Bruce Beckham's Blog - Posts Tagged "skelgill"

Yes, there really is a Goodreads profile* with 14,495 ratings... and all 1-star!

This curious state of affairs was spotted by a vigilant author who was disturbed to receive a 1-star rating when all of her others were much higher.

I have to admit, this would probably have passed me by. I get quite a few 1-star ratings, especially from readers who object to the present tense!

And, actually, there is a certain masochistic frisson in reading a hostile review.

Of course, it’s a great honour when a reader takes the trouble to write a glowing tribute – it’s what keeps you going when you get stuck with 20,000 words still to go, or find a gaping plot-hole with no apparent way of filling it. Positive reviews provide momentum.

But critical reviews provide direction. Following a couple of stinkers, I completely rewrote the first Skelgill novel. I thought the reviewers had a fair point. (And now it gets much better reviews on average.)

And at a lesser level, minor complaints and gripes help to smooth the rough edges. As a result, although my characters cuss and canoodle when the moment is right, virtually none of this happens in public, where it might cause offence.

As for the prolific (and anonymous) 1-star rater on Goodreads, there has been speculation that this can’t possibly be a real person – it must be a robot that is up to some online trickery.

But maybe it really is just another masochistic aspect of literature, this time on behalf of a reader?

* read more on this thread – you can find the phantom profile with a bit of sleuthing: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

They say you can’t write in a vacuum – but neither can you write when your other half is on the phone to her mother – or the kids are practising hockey in the hall – or with a dozen other distractions that drive you to seek solitude.

Dog to the rescue.

This most efficient machine for removing grated cheese from the kitchen floor is not only humankind’s best friend – but he (in my case, he) is also the writer’s best friend.

Yes, he’s my excuse to escape into the woods for a couple of hours – but there’s more – much more. There’s his exceptional ability to sniff out characters and events for my stories.

WITHOUT DOG. I notice I am ignored, or worse, treated with suspicion. I can tell what they’re thinking. Who’s the weirdo with the giant fishing umbrella? Is that a laptop in that rucksack – is he a cat burglar? A serial killer? (It’s a fair cop – at least, I might be thinking about one.)

WITH DOG. Suddenly everyone stops to talk. What is he, a Cockerpoo? – no, Australian Labradoodle – bit chunkier, you’ll notice – more ball-obsessed. Is he really called Noodles? – well, actually I call him Dude – would you shout Noodles? – and on it goes like this for a little while – perhaps that’s where it ends.

But next time – Hey, Noodles! How’s it going, man? You wouldn’t believe what happened to me last week. Murder, assault, car crash, pickpocketing, infidelity, divorce, fraud, shoplifting, inheritance... it all comes flooding out – and I hardly know the person!

When finally I can get a word in, I say – nice weather – dry – easy-clean day for the dog. They go: aye, so it is. See you later, Noodles.

Surreptitiously I reach for my notebook.

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/autho...

I found an article in today’s newspaper, “Want to get creative? Try a cup of tea.”

Peking University’s School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences conducted creativity tests, giving human guinea pigs either black tea or water to drink immediately beforehand.

It seems tea won hands down – both when it came to generating new ideas, and in general creativity.

Speaking as a tea jenny myself (Scottish glossary: a person who drinks a lot of tea), I was pleased to hear of this outcome. Based on my daily consumption, I reckon each Skelgill mystery takes me 1800 cups from start to finish.

1800 bags of my preferred brand cost about £100. Since there is now scientific proof that I NEED this to do my job, can I put tea on my tax return?

Or is that what’s known as creative accounting?

At just after six this morning I was typing half-awake when an email came in. I have all the bleeps turned off so I can’t be disturbed when I’m writing – but you know how that little ghostly précis comes up in the corner of the screen? It caught my eye – and prompted me to open the message.

It was from Amazon. Would I like to order ‘Murder Mystery Weekend’, the new novel by Bruce Beckham?

Okay – nothing unusual there – that’s just Amazon doing their job, recommending things I might like. Except the thing I’m writing, that I have just interrupted is ‘Murder Mystery Weekend’, by Bruce Beckham.

Jeepers! It comes out in – let me calculate – yes, 36 days!

I wonder – is this Amazon kindly advising everyone who has (hopefully) enjoyed another of the series that the latest is coming soon? Or is it a clever ploy? Do they only send it to me – to chivvy me along?

I had better get back to the book!

If you're a Prime member and you have a Kindle device you can borrow one book per month absolutely free from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library - and the entire DI Skelgill series is available.

Here's a link with a short video that explains it all:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...

(If that doesn't work just type into your browser something like "Amazon Help - Borrow Books from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library".)

Basically, all you have to do is open your Kindle and click on the Kindle Store icon (the shopping cart, or trolley as Skelgill would say). Then you click on the drop-down menu (3 horizontal bars, top right), and from the list that appears select the Lending Library. Once you're in there, search for the title you would like, and on its product page there should be a button that says "Borrow for Free".

So - why not try searching "Skelgill" - it seems to do the trick! (Oh, and I'm sure other good detectives are available.)

Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I devoured the first five William Boyd novels and somehow lost touch; yet I found them variously remarkably authentic and laugh-out-loud funny, and always compelling. As our street book group’s latest choice, therefore, I was pleased to reconnect … until I began reading.

It’s hard to believe this 1960s spy story was written by the same author as A Good Man in Africa or An Ice Cream War. The narrative is riddled with non-sequiturs, major and minor, characters waver in their consistency, and there are plot holes that Agatha Christie would be proud of, as implausible means of sneaking past awkward explanations.

The words on each page read pretty well, so as a group we tried to analyse what was missing from the big picture. The consensus was that, while as a reader you accept you are rooting for the protagonist, this story lacks a clear reason as to WHY you should do so. To what end are you hanging onto Gabriel’s coattails?

Is it the resolution of his childhood trauma, of the book’s title? Or that he will become a competent secret agent? Or that he will pull the beguiling older woman who gives him orders?

We didn’t know.

One member found Gabriel’s continual anticipation of sex with successive females a little disconcerting, and there were one or two toe-curling descriptions.

Another remarked, did we really need to know each time he urinated?

Perhaps enough said.




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The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I think this was my third reading of The Mystery of the Blue Train and, as ever with such Christie revisitations (there being 66 works), I had no recall whatsoever of the perpetrator of the crime.

This made it all the more frustrating, as I tried unsuccessfully to spot the clues – and, frankly, I don’t think Hercule Poirot spotted them either. I reckon the author presented him with some sneaky snippets of inside information; and even he admitted that: “unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective”. I can’t see that washing in a job interview.

Agatha Christie was quoted as saying that she would write most of a novel and then choose the least likely perpetrator. If this were true, then it must have involved a lot of backtracking. And it shows. I bumped over a good half dozen poorly filled plot-holes, and others that became apparent with hindsight. I think she quite simply created workarounds to explain the improbable – for instance, in this book, the unlikely disfigurement of the victim, merely to explain away a minor inconvenient detail. Cumulatively, these little ‘cheats’ undermine the credibility of the storyline.

I have concluded that an ingenuous approach is best; sit back, relax and enjoy the journey. Certainly, this is literally a journey – and it paints a pleasing picture of upper-class life, lived between London, Paris and the French Riveria during the late 1920s. Penned almost a century ago, it is in its way a cosy piece of historical fiction. And there is Poirot in his pomp.

I expect I’ll read it again.



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The Mystery at Stowe by Vernon Loder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I came across the prolific Belfast-born John Haslette Vahey advertised on the dust jacket of an old copy of Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train. As a Golden Age contemporary of Christie, he published 22 crime novels between 1928-1938 under the penname ‘Vernon Loder’. Plenty to get one’s teeth into!

The Mystery at Stowe is the first of these, although as far as I could glean, there is no ‘hero’ detective, and if anything I found it difficult to identify a clear protagonist in this work.

For the most part it is a tidily written, tightly constructed traditional mystery, the archetypal country house murder. A well-intentioned benefactor gathers together an upper-middle-class crowd, and a poison dart from a wall-mounted trophy blowpipe does the ill deed.

The victim is the wife in a rumoured love triangle, and her female explorer rival becomes the chief suspect. Out of the blue from Africa, enter a long-estranged suitor (not universally welcomed), bent on proving the police wrong.

So far, so good. The narrative keeps the locus tight, and the police make steady progress. But … I had forgotten one thing … the ‘rules’ of the Detection Club: anything goes!

Authors were invited to ‘cheat’ by concocting a practically implausible but theoretically possible modus operandi – indeed, it seemed the more contrived the better. In achieving the unfathomable whodunit, no amount of jiggery-pokery was off limits!

All well and good, but a rather unsatisfying climax for the reader who seeks a credible scenario.




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The Slip-Carriage Mystery by Lynn Brock

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is certainly one of the more challenging Golden Age mysteries that I have come across. Published in 1928 and authored by Irish-born ‘Lynn Brock’ it is the fourth of seven Colonel Wyckham Gore novels. The protagonist sleuth is a partner in a London law firm.

On a foggy winter’s night, a prominent industrialist is found stabbed to death in his first-class compartment of a slip carriage in the siding of a provincial railway yard. A year later, the murder remaining unsolved, Gore is charged by the Government to investigate the crime. So far, so good.

The book comprises two distinct halves. In the first, Gore reads through reams of witness statements; in the second, he gains a position undercover at the late industrialist’s country estate. These might almost be two separate books, and I found the profusion of detail in each difficult to reconcile.

Moreover, in both content and style, the narrative is highly disjointed – and, frankly, I think I would need to read it at least once more to absorb and understand exactly what went on. When I finally reached the denouement, it could have been transplanted from another book, and I would have believed it.

Searching for plus points, like all Golden Age novels, it provides an accidental insight into the customs and mores of its time – and, indeed, on the latter aspect it perhaps surprises, in not shying away from shootings, poisonings, illicit affairs and drug dealing!




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Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Of course, a masterpiece of writing – and how did Jane Austen do it, in 1814 with just a quill pen and parchment? No spell-check or Grammarly, no instant thesaurus, no cut and paste. The technical task of organising 160,000 words and hanging together a coherent narrative is a minor miracle in itself.

It is a slow-moving story in which little happens, but whose tendrils creep insidiously into your subconscious and draw you into the world of Mansfield Park, leaving you always pleased to return after a day of alternative reality. Before you know it, you are back rooting for Fanny, the poor relation adopted into the wealth and privilege of her uncle’s Northamptonshire estate.

Shy and retiring, a bud the idea of whose ‘coming out’ is overlooked by county society, Fanny blooms into a most desirable rose – though her morals are never in danger of corruption – and her strength of character shines through; not least when she resists an arranged marriage and suffers the almost intolerable disapprobation of the entire household.

The novel is a wonderful exposition of the life and times of the landed gentry of the early 19th Century; it conveys a deep sense of place and of the customs and mores of the upper classes. Though in this latter respect I felt, if not exactly a plot-hole, then at least a bump in the road. I shall avoid a spoiler, but if you have read Mansfield Park, you might agree that the climactic ‘trauma’ comes with too little pitch-rolling, somewhat out of the blue and therefore seemingly out of character.

But read it.




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