Writing in an Age of Silence

Verso have just published a paperback edition of Sara Paretsky’s Writing in an Age of Silence, which first came out a couple of years back. Paretsky is, of course, the creator of that notable gumshoe V.I.Warshawski, who was brought to the screen by Kathleen Turner (I haven’t seen the movie, but some reports suggest it didn’t match the quality of the books.)

It is a short book, well summed up by P.D. James in ‘The Spectator’: ‘This poignant and compelling personal testimony explains both the influences that made her a writer and the kind of writer she became.’ James is by instinct a conservative, and Paretsky is a radical feminist, but despite their political differences, writing is clearly a bond which unites them. And so it should be.

This book was written before the election of Barack Obama and it may be that Paretsky’s view of American politics would be a little different if she were starting the book today. There may also be too much here about American politics to appeal to some British readers. But I like this sentence in particular:

‘Because my own great comfort comes from other writers’ words, my hope is that my stories may also bring readers some solace in the night, provide some lamplight on a darkened path.’

Most writers, whether of crime or any other form of fiction, would probably feel the same.

Forgotten Book - Clerical Error

My last entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books featured a title from the pen of Richard Hull. This week, the focus is on novel written by another disciple of Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles. Clerical Error has also appeared as The Vicar’s Experiments, and it has been published under two different names – first as by Anthony Rolls, and then under Rolls’ real name, C.E. Vulliamy.

Vulliamy wrote, among other things, biography and satire. It is his satiric instinct which prevails in the opening chapter, when a seemingly inoffensive cleric snaps during a conversation with a disagreeable loudmouth:

‘Up to a quarter past three, Mr Pardicott might have been described as the gentlest of rural clergymen; at twenty minutes past three he was a criminal of the most dangerous kind. In a dizzy moment of revelation he saw that he had been chosen by the Inscrutable Purpose to be the destroyer of Colonel Cargoy.’

Alas, even when the murder of Colonel Cargoy has been accomplished, Pardicott does not rest content….

Vulliamy wrote a number of other crime novels. I’ve read one of them, Don Among the Dead Men, which follows a broadly similar pattern. I wouldn’t claim either book is a masterpiece. In each case, there is a neat initial idea, and some witty writing, but (at least, for a modern reader) the plot isn't complex or credible enough for the whole novel to live up to the promise of the early pages. But they have, at the very least, a deal of interest for readers fascinated in the development of the genre. Vulliamy was no Ruth Rendell, but he was no mug, either.

CWA Daggers

This time last year I was eagerly looking forward to the CWA Daggers dinner, which turned out to be the highlight of my career as a writer to date. A year on, the latest award ceremony is imminet, and Meg Gardiner has emailed to say that a few tickets are still available - if you get your skates on. Here are the details:


The Crime Writers' Association Dagger Awards
Wednesday 15th July 2009
Tiger Tiger, Haymarket, London


Presenting:
The Debut Dagger
The Short Story Dagger
The International Dagger
The Dagger in the Library


And the shortlists for:
The John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
The Gold Dagger


6.30 pm Pimms reception
7 pm awards
Drinks and canapes to follow


Tickets are £45 each.


Each ticket holder is entitled to half-price dining at Tiger Tiger on July 15th.


If you're interested, tickets can be ordered by sending a cheque and SAE to:


The CWA
PO Box 273
Borehamwood
Herts
WD6 2XA

Die With Me

My haul of goodies from Crimefest included an abridged audio book of Elena Forbes’ debut novel Die With Me. It’s a serial killer story, and although scarcely a ground-breaking work, I found it provided five hours of very agreeable car-listening.

Some of the pleasure derived from an excellent reading by Dan Stevens, an actor previously unknown to me. The story opens with the mysterious killing in a church of a 15 year old girl called Gemma by a man who appears to have persuaded her to join in a suicide pact. But he gets a kick out of watching her die.

Soon Mark Tartaglia and his fellow cops are on the case, and it turns out that Gemma is not the first of the killer’s victims. Tartaglia is irritated when a senior woman cop is brought in over his head to lead the investigation, and even more irked by his new boss’s enthusiasm for a dodgy criminal profiler.

I had one or two reservations. The link that connects the victims should surely have been discovered sooner than it was, and the killer’s precise motivation was not as clear as I’d have wished. Forbes paves the way for a sequel, and perhaps the next story will fill in some of the gaps. Suffice to say that, on the evidence of this debut, it will undoubtedly be worth reading – or listening to.

The Freewheelin' Hakan Nesser

One of the treats in the Crimefest delegate bag this year was a small booklet celebrating the achievements of guest of honour Hakan Nesser. The Freewheelin' Hakan Nesser turns out to be the sort of thing any author would love to have produced about himself – lavishly illustrated and full of intriguing snippets.

Included also are samples of a Nesser manuscript – he always starts by writing in longhand. Someone at Crimefest asked how anyone could be expected to read it – and he replied by saying he needs to type up from the longhand draft within a week, otherwise he too will be unable to decipher or recall what he wrote!

The booklet does not major on Nesser’s Van Veeteren novels, but give a flavour of his overall work, including the delightfully titled Kim Novak Never Bathed in Lake Genesaret; only about half of his books, it seems, fall squarely within the crime genre, and he is properly cautious about the merit of categorising books as crime or non-crime. He is formidably well-read, and says of his attitude as teenager: ‘An author who wrote a book where nobody died was an idiot, I was quite convinced of that.’

The assessment of Nesser’s work is thought-provoking and persuasive. His emphasis on the logic of narrative, the importance not only of detail, but choice of detail, the search for pattern in incident and character, these are elements in his writing that repay further study. For my part, I look forward eagerly to reading more of his books. I’m sure there’s a lot that a writer like me can learn from them..

Mysterious Castles

Castles feature rather more in children’s mystery stories than in adult crime novels, I think – The Castle of Adventure, by Enid Blyton, is a book I loved in the early years before I was introduced to Agatha Christie.

Visiting Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island reminded me of what intriguing and eerie places castles can be. In recent weeks, I’ve wandered round Flint Castle, on the North Wales seafront, and Richmond Castle, in Yorkshire, which is certainly impressive. But for setting as well as style, Lindisfarne Castle is very hard to beat.

It was never a castle that saw serious combat, and Edward Lutyens transformed the interior for the pleasure of a rich Edwardian owner. The equally renowned Gertrude Jekyll created a lovely walled garden a short walk from the rocky outcrop on which the castle stands. Nowadays, the castle is in the very safe hands of the National Trust, and in the sunshine, it all looked gorgeous. Though it crossed my mind that the upturned boat sheds and the disused lime kilns (both pictured) would be excellent places to stash an inconvenient corpse or two.

Such reflections left me wondering just how many crime novels have been set in castles. None instantly spring to mind, but I’m sure I must have overlooked quite a few.

Mystery Islands

I love islands – especially small ones. They seem to me to be tranquil places, yet full of mystery. The best Golden Age detective story (in my opinion) is set on a small island – Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. And the enduring appeal of the island setting is highlighted by the success of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

For years, my favourite island has been Herm, in the English Channel, a marvellous little place, but now it has been displaced at the top of my list by Holy Island, aka Lindisfarne (not to be confused with the 1970s folk/rock group of the same name), off the coast of Northumberland, not far from the Scottish border.

Staying overnight in the Old Manor House, right next to the ancient priory, was a great experience. The weather was glorious and that meant plenty of opportunity to explore the main sights, even though time ran out before it was possible to roam to some of the less visited parts of the island.

Holy Island is a place of pilgrimage, and no wonder. I found it utterly fascinating. I am not aware that it has featured in any mystery novels, though perhaps Ellis Peters or Peter Tremayne may have set medieval stories there. But it would be a perfect setting for a modern day mystery in the classic mould.

North by North East

I’m just back from a fascinating trip to the North East of England. All too brief, but restorative (at least, once I’d had an extensive lie-in this morning!) Among other things, there was the chance to meet up with Peter and Margaret Lewis, of Flambard Press, publishers of Dancing for the Hangman. We had coffee and scones together on Friday morning at the home of our mutual friends Ann and Tim Cleeves, in Whitley Bay. Great to see all of them again.

The previous evening, I’d staged the Victorian mystery event at Stockton-on-Tees. Claire Pratt and her colleagues really did me proud. I’ve never been to Stockton before, and I have to say that its traffic system and gyratory provided a mystery more challenging than anything Agatha Christie ever devised. But Claire talked me through it on the phone and I was delighted to meet her at last – we’ve been trying to organise the trip for a couple of years. The wait was well worth while as far as I was concerned.

The next day, a trip by Metro from Whitley Bay took me to the sparkling new city library in the centre of Newcastle, and another big audience for ‘Who Killed George Hargrave?’ Sheila Naughton told me that Val McDermid appeared at the library a fortnight ago, and Lee Child is due there shortly, but this was their first interactive mystery event. A fabulous place, and it would be good to think that other cities model their library plans on Newcastle’s stunning achievement.

To Catch a Thief

Alfred Hitchcock based his famous film To Catch a Thief on a book by the American crime writer David Dodge. It’s the story of jewel theft on the Riviera and it stars Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who combine together splendidly. To use a term that wasn’t around when the film was first shown, it’s a ‘feelgood movie’.

Grant , who plays John Robie, lives quietly in a lovely villa. He was once a famous jewel thief, but worked in the Resistance during the war, and has now renounced his old criminal ways. But when wealthy women of the south of France suffer a fresh series of jewel thefts which seem to bear all his hallmarks, Robie is the inevitable suspect. His old friends don’t believe in his innocence, let alone the police. Danielle, daughter of a former comrade who is now a wine waiter, urges him to take her to South America with his ill-gotten gains. But Robie decides to prove that he is innocent by catching ‘the Cat’.

This brings him into enjoyably close contact with Grace Kelly, playing the daughter of a scoundrel’s widow whose jewels make her an obvious target for ‘the Cat’. Kelly’s lustrous beauty and the couple’s developing relationship are more memorable than the actual plot. This is one of Hitchcock’s lighter movies, and the plot is scarcely complex, but even so, it offers a couple of hours of pleasant entertainment.

Forgotten Book - Excellent Intentions

Richard Hull was one of the few chartered accountants to become a notable writer of detective novels. He burst on to the scene in 1935 with The Murder of My Aunt, which remains the book for which he is best known. It is a good story, although the ironic ending is easily foreseen by the modern reader. But my choice for the latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is Excellent Intentions, which came out in 1938.

The plot is very clever. Henry Cargate has been murdered, and because he was an unpleasant chap, there are plenty of suspects. But although a murder trial is taking place, Hull does not reveal who is in the dock. Court scenes and police investigations are blended together cunningly so as to build the suspense.

But even when we do discover who is on trial, there is a terrific twist. It has a legal element that I certainly will not spoil for anyone who would like to track down this rather obscure title. Suffice to say that Hull is trying to show that sometimes the only way to achieve a truly just outcome is to thwart justice.

Richard Hull was one of those writers who were influenced by the ironic flavour of the work of Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles. His reputation has not lasted as well, but he deserves not to be forgotten.