Martin Edwards's Blog, page 92

Sheila Quigley R.I.P.

I was so very sorry to hear yesterday that Sheila Quigley has died quite suddenly at the age of 72. The newspaper report I've read indicates that although her health declined very rapidly in a matter of a few days, this was not a virus-related tragedy. She was such a vibrant personality that it is hard to believe she is no longer with us.

Sheila's life story was remarkable. A straight-talking former factory worker, she secured a £300k deal for her first two books when she was in her 50s, a brilliant achievement that understandably gained national attention. I got to know her through meetings of the northern chapter of the Crime Writers' Association.

I wrote a The last time I was with her was at a bookshop event in Merseyside. She'd travelled, with members of her family, all the way from her home in the north east for that one event. It was an illustration of her commitment to her writing. We had a good time together that evening as always. I shall remember her not only with affection but with admiration.

 

Forgotten Book - The Case of the Calabar Bean

There's something very Golden Age about a title like The Case of the Calabar Bean. You simply don't get book titles like that these days. The author was Cecil M. Wills and the novel was published right at the end of the Golden Age, in 1939. The publishers were Hodder & Stoughton - Wills had moved to this prestigious imprint a year or two before, having earlier been published by a less notable house. At the time, he seems to have been moving up in the crime writing world. He never quite made it to the Premier League, but he is a good writer of the second division.

My own copy bears a pleasing authorial inscription: "To...to regale scanty house of leisure- or to put him to sleep," and certainly this story has an amiability about it that suggests Wills, about whom I don't know much, was an amiable fellow. So is his series detective, Chief Inspector Boscobell of Scotland Yard, generally referred to in the text as Geoffrey rather than by his surname.

An interesting feature of the book is the "prologue", which is actually half a dozen short first person accounts of life in Molton Priory, the scene of the crime - a scene which benefits from two floor plans, on the front and rear endpapers of the book. We are then plunged into the murder case - Rex Farradale is found dead and his wife Myrtle is seriously ill. They have evidently been poisoned. So who is responsible?

The book is presented as a challenge to the reader, although I must say I found it easy to figure out the culprit's identity. This is because there are too few credible suspects. I suspect that Wills came across one very interesting piece of information which he felt he could build a plot around. It is indeed interesting, but I think he could have made better use of it, perhaps by introducing more plot complications. As it is, the story seems over-long. What's more, it seems almost inevitable to me that the culprit's cunning plan would have gone awry. Yet despite these flaws, I rather enjoyed this one. Wills writes agreeably and although he can be a bit long-winded, he was a capable entertainer. I'm definitely interested in reading more of his work. 

 

Forgotten Book - The Wench is Dead

The title of today's Forgotten Book comes from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta, which has been referenced several times in crime fiction. The author of this novel was Fredric Brown, and it was published in 1955. I'm intrigued by my copy, which he inscribed to his ex-wife Helen. Whether it was because their relationship was amicable, or he was wanting to make some kind of macabre joke, I don't know, but I suspect and hope it was the former.

I've heaped praise on Brown several times in this blog. He was a terrific writer, but one of those who - despite the admiration he received during his lifetime - seems to me never to have been appreciated quite as extensively deserved. Although he wrote a series of books about Ed and Am Hunter, most of his finest novels were stand-alones. And this one has received praise from various good judges.

I have to say, though, that it's not one of my favourites. This is partly because the plot is relatively straightforward, and lacks the brilliance of Brown's best work. Another reason is because it's a story in which Brown's interest in alcohol and alcoholics is very much to the fore. Much as I like a drink, I find reading about drunks rather tedious.

The protagonist is Howie Perry, who plans to take a degree in sociology, and is gearing up for this by posing as a wino and working as a dishwasher. His pose becomes something of a reality as he starts drinking to excess and gets involved with a gorgeous prostitute called Billie. But things get tricky when a woman he's called on is murdered. Soon, it seems, he is the number one suspect. I didn't find myself as involved with his fate as with the misadventures of other Brown protagonists. The Wench is Dead is a satisfactory quick read, but not one of his masterpieces.

Quiz - ITV review

Quiz, which ran for three episodes on consecutive nights last week, was perfect lockdown televiewing. A family entertainment show about family entertainment, with an ingenious crime and a bit of courtroom drama. Fittingly, for a show about quizzes, it posed a tricky question. Did Major Charles Ingram and his wife Diana conspire with Tecwen Whittock in 2001 in an attempt to cheat a million pounds out of the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I was a big fan of Millionaire in its early years. I've always enjoyed quizzes and the TV show I watch most regularly is University Challenge, where the contestants play for glory rather than cash. A lot of the popular quiz-type shows with big cash prizes leave me cold, but Millionaire fascinated me until it became too samey. Quiz showed how Millionaire began before showing how the Ingrams, and Diana's brother became obsessed with the possibility of winning a million. In short, the issue was whether strategic coughing by Whittock was what tipped Ingram off about the right answers.

Quiz boasted impeccable credentials, with a script by James Graham and direction by Stephen Frears. The Major was played by the always appealing Matthew Macfadyen and Diana by Sian Clifford, who was excellent in Fleabag. Especially brilliant - but when is he not? - was Michael Sheen, with an extraordinarily convincing performance as quiz master Chris Tarrant. The third episode was cunningly written so as to strike quite a good balance between the competing arguments - in effect, the allegation of fraudulent conspiracy versus the defence of innocence and eccentricity.

History relates that the Ingrams and Whittock were convicted of the crime. But they have always maintained that the conviction was unjust. I thought that Quiz was not only extremely watchable but also extremely fair to the accused. It didn't, for instance, highlight the fact that two years after they avoided prison in this case, Ingram was convicted of an unrelated insurance fraud.

The Coffin Trail and the Lake District Mysteries

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The Coffin Trail is available today as an Amazon Kindle Daily Deal for a modest 98p - a price which I hope will tempt you if you haven't already read it! (The offer isn't available in the US, I'm afraid.) And this reminds me that I ought to give an update on progress with the Lake District Mysteries. In case you're wondering - I'm writing a new one right now!

The Coffin Trail is the first book in the series and when I went back to it to refresh my memory about a number of details, I was startled to realise that I wrote it seventeen years ago; it was then published in 2004 and shortlisted for the Theakston's Prize for best crime novel of the year. Since the other shortlisted novels were by Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Susan Hill, Stephen Booth, and Lindsey Ashford, it was a truly memorable experience.

When I wrote The Coffin Trail, I intended that it should be the first in a series. That said, I didn't anticipate the direction my career would take in the ensuing years; if you'd told me what would happen, I doubt I'd have believed you. But because I write for the long term, there were ingredients of that first story which I intended would gain greater significance in subsequent books.

The first of those ingredients concerned the garden of Tarn Cottage, which becomes relevant in the second book in the series, The Cipher Garden. The second ingredient - well, I'll leave you to figure it out. Suffice to say that, at long last, I've picked up those early threads in the new book, The Crooked Shore. And readers will therefore encounter the resolution of a mystery they might not even be aware was bubbling under the surface...

I'm hoping that within a week or so, I will have completed the first draft, with a view to the book being published next year. It's been fascinating to return to the Lakes, after a break of several years while I've focused on Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall, among other projects. And I hope that today's deal will introduce a few more readers to the delights of the Lakes as well as the tangled lives of the lead characters, Hannah Scarlett and Daniel Kind. 

Forgotten Book - Murder in Blue

Murder in Blue, published in 1937 by Hodder & Stoughton, was the first detective novel of Clifford Witting. It was an auspicious debut, proclaimed by Hodder as "a first-class detective story...about the murder of a policeman". It's interesting to compare the first edition of this book with first editions written by debut authors today. Now, readers are always presented with information about the author. Publishers are keen, almost to the point of obsession sometimes, to focus on an author's "platform", i.e. the means by which, it's thought, he or she can attract readers. It was very different in 1937. We are not told a word about Witting.

So who was he? I don't possess a lot of biographical information but I do know that Clifford Witting (1907-68) was educated at Eltham College and worked for many years for Lloyds Bank. He enjoyed a long career as a crime novelist, spanning 27 years, but was much less prolific than many others who started during the Golden Age. In that time he published sixteen novels. Quite possibly, like Cyril Hare for instance, his day job reduced his literary output. But lack of productivity is no bad thing if it is matched by a corresponding increase in quality. He wrote accomplished traditional mysteries and in 1958 he was elected to membership of the Detection Club, a sign of the esteem in which he was held by fellow practitioners.

Nick Fuller writes about Witting on the excellent gadetection site, and asks why he is so obscure, given the engrossing nature of his stories. It's a good question. I missed out on Witting for many years and it was only because of the advocacy of Nigel Moss, an excellent judge, that I sampled him. I'm glad I did, because all the books of his that I've read have merit.

Narrated by a likeable bookseller, John Rutherford, and set in a thinly disguised Sussex, Murder in Blue introduced Detective Inspector  Charlton, who was to become a series character. There's more focus on characterisation and setting than you find in, say, most of the Freeman Wills Crofts books, and definitely more humour. Witting was witty! The story begins extremely well thanks to Witting's smooth narrative style, although I felt it sagged in the later stages. Overall, however, a decent start to a career of under-valued accomplishment.

Charade - 1963 film review

Charade is a film made by an accomplished director, Stanley Donen, who was here venturing into Hitchcock territory with a light thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The movie was a commercial success and boasted a theme song by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer. When I first saw it, the mix of crime with romance and comedy slightly underwhelmed me, and the same was true (as I said on this blog twelve years ago) when I took another look.

But time passes and views change and on a recent third viewing - intended as light relief in the lockdown era - I enjoyed it more. It's a well-crafted confection of highly commercial if highly derivative ingredients although not in the same league as, say, Hitchcock's North by North West, which is by far my favourite Cary Grant film.

The source material was a short story called "The Unsuspecting Wife", written by Peter Stone. He and Marc Behm (best known as author of The Eye of the Beholder) turned it into a screenplay. When this didn't sell, Stone turned the story into a novel, Charade, which did. Donen secured a high-calibre cast, including Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy.

Hepburn plays Regina, whose marriage is on the rocks at the start of the film. She's not too heartbroken to learn of the death of her husband Charles or to meet a charming man (Grant) who calls himself Peter Joshua. When it turns out that Charles was a crook who nicked a quarter of a million dollars that assorted villains want for themselves, Regina finds herself in danger. Peter comes to her aid - but what's his real game?

There are some good set-piece scenes and I enjoyed George Kennedy's steel claw, which reminded me of Major Whitlow in Mortmain Hall, not to mention Louis Crandell, the inspiration for my character! The Parisian backdrop adds to the movie's charm and overall it ranks as an agreeable piece of escapism. Very suitable at the moment!

Walter Satterthwait's Dead Horse

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I've been interested in the writing of Walter Satterthwait since reading his excellent historical mystery Miss Lizzie shortly after it was published in the UK at the end of the 80s. At that time it seemed to me that he was destined to become one of the genre's major figures. His versatility - he wrote a short series about the private eye Joshua Croft as well as novels featuring such notable figures as Oscar Wilde and Harry Houdini - was in many ways a great strength, but although I admire authors who avoid the same-old, same-old, possibly it counted against him. His work was well-respected but it's probably fair to say that he never quite achieved the level of commercial success that one might have anticipated. Of course, that is true of many, many gifted authors.

I never met Walter but I gather he had an extremely interesting and varied life and he was a good friend of someone I did knows slightly, the late Sarah Caudwell, another charismatic figure who was in many ways a very different kind of character. It would have been wonderful to listen to them in conversation together. Sadly, he died earlier this year after a long illness. The good news is that Stark House Press have recently republished his 2008 novel Dead Horse, together with an excellent intro by Rick Ollerman.

And what a fascinating book it is. Like much of his best work, it's a historical crime novel, inspired by real life events - in this case the apparent suicide of Emily Whitfield, second wife of the hardboiled writer Raoul Whitfield. Satterthwait's version of events is invented, but compelling.

I devoured this book in just 24 hours. Satterthwait's terse style here is very much in the hardboiled tradition. He invents a dogged local cop, Tom Delgado, who is convinced that there is more to Emily's death than meets the eye. It's a doom-laden story set in Santa Fe, where the Whitfields had a ranch called Dead Horse. This is an excellent reprint, which I can recommend. And it's made me want to read Whitfield too...

Forgotten Book - Crossed Skis

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I've discussed my interest in the detective novels of E.C.R. Lorac often enough on this blog, but I've not had much to say about the work of her alter ego, Carol Carnac, which features a Scotland Yard cop called Julian Rivers. This is simply because I've not read many Carnacs. However, a while ago I was offered the chance to acquire an inscribed copy of the Carnac novel Crossed Skis, and I jumped at it.

The book was published in 1952, and is dedicated to Lorac's fifteen fellow members of a ski-ing party that travelled from England to Lech in Austria: "with thanks for their help and advice and happy memories of their charming company". My copy was inscribed to a member of the party, and I wonder what he made of it. I'm pretty sure he'd have been fascinated, since the story is all about - guess what? - a party of sixteen English people who go ski-ing to Lech...

This is an interesting and fairly unusual detective story, and I'm delighted that the British Library has decided to publish it in the Crime Classics series. There are two narrative strands. The ski-ing party set off for the continent, with some of its members unknown to each other. I did worry that Lorac had made a mistake by introducing too many characters, and personally I think a party of four men and four women would have been viable in this story, but I can see why she thought her plot called for more people.

The second strand of the story begins with a fire in a London house. Is it an insurance scam, is it an accident, or is something more sinister happening? Rivers takes charge of the investigation, and soon finds himself on the trail of a ruthless killer. As the two strands come together, the tension mounts. This is an enjoyable book, even for someone like me, who would rather do almost anything than ski!

Reviewing and Being Reviewed

Do book reviews matter? As someone who has reviewed crime fiction since the late 80s (and legal books before that), I'd like to think the answer is yes. As an author myself, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. This isn't to say that great reviews necessarily equate to great sales; the publishing world isn't as simple as that. But reviews affect a writer's morale, both positively and negatively. Perhaps most authors remember the poor reviews more than the good ones, but I think the key thing is to see what one can learn from reviews. As a reviewer, I try to make judgements based on my opinion about what the writer was trying to achieve. And as an author I find that the reviewers whose comments are most valuable are those who "get" what I was aiming to do.

I vividly remember the pleasure I had when Frances Fyfield gave a glowing review of an early Harry Devlin novel of mine. She "got" what I was trying to do with the characters, and that was highly satisfying. Years later, I met her in person and had the opportunity to thank her. The late Matthew Coady and Marcel Berlins were other critics who worked for the national press and showed an understanding of and empathy for my early books. That too was gratifying at a time when I was trying to establish some kind of niche.

The Puzzle Doctor has recently been generous enough to review three very different books of mine, two novels and The Golden Age of Murder, on his blog In Search of the Classic Mystery. Once again he's demonstrated the virtues and value of a thoughtful and insightful reviewer. His comments about The Dungeon House, which is probably my own favourite of my Lake District books, remind me that many fans of series hope for a significant focus in the storyline upon the recurring characters. This is something I'll bear in mind with my current work-in-progress, The Crooked Shore. It's shaping up to be a story that is at least as much about psychological suspense as the police investigation, but it's helpful to be reminded that readers do like to know what's going on in the lives of Hannah and Daniel. 

His comments about Mortmain Hall I found equally interesting. And it's enormously heartening (as well as a relief!) when a good reviewer enjoys a book so much. I'm particularly glad that he feels it's a book that keeps you thinking long after you've finished it. That's a reaction, like Frances', which delights me, because although my focus is definitely on entertaining my readers, I also like to include elements in all my books that provoke thought. Sometimes those elements are a long way under the surface (probably they were too far under the surface in Take My Breath Away, which I wrote nearly twenty years ago and hoped would be something of a breakthrough - but commercially it was about my least successful novel.)

I do understand why some fellow novelists prefer not to read reviews, but my own feeling is that it's well worth hardening oneself against the occasional brickbats, because there's so much to be gained from a well-crafted and constructive assessment of something one has written. The Puzzle Doctor's trio of reviews illustrates what I mean, and I'm grateful to him not just for his kind words but for taking the time and trouble to analyse what I set out to do with each book.