Andrew Cartmel's Blog, page 45

Chandler in the Telegraph — a Playback Mystery

Venturing out on a rainy Saturday to the shops I ran into a friend on the bus. He gave me a hot tip, which I now pass on to you. All this week the Daily Telegraph (please don't stop reading at this point) are giving away free copies (ah, I thought that might pique your interest) of the CDs of Radio 4's Raymond Chandler dramatisations (there, I knew I'd get you in the end). ¶ What made this irresistible to me is the fact that half of the recent (2011) Radio 4 Chandler adaptations were written by my friend and colleague the extremely talented Stephen Wyatt. ¶ Now here comes the mystery. It seems that some of the Telegraph Chandler CDs come from this recent series. But others — including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye — are the BBC dramatisations written by Bill Morrison, which mostly seem to date from the late 1970s. ¶ But until each disc appears, I can't be sure which is which. Thanks, Stephen, now I'm stuck with buying this, ahem, conservative broadsheet. ¶ Just for the record, the 2011 series consisted of eight shows which were: The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, Farewell My Lovely, Playback, The Long Goodbye, The High Window, The Little Sister and Poodle Springs (the last named you may not be familiar with — it was an unfinished Chandler novel completed some decades after his death by Robert B. Parker). ¶ Of these, Stephen Wyatt scripted Lady in the Lake, Little Sister, Long Goodbye and Playback. (The other scripts were written by Robin Brooks, who did the magnificent Radio 4 I, Claudius adaptation.) Playback is a particular favourite of mine because it occasioned a discussion (all right, argument) between Stephen and I about who killed whom in the novel — reminiscent of Jules Furthman, Leigh Brackett and William Faulkner being baffled over The Big Sleep when they were adapting it for Howard Hawks. ¶ Speaking of screenwriters, Stephen was also responsible for a pair of stunning plays about Chandler in Hollywood for Radio 4, both of which deserve to win a slew of awa rds. They are Double Jeopardy, about Chandler and Billy Wilder and Strangers on a Film, about Chandler and Hitchcock. Patrick Stewart is terrific as Chandler in both of them.¶ I've illustrated this post with an image of the covers which the Telegraph has apparently commissioned especially for this offer. These are imaginative, true to the stories and make strong use of graphics. No credit for the artist or artists, but if I find out I'll let you know. (Genuinely nice job, guys. Much appreciated. It makes me glad I didn't make any cheap "Torygraph" cracks in this piece.) Incidentally, these covers are considerably nicer than some of the official BBC releases on CD, though I do really like the 1999 Long Goodbye and Big Sleep shown here. ¶ The 2011 Radio 4 series featured two late Chandler rarities — Playback and Poodle Springs — and I don't think these have ever been adapted before. So I suspect the Telegraph discs will be these, including Stephen's Playback, which is out on Thursday. ¶ So you must buy that one, then read the novel and compare the two. Then you can join in the debate about who the hell killed which character and what happened when what's-his-name went over the balcony and all that. I look forward to the shouting. ¶ The real mystery about the Telegraph CDs is that they seem to have opted for Poodle Springs over The Little Sister, which isn't one of the seven titles on offer. Weird. There's certainly nothing wrong with Poodle Springs, which is available on Friday, but it is a curiosity, whereas The Little Sister is a classic. ¶ Anyway, full details of the Telegraph offer can be found here. But get your skates on, the Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely already out as I write this. And if you're after the complete 2011 series by the splendid A-team of Stephen Wyatt and Robin Brooks, look no further than here.

Denis McLoughlin and Dinosaurs

In a brief pause during the writing of my new novel, which along with various TV scripts and some film rewriting, has kept me madly busy in the last few months (apologies for lack of blogs) I got an email alert from eBay. ¶ I was delighted to see the book illustrated here. I placed a bid and was even more delighted when I won it. Michelle, my lovable postie just delivered it, and it now resides proudly on my coffee table (a table that's never known any actual coffee but is overburdened with books and CDs). ¶ It features a cover by one of my all time favourite illustrators, the great British Noir artist Denis McLoughlin. I first became acquainted with his amazing colour illustrations through his covers for the crime thrillers published by Boardman Books. ¶ He is also famed for his Buffalo Bill Wild West Annuals, of which I have a few. But I wasn't aware of these Okay Adventure Annuals. From what I've seen, each year featured a different genre (eg explorers in Africa), but I was lucky enough to glom this particular specimen, with its science fiction theme. Not only does it feature great art, but it also embodies one of my mottoes for life: never go hunting for dinosaurs unless you've got some grenades in the jeep.

Downton Abbey by Julian Fellowes

When I heard that Ben Aaronovitch had been invited to the BFI screening of Downton Abbey, my immediate reaction was to try to wangle an invitation for myself. It wasn't the exclusive pre-screening drinks or the lavishly catered afterparty that attracted me — or only to the extent that they boded well for networking. ¶ Ben has had great interest in his soon to be bestselling series of novels and I've been commissioned to write an episode of Midsomer Murders. So now seemed like a good time to go networking. ¶ Ben had garnered his invitation through the good offices of Carnival, one of the great British independent TV companies. They were responsible for Simon Moore's Traffik, which remains a high water mark for television drama. ¶ So of course I wanted to lig along. It
sounded like fun. Ben didn't have any trouble wangling me an invitation. ¶ I arrived at the BFI fashionably on time and Ben introduced me to Gareth Neame, former head of drama at the BBC and now a honcho at Carnival. Also, a man who clearly has an eye for writing, given that's he had the uncommon good sense to commission Julian Fellowes. ¶ The pre-screening drinks were scheduled to commence a full hour and a quarter before the screening. I arrived wondering how I could possibly fill that yawning void of time. But as interesting people surged into the bar we introduced ourselves around and ate the little cheese biscuits provided (black napkins — classy touch). Ben was soon deep in schmoozing mode and I set about striking up a conversation with the nearest beautiful woman — who proved to be an internet executive. Before you knew it, it was time for the screening. ¶ We filed into NFT 1. This is one of the finest cinemas in London, with certain towering caveats. For a start it was designed by someone who clearly thought the sightlines for a movie are the same as for live theatre. Oh no, my friend, I am afraid to tell you that they're not.¶ This is why great swathes of the seats on the left and right of the screen give a weirdly angled view with fatal quantities of parallax and distortion. ¶ And don't even get me started about the time they screened Barry Lyndon. At the end of Kubrick's misty master piece, after 184 minutes of film, the projectionist was still trying to get the focus right.¶ Stanley would have been foaming at the mouth. Anyway, like I said, certain caveats.¶ But if you're lucky enough to be sat in the sweet spot in the centre aisle, the NFT1 is a great cinema. And when Ben and I consulted our tickets we found we were seated dead centre. And the dishy internet exec was in the row behind us. ¶ There was a good humored sense of excitement, a subdued buzz in the audience as the lights went out. ¶ Julian Fellowes wrote Gosford Park, a film for which he won the Oscar. And like Gosford, Downton Abbey concerns an English stately home and the people who live in and their servants, and it's dynamite. We're instantly acquainted with a large cast of characters and immediately made to care about them. The way Fellowes channels our sympathies is masterful. Plus that redhaired undermaid is really cute. ¶ After the triumphant screening there's a Q&A. I t's obvious Downton Abbey is going to be a huge hit. Not least in America. ¶ At the after party, attended by cast and crew plus numerous hangers on (me, for instance) we meet Andrew Morgan, who worked with us on Doctor Who, directing Ben's Dalek story. ¶ "Canapes?" says Andrew, "I thought they said cannabis!" We also meet a Tierra del Fuegian banjo player who is the only person present who isn't ecstatic about Downton Abbey. ¶ He dismisses it with lofty contempt. I listen politely to his specious vapourings before moving off. I make a point of meeting Julian Fellowes, who it turns out is an old friend of Andrew Morgan. ¶ We chat briefly and I convey my great admiration for his script . "Well done on the Midsomer," he tells me. ¶ Walking back along the Thames around midnight, the bright circle of the London Eye looming in the night above, I reflected that it was a great TV drama and a great evening. My only regret is that I didn't speak to the redhaired undermaid — or punch the Tierra del Fuegian banjo player. ¶

Title Fight

One of my favourite novels is I, Lucifer. It was the work of Peter O'Donnell. You too may have recently read I, Lucifer but the trouble is, there's every chance the book you read was by someone called Glen Duncan. ¶ Now I'm quite willing to believe that Glen Duncan is a nice fellow and who knows, perhaps a very able writer. ¶ But that begs the question why anyone would filch a wonderful title from a fellow artist. ¶ And if the writer had no idea that it had been filched (good word, filched), then why in the name of all the gods didn't said writer's editors or p ublisher spot the duplication? ¶ Or was it simply too good a title and nobody thought they had to take the original seriously because it was 'just' a Modesty Blaise novel. ¶ I snuck those quotation marks in because any fair-minded person would concede that Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are up there with Travis McGee and Meyer or Aubrey and Maturin. ¶ Anyway, when I heard that this book this new book with its borrowed title was coming out I doted on fantasies of acquiring the rights to the Peter O'Donnell original and releasing it at the same time. With a great big publicity push, to create confusion and sabotage the launch of the pretender. ¶ I'll read Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer one day but first I'll have to simmer down. ¶ There's no doubt that I, Lucifer is a brilliant title. And it was Peter O'Donnell who thought of it, in 1965. ¶ The English Assassin is another brilliant title. Michael Moorcock thought of it and used it in 1972. In fact , it's such a good title that it was recently appropriated for a novel by Daniel Silva. ¶ Like Peter O'Donnell's book, Moorcock's original was a kind of spy thriller. It too featured one of the mutant offspring of James Bond (in this case, Jeremy Cornelius). ¶ Reprehensibly (I think that's not too strong a word), Silva or someone at his publishers, has decided to recycle Moorcock's great title, and for a spy novel, too. ¶ Okay, Moorcock's take on a spy novel was decidedly surreal, a meltdown in fact, but it's still a bit much. Glen Duncan at least had the decency to carry the purloined goods some distance before trying to peddle them — so to speak. ¶ Again Daniel Silva may be a prince of a fellow and may have written a fine novel. But again I'm going to have to simmer down a mite before I can bring myself to read it. ¶ I repeat, these writers may be talented, intelligent, engaging chaps who have written fine books. ¶ That's certainly true of China Mieville. But as with Mieville, this no way absolves them of what one would have thought would be th eir duty as writers themselves to refrain from pillaging the work of other writers. ¶ It's no defence to say "it's just the title." The title is in some ways the crucial thing, and a great one is hard to come by. ¶ Speaking of great titles how about King Rat? Terrific title, terrific book. But is was written in 1960 by James Clavell. And, oh wait a minute, there seems to be a novel on the bookshelves now called King Rat. ¶ But it's by China Mieville. ¶ Mieville is a writer whom I respect. Yet it's hard to believe he was unaware of Clavell's book, enduring bestseller that it was. (Its lack of obscurity was enhanced by the outstanding film adapted from it; nice John Barry Score, great performance from George Segal). ¶ So, just what the blue blazes was going on in a writer's mind when he chooses to make of with another writer's title? ¶ Is that a gleam I see in the eye of Jeffrey Archer? Would it be petty minded and tasteless to remind everyone at this point that Lord Archer is a convicted felon? I think that's the right term. ¶ Anyway, Archer may well be a charming chap. His millionaire's eyrie certainly has a nice view of the Thames. But still it's going to be a cold day in hell before I read hi s novel Paths of Glory with its stolen title. For the original go to Humphrey Cobb's superb 1930s tale of war (made into a stunning Kubrick film). ¶ Before closing, in the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I've had two stage plays pr oduced. The title of the first, arrived at after much soul searching, heart ache and head banging (Dark Ride, anyone? How about Death Etc?) was End of the the Night. ¶ Which, despite being a standard meteorological term sounds suspiciously like The End of the Night, a stunning 1960 suspense thriller by John D. MacDonald. ¶ As I mentioned, a good title is hard to come by. My second play was called Under the Eagle which I later discovered to be a novel about a Roman Legion by Simon Scarrow published in 2000.¶

Norman Lewis: The Sicilian Specialist

I've been meaning to write a piece on Norman Lewis for some time now, having recently read and admired his 1974 Mafia thriller The Sicilian Specialist. What finally galvanised me into action was a news report on the radio yesterday about a Mexican prison where apparently they're letting inmates out, providing them with transport and firepower, allowing them to go off and perform contract killings and then letting them come back into prison to be locked up snugly again. (Naturally the prison officials expect to be remunerated for organising these little sabbaticals.) ¶ Startling? Well, it would have been if I hadn't just read about exactly the same scenario taking place back in the 1960s, in The Sicilian Specialist. I assume the incidents Norman Lewis describes in his novel are versions and variants of things that actually happened in Latin America. ¶ Lewis was a fine journalist, whose exposé of the genocide of Indians in the Brazilian Rain Forest in 1968 was a memorable classic which led to reforms and changed (and saved) lives. Graham Greene described him as one of the best writers of the century. ¶ Now, while I would never pay attentionfkeen
to Greene on say spiritual matters, I'm more than willing to listen to him about writers. So I've been on the look out for The Sicilian Specialist, and having now read it I'm keen to investigate Lewis's non fiction book on the Mafia, The Honoured Society. (The fact it originated as a series of pieces in the New Yorker makes me all the more keen.) ¶ The Sicilian Specialist explores the links between the Mafia and CIA in post World War II Sicily, moving on to America and then Cuba. The least interestingly evoked sequences are in Vermont. There is a fine chase from a roadhouse followed by a savage beating in an autumnal field, but give Lewis a hot, exotic locale any day. His feeling for the crueler sunbaked landscapes of the world is clear. The scenes in Sicily and Cuba are superb, so it comes as no surprise to learn that Lewis's wife was Sicilian or that he was sent to Cuba by Ian Fleming to interview Ernerst Hemingway (if you're going to visit Cuba, that's definitely the way to go). ¶ Norman Lewis is a master of sudden, violent action and the amazing, audacious succinctness of his descriptions rivals that of Charles Willeford. In The Sicilian Specialist the darkest and most disturbing of deeds are presented in a measured, beautiful and intelligent prose that is informed by a love and understanding of the far away parts of the world — and of the human psyche. It's like Jim Thompson meets Patrick O'Brian. ¶ The Sicilian Specialist becomes unstuck at the very end, when its brief and brutal saga dovetails with the Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963. It's hard to convey my disappointment at this development: oh god he even mentions the grassy knoll. Of course, there was no way Lewis could have known at the time he wrote this what an egregious cliche that would b ecome. ¶ And this in no way spoils the novel, which remains a classic thriller. It's just that the last few pages seem an unworthy conclusion for all that has gone before. ¶ But even here Lewis throws in a moment of casual brilliance, describing a near fatal accident in the air with indelible terse vividness. Highly recommended, and I'm off to find The Honoured Society. ¶