Martin Edwards's Blog, page 271

A Charitable End - review

A Charitable End was Jessica Mann's first novel, published back in 1971. I was pleased to find a first edition in Jamie Sturgeon's last catalogue, and couldn't resist the temptation to snap it up.

The novel was a Collins Crime Club title. So many splendid books were produced under that imprint over the years. I still can't understand why the publishers abandoned it after the retirement of the legendary editor, Elizabeth Walter. She had an eye for talent, and clearly she took to Mann's elegant prose style.

The setting is Edinburgh, and a middle-class world where well-off people pursue charitable activities in their leisure time, before the cosy status quo is shattered by a sudden death, and a sequence of poison pen letters. The narrator is a young woman who has been conducting an affair with the deceased's husband, and Mann examines the tension s beneath the surface calm with some accomplishment.

The narrative is far from orthodox, but it never sinks into self-indulgence. The main focus is on the lives of the female characters, rather than on detection, but in the end, the mystery is rather neatly unravelled. At the time, naturally, Mann was feeling her way as a crime writer, but the assurance of her debut promised good things to come, a promise on which, in the intervening years, she has delivered.

I've quizzed Jessica Mann about the background to this book, and to my delight she has agreed to write a post for this blog which will say a bit more about it. Watch this space!

Dorte H and Nigel Bird

A very hasty week-end post to mention two enterprises by fellow bloggers that you might like to check out. First, Candied Crime, by Dorte H, a cosy/humorous collection. Many of you already know Dorte's work by way of her terrific blog, a blog in which a very pleasant personality always shines through.

Second, Nigel Bird of the Sea Minor blog has mentioned to me that his collection Dirty Old Town is now available as an e-book. Again, it strikes me that this kind of enterprise shows the potential of new(ish) media for writers, at a time when traditional publishing isn't really in a great state.

The connections that bloggers make with their readers is a source of constant fascination for me, and a shared enthusiasm for writing is one of the strongest bonds of all. So I hope Dorte, Nigel and others who are engaged on similar projects meet with success - and a good deal of enjoyment, too.

Forgotten Book - Murder in Black and White

In 1931, Milward Kennedy wrote the first of three books under the pseudonym of Evelyn Elder. These are rare books, but the first Elder, Murder in Black and White, has recently been reprinted by Fender Tucker's excellent small press, Ramble House. I strongly recommend Ramble House, who have brought back at reasonable prices a host of obscure titles.

This book contains, in effect, a 'challenge to the reader' in the Ellery Queen style, though it is not expressly described as such. The author says: 'When teh reader has reached the end of Part Three he is in possession of all the facts needed to reach the solution of the problem. Such further facts as are introduced in Part Four (and they are virtually only two in number) are no more than confirmation of the theory which emerges from the rest of the book.' So in a sense, Rupert Penny, whom I quoted a while back, was wrong in saying that The Talkative Policeman was the first English book to present this kind of direct challenge to the reader.

The novel shows us both the best and the worst of Kennedy. He was an intelligent man and a good writer, with a flair for ingenious ideas that suited the Golden Age. But somehow, all too often, the sum of the parts does not add up to as much as it ought. The narrative is strangely constructed, with far too many characters introduced too soon, and this becomes wearisome. I didn't care about the people as much as I should have done, given that Kennedy was better at characterisation than some of his contemporaries.

And yet the idea of the book is very appealing. An architect and amateur artist, Sam Horder, takes a holiday in the south of France and becomes involved in a seemingly impossible crime. Real tennis, of which Kennedy was clearly a fan, plays a significant part in the story. Sam's sketches are reproduced in the book – Part Two consists solely of them - and you can, if you care to do so, try to figure out the solution by studying them. He recounts the mystery to a friend, who plays armchair detective by doing just that. The sketches were actually drawn by Austin Blomfield, himself an architect and artist who went into practice with his father, an architect of distinction whose work included buildings at Lady Margaret Hall.

Overall, then, a book I found frustrating yet, from a historical perspective, very interesting indeed.

Brief Encounter

En route for Grasmere and the launch of The Serpent Pool, we stopped off at Carnforth, just south of the Lake District. I had in mind a trip to the very good second hand bookshop in the town, but digressed to the railway station for lunch. And this proved surprisingly memorable.

This is because Carnforth Railway Station was used for the filming of the classic movie Brief Encounter. After the British rail network was stupidly decimated in the 60s, the station was left derelict, but a great charitable effort led to it having a new life. There is now a splendid museum featuring the history of the station, and the making of Brief Encounter. You can lunch, as we did, in a recreated cafeteria that is really atmospheric.

Brief Encounter isn't really my favourite sort of movie, but I do think that what has been done at Carnforth is wonderful. Even though life moves on, and we must embrace the new, it's a terrible mistake to neglect the past. This humble railway station offers a real slice of British social history, and its revival is a sign of what can be done by people with imagination and drive.

I've always been keen on history, but if anything, I'm keener than ever these days. History plays a big part in the Lake District Mysteries, and will continue to do so, informing the lives of Hannah, Daniel and those around them. And they may even pay a visit to Carnforth one of these days...

John Barry R.I.P.

John Barry has always been one of my favourite musicians and the news of his death today saddens me. I've mentioned Barry several times in this blog and given that he won five Oscars,I think it can safely be said that he was Britain's finest ever writer of film music.

John Barry will forever be associated with the music for James Bond, and rightly so, but he achieved so much more. Working with a variety of lyricists, including Don Black and the great Hal David, he produced some of the finest songs of the 60s. My personal favourite is 'We Have All the Time in the World', co-written with Hal David and sung by Louis Armstrong, of all people, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And the best tune might just be 'The Girl with the Sun in her Hair', from You Only Live Twice, even though most people associate it with a TV commercial.

There's a drama and a dynamism about Barry's music that sets it apart. He's associated with lush, romantic sounds, but it's no coincidence that he wrote music for classic crime films and TV shows. His music is truly exciting.

Think of The Ipcress File, The Persuaders, and the magnificent score to that brilliant film Body Heat. All of them gain a great deal, in different ways, from Barry's music. There are plenty of other examples of his gifts from the crime genre, even before we come to Midnight Cowboy, Born Free and Dances with Wolves. A little while ago, I tried to find a DVD of one of his concerts - but there are none available. Astonishing. John Barry was a superstar among modern composers.

Should writers list their characters?

A very welcome arrival to the blogosphere is J.F. Norris, whose Pretty Sinister blog I've added to my blogroll. He covers some modern fiction – such as that very entertaining writer L.C.Tyler – but his main focus is on books from the past, and already he's come up with some fascinating bits of information.

In commenting here, he also raised a very interesting question about lists of characters at the start of books, to help readers pick their way through. This used to be common in detective stories, but these days I've heard publishers argue that it is off-putting, and implies that the story is not clear enough to stand on its own merits.

I can understand this argument, and that some readers will draw an adverse inference if they see a character list at the front of the book. But I do tend to like them – for instance in the old books that Rue Morgue reprint. And some authors, like Christianna Brand, used to use them as part of the overall means of entertaining the reader.

I've been thinking about the other bits and pieces that can add to a reader's pleasure in the last few days as I've been working with my American publishers on a map for The Hanging Wood. It's fun to see my dubious draughtsmanship transformed into a rather nice piece of work by an artist. Maps seem to be coming back into vogue generally at present, not least in Scandinavian novels. A good thing!

So what will be the next device to be exhumed from the Golden Age? More family trees? Challenges to the readers? Clue-finders? None of them seem likely, I must admit. But you never know...

Forgotten Book - Death Among the Sunbathers

The name E.R.Punshon doesn't often feature in the blogosphere, but he was a prolific crime writer, turning out more than 50 books, roughly in the Golden Age tradition, and having overlooked him for years, I decided to give him a try. So my Forgotten Book for today is his 1934 title Death among the Sunbathers.

Punshon is most commonly associated with a series character, the policeman Bobby Owen, who features in this book in a rather untypical way. The starting point for the investigation is the murder of a young woman journalist. She has been shot, and her body left in a burning car.

The story-line takes the police to a sunbathing colony, which is described with some rather pleasing satire. Punshon, whose work was much admired by Dorothy L. Sayers, was a decent writer, and his characters were more clearly defined than those of some of his duller contemporaries.

The snag with this particular book is that the mystery plot and the cast of suspects did not really appeal to me. There is a shift of focus halfway through the book which paves the way for a neat twist, but unfortunately matters were prolonged in such a manner that I'd figured out that twist some time before it was finally revealed. Quite an interesting novel, simply because of its touch of unorthodoxy, but I suspect Punshon was capable of better.

Writers and their Readers

Dorte asked in a recent comment about the 'contract' between writer and reader, and this intriguing question prompted me to reflect again on what it is that readers expect writers to deliver. In this post, I'll focus on my own experience, and field, but there are a good many wider issues that are also well worth discussing, and perhaps a future post will do so.

Most people would agree that 'rules' for writers are not a good thing. Way back in the 20s, Ronald Knox devised his Decalogue for detective story writers, a list of rules which should be observed and which has been seen in some ways as a cornerstone of writing in the Golden Age. But even he broke one or two of his own rules in his fiction, and so did many others, very successfully.

There is one important issue in a crime series that occupies my thoughts a lot. If you have loyal readers, who have read your earlier books, you don't want to bore them with explanation about the characters' back stories. But new readers need to understand about the people in the story, and not be confused. I believe I owe it to both sets of readers not to irritate them with too much or too little back story, and to deliver information in a pleasing way, without boring anyone. I have come across some series where there is too much or too little repetition of key facts, and the skill required to walk the tightrope is, I think, often under-estimated. I am determined to try to make sure that you can start my series anywhere - with the latest book, or one in the middle, and still enjoy that one, and then - if you do like it - all the others.

I'm also guided by another principle, which not everyone will agree with. I strive in my writing to create a strong impression of realism, but I'm not obsessed with it. I don't mind changing the topography of Liverpool or the Lakes a little, if it suits the story, and does not jar (at least, does not jar with me!) One reason why this is a good idea, in my opinion, is to avoid distressing people in the real world, or even libelling people or organisations unintentionally. For instance, inevitably I feature the Cumbria Constabulary in my work, but I've created a fictional equivalent to the real police force (the real one is, I gather from the statistics, very good, even if it lacks a Hannah Scarlett, let alone a Les Bryant or a Greg Wharf.)

However 'realistic' we try to be as writers – and I'm strongly in favour of writers making the attempt to be 'realistic' – we have to recognise the real world is different from our make-believe universe. Take the Cumbria shootings, or the Jo Yeates murder, for instance. Those tragic events have a resonance and an impact that is almost impossible to re-create in fiction, even though the best fiction can have enormous impact. Here's another 'rule' that I set myself, then. When challenging readers to think about matters of life and death in fiction, to do so with respect for those living in the real world.

Grasmere and The Serpent Pool

I had the great pleasure yesterday of launching the paperback edition of The Serpent Pool at the Wordsworth Trust's Art and Book Festival at Grasmere. This was held at the Wordsworth Hotel, which I've driven past many times but never stayed at before.

The event gave the chance for a Lakes-orientated week-end, with stops at one or two very interesting places, but of course the Festival was the highlight. It was very well organised by Michael McGregor, Andrew Forster and their colleagues at the Wordsworth Trust, and I enjoyed meeting a range of likeable people, including one lady who gave me an interesting bit of Wordsworth family trivia that one day may appear in a novel.

There was also a chance to meet a range of fascinating writers including the poet Jackie Kay, the commentator and retired bishop Richard Holloway, and Roy Hattersley, the former deputy leader of the Labour Party. Lord Hattersley spoke after dinner on Saturday about political biography, and I found his talk absolutely fascinating. He is in his late 70s, and even more articulate and insightful than you would expect. I liked the fact that he emphasised the importance of sticking to what you believe in politics, whatever your party viewpoint. He was a very tough act to follow.

But follow it I had to, the next morning, and I was gratified by the feedback to my talk about my writing career in general and The Serpent Pool in particular.A walk around Grasmere, such a lovely village, was the perfect end to a very enjoyable event. It made me realise that after this long dark winter, spring is not too far away.

Forgotten Books - Half-Mast Murder

Milward Kennedy was a founder member of the Detection Club, but his novels are long out of print in the UK, and Half-Mast Murder is a good candidate for inclusion in Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books.

Published in 1930, it is a country house murder case, boasting three plans, including one of the octagonal summer house in which Professor Paley, an expert on the subject of international relations, is found stabbed to death. The summer house is locked, but Superintendent Guest soon establishes that the victim was murdered, and the 'locked room' element of the story is quite minor. The flag above the summer house is flying at half-mast – but why? The explanation for this aspect of the story is a pretty good one.

The main question is whether the motive for the murder was connected to the dead man's political views, or to some more commonplace personal or domestic issue. There is one character who appears to be above suspicion throughout, and if I were writing the book, I'd have been tempted to make her the culprit. But Kennedy opts for a different outcome, although the motive is concealed until the end of the book (and because a key fact is not revealed until very late on, he doesn't really play fair with the reader.) The culprit's identity is, though, a pleasing twist on an old theme.

Kennedy, whose full name was Milward Roden Kennedy Burge, was an interesting character. His first book was a mystery written with a contemporary from Winchester College, A.G. Macdonell, best known for the humorous classic England, Their England. He wrote few novels after the 30s, though he reviewed crime until the 60s, and lived until 1968. At one time, he worked for the League of Nations, which is name-checked in his book, and I felt this background might have been more fully exploited than in fact proves to be the case. Kennedy was a good enough writer to come up with some very interesting ideas, though not perhaps good enough to make the very best use of them. Even so, this is a sound example of Golden Age fiction of the second rank.