Martin Edwards's Blog, page 280

Le Boucher and Chabrol

A week after the death of the eminent film-maker, Claude Chabrol, I've watched one of his most famous movies, Le Boucher. It's not exactly a homage to Hitchcock, but the influence of the master of suspense is evident in a various ways, most notably in the appealing yet repressed blonde heroine, played by Chabrol's wife, Stephane Audran.

At a wedding in the idyllic village where she is in charge of a small school, she meets a butcher called Popaul, who has returned after 15 years in the army. ...

The Octave of Jealousy

Some of my regular readers may recall my mentioning Margaret Yorke, and her comment about writing a book rather along the lines of La Ronde. This led to mention of the long-deceased short story specialist, Stacy Aumonier, and his tale 'The Octave of Jealousy' – of which I'd never heard.

Well, thanks to the generosity of Fiona B, I've received a splendid Penguin paperback, containing the story, and I've just read it with much pleasure: what a nice thing it is to be a blogger, connecting with...

Forgotten Books - The Fifth Point of the Compass

I've included books by Miles Tripp before in Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books. One I've just read, supplied by that very good bookseller Jamie Sturgeon, is The Fifth Point of the Compass, which dates back to 1967. It has the style of a thriller, although it's more a study in character than a crime novel.

The main protagonist is David Walters, a veteran pilot, whose seemingly happy marriage is faltering, as his wife has become fed up with his frequent absences, and is now more...

The Brian Epstein Story

I've just watched an Arena documentary, made a while ago, about the extraordinary life of Brian Epstein. It's not a crime story in any way, but Epstein's short life and indeed his rather mysterious death certainly had dramatic elements that make truth seem stranger than fiction.

Epstein was the man who discovered the Beatles, became their manager, and piloted them to the status of pop, and pop culture, legends. The documentary gave a fascinating picture of Liverpool in the 60s, before I knew i...

100 Great Detectives

Over the years, I've contributed to quite a number of reference books about crime fiction, including The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, edited by Rosemary Herbert. But the very first book for which I wrote an essay about the genre was 100 Great Detectives, edited by Maxim Jakbowski.

My subject was an amateur sleuth whose few cases I have much enjoyed, This was Francis Pettigrew, created by Cyril Hare. He is a barrister, who becomes involved in mysteries against his will. The c...

Characters who self-destruct

Many fine crime novels (and other novels!) focus on characters who self-destruct, in one way or another. The way in which self-destructive impulses are charted often gives a clear idea of a writer's quality. I think, for instance, of Ruth Rendell's brilliant depiction of the illiterate Eunice Parchman in that fine book A Judgment in Stone.

I've just watched a movie which portrays a real-life character with a self-destructive impulse quite brilliantly. This was The Life and Death of Peter...

The Long Memory

I chanced upon the 1952 movie The Long Memory by accident when browsing the schedules – and it was a really good find. Some people describe it as a British film noir. It certainly moves at a lively pace from start to finish – and you can't be at all sure how it will finish, which is a bonus.

John Mills stars as Davidson, a man just released from prison after serving 12 years for a murder he didn't commit. He was convicted thanks to perjured testimony and now he is out for revenge. By a...

Deadline

Deadline is a 2009 movie about a writer under pressure of time to finish her latest work in progress, a theme that I found sufficiently close to home to tempt me to watch it. The writer in question goes away to stay in a quiet house in order to get the work done, a method that seems very sensible – in theory. But not, perhaps, if the house is in the middle of nowhere, and the writer's violent former lover has just been released from prison.

The star of the film, Brittany Murphy, died in sad...

Following the Detectives

I've mentioned previously that I've contributed a couple of essays, on Ellis Peters' Shropshire and Inspector Morse's Oxford, to a forthcoming book edited by Maxim Jakubowski, dealing with real life scenes of fictional crime. Two subjects I found very agreeable to research as well as write about. Marvellous, contrasting, yet each very English.

The book is due to come out on 25 September, published by New Holland Press, and I'm looking forward to reading the other contributions. All the more...

Forgotten Book - Mizmaze

My choice for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books today is Mizmaze. Quite a nice title. It is the only book by Mary Fitt that I have read, although she was a prolific crime writer for almost a quarter of a century. I was attracted to her work by the praise accorded to her by Harry Keating in Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers and by Cooper and Pike in Collecting Detective Fiction.

The name of Mary Fitt concealed the identity of Kathleen Freeman, a well-regarded Greek scholar whose ...