Mini reviews #35

 Surprise! I warned you this blog would be sporadic. COVID-19 and associated problems have wrought havoc on people close to me and on me, as they have on so many. While I have been reading a lot (a LOT) of crime fiction, I’ve barely been writing anything not required by my day job or my publisher. Luckily, the manuscript for my next book has been submitted and normality – albeit a new normality with many people and pleasures lost – is returning. Anyway, here are some mini-reviews.

 
Emma (1815) by Jane Austen
I always feel guilty that Emma is not my favourite Austen book. It is the one that anyone interested in crime fiction of LGBTQ+ concerns cites. And it’s my second-favourite, but, honestly, I prefer Northanger Abbey and think there may be an element of over-reading involved in claiming Emma as a queer text. Certainly, Emma Woodhouse is an amazing, strong character who rewards queer analysis but I think it does a disservice to her, to her creator, and to queer readers to claim her as a queer figure. The plot of Emma is engaging and its execution biting and, sometimes, laugh-out-loud funny, but overall the feeling one gets reading it is, “Thank God someone is thinking like this”. I include it here because it is often cited as the first detective novel, but really I think that, too, is a stretch. Emma does investigate, and see new ways of reading situations, clues, and people, and I can see why people are keen to link a line of female detectives back to her, but I’m not convinced.
 
Giant’s Bread (1930) by Mary Westmacott
Agatha Christie’s first pseudonymous novel, Giant’s Bread is an ambitious literary effort with a mega three-book structure. It centres on Vernon Deyre, a brilliant, troubled musician for whom music is less a passion than an obsession. It follows him from childhood through a troubled adulthood, presumed death, and resurrection, as a Jewish friend, Sebastian Levinne, takes up the role of protagonist. With Levinne, Christie shows an awareness of antisemitism as a social evil, but also reveals her own limits as a social commentator as there is an essential difference in how he is presented compared to his friends. In all, Giant’s Bread is almost a masterpiece, and it makes perfect sense that it garnered critical praise upon its anonymous first publication.
 
The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) by Michael Connelly
Connelly is one of those authors I’ve been meaning to read for a while. A lot of people have recommended him to me, but I’ve always shied away because it’s always been in the context of “You wouldn’t like this blokey author, but how about Michael Connelly?” And, being half-straight, there are a fair few blokey authors I do enjoy. So, Connelly has always felt like an afterthought, although I’ve acquired a decent stack of his books. I figured I’d start with The Lincoln Lawyer, the first in a series about Mickey Haller, a defense attorney (barrister) who only represents clients he believes to be innocent. The story is decent and highly readable, and I did go on to read two more. One thing that niggled – in this, the two subsequent books, and the highly-influenced-by-Connelly prose of Steve Cavanagh, is that characters are nodding at one another all the time. I think this is some sort of macho thing.
 
The Thursday Murder Club (2020) by Richard Osman
A group of retirees in a small village meet on Thursdays to talk about mysteries: they end up embroiled in a murder case. Like a lot of people, I avoided The Thursday Murder Club at first because I’m not generally a fan of celebrity-authored novels, and prime time intellectuals tend to be the worst kind of celebrity novelist. However, also like a lot of people, once I’d read The Thursday Murder Club, I was enchanted. It’s not flawless – I found the central figure, Joyce, overly caricatured and had expected a better mastery of the conditional past tense – but it is fun. More fun than funny, it’s an entertaining tribute to the kind of mysteries that end up on ITV 3.
 
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Greatest Detective in the World (2020) by Mark Aldridge
In this extensive, highly illustrated and archivally informed book, Mark Aldridge presents a full story of Hercule Poirot, with particular attention to adaptations and behind-the-scenes elements, although he also summarises the novels, the plays, and several of the stories. An essential resource for any Agatha Christie fan, it’s also of use to scholars and researchers, containing some previously unreleased material. This is partly down to the benefit of the Christie estate’s heavy involvement and partly down to the author’s conscientious research ethic. Presentationally, Aldridge strikes a delicate balance between the informality of Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie and the scholarly rigour of Julius Green’s Curtain Up. It is not surprising that this book has become a bestseller, and I look forward to Aldridge’s next offering.
 

Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar directed by Sam Yates.

Oh, my God. I quite enjoyed Agatha and the Truth of Murder in 2018, which most people hated. So, when everyone said Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2019) was awful too, I took that with a pinch of salt. Well, everyone was right.

Agatha Christie (Lyndsey Marshal) travels to Iraq in 1929, meets her future husband Max Mallowan (Jonah Hauer-King), and solves a murder involving a curse.

Agatha’s first line is a joke about penises. Max is a hunky cockney. The Murder at the Vicarage is apparently a Poirot novel. The Mary Westmacott novels are “about romance” (aaaargh!!!). There’s a massive missed opportunity in the decision to turn Katherine Woolley (look her up) into a sex-mad degenerate (this is a shame because she is played by the superb Katherine Kingsley; if you ever get a chance to see her on stage, do it).

And then there’s the plot – suffice to say that, two days after watching it, I can’t remember who died, who did it, or why. Yes, of course I’ll be watching the third instalment, Agatha and the Midnight Murders, this Christmas.

But If you want a better-researched and more compelling mystery starring Agatha Christie on a dig with the Woolleys in 1929, check out Andrew Wilson’s Death in a Desert Land, also released in 2019. 

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall

A fun tribute to the Sherlock Holmes canon, The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (2019) is set in a fantasy world of magic, steampunk, and LGBTQ equality, within the straits of Victorian social mores.

Captain John Wyndham returns from war to his homeland and takes up rooms with an eccentric consulting sorceress, Shaharazad Hass, only to be confronted with a case involving an old flame of hers.

I came to this after reading Hall’s forthcoming gay rom com, Boyfriend Material, which is cute if upsetting in its honesty at times. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is well worth the time of any queer Sherlockian.

Who Killed Robert Prentice? by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links

Another mystery dossier by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links – you get the physical clues and sift through them to solve the crime – Who Killed Robert Prentice (1937) is huge fun as

always.

Reading as I did the bound printed 1980s edition, I unfortunately missed out on some of the clues/experience (scented paper!) but it was nonetheless a great afternoon diversion. The solution to the mystery bears a striking resemblance to that in an early Agatha Christie novel but (is this heresy?) I think it’s done better here.

Wheatley, it turns out, is not averse to self-promotion. Whenever a newspaper clipping appears, on the back or in the corner is some form of advertisement for his work, and there’s even an “interview with a local writer” that is basically his CV followed by “Mr Wheatly thought it unwise to comment on the case”!

It was interesting to learn from these materials, though, that “arranged by J.G. Links” means that Links comes up with the stories and decides on the clues, and Wheatley just writes them up.

The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher

Subtitled “A Harlam Mystery”, The Conjure-Man Dies was first published in 1932, just two years before its author’s early death. It is the first example of a detective novel with an African American author, and explores in a unique way the black American experience in the early 1930s. The detective is Perry Dart, one of the ten black police detectives in Harlam, who is called to investigate the murder of a conjure-man (fortune teller and witch doctor), N’Gana Frimbo, who appears at one point to have brought himself back from the dead. In his investigation, he is assisted by the capable Dr John Archer and constantly has to deal with two over-enthusiastic young men, Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins who provide a great deal of comic relief.

It’s a complex and character-driven mystery with plenty of surreal-but-illuminating moments, which tell audiences about traditions they may not be familiar with in the format of a popular puzzle entertainment. The crime itself is sufficiently theatrical to delight the most seasoned mystery reader. And, perhaps uniquely in golden age crime novels, all the characters are black.

Fisher once said in an interview that Harlem “itself is mystery – outsiders know nothing of Harlem life as it really is … what goes on behind the scenes and beneath the dark skins of Harlem folk – fiction has not found much of that yet. And much of it is perfectly in tune with the best of the mystery tradition – variety, color, mysticism, superstition, malice and violence.” This understanding, and the wish to communicate, are why The Conjure-Man Dies worked at the time as both a novel and a popular entertainment and why it still works on both counts.

This was not the author’s first novel – that was The Walls of Jericho (1928) – but it was his first, and sadly last, murder mystery. He also wrote a short story featuring Dart and Archer, “John Archer’s Nose”, which is included in the edition I have. This 2017 reprint is part of the Collins Detective Club vintage-style hardback series, and is a treat – although the book has never been published by Collins before.

The edition also reprints a 1971 introduction by Stanley Ellin which is, if anything, more of its time than the actual novel. Ellin acknowledges the writers who inspired Fisher’s foray into detective fiction – notably SS Van Dine and Dashiell Hammett – and concludes that while Van Dine may have influenced plotting decisions, the majority of influence goes to Hammett, something demonstrated by the fine and nuanced characterisation. I’d suggest that Van Dine and the Golden Age are much bigger influences here, as both the plot and the light-but-thorough approach to character, the clever balance of comedy and pathos, are hallmarks of both a broad education in the puzzle form and Rudolph Fisher’s own skill.

The D. Case by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini (and Charles Dickens)

Together, Carlo Fruttero (1926-2012) and Franco Lucentini (1920-2002) wrote several crime novels, short stories, and collections of criticism from the 1960s until Lucentini’s death. I’m not familiar with their work, but understand that they have a fair following in Italy and that The D. Case, or, the Truth about the Mystery of Edwin Drood (1989) is unusual, even given their trademark humour and strangeness.

In some ways, The D. Case is a work of criticism masquerading as a novel. In others, it’s a parody of detective fiction and the shoe-horning in of social commentary. Mainly, though, it’s just a weird and fascinating read.

There are two narratives here: Charles Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, famously unfinished at his death, is republished chapter by chapter and interspersed with a ‘contemporary’ narrative in which multiple detectives from the pages of fiction gather together at a conference to try and determine the ending.

I have probably missed some, but these are the fictional detectives I spotted: Sherlock Holmes (and Watson), Hercule Poirot (and Hastings), Dr Thorndyke (and Astley), Nero Wolfe (and Goodwin), Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer who form an amusing double act, basically doing the same thing at all times – with one being famously considered a rip-off of the other, Father Brown, Superintendent Battle, Sergeant Cuff, Hercule Popeau, Toad-in-the-Hole (the anti-hero in Thomas de Quincey’s ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’), Porfiry Petrovich(!), Inspector Bucket, Gideon Fell, Dupin, and Maigret.

The detectives bicker and divide themselves into cliques – including over the question of whether The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a mystery novel or a psychological thriller. Plagiarism is a constant discussion, as character quarrel over whether Dickens plagiarised Wilkie Collins and whether Robert Louis Stevenson plagiarised Dickens. Hercule Poirot is forced at several points to confront the fact that he himself exists as a result of Agatha Christie plagiarising Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau (there’s no mention of M. Poiret). Yes, the characters are perfectly happy in their own fictionality – including Inspector Bucket, who knows he was created by Dickens. Sherlock Holmes remains oddly silent because he knows that Arthur Conan Doyle contacted Dickens in a séance and asked for the solution. So, he already knows the truth.

Throughout, existing (real-life) theories and proposed solutions to Dicken’s novel are brought up and evaluated before Poirot presents the ‘truth’ – not only about how the novel should end but also why it was never finished. This theory, so outlandish and like something out of a crime novel that it works in a work of fiction and not in a work of literary criticism, is universally accepted and, at the end of the book, universally hushed up. The 'D.' in 'D. Case' turns out to stand for three things: Drood, Dickens, and the fourth solution proposed.

Since plagiarism forms such a lively element of the discourse throughout – including being at the heart of Poirot’s solution – it is interesting that Fruttero and Lucentini seem not to have been too bothered about copyright infringement. Perhaps this can be classed as parody, but I don’t really know enough about copyright law to know how it works. In my English translation (but not, a friend tells me, in the original Italian), Agatha Christie Limited is thanked for permission to use the character of Poirot – but no other author or estate is thanked, and there is no reference to the other Christie characters: Hastings and Battle. Nonetheless, The D Case counts technically as the first authorised Hercule Poirot continuation novel. Mystery upon mystery!

Mini reviews #34

A quick note: I've been trying to respond to comments, but for some reason haven't been able to. I really do appreciate them, and it's nice to think that someone other than me reads this blog!

Laura (1943) by Vera Casparay. Several narrators tell the story of the death and reappearance of the elusive Laura Hunt. Rightly considered a classic of American noir, Laura is an uneven novel but an absorbing one. The first narrator, Waldo Lydecker, is one of the most unlikely and intriguing narrators in the genre. Casparay’s great strength is in characterisation, and she shines showing the effects that one person, or the idea of one person, can have on the individual psyche.

Green for Danger (1946), directed by Sidney Gilliat. A nice old-school whodunit, set in a hospital during the Second World War and starring Alistair Sim. I haven’t read Christianna Brand’s novel (sorry, please don’t exile me) but have been told that this is a great if not entirely faithful adaptation. Adaptations shouldn’t be entirely faithful and, whatever its source, this works well as a classic mystery film.

Dear Murderer (1947), directed by Arthur Crabtree. An example of British noir, based on a play by St. John Legh Clowes. Eric Portman stars as an angry businessman who discovers that his wife (Greta Gynt) is a serial philanderer. He comes up with a plan to get rid of not one but two of her lovers… The film is great fun with a strong albeit reductive plot and no frills or distractions.

The Railway Detective (2004) by Edward Marston. A light read, full but of but not overloaded with information about trains and railways in the 1850s. Although it’s advertised as ‘the first Inspector Colbeck mystery’, it is more a police procedural set in the mid-nineteenth century. There is no question as to who committed the crime(s). It begins with a train robbery and follows through a kidnapping and a criminal conspiracy in the murkier parts of London. No cliché is too tepid for this author, but it works.

Herring in the Smoke (2017) by L.C. Tyler. Reliable fun, as always. Roger Vane, a well-known novelist, missing for twenty years, is officially declared dead. At the memorial service, struggling writer Ethelred Tressider meets a man who introduces himself as Roger Vane. The story ambles along nicely with all the fun and shameless clichés you expect, although I found the ending a bit disappointing. It’s hard to explain why without giving the whole thing away.