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 #33

The Malinsay Massacre (1938) by Dennis Wheatley

The third of four crime dossiers Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links prepared in the late 1930s, and the second I’ve read. I don’t own the other two and they’re too expensive for me to get hold of, sadly. This wasn’t quite as enjoyable as Murder off Miami, partly because there’s not a great variety in evidence to sift through: it’s mostly letters and everything else feels either contrived (it could have been in a letter) or is plain irrelevant – which is bad form for a red herring. A good red herring is a clue we’ve been steered to misinterpret. This time, there’s a whodunit and a howdunit, as we dig into the massacre of a late Victorian aristocratic family on a small island off Scotland. I got the howdunit but I only got the whodunit by suspecting more or less everyone, and didn’t get any of the clues. The Malinsay Massacre is enjoyable and diverting, but lacks the coherence and sparkle of Murder Off Miami.

Mrs Pym of Scotland Yard (1939) directed by Fred Ellis

This film is huge fun, and stars Mary Clare as a Scotland Yard officer who has to work more or less solo while the male superiors she runs rings round protest her very presence on the grounds of her sex. It stars lots of theatrical types in a range of standard roles – heiress, journalist, shady businessman – and centres around the deaths of two women who visited the same psychic medium. Mrs Pym exposes the bogus seances and uncovers the killer. The film was supposed to be the first of a series by Nigel Morland, who later reused the title for a novel, but the series never materialised, and Mrs Pym survives chiefly in book form.

Death of an Englishman (1981) by Magdalen Nabb

A short, diverting, and forgettable mystery set in Florence, where an Englishman has been shot in the back just before Christmas. The down-to-earth Florentine Police have to overcome their differences with a class-conscious Scotland Yard duo to get to the truth. The author, who is new to me, followed this up with Death of a Dutchman, also set in Florence, and a few more mysteries and seems to have gone on to write children’s literature.

The Hunting Party (2019) by Lucy Foley

I wasn’t sure what to expect of The Hunting Party, mainly because it was aggressively marketed like those vapid mysteries that are being written with more than one eye on Netflix and which don’t stand up to … anything (One of Us is Lying, The Last, etc.). So I didn’t get round to reading it until I needed to, and I was astonished. It’s brilliant – a psychologically nuanced thriller with compelling, relatable characters and a driving, twisty narrative. The more outlandish the action gets, the more believable it becomes.

Rules for Perfect Murders (2020) by Peter Swanson

The concept here is irresistible: a bookseller releases a blog post listing the most ‘perfect murders’ in crime fiction, and, years later, someone seems to be committing murders that correspond to those in the list. The execution is also marvellous. A wonderful combination of the many branches and valences of classic and contemporary crime fiction, Swanson’s novel invites you to read it in one sitting. It is the perfect read for any broad-church crime fiction fan who wants something to escape with and doesn’t take the genre too seriously.

Report for Murder by Val McDermid

Report for Murder (1987) introduces the self-described ‘cynical socialist lesbian feminist journalist’ Lindsay Gordon. This description occurs in the first paragraph, making her impossible to dislike. Val McDermid’s debut novel, published under the Paretsky-evoking name V.I. McDermid, is much more in the Agatha Christie tradition than the police procedural model that made its author famous. However, in some ways – not least the detective – it’s more sociologically interesting. The themes are much simpler and more traditional than in McDermid’s Hill and Jordan books: we’re looking here at the class system, lies, and relationships.

As a journalist, Lindsay is commissioned to write a puff piece on a charity fundraiser at an exclusive boarding school for girls. She turns up and walks into various rows between the staff, while trying to reconcile her socialist views with her interest in various posh women. The set-up certainly reminded me of Agatha Christie’s Cat Among the Pigeons (I see the influence of this book much more than the influence of Nancy Spain’s Poison for Teacher), and the plot is more of a light, straightforward mystery than one might expect from this author.

I understand why McDermid moved away from writing conventional mysteries whose USP is the detective’s sexuality and into more contemporary, commercial – and, notably, straight – blockbuster novels. But I hope that subsequent entries to the Lindsay Gordon canon, which ran up to 2003, don’t lose the lightness of touch that makes Report for Murder a strong, diverting read.

META MATTERS

Lindsay Gordon is an avid reader of detective fiction. We meet her reading a detective novel on a train. As soon as a body is discovered, Lindsay is encouraged to investigate when one character asks, ‘Don’t you ever read any Agatha Christie?’ and another christens the event ‘Murder in the Music Room’.  Later, investigating, and consistently using language like ‘red herring’, Lindsay regrets that ‘It always seems so easy for the Hercule Poirots and the Lord Peter Wimseys’. There are many other meta moments like this.

My favourite such moment occurs roughly midway through, when Lindsay's love interest says that, if Lindsay were Hercule Poirot, she would have solved it by now. The response? 'If I were Hercule Poirot, you wouldn't fancy me.'

Mini Reviews #23

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’m currently rereading the original Holmes canon in order – just for fun – and one thing I’m noticing is the sheer number of stories Agatha Christie ripped off! I would bet money that she had this volume open when she started work on The Murder on the Links; key plot devices are lifted directly from ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’ and ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’. While the stories in this collection are not generally considered among the best, some – ‘The Six Napoleons’ and ‘The Dancing Men’ are rightful classics. ‘The Abbey Grange’ also contains a piece of dialogue that should be, but for some reason isn’t, widely quoted, from Holmes himself: ‘Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience. Let us know a little more before we act.’

The Killings at Badger’s Drift (1987) by Caroline Graham. A truly great crime novel, The Killings at Badger’s Drift deserves to be remembered as so much more than the book that kicked off Midsomer Murders. In a self-consciously classical narrative, Caroline Graham goes where few British genre novelists dare to tread even now, making a pillory of rural nostalgia.

Code to Zero (2000) by Ken Follett. A thriller set in 1958, in which a man wakes up with no memories of who he is. The book is set around the space race between America and Russia, and evokes the Cold War thrillers of the subsequent decade. There is a conspiracy, of course, and the CIA is involved. This is one of those books in which the author has done lots of technical and historical research, and is keen to show you the fruits of his labour. To that extent, there’s an uneven tone. But for the most part, it’s a straightforward blokey thriller.

The Herring in the Library (2010) by L.C. Tyler. A fun, cosy comedy mystery with the emphasis more on the comedy than the mystery. The narrators are Ethelred Tressider, a self-professed ‘third-rate crime writer’ and his outspoken literary agent, Elsie Thirkettle. An old acquaintance invites them to his country home, and, on the night, he ends up dead. Gentle metafiction, stock characters and tropes, and Cluedo references galore. I’d be shocked if any reader failed to solve the mystery two-hundred pages before the detectives, but it’s a light and easy read.

Tricky Twenty-Two (2015) by Janet Evanovich. My first and last brush with Janet Evanovich and her ‘sassy, kick-ass’ bounty hunter detective, Stephanie Plum. I always knew these books appealed to teenage girls, but I didn’t expect them to have been written as if by one. The only possible reason to read this book is if you like cringing. Among other sins, it is responsible for the absolute worst metaphor I have ever come across: an unsavoury relative is described as ‘the pimple on the backside of my family tree.’ After reading Tricky Twenty-Two, I turned to an Artemis Fowl novel, which felt significantly more worldly and sophisticated.

Mini reviews #12

Death in a White Tie (1938) by Ngaio Marsh. Blackmail, debutantes, and dying social niceties abound in this golden-age mystery with more than a touch of the self-parodic. Although one of the least substantial Roderick Alleyn novels, I think it’s one of the best. Marsh is at her best when she’s writing like a wasp sampling sugar.

Knots and Crosses (1987) by Ian Rankin. The first Rebus novel, which was, apparently, never meant to spawn a series. The idea of a divorced alcoholic detective, unable to recreate his former glories while all the time the world around him needs fixing is old and hackneyed now, but it was probably fresh when Rankin wrote this. And, the way he writes, it still feels fresh.

Agatha Christie: The Grand Tour (2012), edited by Mathew Prichard. I’m conflicted about this beautiful book. It is, undeniably, a lovely thing to behold. The format is simple: a collection of Agatha Christie’s letters, written to her mother during her 1922 world tour with her first husband. As a Christie enthusiast, I love the insights into my favourite writer’s early professional life. As a human being, I feel a bit dodgy dipping into her personal – and definitely not professional – correspondence.

Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) by P.D. James. An almost unspeakably dull mystery sequel to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and, it turns out, James’s final book. I have very little good to say about this, except that the author’s love and affection for her source shines through on most pages.

Detecting Wimsey: Papers on Dorothy L. Sayers (2017) by Nancy-Lou Patterson. A collection of old (mostly 1970s/1980s) essays on Sayers and her detective, previously published in specialist journals and edited by Patterson’s students. While there is nothing ‘new’ in the scholarship, it provides a fascinating glimpse of how crime fiction studies used to be – and, by proxy, how far the field has come.

Mini reviews #11

A festive-themed look at five short stories!

‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ (1892) by Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is at his best and his worst in this story, which involves a mysterious stone being smuggled in a Christmas goose. There is an element of Dickensian goodwill in the resolution, which is more satisfying than usual.

‘A Christmas Tragedy’ (1930) by Agatha Christie. On holiday, Miss Marple suspects that a man is planning to murder his wife — because that’s the natural conclusion to draw from other people’s marital disputes. Part of The Thirteen Problems, ‘A Christmas Tragedy’ isn’t very Christmassy but it’s a decent, substantial story with a surprising emotional punch.

‘The Murder of Santa Claus’ (1984) by P.D. James. A gloriously self-referential, if annoyingly conservative, country house mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh, with a bit of reflection on the death penalty thrown in.

‘Saint Nicked’ (2002) by Ian Rankin. A fun, festive, and insubstantial Rebus story, written for the Radio Times. The reader should not exert too much energy on this one, and I strongly doubt the author did.

‘The Tennis Church’ (2015) by Sophie Hannah. Charlie Zailer and her past are at the centre of this psychological mystery story. It bears all of Hannah’s signature wit and pith. You can read it, nicely illustrated, here.

Mini reviews #8

The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins. T.S. Eliot called The Moonstone ‘the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.’ Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers made similar remarks. And — while each of those points is demonstrably not true — the remark holds, idiomatically. The Moonstone is a fascinating novel that blends sensationalism and realism. Most major crime fiction has its origins in this book (I’m looking at you, A Study in Scarlet), and the whole thing is compulsively readable. I’ve never met anyone who dislikes The Moonstone, and I think that every crime fiction fan should read it.

No More Murders! (1967) by Maria Lang. Enjoyable escapism from ‘Sweden’s answer to Agatha Christie’ — and, for once, the accolade seems well-earned. Reading this book in translation made me feel the closest I’ve ever felt to reading a new Christie book. It’s not quite the same, and Lang has her own voice, but the complicated plot, the sense of fun, and the poetic beauty of the setting all work brilliantly. I derived considerably more pleasure from No More Murders! than from the TV adaptation, which I also enjoyed.

Country House Murders (1989) edited by Godfrey Thomas. This is one of the best of those massive Michael O’Mara anthologies from the 1980s and 1990s. It features an impressive roll of authors: Christie, Rendell, Marsh, James, Allingham, Innes, Sayers, Wodehouse(!), Chesterton, Blake, Collins, Brand, Orczy, MacDonald, Doyle, Hare, Freeman, Barr, Wills Crofts, Carr, Ethel Lina White, and James Miles — only the last of which was new to me, and all stories are on the classic country house theme.  Besides featuring the titles you’d expect (James’ ‘A Very Desirable Residence’; Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of Abbey Grange’), it includes some unexpected delights, such as ‘The Man on the Roof’ by Christianna Brand, and ‘The Worcester Enigma’ by James Miles, in which Sherlock Holmes inspires Elgar’s Enigma Variations. So, now we know!

An Expert in Murder (2008) by Nicola Upson. Upson’s first book to feature Josephine Tey as a detective is set in the West End in the 1930s. It’s a nice nostalgic whodunit, with a really interesting plot. I did find, however, that the narrative didn’t really suit Tey — either as a writer or a character. Upson’s Tey bears no resemblance to Elizabeth Mackintosh herself, but is a kind of everywoman-Scottish-crime-writer, and the story architecture bears little resemblance to her own. I’d have enjoyed this more if the sleuth had been an original character… but, then, in all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have heard of it, let alone read it. So props to Upson.

Magpie Murders (2016) by Anthony Horowitz. The only thing worse than ripping off Dame Agatha is ripping off Dame Agatha without understanding what she was doing.

Mini Reviews #7

A Blunt Instrument (1938) by Georgette Heyer. Sorry -- I'm not convinced. After a few laugh out loud lines like 'His Lordship did not answer because he was dead', which I'm not convinced were supposed to be funny, I read this in a pretty bad mood. And for what it's worth, the solution is obvious literally from page 2. Heyer is being heralded as writing gentle social satires in her detective fiction, but I don't buy that. A Blunt Instrument exemplifies the conservatism and laziness that we like to think it critiques.

Dead Air (1986) by Mike Lupica. An investigative journalist takes to... investigating... when his ex-girlfriend is murdered. The case leads him into the glamorous and impossibly bitchy worlds of American television and evangelical Christianity. This is an amusing read. I first read it at the age of eleven and saw the twist coming a mile off.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) by Walter Mosley. The first case for hardboiled African American war veteran Easy Rawlins. Set in Los Angeles in 1948, this novel takes all the tropes and conventions that Hammett and Chandler coined and exposes their limits, developing Rawlins as a distinct voice in search of an identity. A compelling and brilliant read.

The Snowman (2007) by Jo Nesbo. The seventh case for Norwegian sleuth Harry Hole. Someone is building snowmen, sinisterly unexplained and facing towards houses from which people disappear. And soon bodies -- or, rather, bits of bodies -- turn up. This is a fast-paced and atmospheric novel that takes us all over Oslo and gets us fully invested in the unfortunately-named hero.

Sleep No More (2017) by PD James. A beautiful new collection of 6 short stories by the late crime queen. It's easy to scoff at the publishers for bringing these out 6 at a time, instead of in one go, and always in time for Christmas. But the books are so pretty one can almost forgive them. James was not a great short story writer, and if you read anthologies, you have probably come across some or all of these before. Of note is 'The Murder of Santa Claus', narrated by a hack crime writer who explains that he is 'no H.R.F. Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a P.D. James.' Poor thing. That story is a bit of a satire on golden age crime as James perceived it, as divorced from the horrors and ethical overhauls of international war. I've never agreed with James's hot takes, but she expressed them in a relatively entertaining manner.

Mini reviews #3

The Agony Column by Earl Derr Biggers (1916). Enjoyable enough romantic thriller. Very much of its time -- in fact, very much of an earlier time.

Death of a Hollow Man by Caroline Graham (1989). Funny, intense, disillusioned, and puzzling. Peak Inspector Barnaby, and peak Caroline Graham.

The Stepmother by Simon Tolkein (2003). An ambitious novel about a criminal trial, which plays out as sadly unmemorable. Tolkein is JRR's grandson, and one wonders if this book would have been published in other circumstances.

My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry (2016). An impressive debut psychological
thriller, cleverly written to build up suspense and discomfort.

Deadlier: 100 of the Best Crime Stories by Women edited by Sophie Hannah (2017). A majestic hardback volume, over 1,000 pages long featuring a range of established, lesser-known, and brand new stories by women from the 19th century to the 21st.

Fire Dance by Caroline Graham

Caroline Graham is based in Suffolk (where I live!) and is best-known as the creator of ITV's Midsomer Murders -- although has a justifiably lukewarm view of the series. Anyone who's glanced at her novels will know that they haven't been served well on television (that flawless first episode, The Killings at Badger's Drift, is an exception). Even John Nettles, DCI Barnaby himself, has written frankly that 'the Barnaby novels [are] better than their television counterparts', and 'much more interesting'. You can read his introduction to A Place of Safety in the Amazon preview. Today, I'm reviewing Graham's first-published novel, which is not a crime story at all.

When I was 13 I read all Caroline Graham’s detective novels with a greedy keenness. I loved them – the rather awkward writing style, the wry observation of character, and the black, bleak humour that I knew I was too young to fully understand. It was like a prolonged conversation with the very sharp relative we all wish we had.

The only of her adult novels that I didn’t read at the time was Fire Dance (1982). The first reason for this was that it was out of print. The second reason was that whenever the book was discussed it was as a ‘romantic novel’ and a very bad one at that – something that failed to help the author break through. But the other day, after following up a rumour, which proved to be false, that she had written a new crime thriller, I ended up buying this book on impulse. And I’m glad I did.

I think one reason that Graham herself has disavowed this book is because she doesn’t own the copyright: so there’s nothing in it for her. And it is very much a first novel – for one thing, it’s a lot shorter than the sprawling Barnaby narratives, and for another all the Graham hallmarks are there but not quite developed. In every Graham novel, this included, characters show their hedonism by taking scented baths, or they show their naivety by working for the BBC – I’m not sure what these facts tell us but it’s interesting to note that they remain constant throughout the author’s career!

The influences of Ruth Rendell and Iris Murdoch are much more overt here than they are in the later books, and Graham switches POV mid-paragraph, sometimes apparently unsure of who is speaking or thinking: this is toned down in later titles, but has always been the one weak point of her prose style. Nonetheless, Fire Dance is a good book, and a gripping read. I read it in a day.

This is not a romantic novel. No major couple survives the narrative (although the foreword warns us there will be a marriage, it becomes clear that it will be a rather dark, abusive one). It’s a psychological thriller about the twisting power of obsession. Kate, a rich and privileged woman, is obsessed with David, an older, widowed psychologist. David is obsessed with Anne, our unkempt, dead-behind-the-eyes protagonist. Anne is obsessed with a waxwork of Lord Byron – and we suspect, then know, that this has something to do with her father.

Perhaps this isn’t the most inviting or detailed plot summary – but to really experience the pleasure of Fire Dance is to read it. As a novel, it’s not going to set the Thames alight, but it isn't a bad read.