Martin Edwards's Blog, page 92
May 15, 2020
Forgotten Book - After the Fine Weather
Michael Gilbert used to tease his fellow detective novelists by saying that it was harder to write thrillers than it is to write detective novels. He was unusual in that he was equally accomplished whether writing classic whodunits or stories of action and adventure (or, come to that, police procedurals or spy stories). After the Fine Weather was published in 1963, four years after his previous novel, which was a London-based police story, Blood and Judgement. This book could hardly be more different from its predecessor.
The setting is Lienz, a tiny Austrian province on the border of South Tyrol. After an introductory chapter which follows the release from prison of a brutish chap called Albin Boschetto, Gilbert switches focus, as we meet twenty-year-old Laura, who is in Rome, and about to travel to Lienz to meet her brother Charles, who is a diplomat.
One of the interesting features about this story, which I think was unusual at the time it was written, is that it's an action thriller with a strong and likeable female protagonist. Laura is a good character, and Gilbert's presentation of her is appealing. Before long, she witnesses an assassination, and although the local authorities have picked their own scapegoat for the killing, she insists that someone else was responsible. The tension mounts from there.
Like all Gilbert's novels, this one is written with great assurance. One of the quaint features is the absence of communications when Lienz is cut off from the rest of Austria by snow. No internet, no mobile phones, nothing like that. The sense of people being dependent on their own personal resources is strong in this story, and it makes for an entertaining read. When I first read it, as a teenager, I was slightly underwhelmed. Belatedly, I've revised my opinion. It's a pity that Laura never returned.
The setting is Lienz, a tiny Austrian province on the border of South Tyrol. After an introductory chapter which follows the release from prison of a brutish chap called Albin Boschetto, Gilbert switches focus, as we meet twenty-year-old Laura, who is in Rome, and about to travel to Lienz to meet her brother Charles, who is a diplomat.
One of the interesting features about this story, which I think was unusual at the time it was written, is that it's an action thriller with a strong and likeable female protagonist. Laura is a good character, and Gilbert's presentation of her is appealing. Before long, she witnesses an assassination, and although the local authorities have picked their own scapegoat for the killing, she insists that someone else was responsible. The tension mounts from there.
Like all Gilbert's novels, this one is written with great assurance. One of the quaint features is the absence of communications when Lienz is cut off from the rest of Austria by snow. No internet, no mobile phones, nothing like that. The sense of people being dependent on their own personal resources is strong in this story, and it makes for an entertaining read. When I first read it, as a teenager, I was slightly underwhelmed. Belatedly, I've revised my opinion. It's a pity that Laura never returned.
May 13, 2020
A Spot of Folly by Ruth Rendell
Ruth Rendell was as talented a short story writer as she was a crime novelist, and that's saying something, because so many of her novels were so good. I've devoured her various collections over the years, and now I've had a chance to read her final, posthumously published (in 2017) collection, A Spot of Folly, and to remind myself of her remarkable talent.
The hardback's dust jacket proclaims that it is a book of "New and Uncollected Short Stories." New? Well, they haven't previously been collected together in book form under Rendell's name, although one appeared in Winter's Crimes. But it simply is not correct to say, or imply, that these are "new" stories. Most of them were first published in the 1970s, and one of them, the splendid "The Irony of Hate", is discussed in some detail in Harry Keating's equally splendid book about the craft of crime writing. The most recent story was published more than a decade before this book. New? Why on earth do publishers, even very good publishers like those here, say such things? Rendell was certainly a good enough writer for her books not to need marketing by such means.
Anyway, what of the book itself? It benefits from an intro by Sophie Hannah, who is like me a long-time Rendell fan, and the copyright page reveals that the selection was made by the very knowledgeable Tony Medawar. The contents are billed (more accurately this time) as "ten and a quarter stories" - the quarter story is just a few lines long, but it's neatly done. The story from Winter's Crimes, "A Drop Too Much", shows Rendell, unusually, in comic mode, and it's an entertaining biter-bit tale.
As for the others, they are a mixed bag. There are ghost stories, and also an interesting dystopian story, "Trebuchet", which deserves to be read more than once. It dates from the Eighties, and again it's best read if one remembers that it was written during the Cold War; even so, it has resonance today. There is also an intriguing and unusual story, "In the Time of his Prosperity" which I'm sure will stay in my mind. The novella "The Thief", alas, is a later work, and it rather illustrates Rendell's decline. Plenty of authors would be glad to have written it, but for such a superstar, it's pretty unconvincing. So, overall, this book is a mixed bag, but that is the nature of such things. I'm glad to have caught up with it.
The hardback's dust jacket proclaims that it is a book of "New and Uncollected Short Stories." New? Well, they haven't previously been collected together in book form under Rendell's name, although one appeared in Winter's Crimes. But it simply is not correct to say, or imply, that these are "new" stories. Most of them were first published in the 1970s, and one of them, the splendid "The Irony of Hate", is discussed in some detail in Harry Keating's equally splendid book about the craft of crime writing. The most recent story was published more than a decade before this book. New? Why on earth do publishers, even very good publishers like those here, say such things? Rendell was certainly a good enough writer for her books not to need marketing by such means.
Anyway, what of the book itself? It benefits from an intro by Sophie Hannah, who is like me a long-time Rendell fan, and the copyright page reveals that the selection was made by the very knowledgeable Tony Medawar. The contents are billed (more accurately this time) as "ten and a quarter stories" - the quarter story is just a few lines long, but it's neatly done. The story from Winter's Crimes, "A Drop Too Much", shows Rendell, unusually, in comic mode, and it's an entertaining biter-bit tale.
As for the others, they are a mixed bag. There are ghost stories, and also an interesting dystopian story, "Trebuchet", which deserves to be read more than once. It dates from the Eighties, and again it's best read if one remembers that it was written during the Cold War; even so, it has resonance today. There is also an intriguing and unusual story, "In the Time of his Prosperity" which I'm sure will stay in my mind. The novella "The Thief", alas, is a later work, and it rather illustrates Rendell's decline. Plenty of authors would be glad to have written it, but for such a superstar, it's pretty unconvincing. So, overall, this book is a mixed bag, but that is the nature of such things. I'm glad to have caught up with it.
May 11, 2020
Knives Out - 2019 film review
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Knives Out has attracted a lot of attention as a high profile film which is also in the vein of the traditional mystery. The cast is superb, led by Daniel Craig (sporting an unlikely American accent) and including such famous names as Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Frank Oz, and Christopher Plummer. Reviews and audiences have been very positive, and there is talk of a sequel being made.
Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a crime novelist who is cared for by a nurse, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) has made a fortune from his books (well, it is fiction..) and who invites members of his family, in classic fashion, to his great mansion to celebrate his 85th birthday. Needless to say, there is a lot of jockeying for position among the greedy and undeserving, and again in traditional manner the contents of Harlan's will play a central part in the story.
We know from the start that Thrombey is dead, but a good deal of mystery surrounds the precise circumstances. The police are willing to treat the case as one of suicide, but an unknown person hires the great private detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) to investigate. Craig has a lot of fun in this part. He's an actor I really like, although I did struggle to get accustomed to that accent.
The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson and his screenplay manages to keep you interested in the plot while making points about greed, power, and entitlement. I find it very interesting that, many years after Alfred Hitchcock highlighted the difficulties inherent in filming whodunits, a young film-maker has shown that it's possible to entertain twenty-first century filmgoers with a puzzle mystery.
May 8, 2020
Forgotten Book - They Don't Dance Much
They Don't Dance Much is a novel by James Ross that was published in 1940 and earned the approval of Raymond Chandler, no less. But it didn't do much commercially, and it wasn't until the 1970s that a reprint appeared, with an afterword by George V. Higgins, which re-ignited interest in Ross. More recently it was reprinted again, with an intro by Daniel Woodrell. Even so, it's a book which I think deserves to be better known.
The pace of the story is leisurely, and at first I wasn't overly impressed, but gradually I began to find Ross's laconic prose hypnotic. The story is told in the first person by Jack, whose family farm in North Carolina isn't making any money. As a result he finds himself forced to work for Smut Milligan, who runs a petrol station which he soon develops into a roadhouse.
Smut is a brilliantly evoked character, a man not totally devoid of charm, but utterly selfish and extremely cruel. He involves Jack in a robbery which turns, during a very chilling scene, into a case of torture and murder. Equally shocking to a modern reader is the way the black characters in the book are portrayed; but Ross is telling us something important about the nature of race relations in the South during the Depression era. His observations about relations between men and women are equally acute: there is only one significant female character, a typical femme fatale, but there is a very funny scene when a group of men discuss an agony columnist's advice to young women.
Long before the story came to its bleak conclusion, I was persuaded that Chandler, Higgins and Woodrell were absolutely right to admire this book. It's not perfect - it was a first novel and Ross, disillusioned, never published another - but it's memorable. Woodrell describes it as "country noir", and it's an apt characterisation.
The pace of the story is leisurely, and at first I wasn't overly impressed, but gradually I began to find Ross's laconic prose hypnotic. The story is told in the first person by Jack, whose family farm in North Carolina isn't making any money. As a result he finds himself forced to work for Smut Milligan, who runs a petrol station which he soon develops into a roadhouse.
Smut is a brilliantly evoked character, a man not totally devoid of charm, but utterly selfish and extremely cruel. He involves Jack in a robbery which turns, during a very chilling scene, into a case of torture and murder. Equally shocking to a modern reader is the way the black characters in the book are portrayed; but Ross is telling us something important about the nature of race relations in the South during the Depression era. His observations about relations between men and women are equally acute: there is only one significant female character, a typical femme fatale, but there is a very funny scene when a group of men discuss an agony columnist's advice to young women.
Long before the story came to its bleak conclusion, I was persuaded that Chandler, Higgins and Woodrell were absolutely right to admire this book. It's not perfect - it was a first novel and Ross, disillusioned, never published another - but it's memorable. Woodrell describes it as "country noir", and it's an apt characterisation.
May 6, 2020
The Passenger - 1975 film review
The first film by Michaelangelo Antonioni that I ever saw was Blow-Up (a film that gets a passing mention in the Lake District Mystery I'm writing right now.) I was seventeen or so at the time and it was quite a memorable evening. Mainly because the film was screened by the film society jointly run by my school and the local girls' school. In those days, societies which overcame the segregation of our single-sex schools were very popular....
Anyway, I enjoyed my trip to watch Blow-Up, but I never got round to seeing The Passenger, which is perhaps Antonioni's most famous film. I've only just repaired this omission. The Passenger is sometimes described as a thriller, but that's a label so unhelpful as to be almost meaningless. And indeed, the glacial pace is distinctly unthrilling. But the basic idea is one that might well have come from Patricia Highsmith.
A journalist called Locke (Jack Nicholson) comes across Robertson, a businessman, while working on a documentary in Chad. The businessman dies suddenly (from a pre-existing condition) and Nicholson discovers the body. On an impulse, it seems, perhaps inspired by his resemblance to the deceased, Locke decides to switch identities with the dead man. He falsifies his passport and successfully becomes Robertson.
Among other things, he abandons his wife (Jenny Runacre), and finds himself embroiled in Robertson's murky business activities. He encounters a beautiful young woman (Maria Schneider) and they become lovers. But you can bet that if his purpose in becoming Robertson was to escape his old life and to find something better, he will be disappointed, to say the least. And so it proves. The film is beautifully shot, but the bleakness of its philosophy is depressing. I'm glad that I finally got round to seeing it, though. It's an interesting piece of movie-making, even if there's less to it than meets the eye or than its reputation suggests.
Anyway, I enjoyed my trip to watch Blow-Up, but I never got round to seeing The Passenger, which is perhaps Antonioni's most famous film. I've only just repaired this omission. The Passenger is sometimes described as a thriller, but that's a label so unhelpful as to be almost meaningless. And indeed, the glacial pace is distinctly unthrilling. But the basic idea is one that might well have come from Patricia Highsmith.
A journalist called Locke (Jack Nicholson) comes across Robertson, a businessman, while working on a documentary in Chad. The businessman dies suddenly (from a pre-existing condition) and Nicholson discovers the body. On an impulse, it seems, perhaps inspired by his resemblance to the deceased, Locke decides to switch identities with the dead man. He falsifies his passport and successfully becomes Robertson.
Among other things, he abandons his wife (Jenny Runacre), and finds himself embroiled in Robertson's murky business activities. He encounters a beautiful young woman (Maria Schneider) and they become lovers. But you can bet that if his purpose in becoming Robertson was to escape his old life and to find something better, he will be disappointed, to say the least. And so it proves. The film is beautifully shot, but the bleakness of its philosophy is depressing. I'm glad that I finally got round to seeing it, though. It's an interesting piece of movie-making, even if there's less to it than meets the eye or than its reputation suggests.
May 4, 2020
The Mysteries of Lockdown
We're living in extraordinary times right now, encountering situations that none of us could have dreamed of a few short months ago. Writing and reading offer a very welcome form of escapism for many of us, and I'm not planning to write extensively about my experiences of lockdown or indeed to keep a lockdown diary. But among other things, this blog is about one person's take on the writing life and it wouldn't make much sense to ignore something as significant as the impact on lockdown.
Fortunately, I and my family have so far kept well, and when one sees the problems being experienced in some places, any difficulties I've encountered are really of little consequence. The biggest downside in terms of my writing life, apart from not being able to meet friends, has been that I'd arranged a very busy year of events and travel, and pretty much everything has fallen by the wayside.
But there have been upsides - including a chance to reflect on the simple pleasures of nature, as with the rainbow over Lymm Dam, above. I'd been acutely conscious that, because of all my commitments, I would struggle to meet my various writing deadlines. When it began to seem likely that there would be some kind of lockdown, I resolved to try to treat the problem as an opportunity. So, among other things, it's been possible to complete work on the proofs of the next CWA anthology, Vintage Crimes, and the Detection Club's hefty book about the art and craft of crime writing, Howdunit. The publication of Howdunit has, however, been delayed from June to September.
Given that there was to be no launch of Mortmain Hall or promotional events, I've also done my best to pursue opportunities to promote the book online. The big challenge has been to cope with unfamiliar technology - BeLive, Zoom, Facebook Live, and so on, and that hasn't been easy for a dinosaur like me. But I've been hugely gratified by the response to the book so far. The latest lovely review is by Lynne Patrick for Mystery People: https://promotingcrime.blogspot.com/2020/05/mortmain-hall-by-martin-edwards.html"
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The biggest task was to crack on with the next Lake District Mystery. It's hard to credit that it's five years since The Dungeon House was published - so much has happened since I finished writing that one. The basic idea for the new book, The Crooked Shore, has been spinning around in my head for a long time, but some key ingredients only came to me late last year - including the setting (the top photo gives a clue as to how I solved this riddle). I felt I had a great concept but something was missing before then. Once I started writing it in December and I've finished the first draft. It took 137 days to write the book, the fastest I've ever completed a novel. I'll take another look at it soon to do some further revision, but I'm very pleased to have got to this stage and I'm pretty happy with the story. Certainly I feel that it's up to the standards of the earlier books in the series. And so, for all the drawbacks of lockdown, for me there have certainly been compensations.
May 1, 2020
Forgotten Book - Death of a Frightened Editor
Dean Street Press have done excellent work in reviving a wide range of vintage detective fiction titles and one of their latest rediscoveries is the husband and wife partnership of E. and M.A. Radford. These books benefit from informative introductions by Nigel Moss, and I've just read Death of a Frightened Editor, which was first published in 1959.
This is a novel brimming with Golden Age tropes. We have an apparent "closed circle" of suspects, the seven people who regularly travel in the first class coach of the London to Brighton train, all of whom seem to have a reason to wish the eighth person dead. We have poisoning by strychnine. We have a character leading a double life. We have gossip and mischief-making in country houses. We have a disparity between the victim's legitimate earnings and his evident wealth. We have a scientific puzzle worthy of Austin Freeman. We have...well, you get the picture.
The lead detective is Doctor Manson, who is not only a scientific expert in the Thorndyke class but happens to work for Scotland Yard. The technical trickery at the heart of the plot is rather neat - as with the Cecil M. Wills book I reviewed here last week. Mind you, I was rather baffled as to why this particular group of seven suspects should travel so regularly with the unpleasant victim.
The Radfords only turned to crime writing in their fifties, but they became quite prolific. I enjoyed a passing reference to the then fledgling Crime Writers' Association - my guess is that members of the CWA at that time liked to mention it in their books in order to boost its public profile. In many ways, this book reads as though it was written in the mid-30s - it's very different from the kind of novel that Julian Symons and Margot Bennett were publishing in the late-50s, in terms of plot, characterisation, and prose style. And it's a reminder that, long after the Golden Age, there were still plenty of writers around who were working in the traditional vein.
This is a novel brimming with Golden Age tropes. We have an apparent "closed circle" of suspects, the seven people who regularly travel in the first class coach of the London to Brighton train, all of whom seem to have a reason to wish the eighth person dead. We have poisoning by strychnine. We have a character leading a double life. We have gossip and mischief-making in country houses. We have a disparity between the victim's legitimate earnings and his evident wealth. We have a scientific puzzle worthy of Austin Freeman. We have...well, you get the picture.
The lead detective is Doctor Manson, who is not only a scientific expert in the Thorndyke class but happens to work for Scotland Yard. The technical trickery at the heart of the plot is rather neat - as with the Cecil M. Wills book I reviewed here last week. Mind you, I was rather baffled as to why this particular group of seven suspects should travel so regularly with the unpleasant victim.
The Radfords only turned to crime writing in their fifties, but they became quite prolific. I enjoyed a passing reference to the then fledgling Crime Writers' Association - my guess is that members of the CWA at that time liked to mention it in their books in order to boost its public profile. In many ways, this book reads as though it was written in the mid-30s - it's very different from the kind of novel that Julian Symons and Margot Bennett were publishing in the late-50s, in terms of plot, characterisation, and prose style. And it's a reminder that, long after the Golden Age, there were still plenty of writers around who were working in the traditional vein.
April 29, 2020
Maj Sjowall
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I was sorry to hear of the death earlier today of Maj Sjowall, at the age of 84. I've been a fan of her work for decades, and it was a pleasure to meet her in person at a CrimeFest gala dinner almost exactly five years ago. She graciously autographed a menu card for me. A treasured signature, I can tell you.
When Adrian Muller and I put together an anthology to celebrate the 10th anniversary of CrimeFest, we were very keen to include a story by Maj. She'd written just a handful of stories that might fit, and in the end we were delighted that she agreed to contribute "Long Time, No See" to Ten Year Stretch. She also agreed that the new English translation could be made by my daughter Catherine, who is based in Stockholm.
Maj's name is, of course, forever associated with that of Per Wahloo (1926-1975). Their ten-book series about Martin Beck blazed the trail for Scandi-noir long before the days of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson. The novels are police stories, and were designed to make a point about society from a Marxist perspective. But because the political stuff was carefully handled, the literary results were much more compelling than most fiction written from a strong political standpoint.
The books remain highly readable, but after Wahloo's early death, Maj didn't write crime novels of her own. She preferred to work as a translator, and left the Communist party; in later years she was content to describe herself as a "socialist". Wahloo had written several interesting books of his own before their relationship and collaboration began, and I'm not entirely clear how their writing partnership worked. But their joint productions were far more significant than anything either of them wrote on their own. I'm sad that's she gone, but her achievements will live on. And I'm glad I got the chance to say hello to her.
The Jigsaw Man - 1983 film review
The Jigsaw Man is a spy thriller, and a pretty strange one. The ingredients are, in many ways, highly impressive. Take the cast, for a start. Not just Michael Caine, but Laurence Olivier, Charles Gray, Susan George, and Robert Powell. Wow! The director was Terence Young, whose CV included several early James Bond films and Wait Until Dark. The screenplay is by Jo Eisinger, whose credits included that excellent film noir Gilda. And there's even a song by Dionne Warwick - 'Only You and I', though it has to be said that it's so obscure that even I, a lifelong Dionne fan, had never heard of it.
How could you possibly go wrong? Especially when Young was directing a film based on a novel written by his wife, Dorothea Bennett (whom he'd given a tiny role in From Russia With Love) and published in 1977, which drew inspiration from the case of Kim Philby.
The film begins with Kimberley, a senior British politician who has defected to Russia, having his death faked. He undergoes plastic surgery and then an intensive physical training regime which makes him look very much like Michael Caine. He returns to the UK to recover some vital information for his paymasters, but promptly defects - so that the KGB, as well as the British police and secret services are after his blood.
It's a good set-up, but the film is a mess. The script is wordy and keeps shifting focus so that, although one would expect Caine to be the key character, he is off-screen for long spells as the story wanders down assorted sidetracks and descends into silliness more than once. I found it impossible to care about what happened to the characters. Dionne's song isn't one of her most memorable, but it was probably the best thing about this odd movie.
How could you possibly go wrong? Especially when Young was directing a film based on a novel written by his wife, Dorothea Bennett (whom he'd given a tiny role in From Russia With Love) and published in 1977, which drew inspiration from the case of Kim Philby.
The film begins with Kimberley, a senior British politician who has defected to Russia, having his death faked. He undergoes plastic surgery and then an intensive physical training regime which makes him look very much like Michael Caine. He returns to the UK to recover some vital information for his paymasters, but promptly defects - so that the KGB, as well as the British police and secret services are after his blood.
It's a good set-up, but the film is a mess. The script is wordy and keeps shifting focus so that, although one would expect Caine to be the key character, he is off-screen for long spells as the story wanders down assorted sidetracks and descends into silliness more than once. I found it impossible to care about what happened to the characters. Dionne's song isn't one of her most memorable, but it was probably the best thing about this odd movie.
The Perfect Host - 2010 film review
The Perfect Host is a psychological thriller that seems to be following a familiar pattern, only to take new life as a result of a couple of pretty good plot twists. My expectations when I sat down to watch this film weren't especially high, but there is a mood of black humour right from the start as John, an injured young man (Clayne Crawford), evidently a criminal, gets embroiled in a hold-up from which he is lucky to escape alive. He is desperately seeking sanctuary and seems to find it at the house of a pleasant, rather effete man called Warwick (David Hyde Pierce). John pretends to be a friend of a friend of Warwick's, and although his lies are transparent, Warwick treats him generously.
Warwick reveals that he's about to host a dinner party. He plies John with wine, and invites him to join his guests. John, in a panic, threatens him and instructs him to call the guests and cancel the meal. But soon it becomes clear that all is not as it seems...
At this stage, the story was moving along familiar lines, although with verve. But it starts to take an interesting turn as we learn more about Warwick and the reach of his imagination. There's a cameo role for Helen Reddy as Warwick's nosey neighbour. Yes, that Helen Reddy, who had chart hits with the excellent and mysterious "Angie Baby" and "I am Woman" back in the day. A very good singer who makes the most of a small part here.
We also see the detectives closing in on John, who proves to have robbed a bank. One of the cops is played by Nathaniel Parker, another unexpected piece of casting, and at first this strand of the story seems insignificant, just like the flashbacks to John's plans to commit the crime, in collaboration with his girlfriend Simone. But really, nothing as it seems.
I liked this film a lot. It's well-written and well-acted, and definitely a cut above the average psychological thriller movies.
Warwick reveals that he's about to host a dinner party. He plies John with wine, and invites him to join his guests. John, in a panic, threatens him and instructs him to call the guests and cancel the meal. But soon it becomes clear that all is not as it seems...
At this stage, the story was moving along familiar lines, although with verve. But it starts to take an interesting turn as we learn more about Warwick and the reach of his imagination. There's a cameo role for Helen Reddy as Warwick's nosey neighbour. Yes, that Helen Reddy, who had chart hits with the excellent and mysterious "Angie Baby" and "I am Woman" back in the day. A very good singer who makes the most of a small part here.
We also see the detectives closing in on John, who proves to have robbed a bank. One of the cops is played by Nathaniel Parker, another unexpected piece of casting, and at first this strand of the story seems insignificant, just like the flashbacks to John's plans to commit the crime, in collaboration with his girlfriend Simone. But really, nothing as it seems.
I liked this film a lot. It's well-written and well-acted, and definitely a cut above the average psychological thriller movies.
