Martin Edwards's Blog, page 293

Forgotten Book - Sweet Adelaide

In discussing Linda Stratmann's book Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion, I mentioned that she devotes a chapter to the case of Adelaide Bartlett. This is one of the most fascinating of the classic British murder cases, I think, right up there with Maybrick, Crippen, Wallace, Ruxton and the Croydon Poisonings.

The trial of Adelaide Bartlett took place in 1886, and as Statmann explains, it 'both scandalized and titillated Victorian society'. Adelaide was accused of using chloroform to murder...

The Man in the Mist

I've watched another in the Partners in Crime series from the 80s, featuring Francesca Annis and James Warwick as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. This episode was 'The Man in the Mist', and involved the murder of an actress who is about to marry and is seeking a divorce from a reluctant husband.

The idea of the original stories which formed Partners in Crime was that Agatha Christie would conceive a mystery in the style of a popular whodunit writer of the 1920s, and Tommy and/or Tuppence...

Lindsey Davis and the Writer's Life

Lindsey Davis, author of the Falco novels, is someone I had the pleasure of getting to know a little when she was chair of the Crime Writers' Association a few years back. In my capacity as editor of the CWA's annual anthology, I need to liaise with the Chair on various practical matters, and I always find them kindly and supportive. That was certainly true of Lindsey.

I've read a few of the Falco stories, and their amiable wit is characteristic of their author. I was delighted, incidentally, ...

Hung Parliament and Floating Voter

Events of recent days have reminded me of a couple of crime novels ('entertainments', he dubbed them) written by Julian Critchley and featuring a lawyer and M.P. called Joshua Morris. The first was called Hung Parliament – a very topical title! I haven't read it, but Marcel Berlins, no less, gave it a good review. The second was Floating Voter, and I have a copy dating from 1992. It's set at the Conservative Party conference at Brighton, and features the kidnapping of Jeffrey Archer…

The Man Who Left Too Soon

Ever since Stieg Larsson's first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tatttoo, was posthumously published to enormous acclaim, first in his native Sweden, and before long around the world, Larsson mania has gripped the world of crime fiction world. This is in part because of the excellence of his Millennium trilogy, but also because of the remarkable story surrounding it, not least the tragic fact that the author died before he became a global phenomenon. I must say that I am really looking...

Lewis: Dark Matter - review

Dark Matter, the second episode in the latest series of Lewis, lived up to the standard set last week by Dead of Winter. This was a college-based story, kicking off with the death in an observatory of the Master of Gresham College, whose tangled personal life was gradually unravelled as the story developed.

One of the many pleasures of Lewis is spotting the star guests. Warren Clarke, best known to crime fans as Andy Dalziel, played the college's head porter with great gusto. His wife was...

Chloroform

At the recent CWA conference at Abegavenny, there were, as usual, a number of excellent talks. Over the twenty-odd years that I've been attending the conference, there have been some marvellous speakers, and some memorable events, and this year was no exception. I was fascinated to listen, for instance, to the legendary pathologist Bernard Knight (a notable crime novelist himself) talking about the Cromwell Street murders.

One talk by an author whose name was previously unknown to me also...

Arthur Machen

When I wrote about the CWA conference in Abergavenny recently, I mentioned that as well as locally born Ethel Lina White, another writer from South Wales came to my attention that week-end. This was, in fact, Arthur Machen, who was born not too far away in Caerleon-on-Usk (the Usk, as I discovered, is a lovely river and there are a number of very pleasant towns in its environs.)

There is a nice little museum at Abergavenny Castle, and when we visited it, I was interested to see a small...

Forgotten Book - Released for Death

My choice this week for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books is Released for Death, a novel by Henry Wade which I've seldom seen discussed. It's a period piece, but of considerable interest, both historically and in its own right. I reviewed it for Geoff Bradley's marvellous magazine CADS a few years back. Here is an amended version of that review.

The rich variety of Wade's work is illustrated by this book, which traces the misadventures of a cat burglar, Toddy Shaw. The early pages of...

Plot, Pace and Information

Every now and then in this blog, I touch on an issue concerning the writing of crime fiction, and I've been interested to see how many comments some of these posts have prompted. One example was when I asked about the gruesomeness of some modern crime fiction. And another came last Monday, with my post 'Too Much Information?'

These are topics that intrigue me, though I don't think there are simple answers to the questions I have posed, and I'm glad that you seem to have found them interesting ...