Martin Edwards's Blog, page 268

Vera, starring Brenda Blethyn

Vera, the new TV crime series starring Brenda Blethyn, which is based on a splendid series of books by Ann Cleeves, is coming to our screens in the UK very soon. The first episode will be shown on ITV at 8 pm on Sunday, 1 May. There are to be three more episodes in succeeding weeks, and assuming the ratings are good (and I'm sure they will be great, given the strength of the cast and the storylines), another series will follow at a later date.

I'm enormously pleased about this, because I have been enjoying Ann's books since her writing (and my book reviewing) began in the late 1980s. We met through the Crime Writers' Association a few years later, and have been friends ever since. She has written many very enjoyable books, but her career really took off after she won the CWA Gold Dagger for Raven Black.

Vera Stanhope first appeared in The Crow Trap, a novel which I read and reviewed at the time of its original publication. I felt at the time that she was a wonderful character who deserved a series of her own, and although I think I'm right in saying that Ann did not originally intend Vera to be a long-running series character, I'm sure the TV series will prove that, for once at any rate, I was ahead of the game!

Forgotten Book - The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

Gladys Mitchell, one of the most prolific female detective novelists, is one of those writers whose work divides critical opinion. Philip Larkin was a huge fan, for instance, but Julian Symons did not have too much time for her. I read one or two of her books a long time ago and was not particularly impressed, but recently I decided it was time to give her another go. And my choice for today's Forgotten Book is a rather enjoyable story dating back to 1929, The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop.

This book marked the second appearance of Mitchell's remarkable detective, Mrs Bradley. She is living in a quintessentially English village, which happens also to be home to a rather unpleasant blackmailer who goes missing in mysterious circumstances. Suffice to say that you don't need me to tell you what is eventually found in the eponymous butcher's shop…

It is a mark of Mitchell's unique style that she is able to combine decapitation and dismemberment with plentiful humour. Some of the jokes do not stand the test of time, and the dialogue of the working-class characters is almost unreadable. Yet the book does have, despite various flaws, an enduring charm which explains why Vintage have reprinted half a dozen titles in the Mrs Bradley series. Mitchell offers multiple potential solutions to her mystery, with a flair worthy of Anthony Berkeley, and we are supplied with extracts from Mrs Bradley's notebook, as well as two plans and a timetable. Finally, there is a pleasing twist which sees Mrs Bradley taking a rather idiosyncratic approach to the notion of justice.

One further thing struck me about this book. Not far from the village is to be found "The Stone of Sacrifice" – and in my Lake District Mysteries, there is a Sacrifice Stone close to where Daniel Kind has his cottage. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun!

Police at the Funeral

Quite some time ago I invested in the complete set of DVDs featuring Peter Davison as the legendary sleuth created by Margery Allingham, Albert Campion. I have to admit that I have only just opened the box, but this is not due to any particular lack of enthusiasm. I'm afraid that I have three other box sets still awaiting attention – too many shows, too little time!

I started by watching Police at the Funeral, simply because I had heard good things about the book on which the episode was based. What I did not know was that the plot bears a passing resemblance in some respects to a rather good Sherlock Holmes short story. But Allingham handled the material in her own distinctive style, and to good effect.

Peter Davison has always been a likeable actor and, although I do not claim to be any sort of expert in Allingham's work, it does seem to me that he is rather well cast as Campion. He is aided and abetted by the splendid Yorkshireman, the late Brian Glover, who plays the part of Lugg. I always relished the enthusiasm that Brian Glover seemed to bring to every role, and he was in his element here.

The supporting cast included Timothy West, who was as watchable as ever. The story moved at a brisk enough pace and I enjoyed the episode, possibly more than I expected to. I shall certainly not leave it too long before watching another instalment in a series

Father Brown and others

A little while ago, I was one of the people interviewed for a forthcoming BBC radio 4 programme about Father Brown, the legendary priest-detective created by G.K. Chesterton, and the real-life priest, Father O'Connor, who inspired Chesterton to dream up his character. If I'm brutally honest, I'm not absolutely sure why I qualified to be interviewed, as I can't claim to be an expert on Chesterton. So it may well be that I don't feature in the final edited version of the programme, but the experience has prompted me to look again at the Father Brown stories.

I was interviewed by the former minister Ann Widdecombe, who has now become something of a media celebrity (although I must admit I have never watched Strictly Come Dancing!) One of the points I made to her, which I'm not sure she found totaly interesting, was that, in writing about Father Brown, Chesterton used the short story form, not the novel form. I'm sure this was conscious decision on his part, and a wise one, since I don't think that the pungent, atmospheric and sometimes fantastical style of the stories would have worked if they had been much longer. Julian Symons made the point that the Father Brown stories are rather rich, and that to digest a large number of them in one sitting is too much to contemplate. I agree, but like Symons, I do admire both the character and many of the stories.

At the time he wrote about Father Brown, Chesterton regarded his detective stories as rather less significant than most of his other writing, for example on theology and politics. In fact (shades of Conan Doyle) he abandoned the character for years before returning to him, largely, it seems, for financial reasons. Yes I think it is safe to say that Chesterton is now better remembered for his contribution to the crime genre for anything else.

This isn't uncommon. GDH Cole and his wife Margaret regarded the detective stories as trivial in comparison to their work in the field of politics and economics. "Nicholas Blake" saw himself as a poet, first and foremost. And there are other examples. But popular fiction, and certainly detective fiction, can have a surprising longevity.

Anamorph - review

Anamorph is a serial killer movie from 2007 which stars Willem Dafoe as a troubled cop called Stan, whose experience in dealing with a string of murders attributed to 'Uncle Eddie' comes back to haunt him when a number of killings are committed in the form of weird tableaux.

The plot is complicated, which is not in itself a bad thing – on the contrary. However, while I watched, I was uneasily aware that I was missing lots of complicated sub-texts, and the elaborations of the story in the end become rather overwhelming. It may seem lazy of me, but I like to have a few more signposts about what exactly is going on. And I didn't get enough in Anamorph. Perhaps I should have paid more attention, and possibly I would have done had I seen the film in the cinema rather than at home on TV. But perhaps the film should have made me care more about its characters.

This sense of an opportunity missed is a shame, because there are definitely some strong features to the story. I was rather taken with a couple of anagrams that play a part in the plot. However, Stan is a misery, and the grim ending felt unsatisfactory.

The fact is that the world is full of serial killer stories. To stand out, a film or book about serial killers has to pack a real punch that derives its power from something more than gore. Anamorph, for all its potential, never quite delivers.

Forgotten Book - The Hog's Back Mystery

Freeman Wills Crofts was one of the leading writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction between the wars, but I have only read a few of his books over the years, and by and large have found them competently constructed, but lacking in flair. However, most recently I read The Hog's Back Mystery, my choice for today's Forgotten Book, and found it distinctly more impressive than the other novels by Crofts that I've tried in the past.

The starting point is an apparent domestic intrigue. A doctor's wife has become involved with another man, to the dismay of her friends. Then a chance encounter suggests that the doctor is also playing away from home. He is seen in the company of a younger woman, and lies about what he was getting up to. When the doctor and his friend – who proves to be a nurse of his acquaintance – vanish mysteriously, it seems that they may have run off together. But the truth is very different.

Inspector French is called in, only for one of the doctor's house guests to go missing as well. What is the explanation for the disappearances? And if the three missing people have been murdered, what can be the motive? This is an intriguing and elaborate puzzle, which I found genuinely appealing.

Typically, the weakness of a Crofts mystery is that the suspect with an unbreakable alibi proved to be the culprit, making the storyline rather predictable. But here there are no fewer than six suspects, and a plethora of alibis to unravel. This time, Crofts had me fooled. I'm surprised that this story is not better known, and I also enjoyed the "clue finder" he thoughtfully provided to show how fairly the clues were given. A very good example of that classic mystery puzzle.

The Detection Club Archivist

I'm proud to say that the Detection Club has appointed me as its archivist. Given that I have been fascinated by the history of the crime fiction genre for more years than I care to remember, this is not only an honour, but a role that I'm sure I will find rewarding.

Appropriately enough, a good deal of detective work is bound to be required. Although many crime writers are fascinated by history, only a minority take an interest in the details of the evolution of their genre, and information about the early days of the Club in particular is very hard to come by. To a large extent, this is perhaps understandable for a social group whose main objective has always been simply to have a few convivial dinners each year. Looking back, however, it would be fascinating to know more about the discussions and relationships between people like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, Anthony Berkeley and Hugh Walpole.

To this day, there is continuing uncertainty in many quarters about when the Detection Club actually came into existence. For example, the club's own list of members suggests that it started up in 1932, but that cannot be right, since it published The Floating Admiral in 1931. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it began "officially" in 1930.

I'm keen to gather material for the archives, and if any readers of this blog can help, I'd be delighted to hear from them.

Rome and Research

How do writers do their research? It's a question often asked, and of course there are countless answers. Experiencing real-life and observing our fellow human beings is as good a way as any, and plenty of writers (including me) keep a close eye on the newspapers for intriguing stories that may spark an idea.

But one of the most enjoyable ways to "do research" is to travel away from familiar surroundings. Often, I find that taking a break somewhere else helps me to generate new story ideas. Perhaps the secret lies, at least partly, in relaxing and allowing one's mind to wander down fresh avenues. And by exploring an unfamiliar setting, one may find material for stories that are that little bit different.

As a keen short story writer, I have garnered plenty of plot ideas from my travels over the years. A good example is "The Bookbinder's Apprentice", my most successful short story, which was inspired by a trip to Venice. And now I have just come back from a few days in Rome when, amongst other things, I developed a short story plot after visiting a piazza which features a rather mysterious "Alchemy gate".

I was accompanied on the short trip by my Webmaster, who has been updating my website in various ways recently. The weather was fantastic and we walked around the wonderful city for hour after hour. In the evenings, we had a few glasses of wine at some of the excellent restaurants, celebrating amongst other things that Red Herring Award, and another appointment which I shall mention in a blog post tomorrow…

Trent's Last Case

Trent's Last Case, by E.C. Bentley, is properly regarded as one of the landmark books in the history of crime fiction. The first two film versions left Bentley unimpressed, but the third, shot in 1952, was better and I've just watched a DVD of the movie that I received as a welcome Christmas present.

The stars were Michael Wilding (one of Elizabeth Taylor's many husbands), Margaret Lockwood (whose many other films include that classic The Lady Vanishes), Orson Welles, no less, as Sigsbee Manderson, and Miles Malleson, who had a rather more important role than usual in his prolific career.

I thought it was a decent film. Famously, whodunits are tricky to film; you can understand why Hitchcock generally favoured suspense rather than a heavily plotted mystery. But this one remains perfectly watchable.

The book was greatly admired by Sayers and Christie, among others, and it was a formative influence on their writing careers. Sayers later became a good friend of 'Jack' Bentley, so much so that she even rhapsodised over the belated follow-up, Trent's Own Case, though in truth it was a relatively minor work. Bentley never came close to surpassing his debut novel.

Forgotten Book - Shadow on the Wall

More than a couple of years have passed since I mentioned on this blog that a couple of interesting articles in CADS had prompted me to think about exploring further the work of Henry Christopher Bailey, one of the leading lights of Golden Age detective fiction. It says something about my other preoccupations that it has taken until now for me to get round to reading anything else by Bailey.

My choice for today's Forgotten Book Is Shadow on the Wall, a novel happily made available again thanks to a recent reprint by those excellent American publishers Rue Morgue. It was the first novel to feature Bailey's most famous detective, Reggie Fortune, although by the time it appeared Bailey had produced a large number of Reggie Fortune short stories which had earned a good deal of popular acclaim as well as critical approval. I've read a few of the short stories, years ago, but never before have I broached a full-length novel by H.C. Bailey.

This particular novel – admired by Bailey's fans – shows both his strengths and his weaknesses as a crime writer. Strengths first. He constructs a clever plot – this one starts off as a kind of upper-class country house mystery, but develops into a very dark story indeed. Bailey writes, at times, with both power and passion, characteristics not often associated with Golden Age mysteries. This story has some quite memorable features.

The snag is that Bailey's style is both mannered and horribly dated. At times story is quite hard going, and by all accounts some of his later books were even more self-indulgent. Reggie moans and mumbles so much that an interesting character becomes irritating. All this is a pity, because Bailey was an intelligent writer, and cut above many of his contemporaries. But the laboured and old-fashioned prose is a real stumbling block. Even so, those who are willing to persevere with this novel will be glad that they did.