Martin Edwards's Blog, page 85

Forgotten Book - Duncan Is In His Grave

When I blogged about Richard Wiseman's unusual first novel, First Person Plural I knew nothing about the author. Thanks to Jamie Sturgeon, I learned that this was a pen-name of Nick Bartlett, who had written two mainstream novels before trying his hand at crime fiction. Thanks again to Jamie, I have obtained a copy of his second and final crime novel, Duncan Is In His Grave.

First Person Plural was published by Macmillan - a good start for a new crime novelist, but the book never appeared in paperback. Perhaps sales were poor, perhaps reviews were few. It's certainly a little-known book, though I think that it is a compelling if uncomfortable read. Duncan Is In His Grave was published by Robert Hale, who were library publishers and, to be honest, a step down from Macmillan. A step down taken by many good writers, admittedly, but either Macmillan didn't like this book or felt disappointed by reaction to the first one.

Like First Person Plural, which otherwise it doesn't resemble in terms of storyline, this is a mystery which revolves around warped sexual feelings. It was published in 1978, a year after Jacqueline Wilson's Making Hate, which was a similarly interesting (but flawed) attempt to explore sexual psychology in the crime novel.

The narrator is Stephen Inglis, an advertising copywriter (as Bartlett had been). He falls out with a client called Frimley and embarks on a childish campaign of revenge. In so doing, he's encouraged by discussions with a character called Duncan, and it soon becomes clear that Duncan is imaginary. What follows is a crisply related descent into madness. The author was no doubt influenced by the work of writers such as Symons, Highsmith, and Rendell, and he could certainly write well. This is a very readable story, and it's a shame that Bartlett-Wiseman gave up on the genre. I can only surmise that he was disappointed by lack of success.

Des - ITV review

When I wrote the other day about David Tennant's excellent performance as a psychopathic serial killer in Bad Samaritan, it didn't occur to me that I'd soon be singing his praises again, for his performance of a real life murderer. He takes the lead in the ITV drama series Des, which is running this week, playing the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. I've watched the first two episodes full of admiration for his chilling portrayal of a dead-eyed man without a conscience.

Nilsen's bizarre and horrific crimes were revealed back in 1983 and I remember the case vividly. He had worked as an employment adviser in a jobcentre in London and through a personal connection I learned a little bit about him. He wasn't a popular man, although everybody who knew him was astonished to learn of his crimes. He was best known as a trade union representative, a virulent left-winger who hated the government. All his victims were vulnerable people. 

Tennant is superb, and I don't think it can sensibly be said that this programme glamorises his crimes. Far from it. The material is sensational, but the scripts of the first two episodes treat it with sobriety. There is a proper focus on the quest to identify the victims. The main challenge faced by the writer, Luke Neal, is to maintain tension, given that Nilsen admitted his killings from the outset, and we all know that he died in prison. The real mystery is about what motivated him.

So far, we've been given a few clues. The main source material is Brian Masters' book about Nilsen, and Masters is a major character in the story, again very well played, by Jason Watkins. I'll be interested to see how the third and final episode brings the story to a conclusion. At the moment, there's a division of focus between the police's efforts to investigate and Masters' relationship with Nilsen. I wonder if the script writer considered taking the unorthodox step of telling the story mainly from Masters' point of view. That would have been a very bold approach, and may have paid dividends, but the method actually adopted in telling the story has so far been fairly effective. I look forward to the concluding episode. 

 

Howdunit

This week sees the long-awaited (well, by me, anyway) publication in the UK of Howdunit under the legendary Collins Crime Club imprint. (Publication in the US will follow before long.) Howdunit is the latest book by members of the Detection Club, following in a tradition that dates back to the early 1930s. But never before have so many members contributed to a single volume - almost every living member has taken part, including some who have not published for quite a while, including Jonathan Gash, Lord Denham, Baroness Cohen (aka Janet Neel) and June Thomson. And there are also pieces by many distinguished members of the past, ranging from Agatha Christie to P.D. James.

Howdunit is a book about the art and craft (or graft!) of crime writing. It will, we believe, be a big help to people who want to write crime fiction themselves. But at least as importantly, it gives a unique insight into the writing life. Or rather, dozens of personal insights. Leading writers talk frankly about the ups and downs of a literary career, with topics such as 'imposter syndrome' and writer's block covered, as well as the strange things that can happen when your book is adapted for the screen. 

As President of the Club, I conceived and edited the book, and I wrote the short sections that link all the contributions. In addition, there are ninety contributions from members. The idea was to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of this splendid and unique social network. The book also celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Len Deighton's election to membership of the Club, and is dedicated to him. Len has also contributed a brand new essay about his own stellar writing career. It's a great shame that we can't have a launch or any of the other events that I had in mind at the time the book was compiled last year, but perhaps we can make up for this to some extent next year. 

In the meantime, I hope that this unusual book will appeal to people fascinated by crime writing, whether or not they fancy producing a novel of their own. It really was a joy to receive all the manuscripts - most of the material was specially written for this volume - and great fun to find suitabel ways of welding in existing pieces by the likes of Christie, Christianna Brand, Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and others. And the publishers have done a lovely job of production. I'm thrilled to see it on my bookshelf at last!

Forgotten Book - The Edge of Terror

[image error]
Not so long ago, the books of Brian Flynn were an unknown quantity to most fans of detective fiction, certainly including me. Now, they are in the course of being reprinted by the estimable Dean Street Press. And this is largely thanks to the enthusiastic advocacy of one person, Steve Barge, who blogs as Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery, and provides informative intros to the reprints.

Flynn enjoyed a long career in excess of thirty years, and published over fifty novels. Some earned good reviews, and he was published overseas and in translation in the early part of his writing life. But he'd faded from the limelight long before his final book came out in 1958. And probably it's optimistic to suggest that he was ever actually in the limelight. The firms who published him in the UK were respectable but not exactly market leaders. As a crude rule of thumb, it's fair to say that most of the better writers are published by one of the top firms at some point in their career. For instance, Lorac migrated from Sampson Low to Collins, Cecil M. Wills from John Heritage to Hodder, and so on.

One of the key questions about forgotten authors, inevitably, is whether their neglect is understandable. You don't remain a published novelist for thirty years without having some ability as a storyteller (or so I often tell myself) but this doesn't mean that you're an overlooked master of the genre either. I tried a Flynn novel a while ago, but as a result of a number of distractions found myself unable to get into it. When I read Steve's blog post about The Edge of Terror, I felt the moment had come to give Flynn my undivided attention. And so I read the book within a few days of laying my hands on a copy.

I had mixed feelings about the story for a long time, but I felt that the final section worked well enough for me to be very glad I'd read it. The downsides involve Flynn's cluttered prose and often stodgy dialogue. The doctor-narrator has an irritating style, e.g. 'Bathurst had a sudden visualization of activity and, as was his invariable custom, he was shedding the mantle of meditation for the cloak of clash.' As for the Great Detective, Anthony Bathurst: 'Well, Inspector, you haven't come to the Rowfants to tell us about the status quo ante. I'm confident of that. What is it that's haunting your tortured soul. Open the can.' There's a touch of the wannabe Dorothy L. Sayers about this type of writing, and it didn't work for me. Nor did the middle section of the story, which lacked tension. The book introduces a woman whom Bathurst once loved, but I felt more could have been made of her contribution to the story.

And yet. Just when I was lamenting the lack of excitement and suspense in comparison to that conjured up in the serial killer novels Francis Beeding and Philip Macdonald were writing at around the same time, the story seemed to spring to life. I very much enjoyed the fact that Flynn utilised a version of an idea that I happen to be researching right now, but quite apart from that, I felt that the later chapters had a verve that had earlier been lacking. There's also a clue in a name that I didn't spot, and which is nicely done. All in all, there was enough here to make me see why Steve likes Flynn and to feel that I'd be happy to read more of the books.

Black Work versus Lethal White

ITV has just re-run a three-part crime series from 2015, Black Work, starring Sheridan Smith. It's been interesting to compare this show, written by Matt Charman, with the current series of Strike, the private detective show based on novels by J. K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith, and adapted for TV by Tom Edge.

First to Black Work. It starts with a familiar scenario - a husband dies and his wife discovers that he was leading a secret life. The wife in question is PC Jo Gillespie, played compellingly (as usual) by Sheridan Smith. Her husband was an undercover cop and it soon becomes clear that he took his undercover activities to exceptional lengths. But he was murdered and there's a mystery about his death. Is someone in the police hierarchy covering something up?

Jo's colleagues and superiors are played by a glittering array of actors - Geraldine James, Douglas Henshall, Phil Davis, Ace Bhatti, and Matthew McNulty. Perhaps none of them are above suspicion? I thought that Charman did a very good job of juggling his cast of characters and moving the story on with pace. Very watchable. At the end of the final episode, Jo is promoted, and one assumes that further series were contemplated. Why they have failed to materialise, I don't know, but Black Work made for good viewing.

I enjoyed the second and third series of Strike rather more than the first. They too were both written by Tom Edge, and I had high hopes for Lethal White. After three of the four episodes, however, I'm very disappointed. The story has from the start been bogged down by an excessive focus on the relationship between Cormoran Strike (played admirably, as always, by Tom Burke) and his sidekick, played by Holliday Grainger. A double-stranded murder plot has also become tedious. I no longer really care whodunit. I haven't read the book, but the adaptation feels flabby in comparison to the taut writing of Black Work. It's the old, old story - given the talent of those involved, this series would surely have been much better had the material not been stretched out beyond its natural length.

Bad Samaritan - 2018 film review

David Tennant is such a fine (and versatile) actor that he can lift any TV programme or film in which he appears a notch or two. That's certainly the case with Bad Samaritan, an American movie in which he plays a ruthless serial killer, Cale Erendreich, with such gusto that every scene in which he appears makes compulsive viewing.

At first, though, the focus is on Robert Sheehan, playing Sean Falco, a young guy with a lovely girlfriend and a dodgy way of life. He and his pal Derek (Carlito Olivero) are scammers whose work as car valets at a restaurant gives them a chance to rob people they take a dislike to. Erendreich is among their targets, but Sean finds that he's bitten off more than he can chew. When he breaks into Erendreich's home, he finds a terrified young woman called Katie, tied up in circumstances that make it clear that Erendreich is up to something very, very unpleasant.

The rest of the film is about Sean's mission to rescue Katie, a task which endangers his life and those of the people close to him. Erendreich is not only cruel, he is exceptionally wealthy, and he uses his technological expertise to pursue the young man who is making his life difficult. The police aren't much help to Sean - he's on his own.

Hokum, perhaps, but it's exciting hokum, and pretty well done. I found myself gripped by the pace of Brandon Boyce's script as well as by the excellence of Tennant's performance (and Sheehan's, too). I gather the reviews generally have been mixed, and if you're looking for something profound, you are likely to be disappointed. But serial killer movies are seldom profound. Bad Samaritan is one of the better ones, and certainly delivers in terms of entertainment.

Forgotten Book - A Dandy in Aspic

All too frequently, I find I need a nudge to get round to doing something I meant to do ages ago. And this is sometimes true as regards reading books as well as less pleasurable tasks. Take Derek Marlowe's A Dandy in Aspic, for instance. I first read about this one many years ago, in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. I thought it sounded interesting, especially given that he compared it to Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, but somehow I never made much of an effort to track the book down.


The nudge I needed came when Joseph Goodrich asked me to read the manuscript of his book Unusual Suspects with a view to providing an introduction. Joe is an interesting and versatile writer and I was glad to agree. What I didn't expect was that his book would include a long piece about Derek Marlowe's life and career. This was quite fascinating and I went straight out and picked up a paperback of A Dandy in Aspic.

I'm glad I did. This is in some ways a flawed book, but the central idea is appealing, and the execution is, for the most part, highly entertaining. Our narrator is a chap called Eberlin. He works for the government, but it soon become apparent that he is a Soviet agent. Not only that, he is a hitman. The British secret service are concerned that some of their agents are being eliminated. So who better to hunt down the assassin? Eberlin, naturally...

The mannered style of writing is occasionally irritating, but on the whole adds to the enjoyment. My copy describes the book modestly as "the most brilliant spy novel of the decade". Wow! Given that Fleming, Le Carre, and Deighton were hard at work in the 60s, this is the wildest of hype. But the novel was filmed, with Laurence Harvey and Mia Farrow, and my next objective is to watch the movie version. I'm glad I finally read the story, and my thanks go to Joe Goodrich for giving me that all-important nudge.

Dorothy Simpson R.I.P.

[image error]
I was sorry to learn of the death on 20 August of Dorothy Simpson, at the age of 87. Dorothy was an accomplished crime novelist whom I had the pleasure of meeting several times during the 1990s, at CWA conferences. She belonged to roughly the same generation of female novelists as June Thomson, Clare Curzon, Anthea Fraser, Marjorie Eccles, Marion Babson, Eileen Dewhurst, and Ann Granger, all of them makers of sound and enjoyable traditional mysteries. I didn't know Dorothy as well as the others I mention, but my rather distant memory is of someone charming and elegant with a good sense of humour.

I knew her as the author of the Inspector Thanet novels, but I gather that she came to writing (as did a number of her predecessors, including Freeman Wills Crofts, G.D.H. Cole, and Patricia Moyes) after a period of convalescence. She began with a suspense novel, Harbingers of Fear, which was published in 1977.

After that came some rejections, but then she created Thanet and and never looked back after publishing The Night She Died in 1981. Something I didn't know until recently was that she spent thirteen years as a marriage guidance counsellor. This was an experience she found invaluable as a writer. As she pointed out in a comment on her website, murder mysteries are about relationships that go wrong, and her understanding of what makes people tick was a great asset.

The series is set in Kent, where she lived for many years, although she came originally from south Wales. Her novel Last Seen Alive won the CWA Silver Dagger in 1985, just pipped to the Gold by Paula Gosling's Monkey Puzzle. The other nominees were two illustrious names, Andrew Taylor and Jill Paton Walsh, an indicator of the quality of Dorothy Simpson's work. The book was later included in an omnibus of three novels which introduced me to her stories. I hadn't seen her for a very long time, and I gather that severe RSI put paid to her writing after her last novel appeared in 1999, which is a shame. But she leaves a literary legacy of real merit.

Rediscovering Josephine Bell

[image error]
I first came across Josephine Bell's books when a feminist imprint, Pandora, reissued a number of excellent books by women writers in the late 1980s. These included The Port of London Murders, which became one of the first books I reviewed for The Criminologist. I was very struck by the fact that, although it was written in the late 30s, the story seemed ahead of its time in mood, setting, and treatment. No country house mystery this, but a novel that anticipated the approach of the Fifties.

Twenty years later, when I was working on The Golden Age of Murder, I was lucky enough to be sent some family documents which gave me fresh insight into Bell's writing, and I referred to these in the book. But she didn't become a member of the Detection Club until the Fifties, so she isn't a major figure in that particular study. I have, however, retained my interest in her work.

When the British Library agreed to reissue a book by Bell in the Crime Classic series, I was keen for The Port of London Murders to be the chosen title, and fortunately this was agreed. In writing the intro, I was again assisted by Bell's family, and (although a good deal still remains to be said) the result was a slightly longer introduction than usual, which I hope readers will find of interest.

But the story is the thing, and it's a good one. Bell made use of her medical know-how (she was a doctor, and so was her late husband) but it strengthens the storyline rather than overwhelming it. She also did a good deal of research into the workings of the port. There is an authenticity about the book that seems quite modern. Publication day is 10 October and it will be interesting to see how readers respond.

Forgotten Book - A Dandy in Aspic

All too frequently, I find I need a nudge to get round to doing something I meant to do ages ago. And this is sometimes true as regards reading books as well as less pleasurable tasks. Take Derek Marlowe's A Dandy in Aspic, for instance. I first read about this one many years ago, in Julian Symons' Bloody Murder. I thought it sounded interesting, especially given that he compared it to Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, but somehow I never made much of an effort to track the book down.

The nudge I needed came when Joseph Goodrich asked me to read the manuscript of his book Unusual Suspects with a view to providing an introduction. Joe is an interesting and versatile writer and I was glad to agree. What I didn't expect was that his book would include a long piece about Derek Marlowe's life and career. This was quite fascinating and I went straight out and picked up a paperback of A Dandy in Aspic.

I'm glad I did. This is in some ways a flawed book, but the central idea is appealing, and the execution is, for the most part, highly entertaining. Our narrator is a chap called Eberlin. He works for the government, but it soon become apparent that he is a Soviet agent. Not only that, he is a hitman. The British secret service are concerned that some of their agents are being eliminated. So who better to hunt down the assassin? Eberlin, naturally...

The mannered style of writing is occasionally irritating, but on the whole adds to the enjoyment. My copy describes the book modestly as "the most brilliant spy novel of the decade". Wow! Given that Fleming, Le Carre, and Deighton were hard at work in the 60s, this is the wildest of hype. But the novel was filmed, with Laurence Harvey and Mia Farrow, and my next objective is to watch the movie version. I'm glad I finally read the story, and my thanks go to Joe Goodrich for giving me that all-important nudge.