first to think of it. But of course, an idea is one thing. Executing it successfully is something very different.
The story opens with the discovery of a dead man at Dorothy's home in Essex. He is found slumped over a typewriter, and there is with him an apparent suicide note. Was he a distraught lover? No, it turns out that murder has been done, and Sayers and in particular Agatha Christie are the ideal people to solve it.
The dust jacket claims that Larsen "has rendered every detail of character and place with uncanny accuracy". Unfortunately, this is so far off the mark as to be hilarious. Take for instance the author's apparent belief that Chester (where Agatha watches a soccer match...) is located in the Lake District, and is a shortish drive away from Essex. Now, I wouldn't want to be excessively pedantic about the countless factual errors and historical and chronological anachronisms. When writing about a foreign country and different era, mistakes are almost inevitable, and I'm as likely to get things wrong as most other writers. But here there are just too many howlers, page after page, and most could have been avoided by elementary care. The bizarre portrayal of Oxford life, for instance, might be forgivable, but the repeated references to "Summerville College" and the suggestion that Anthony Berkeley was president of the Detection Club are just lazy. Whatever happened to fact-checking and the editorial process?
And then there is the dialogue. Where do I begin? Dorothy saying to Agatha, "We're a couple of stodgy, middle-aged storytelling dames."? Agatha saying to E.C. Bentley , "Edmund, I'm sorry. I've gotten you out of bed?" You get the picture.
In defence of Gaylord Larsen, he can write agreeably, and the pages turn quickly. He deserves genuine praise for coming up with a concept of real interest and exciting potential. What is more, his "least likely person" plot isn't at all bad. These positive points do need to be made, not least because I don't care much for reviews that are wholly negative. It's not right to overlook redeeming features. But I'm afraid that, overall, Dorothy and Agatha has to rank as, to put it kindly, a missed opportunity.
Regular readers of this blog can probably guess at my delight when I learned of and tracked down this novel. Larsen's lovely idea of setting a story around the Club offers terrific potential, and I wish I'd been the first to think of it. But of course, an idea is one thing. Executing it successfully is something very different.
The story opens with the discovery of a dead man at Dorothy's home in Essex. He is found slumped over a typewriter, and there is with him an apparent suicide note. Was he a distraught lover? No, it turns out that murder has been done, and Sayers and in particular Agatha Christie are the ideal people to solve it.
The dust jacket claims that Larsen "has rendered every detail of character and place with uncanny accuracy". Unfortunately, this is so far off the mark as to be hilarious. Take for instance the author's apparent belief that Chester (where Agatha watches a soccer match...) is located in the Lake District, and is a shortish drive away from Essex. Now, I wouldn't want to be excessively pedantic about the countless factual errors and historical and chronological anachronisms. When writing about a foreign country and different era, mistakes are almost inevitable, and I'm as likely to get things wrong as most other writers. But here there are just too many howlers, page after page, and most could have been avoided by elementary care. The bizarre portrayal of Oxford life, for instance, might be forgivable, but the repeated references to "Summerville College" and the suggestion that Anthony Berkeley was president of the Detection Club are just lazy. Whatever happened to fact-checking and the editorial process?
And then there is the dialogue. Where do I begin? Dorothy saying to Agatha, "We're a couple of stodgy, middle-aged storytelling dames."? Agatha saying to E.C. Bentley , "Edmund, I'm sorry. I've gotten you out of bed?" You get the picture.
In defence of Gaylord Larsen, he can write agreeably, and the pages turn quickly. He deserves genuine praise for coming up with a concept of real interest and exciting potential. What is more, his "least likely person" plot isn't at all bad. These positive points do need to be made, not least because I don't care much for reviews that are wholly negative. It's not right to overlook redeeming features. But I'm afraid that, overall, Dorothy and Agatha has to rank as, to put it kindly, a missed opportunity.
January 18, 2012
The Danish Scene of Crime
That splendid blogger, and great crime fan (and nowadays, crime writer) Dorte H is someone whose fair and thoughtful observations about the genre are always well worth studying. She was one of a number of bloggers I met in person, along with her husband (at a pub quiz!) for the first time last year, and now she's kindly agreed to contribute to this blog a study of the Danish crime scene. I found it fascinating and I am sure other readers will agree.
"When I was young, so little happened on the Danish scene of crime that we had to turn to either America for hardboiled thrillers or Britain for police procedurals (to generalize a tad....)
In the late 1990s, a few things began to happen, though. Inspired by our Swedish and Norwegian neighbours, the ´femikrimi trend´ hit Denmark. Actually there were two trends by the same name; first the serious trend where former journalists wrote crime fiction with a strong, feminist message. The Danish writer Elsebeth Egholm carved a name for herself in Denmark in the same way as Liza Marklund did in Sweden with their independent, female journalists who wouldn´t take no for an answer when they were on a mission. Another Danish writer of this category is Gretelise Holm whose sixtyish protagonist is a free and active spirit, also sexually. A mature woman who puts up a fight when male bosses and colleagues try to keep her down.
The other femikrimi trend is not as common in Denmark but represented by well-known Swedish writers such as Camilla Läckberg and Mari Jungstedt. Some Scandinavian reviewers have dubbed their books chicklit with crime or lipstick literature, and instead of the anger and injustice which colour some of the feminist books, they deal with the female characters´down-to-earth struggles with love and family life. The only Danish writer who springs to my mind is Sanne Udsen.
Finally, a pre-millenium writer who is difficult to pin down but deserves a paragraph. And how to introduce Susanne Staun? Readers of my blog will know she has been one of my favourites ever since I read the first Fanny Fiske mystery. Staun did not only chose an old, female protagonist. She let her go through so much plastic surgery that her surgeon had to remind her of Michal Jackson! Nevertheless this tough and sturdy profiler is never short of young flesh (do you smell a crime fiction cliché turned upside-down here?) The books are well-written, terribly exciting and full of pitchblack humour.
Unfortunately the global recession also hit the publishing business in Denmark a few years ago. Traditional publishers are very unwilling to take chances with new writers, and just like the rest of the world, they have been busy looking for the next Stieg Larsson.
So for a couple of years we have seen a boom of fastpaced thrillers (but without any Lisbeth Salanders to make them stand out). For a Swedish example of these Larsson lights, I could mention Lars Kepler´s The Hypnotist, but I believe the Danish debut Svinehunde (which means pigs or bastards) by Lotte and Søren Hammer is also on its way in English. What they have in common is lots of action. The Hypnotist begins with the truly horrible slaughtering of a family, Svinehunde with five bodies swinging from the ceiling of a gymnasium. At least Svinehunde offers some kind of moral message though not quite successfully. Well, it seems that Scandinavian readers want these less than credible orgies in violence, but the reviews are mixed...
Finally the really good news (if you ask me). After some meagre decades when we secretly envied the Swedish writers who achieved worldwide fame, three of our very best series are on their way to a wider audience. One of them is Elsebeth Egholm´s Next of Kin, her fourth Dicte Svendsen mystery (see above) which was published in Australia last year.
Jussi Adler-Olsen´s first police procedural about Carl Mørck was published in Britain last spring, and I have enjoyed reading a handfuld of enthusiastic, English reviews of this excellent series. I have read four volumes now and believe me, they grow better and better. Mørck is a somewhat reluctant police officer, but he is spurred on by his unorthodox sidekick, the immigrant Assad. Dark, exciting and with some comic relief.
Furthermore, a great series written by two female writers, Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, has been snatched by the American publisher Soho, also in the past year. They have both written children´s fiction before, but the series about Red Cross nurse Nina Borg is their first thriller. You could say that this series has a bit of it all. At first I feared Nina Borg would be too bland and idealistic, but as the plot develops, we realize that she is nicely flawed. When I reviewed the first one, I stated that it was the best Danish thriller I had ever read. So perhaps this book is closer to Stieg Larsson´s series than any of the others: a drama that keeps you on the edge of your chair, but also a female protagonist you cannot get enough of.
What these series have in common are that even though they are exciting, the writers put character development & detection above sheer action, and they all offer interesting settings.
Available in English:
Elsebeth Egholm, Next of Kin (Australia)
Jussi Adler-Olsen, Mercy (Britain)
Kaaberbøl & Friis, The Boy in the Suitcase (the USA)"
Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen is a Danish blogger and writer of crime fiction. Her debut novel, the humorous mystery "The Cosy Knave" was published in August this year, and her latest publication is an anthology of funny Christmas crime stories, "Christmas in Knavesborough". They take place in the same fictional Yorkshire village but can be read separately.
"When I was young, so little happened on the Danish scene of crime that we had to turn to either America for hardboiled thrillers or Britain for police procedurals (to generalize a tad....)
In the late 1990s, a few things began to happen, though. Inspired by our Swedish and Norwegian neighbours, the ´femikrimi trend´ hit Denmark. Actually there were two trends by the same name; first the serious trend where former journalists wrote crime fiction with a strong, feminist message. The Danish writer Elsebeth Egholm carved a name for herself in Denmark in the same way as Liza Marklund did in Sweden with their independent, female journalists who wouldn´t take no for an answer when they were on a mission. Another Danish writer of this category is Gretelise Holm whose sixtyish protagonist is a free and active spirit, also sexually. A mature woman who puts up a fight when male bosses and colleagues try to keep her down.
The other femikrimi trend is not as common in Denmark but represented by well-known Swedish writers such as Camilla Läckberg and Mari Jungstedt. Some Scandinavian reviewers have dubbed their books chicklit with crime or lipstick literature, and instead of the anger and injustice which colour some of the feminist books, they deal with the female characters´down-to-earth struggles with love and family life. The only Danish writer who springs to my mind is Sanne Udsen.
Finally, a pre-millenium writer who is difficult to pin down but deserves a paragraph. And how to introduce Susanne Staun? Readers of my blog will know she has been one of my favourites ever since I read the first Fanny Fiske mystery. Staun did not only chose an old, female protagonist. She let her go through so much plastic surgery that her surgeon had to remind her of Michal Jackson! Nevertheless this tough and sturdy profiler is never short of young flesh (do you smell a crime fiction cliché turned upside-down here?) The books are well-written, terribly exciting and full of pitchblack humour.
Unfortunately the global recession also hit the publishing business in Denmark a few years ago. Traditional publishers are very unwilling to take chances with new writers, and just like the rest of the world, they have been busy looking for the next Stieg Larsson.
So for a couple of years we have seen a boom of fastpaced thrillers (but without any Lisbeth Salanders to make them stand out). For a Swedish example of these Larsson lights, I could mention Lars Kepler´s The Hypnotist, but I believe the Danish debut Svinehunde (which means pigs or bastards) by Lotte and Søren Hammer is also on its way in English. What they have in common is lots of action. The Hypnotist begins with the truly horrible slaughtering of a family, Svinehunde with five bodies swinging from the ceiling of a gymnasium. At least Svinehunde offers some kind of moral message though not quite successfully. Well, it seems that Scandinavian readers want these less than credible orgies in violence, but the reviews are mixed...
Finally the really good news (if you ask me). After some meagre decades when we secretly envied the Swedish writers who achieved worldwide fame, three of our very best series are on their way to a wider audience. One of them is Elsebeth Egholm´s Next of Kin, her fourth Dicte Svendsen mystery (see above) which was published in Australia last year.
Jussi Adler-Olsen´s first police procedural about Carl Mørck was published in Britain last spring, and I have enjoyed reading a handfuld of enthusiastic, English reviews of this excellent series. I have read four volumes now and believe me, they grow better and better. Mørck is a somewhat reluctant police officer, but he is spurred on by his unorthodox sidekick, the immigrant Assad. Dark, exciting and with some comic relief.
Furthermore, a great series written by two female writers, Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, has been snatched by the American publisher Soho, also in the past year. They have both written children´s fiction before, but the series about Red Cross nurse Nina Borg is their first thriller. You could say that this series has a bit of it all. At first I feared Nina Borg would be too bland and idealistic, but as the plot develops, we realize that she is nicely flawed. When I reviewed the first one, I stated that it was the best Danish thriller I had ever read. So perhaps this book is closer to Stieg Larsson´s series than any of the others: a drama that keeps you on the edge of your chair, but also a female protagonist you cannot get enough of.
What these series have in common are that even though they are exciting, the writers put character development & detection above sheer action, and they all offer interesting settings.
Available in English:
Elsebeth Egholm, Next of Kin (Australia)
Jussi Adler-Olsen, Mercy (Britain)
Kaaberbøl & Friis, The Boy in the Suitcase (the USA)"
Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen is a Danish blogger and writer of crime fiction. Her debut novel, the humorous mystery "The Cosy Knave" was published in August this year, and her latest publication is an anthology of funny Christmas crime stories, "Christmas in Knavesborough". They take place in the same fictional Yorkshire village but can be read separately.
January 17, 2012
Blogging thoughts
Such is the interest in Sherlock that my post on The Reichenbach Fall seems already to have become comfortably the most viewed post I've ever placed on this blog. Blimey - had I anticipated that, I'd have written it more elegantly instead of last thing on Sunday night!
I must admit that I am slightly wary of blog statistics - they seem a bit erratic, and since the changes to my blog template, figures for the first year or so have disappeared into the ether. Figures do seem to be generally higher in winter months than in summer, although that makes sense. But it does seem clear that this blog is visited more often now than ever before, even though I no longer post each day.
I'm glad that people keep finding and then returning to the blog, and I'm grateful in particular to those who read it regularly, many of whom, I know, don't necessarily comment. This level of interest is truly rewarding, especially given that pressure of work means I often don't find the time to do as many links and include as many images as would be desirable (the achievements in this respect of some other bloggers are much more impressive.) I must add that when I was experiencing a variety of stresses over the past couple of years, the support I received from you was enormously positive and meant a great deal.
There's not much more I can do than once again say thank you. But as a special treat for you, tomorrow I'm including a longer than usual post from one of the most impressive crime bloggers around. It's full of interest, I think, and I'm confident you'll agree.
I must admit that I am slightly wary of blog statistics - they seem a bit erratic, and since the changes to my blog template, figures for the first year or so have disappeared into the ether. Figures do seem to be generally higher in winter months than in summer, although that makes sense. But it does seem clear that this blog is visited more often now than ever before, even though I no longer post each day.
I'm glad that people keep finding and then returning to the blog, and I'm grateful in particular to those who read it regularly, many of whom, I know, don't necessarily comment. This level of interest is truly rewarding, especially given that pressure of work means I often don't find the time to do as many links and include as many images as would be desirable (the achievements in this respect of some other bloggers are much more impressive.) I must add that when I was experiencing a variety of stresses over the past couple of years, the support I received from you was enormously positive and meant a great deal.
There's not much more I can do than once again say thank you. But as a special treat for you, tomorrow I'm including a longer than usual post from one of the most impressive crime bloggers around. It's full of interest, I think, and I'm confident you'll agree.
January 15, 2012
Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall - review
Sherlock concluded its all too short three-episode run tonight with another cunningly titled episode - The Reichenbach Fall. Of course, I say "all too short", but part of the success of the series has been to leave viewers wanting more. The temptation for any writer is to outstay his or her welcome, whether with a series that has run out of steam, or a type of book that has passed its sell-by date. But this episode was probably as good as any we've seen to date. Will there be any more? We can only hope so.
I'm going to avoid spoilers, but I think even a Holmes super-purist would be impressed with the way the writers have taken themes from Conan Doyle's original stories, and updated them so cleverly that the effect is always of homage, not parody. And as the title of this episode suggests, there was a duel of wits between Sherlock and Moriarty which resulted in a dramatic climax.
Benedict Cumberbatch was as good as ever in the title role, but I was impressed also by Andrew Scott as Moriarty. At first, I wasn't convinced by the casting of Scott, which is certainly audacious, but the quality of his acting has won me over, as I'm sure it has won over many other doubters. The roof-top encounter brought out the best in both actors, while Martin Freeman was again excellent as the devoted Watson.
One of the many small touches that I've admired in this series was the casting of Douglas Wilmer, who celebrated his 92nd birthday earlier this month, as a guest in the Diogenes Club. Wilmer played Holmes in the TV series that I enjoyed very much as a young boy. He's not as celebrated as Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing but I felt he was a very good Sherlock, and it was great that he was included in this terrific show.
I'm going to avoid spoilers, but I think even a Holmes super-purist would be impressed with the way the writers have taken themes from Conan Doyle's original stories, and updated them so cleverly that the effect is always of homage, not parody. And as the title of this episode suggests, there was a duel of wits between Sherlock and Moriarty which resulted in a dramatic climax.
Benedict Cumberbatch was as good as ever in the title role, but I was impressed also by Andrew Scott as Moriarty. At first, I wasn't convinced by the casting of Scott, which is certainly audacious, but the quality of his acting has won me over, as I'm sure it has won over many other doubters. The roof-top encounter brought out the best in both actors, while Martin Freeman was again excellent as the devoted Watson.
One of the many small touches that I've admired in this series was the casting of Douglas Wilmer, who celebrated his 92nd birthday earlier this month, as a guest in the Diogenes Club. Wilmer played Holmes in the TV series that I enjoyed very much as a young boy. He's not as celebrated as Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing but I felt he was a very good Sherlock, and it was great that he was included in this terrific show.
January 13, 2012
Reginald Hill R.I.P.
I write this post with a very heavy heart, since I learned not long ago that Reg Hill died yesterday. He is an author I admired enormously – this week, by coincidence, I've been re-reading Pascoe's Ghost – and I was proud to call him a friend. I've written about his work on a good many occasions, and his latest novel, The Woodcutter, was one of his very best. But what I want to do right now is just say a few words about the man himself.
When I first met Reg, on a memorable Sunday in Yorkshire nearly 25 years ago, he was already established as a prolific and highly successful author, although his greatest literary achievements still lay in the future. A couple of days earlier, I'd just finished reading a review copy of his short stories, There Are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union, and it was terrific to have the chance to talk to him, and his always charming wife Pat, at a lunch that marked the very first meeting of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association. Reg christened the group who met that day "the few", and those who attended became my first friends in the crime writing community.
What I found then, and what never changed, was that Reg in person was exceptionally intelligent, but never condescending, strong-minded and honest but unfailingly generous, and, despite appearing on occasion to be quiet and reserved, quite simply, the wittiest person I've ever met.
We met many times after that – the photo was taken at Harrogate a couple of years ago, shortly after his famous conversation with John Banville - and most recently at a Detection Club dinner in London. He showed me many kindnesses, not least writing a fantastic intro to a collection of my short stories, and writing brand new stories of the highest quality when I sought contributions for anthologies. He also gave me a lot of very good advice, even though he maintained generally that the only advice that one writer should give to another is: "Don't wait for the post." (One specific piece of advice he gave me, I have yet to follow, but one day I will, and I bet he'll be proved right.) He even put me in touch with a TV company who were interested in filming a series set in the Lake District and who had initially approached him. Mind you, he also relished breaking the news to me on one occasion that he was working on a book to be called Killing the Lawyers.
For years, he chaired the sub-committee that short-lists notable crime writers for the CWA Diamond Dagger, and persuaded me to join; I found I was, in fact, the only other member. His theory was that committees should always be small, and in that, as in so many other judgments, he was wise. Suffice to say that, although his standards were properly exacting, he was the easiest and most agreeable of colleagues, and reaching a consensus on our short-list was always the prelude to a thoroughly enjoyable conversation on other things.
I have a great many happy memories of time spent with Reg Hill, including at a number of week-end conferences he organised in his beloved Lake District, and I have no doubt that, as well as missing him, I'll often reflect in future on how lucky I was to get to know one of the most gifted British crime writers of the past half-century. But for now, it feels so sad that the world has lost a brilliant novelist, that many of us have lost a true friend, and most of all that Pat has lost a wonderful husband.
Forgotten Book - End Game
The Mystery of Edwin Drood's appearance on BBC 2 this week inspires my choice of a non-fiction Forgotten Book today - it is End Game by Richard F. Stewart, who was almost universally known as Dick Stewart. Dick, who died not too long ago, was a great guy. I used to visit his home in South Manchester, sometimes taking my long-suffering son along, and buy books from him. He and his wife made a delightful couple, and Jonathan still remembers those visits as happy occasions, because the Stewarts were so kind to him. I miss those visits a lot.
Anyway, back to End Game, which was published in 1999 by a very enterprising small publisher. Dick's idea was to list and assess all the main solutions to the Drood mystery, as well as all the completions actually written, and the commentaries. He acknowledges at the outset that so much has been written about Drood that a totally comprehensive account is impossible, but this is still a very substantial volume.
Dick quotes G.K. Chesterton's excellent line that "the only one of Dickens's novels which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing" - the story is a pleasing, if tantalising paradox. He lists eight basic questions that anyone trying to solve the puzzle needs to address. They admit of many answers. "Droodism has become a productive cottage industry during the 20th century", he notes, and of course this has continued into the 21st century.
All manner of sleuths have over the years, as Dick says, invoked "mesmerism, telepathy, serial photography, Thuggee, Sherlock Holmes and schizophrenia (to name but a few) in the search for a solution. The composer Rupert Holmes, one of whose excellent songs I featured in The Serpent Pool, wrote a musical based on the story. It's a great game, and Dick Stewart's book is a fascinating guide to it. Dick inscribed my copy "All you never wanted to know about Edwin Drood". Too modest, as he always was.
Anyway, back to End Game, which was published in 1999 by a very enterprising small publisher. Dick's idea was to list and assess all the main solutions to the Drood mystery, as well as all the completions actually written, and the commentaries. He acknowledges at the outset that so much has been written about Drood that a totally comprehensive account is impossible, but this is still a very substantial volume.
Dick quotes G.K. Chesterton's excellent line that "the only one of Dickens's novels which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing" - the story is a pleasing, if tantalising paradox. He lists eight basic questions that anyone trying to solve the puzzle needs to address. They admit of many answers. "Droodism has become a productive cottage industry during the 20th century", he notes, and of course this has continued into the 21st century.
All manner of sleuths have over the years, as Dick says, invoked "mesmerism, telepathy, serial photography, Thuggee, Sherlock Holmes and schizophrenia (to name but a few) in the search for a solution. The composer Rupert Holmes, one of whose excellent songs I featured in The Serpent Pool, wrote a musical based on the story. It's a great game, and Dick Stewart's book is a fascinating guide to it. Dick inscribed my copy "All you never wanted to know about Edwin Drood". Too modest, as he always was.
January 11, 2012
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - part two - review
The Mystery of Edwin Drood concluded this evening, and I thought Gwyneth Hughes did a pretty good job in making this a watchable drama. I'm going to avoid spoilers in this post, but suffice to say that the screenplay included a couple of plot twists that were enjoyable, without resulting in a masterpiece.
I do think the adaptation was a worthwhile project, and what will stick in my mind about it longest, apart from the excellent portrayal of Jasper, is the atmosphere, in particular of the cathedral and its environs, which played a suitably important part in the resolution of the story.
Finishing a story that the original author left unfinished is a fascinating and extraordinary thing to do. I've written before about my work on completing The Lazarus Widow, begun by the late Bill Knox, and that experience has made me more interested than ever in the craft of completion. With The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a contemporary writer has the privilege of working with characters created by a literary genius, but also the challenge of producing a whole story which pleases a modern reader, whose tastes in crime and mystery are arguably more sophisticated and difficult to satisfy than those of Dickens' time. So I can guess that Hughes found the task demanding, but ultimately very rewarding.
I'm tempted to write more about the challenges posed by Edwin Drood's story. Perhaps on Friday, in the context of a Forgotten Book that I'm rather fond of.
I do think the adaptation was a worthwhile project, and what will stick in my mind about it longest, apart from the excellent portrayal of Jasper, is the atmosphere, in particular of the cathedral and its environs, which played a suitably important part in the resolution of the story.
Finishing a story that the original author left unfinished is a fascinating and extraordinary thing to do. I've written before about my work on completing The Lazarus Widow, begun by the late Bill Knox, and that experience has made me more interested than ever in the craft of completion. With The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a contemporary writer has the privilege of working with characters created by a literary genius, but also the challenge of producing a whole story which pleases a modern reader, whose tastes in crime and mystery are arguably more sophisticated and difficult to satisfy than those of Dickens' time. So I can guess that Hughes found the task demanding, but ultimately very rewarding.
I'm tempted to write more about the challenges posed by Edwin Drood's story. Perhaps on Friday, in the context of a Forgotten Book that I'm rather fond of.
January 10, 2012
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - review
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a two-part BBC TV adaptation of Charles Dickens' last, unfinished novel. It's a very long time since I read the original, but it's always fascinated me that Dickens moved in the direction of the crime and mystery genre in the later part of his career. Bleak House is one of my favourite novels, not only because of its portrayal of legal life, and the endless litigation of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, but also because of the part played by Inspector Bucket, a splendid character. Dickens was, like his friend Wilkie Collins, very interested in true crime, as well as having his imagination sparked by an element of mystery.
I've often wondered if, had he lived, Dickens would have made a greater contribution to the development of the crime genre - it is, surely, highly probable. In the past, I've published two short stories featuring the great man, once detecting alongside Collins, and once in partnership with Elizabeth Gaskell. They were great fun to write, and one of these days, I might do another.
Back to the BBC TV show. The screenplay was written by Gwyneth Hughes, who once wrote a screenplay for The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, in which Diana Rigg was unexpectedly cast as Gladys Mitchell's saurian detective. But the mood here was far removed from Golden Age territory - it was dark, hallucinatory and (or is there a twist up Hughes' sleeve?) a study of crime rather than a whodunit.
Matthew Rhys was impressive as the opium-tormented John Jasper, and Freddie Fox, from the famous acting family, played Edwin. The first episode began with a nightmare and ended with a killing. Yet the action was stripped down and this meant that the development of the story was not as labyrinthine as I'd rather expected. Writing this post immediately after watching, I still feel as though I want to mull over my reaction to this particular take on the story. But it has gripped me sufficiently for me to be keen to watch episode two tomorrow.
I've often wondered if, had he lived, Dickens would have made a greater contribution to the development of the crime genre - it is, surely, highly probable. In the past, I've published two short stories featuring the great man, once detecting alongside Collins, and once in partnership with Elizabeth Gaskell. They were great fun to write, and one of these days, I might do another.
Back to the BBC TV show. The screenplay was written by Gwyneth Hughes, who once wrote a screenplay for The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, in which Diana Rigg was unexpectedly cast as Gladys Mitchell's saurian detective. But the mood here was far removed from Golden Age territory - it was dark, hallucinatory and (or is there a twist up Hughes' sleeve?) a study of crime rather than a whodunit.
Matthew Rhys was impressive as the opium-tormented John Jasper, and Freddie Fox, from the famous acting family, played Edwin. The first episode began with a nightmare and ended with a killing. Yet the action was stripped down and this meant that the development of the story was not as labyrinthine as I'd rather expected. Writing this post immediately after watching, I still feel as though I want to mull over my reaction to this particular take on the story. But it has gripped me sufficiently for me to be keen to watch episode two tomorrow.
January 8, 2012
Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville review
Sherlock continued brilliantly this evening with The Hounds of Baskerville, second in the three episode run starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the sage of 221B Baker Street, Martin Freeman as Dr Watson, and Una Stubbs as an unlikely but appealing Mrs Hudson.
The Hound of the Baskervilles is far and away the best of the four longer Holmes stories. The idea came from a man called Fletcher Robinson (whose family business in Liverpool I've long had a happy relationship with, oddly enough) and I recall that the press once gave some publicity to a strange theory that Conan Doyle was responsible for Robinson's death. A book was supposed to be being written about it, but as far as I know, it never saw the light of day. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd be interested to hear more.
Back to Sherlock in the 21st century. Mark Gatiss used elements from the original story very cleverly. There was even a character called Fletcher. Baskerville turned out to be a sinister research centre, and the character given the name of Stapleton proved to be female. She was played by the excellent Amelia Bullimore, last seen as as a senior cop in Scott & Bailey. Sherlock's first visit to Baskerville was a marvellously funny and clever scene.
As with last week's A Scandal in Belgravia, I found the story very enjoyable - perhaps even better. I am sure many others did too, given that my post about last week's episode seems (if Blogger stats are to be believed, which I'm not sure about) to have attracted more page views than all but four of over 1300 previous posts.[image error]
The Hound of the Baskervilles is far and away the best of the four longer Holmes stories. The idea came from a man called Fletcher Robinson (whose family business in Liverpool I've long had a happy relationship with, oddly enough) and I recall that the press once gave some publicity to a strange theory that Conan Doyle was responsible for Robinson's death. A book was supposed to be being written about it, but as far as I know, it never saw the light of day. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd be interested to hear more.
Back to Sherlock in the 21st century. Mark Gatiss used elements from the original story very cleverly. There was even a character called Fletcher. Baskerville turned out to be a sinister research centre, and the character given the name of Stapleton proved to be female. She was played by the excellent Amelia Bullimore, last seen as as a senior cop in Scott & Bailey. Sherlock's first visit to Baskerville was a marvellously funny and clever scene.
As with last week's A Scandal in Belgravia, I found the story very enjoyable - perhaps even better. I am sure many others did too, given that my post about last week's episode seems (if Blogger stats are to be believed, which I'm not sure about) to have attracted more page views than all but four of over 1300 previous posts.[image error]
