Ngaio Marsh – Vintage Murder

Tags

Book Review, Crime Fiction, Golden Age Crime, Inspector Alleyn, Inspector Alleyn Book 5, Ngaio Marsh, Vintage Murder

Murder by bubbly………..

Vintage Murder, Marsh’s 5th book in her Inspector Alleyn series, published in 1937 is, like the second one, Enter A Murderer, given a theatrical setting. This was of course the author’s true home anyway. As is the slightly surprising location of this one – New Zealand which is, again, Ngaio Marsh’s home. Just as the reader is getting used to Alleyn’s regular companions – ‘Brer’ Fox, Bailey and Thompson from the Yard and the bumptiously enthusiastic journalist Nigel Bathgate, we have to journey with Alleyn sans regulars, though assiduous readers will be pleased to see that the sensible character actress Susan Max, from book 2, is also ‘down under’ as one of the members of The Carolyn Dacres English Comedy Company, touring New Zealand. Alleyn, on extended recuperation leave from Scotland Yard following some kind of major operation (we are not party to his medical records) encounters the company and renews his acquaintance with Max on the train travelling to their first New Zealand performance in North Island. The urbane Alleyn gets to meet the company, and is invited to a celebratory back stage party.

Unfortunately as a death occurs, and is, of course, murder most horrid, and Alleyn was present at the scene of the crime, he begins as a witness and potential suspect, as the local police investigate. Quickly realising his impressive credentials – he is the author of the major manual for young Police Investigators in cop school – the locals are happy to have him join the investigating team. Far from viewing the locals as ‘hicks’ and crashing in with offensive superiority, there is a nice give and take between the New Zealand professionals and the Brit, with respect shown on both sides. Something I particularly like about Marsh is her relative freedom from the class and race attitudes which are rather prevalent in ‘Golden Age’ To be sure, prejudice does show, in attitudes towards another person present at the murder scene – a Maori physician – but Alleyn is interested to gain knowledge about a culture so very far from his own.

 

                               Maori tiki

Ngaio Marsh continues to delight me with her wonderful crafted writing, depth characterisation, fiendish by believable plotting. She gets better, so far, book on book, and has effortless wit and style in the person of the marvellous Alleyn.

I was particularly enchanted, in this book, by the inclusion of various sketches from Alleyn’s notebook – the ingenious mechanism by which murder most horrid was done, and the methodical method by which Alleyn records the precise sequence of events, movements of suspects, locations, motives, alibis and all

Alleyn continues to be a romantic at heart, rather susceptible on the inside to the charms of strong-minded, intelligent, sophisticated and vibrant artistic types. Here, leading lady Carolyn Dacres causes his heart to flutter, and he is susceptible. As in the second book, he is remarkably chivalrous, neither taking his position of power or his own allure for granted. Marsh allows him no bedroom scenes, his behaviour is proper, but he does feel he could easily fall under the spell of a woman of charisma, beauty and intelligence, even if, as he half suspects, he might be being played. I assume susceptibility to alluring actresses will not trouble him much longer, because Marsh is getting to the point in the series where Alleyn will soon meet his match and well-deserved destiny…………

What good fun she has. Unlike modern crime novels, there is a lack of grisly detail on the very bloody way violent death happens, which suits me fine, having a somewhat vivid imagination and delicate stomach!

Vintage Murder Amazon UK
Vintage Murder Amazon USA

Ngaio Marsh – Death in Ecstasy

Tags

Book Review, Crime Fiction, Death in Ecstasy, Golden Age Crime, Inspector Alleyn, Ngaio Marsh

The odour of not-quite-sanctity: Church as Country House Murder

So, continuing with my pleasant journey through Ngaio Marsh’s 33 Inspector Alleyn books, some of which I read in any old order back in the dim and distant days when my library carried a far wider range of books than they currently do. (Moans disconsolately that the Crime Fiction shelves seem to be filled with 50 Shades of Girls on Trains, and any number of the latest dismemberment of beautiful women by serial killers)

Back to Marsh, a much, much happier encounter, by a writer with her own clear voice, travelling her own journey, and not clonally copying

Death In Ecstasy is number 4 in the journey. It is a rare one, in that I am more aware of some of the mores and prejudices of the times – this one published in 1936 – which can be a little disturbing, unsettling or even, offensive to a reader of today. Though I do find Marsh, coming from outside the Establishment, and, moreover, from outside this country, has probably had a far wider exposure to more diverse humanity than some of the other ‘Golden Agers’ whom she is bracketed with. The specific discomfort in this one, a mild degree of homophobia – some of it passes as a kind of mildly spiteful camp humour, even delivered consciously by the gay guys – dancers, of course, but, a little more unsettling is Alleyn himself, Inspector Fox and Nigel Bathgate making disparaging comments – Bathgate describing one of the men as ‘loathly, nauseating, unspeakable little dollop’ – though I suppose that, as at that time, homosexuality was illegal, it would be a rare popular book (as perhaps, compared to more literary fare) who would positively present homosexual minor characters. At least Alleyn is less deliberate in his assessment, merely riposting ‘Horrid, wasn’t it?’ agreed Alleyn absently, – clearly thinking more fruitful thoughts about the crime investigation

There is, as is the case fairly often with Marsh, more than one investigation going on. The initial case concerns a murder taking place in a fringe, cult religious organisation. The journalist, Nigel Bathgate, a sometimes self-styled Watson to Alleyn’s Holmes, lives close by the mysterious charismatic church, and, on a bored whim, wonders what goes on in the building. He happens to witness a totally unexpected death, and quickly summons his friends from the Yard. And what a tangled web begins to unravel. With some nice nods to occultic quasi mysticism and unpleasant ideologies arising in Germany (as was indeed the case) the crime investigation begins to involve the usual suspects in murder cases – lust, sexual jealousy, greed, but there are various twists involved.

As ever, Marsh’s clear enjoyment of language, and her lovely, sometimes quite spiteful character drawing – as much down to her visual, artistic abilities as her writerly ones, plus her theatrical skills in crafting tight scenes are a delight :

Mrs Candour had wept and her tears had blotted her make-up again. Her face was an unlovely mess of mascara, powder and rouge. It hung in flabby pockets from the bone of her skull. She looked bewildered, frightened and vindictive. Her hands were tremulous. She was a large woman born to be embarrassingly ineffectual. In answer to Alleyn’s suggestion that she should sit on one of the chairs, she twitched her loose lips, whispered something and walked towards them with that precarious gait induced by excessive flesh mounted on French heels. She moved in a thick aura of essence of violet

Wonderful, cruel scalpel work, and I fear I shall be unable to view anyone whose girth really should have them avoiding heels, without inner snickering

To be fair, where Marsh assassinates, there is often good reason, and the reader is aware of characters who are unlovely at core. Though, as I work my way through her oeuvre, I am beginning to be a little more suspicious of some of the suspects Alleyn initially warms to

Meanwhile, for readers who share my liking of enthusiastic Nigel Bathgate, and his admiration of Angela North, enjoy him while you can, as his days are numbered as the series progresses. The in the Yard relationships are deepening, and also, as the series goes on, we learn more about Alleyn’s rather admirable personal life, and his close colleagues within the Police Force, not to mention relatives and others will mean that others will serve the purpose of foils, sources of alternative deductions, and a kind of sparring partner of wit and repartee. Shame I love all the developing friendships and other relationships, but will be sorry when Nigel is less central

Meanwhile given Marsh’s theatre history, I am more than sure that ‘Mrs Candour’ is a kind of nod towards Restoration Comedy, where often a character’s name will alert the audience to qualities that character does NOT possess, as is certainly the case here.

Death in Ecstasy Amazon UK
Death in Ecstasy Amazon USA

Ngaio Marsh – A Man Lay Dead; Enter A Murderer; The Nursing Home Murder

Tags

A Man Lay Dead, Book Review, Enter A Murderer, Golden-Age Crime Fiction, Inspector Alleyn, New Zealand author, Ngaio Marsh, The Nursing Home Murder

Golden Age Wit, Golden Age Murder, in different variations of closed, ‘ Country House’

Ngaio Marsh is the only Golden Age Crime Fiction author I genuinely adore. I have read her books intermittently, when lucky enough to find her in my local library, but she seems to have vanished from their shelves, pretty much, as these are now devoted to more lurid, modern crime fiction, and no longer seem to stock much ‘cosy’.

I don’t know whether it is because she begins writing a little later than Christie, Sayers or Allingham – mid 30s, rather than 20s, or because she came from outside the UK and outside the upper or upper middle class echelons which the other three came from, but I find her writing is less filled with some of the disturbing attitudes towards race and class which was certainly prevalent in the interwar years.

Marsh’s background was not particularly privileged – her father was a bank clerk. Her first passion was art and theatre, and she initially came to the UK in the late 20s from New Zealand, setting up an interior design shop. The first of her Inspector Alleyn books was published in 1934, though she had written it prior to her return to New Zealand in 1932. Beginning to write as the Depression takes hold, coming from another country, coming from a more ‘rogues and vagabonds’ outsider culture, perhaps all made for a slightly less jaundiced view of ‘people not like us’

Whatever the reason, although certainly her detective is crisp and aquiline, cool and educated, impeccably well-read and all the rest, he seems to be more at home in a wider social class, and is rather more of a team player, less the solitary, eccentric, maverick. He is also, to my mind, deliciously funny in a self-deprecating way. Part of the joy of Alleyn is that he doesn’t work alone. Relationships develop, both professional and personal, whether between him and those in his team – especially Inspector Fox (affectionately called Brer Fox by Alleyn) but also he inspires affection in his ‘plods’ and he trusts them, too – or, others whom he has friendships with, and who undertake, at times, investigations on his behalf.

I have begun to track down the books, in sequence and, true to form, downloading the first three – the 1934 A Man Lay Dead, and her two 1935 books, Enter A Murderer, and The Nursing Home Murder, I could not resist starting and finishing this at a running read, as the developing characters were a delight

Marsh’s first book is classically A Country House Murder. A young journalist, Nigel Bathgate, 25, is setting off with his older cousin, sophisticated, womanising Charles Rankin, to his first ever aristocratic country house party, at Frantock, Sir Hubert Handesley’s welcoming home. Handesley is cultured, good fun, and a renowned host. His gatherings are the last word in to die for. But, as the title suggests, death will be literal, not merely a figure of speech. Handesley’s gatherings always iinvolve games, and one of the most popular is ‘Murder’, where one of the guests will be designated the murderer, and once the pretend deed is done, everyone tries to discover who the murderer is.

Except, in this case, it really happens, and there are several possible culprits, and almost everyone has a motive. Sexual, monetary, not to mention political – a background of a secretive Russian society, and a mysterious vendetta, possibly involving a betrayal or two. Greed, sex, sexual betrayal, power.

Enter Marsh’s Detective – the wonderfully light touch, un-plodding, Roderick Alleyn. Alleyn can inspire a kind of adulation in those younger and older. Although his work brings him, of course, in touch with villains, and he has to suspect everyone, he seems to genuinely also like humanity. If he has a fault, it might be that he often warms as much to the perpetrators, in the likeable qualities they have, as well as he might warm to those without a murderous secret to hide.

Alleyn is both a sharp mind, and an ‘following an instinct’ detective – although he inclines most to the rational, and is wary of his instinct.

He also (hurrah!) likes women a lot – as people, and is particularly keen on intelligent, bright, forthright young women – and not as sexual fodder. Alleyn, when we meet him first, is a bachelor, without love interest on the horizon, and, in this book will form a working friendship with a man and a woman who will appear again in other books in the series

At his first appearance he was a bachelor and, although responsive to the opposite sex, did not bounce in and out of irresponsible beds when going about his job. Or if he did, I knew nothing about it. He was, to all intents and purposes, fancy-free and would remain so until, sailing out of Suva in Fiji……And that was still some half-dozen books in the future”

Marsh, in the introduction to this trilogy

The structure of the book (and indeed, the first 3) falls into 3 parts – the set up and dramatis personae at the ‘House Party’. Part 2, Enter the Detective, and the questioning and sifting of evidence. Part 3 – the reconstruction – very like the third act of a play, Alleyn nails the perpetrator by running the reconstruction, with a twist.

The second book Enter A Murderer, published in 1935, takes place in another kind of ‘closed society’ – in this case, it is theatrical, Marsh’s own roots. The setting is a West End production of a murder mystery play. Alleyn, together with the journalist Nigel Bathgate are in the audience of this hot theatrical hit. The lead actor is a chum from Bathgate’s University days. In front of the audience, in the middle of a highly dramatic scene where murder is being dramatised on stage, a real murder happens. Cue a wonderfully campy theatrical feast. The actors consummately act their ‘types’ in real life, as much as they do on stage :

Arthur Surbonadier called on Miss Stephanie Vaughan…and asked her to marry him. It was not the first time he had done so. Miss Vaughan felt herself called upon to use all her professional and personal savoir-faire. The scene needed some handling and she gave it her full attention.

‘Darling’ she said, taking her time over lighting a cigarette and quite unconsciously adopting the best of her six-by-the-mantelpiece poses

Its not just the lovely wit of Marsh, especially exemplified by Alleyn, the plotting is fiendish and fun, the genre itself is affectionately poked fun at by those investigating and those being investigated, the solution satisfying – and Alleyn himself also has compassion for those caught up in the events.

Book 3, The Nursing Home Murder also features Bathgate and Angela North his fiancée, whom we met in an earlier book. Bathgate, and Alleyn’s slightly strange almost hero worship father/son relationship is a real delight, as is Alleyn’s friendship with sharply intelligent Miss North. This book also returns to the political world of Book 1 – Russia, and a revolutionary society working towards the Proletariat Dawn, are set against draconian measures going through Parliament. The Home Secretary, Sir Derek O’ Callaghan, a man with some secrets to hide, is pushing a bill through the House. He has received several death threats. He is also very unwell and in a pretty lifeless marriage.

O Callaghan is rushed to hospital seriously ill, having delayed taking action on his health until he collapses. This is of course, well before the foundation of the NHS. O Callaghan does not survive his emergency operation. It becomes a distinct possibility that the death was not the result of leaving things too late before seeking medical intervention, and more likely that someone within another closed little world – the private hospital itself – might have hastened the shuffling off of his mortal coil. There are those with personal motivations – the usual; sex, money, revenge and there are also those who might have political and ideological motivations. Some of the thinking around ideologies being debated in the mid-30s make their way into this.

I thoroughly enjoyed my immersion into the first 3 of the Alleyn mysteries, and look forward to further progression in due course

I got this on Kindle download. It’s not a completely seamless, and error free digitisation.  There are some annoying paragraph and line hiccups, but no missing text. The price of the succeeding volumes rise quite sharply – there are 33 Alleyn books, published in 11 sets of 3 – and I have noted reviewers continue to mention some formatting problems. I’m intending on tracking down marketplace sellers and second hand, for the most part!

This collection also included an earlier short story by Marsh, not at all in the detective genre. As it involves a little girl in her bedroom on Christmas Eve I was really pleased when she heard footsteps outside the door that there was no need for a detective! It was a sweet and touching story.

Marsh’s books were turned into a BBC series with Patrick Malahide as Alleyn. It is one I will not be watching – not because i have any objection to Malahide;  it is more, that, searching for a sneak You Tube of a couple of the titles here, I find the adaptation has played fairly fast and loose with her books, transposing the third book to after the second world war, instead of between the wars – a quite different dynamic, and introducing what is hinted at in Marsh’s introduction, as occurring ‘some half-dozen books in the future’ into the first episode, thereby also eliminating a favourite character of mine, who ought to take a professionally assisting task, and demonstrate that Alleyn can form friendships with attractive young women without irresponsibly bouncing! I think Marsh might have turned me into a purist, on behalf of her engaging books!

Ngaio Marsh Collection 1 Amazon UK
Ngaio Marsh Collection 1 Amazon USA

Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time

Tags

Book Review, History, Josephine Tey, Richard III, The 1951 Club, The Daughter of Time, The Plantagenets, The Wars of The Roses

Making the past sing a relevant song

It has been a real delight to read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time again, as part of Kaggsy’s bookish rambling’s ‘1951 club’ I came across this first in my teens and it was one of those books which stayed with me, as one of my favourite books in the genre ‘Crime Fiction’ Probably because it wasn’t about fictional crime at all (but more, later) – I had a kind of squeam about loving descriptions of bludgeonings and hackings – but was about a historical mystery – so it might be, (it is!) educational as well as entertaining

Tey, a jolly good writer of mysteries and detection, fascinated by psychology, and not dwelling overmuch in bloody gore, uses the crime fiction genre to deconstruct a historical villain – or, at least, one who has come down to us as villain – Richard III. The one who had the innocent lamb sons of his brother, Edward IV, brutally done to death in the Tower. The vile and hunchbacked monster so memorably portrayed by Laurence Olivier in Shakespeare’s play of the same name:

Now is the win-ter of our dis-con-tent
Made glorious sum-mer by this son of York

There continues a soliloquy full of great self-loathing, bitterness and grimness, giving the psychology in a nutshell which will let the audience know the man is a monster and will be prepared for the most heinous of misdeeds

………………………………………………..I
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on my own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determin-ed to prove a villain.

Earliest surviving portrait, circa 1520, copy of a previous

Shakespeare, of course, our wonderful Shakespeare, was living in Tudor times, Specifically, Elizabethan. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, bluff King Hal, wife murderer, son of Henry VIIth, first Tudor, the one who had killed the vile Richard in 1485 ‘ ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse……..’ at the battle of Bosworth. Henry VII, saviour we are told, ended the ruination of The Wars of The Roses, uniting the Yorkists (of whose number Richard was) and the Lancastrians (of whom Henry was a distant claimant to be king) by marrying the lambkin princes’ sister Elizabeth. Hurrah, rescuing us all from the wicked Uncle Richard, who had murdered his nephews.

Except – Shakespeare takes his history from Holinshed, who takes his history from the sainted Sir Thomas More. Who lived through these times…….except, he was 5 when Richard came to the throne, and 8 when he died. Thomas More was a Tudor made man. And history, as we know, is written by the victors.

Interestingly the Shakespeare ‘I am a nasty piece of work’ opening soliloquy suggests prematurity

                                               sent before my time Into this breathing world

yet the equal and opposite ‘man was a monster’ myth was that his mother, Cecily Neville has been pregnant with him for 2 years and he was born with a full head of black hair and a mouth full of teeth!

Re-reading this marvellously entertainingly presented history lesson this time, forcefully struck me by its topicality. Tey does not just look at the creation of ‘false news’ in Richard’s time – or, to be more honest, in Henry’s time, but scattered through these pages is evidence of a lot more ‘false news’ some of it twentieth century, and always produced for political/power capital

She uses a great device here – her detective, Inspector Alan Grant, of Scotland Yard, is laid up in bed, flat on his back – for weeks – in hospital, following a severely broken leg, falling through a trap-door, chasing a villain.

This inevitably made me laugh a little wryly. This book was published in 1951. The NHS would have been very young. And perhaps Inspector Grant was quite unusual and maybe of some means. Laid up for weeks in hospital? In a private room? How times have probably changed. I doubt most Inspectors or most anyone would either find private insurance schemes keeping them in bed in a single room for some weeks. Okay, medicine has also moved on and perhaps a badly broken leg is otherwise more speedily mended

Alan Grant does, however, move amongst the cultured great and good, as a good friend is a celebrity West End actress, much admired, who visits him in hospital. Seeking to relieve his grumpy boredom, and knowing his interest in faces, she picks up a job lot of historical portrait photos from another good chum who works fairly high-up at the V + A. One of the portraits is of Richard, and Grant becomes fascinated by the mismatch between the historical monster and his face (mind you, the best known portrait was also painted around 100 years after his death!)

Tey slides in the historical information as Grant investigates (with a tame American researcher who looks like a woolly lamb) in a very easy to assimilate fashion, by the introduction of memorable well drawn secondary characters, including the hospital staff, with whom Grant can be ‘undry’

And the reader (well this one) becomes as eager to unravel a historical mystery as Grant.

Of course, it turns out that the theory Tey is proposing is not (and was not) a new one, at the time of her writing, but she probably did a lot to begin to rescue Richard’s reputation, because she was a popular crime fiction writer.

There have been, since, other historical writers – Alison Weir for one, – who challenge the conclusions Tey makes, many of which came from a 1906 book by Clements Markham.

I wonder how many people became fascinated by history, due to an early exposure to Tey’s book.

The writer herself was born Elizabeth Mackintosh and died in 1952 She had two pen names, Josephine Tey, as here, and as the playwright Gordon Daviot

This book has achieved enduring popularity, voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list compiled by the British Crime Writers’ Association, in 1990, and, in a 1995 American Poll of The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list compiled by the Mystery Writers of America it held the 4th position

The recent discovery of the skeleton buried under a Leicester car park, identified as Richard’s from mitochondrial DNA analysis comparison with a sample analysed from that of a known descendant ,  shows that Richard was not a hunchback (probable Tudor paint-the-monster invention). He did have scoliosis, a fairly common twisting of the spine away from a perfect perpendicular, but this would not (given the degree of it) been visible from observation of the clothed person

I can see how this book would particularly appeal to late teens and twenties readers, who often have a strong sense of the wrongs of injustice, as the whole search for ‘the truth’ by Grant, and his woolly lamb American researcher Brent Carradine, is ‘un-dry’ precisely because of the passionate intensity to right a wrong.

The Daughter of Time Amazon UK
The Daughter of Time Amazon USA

Colin Dexter – Last Bus to Woodstock

Tags

Book Review, Colin Dexter, Crime Fiction, Inspector Morse, Last Bus to Woodstock, Police Procedural

The first Morse and Lewis vehicle: Nothing to do with Joni Mitchell!

I have never read any of this series, and only ever caught one or two episodes of the TV series (though I might now watch as comparison, at some point), so it was interesting to come purely to the book. Where I found things to enjoy, and some things, not so much

The not so much can be encapsulated in a following quote. The crime to be unravelled is the rape and murder of a young woman, whose body is discovered in a car park. Inspector Morse is leading the investigation, and at one point, trying to disentangle events and clarify the identity of the murderer says to Sergeant Lewis:

Raping isn’t easy they tell me if the young lady isn’t too willing

Now I have no idea, given that this is the first in the series, whether this reflects the author’s belief at the time of writing (initially published in 1975), police thinking at the time, or Morse’s own erroneous belief, and whether this is something which will further develop. The statement is presented really without comment on it.

One of the things I did like very much was the absence of much gratuitous and violent sexual detail. Whilst I don’t think that a statement as above would get by without some character challenging or commenting on that statement, or authorial distance from it being obvious, something negative which has happened in intervening years in crime fiction is a lurid, titillating approach to sex and violence being wreaked upon women, the serial killer on the loose fiction genre. Graphic description seems commonplace, and is constantly ratchetted up. Dexter focuses here far less on indulging a kind of voyeuristic prurience, and far more on the more mainstream reasons why someone might be driven to murder.

Something else I liked enormously, is of course that this is indeed a novel of relationship and character, as much as police procedural, and it is easy to see why this did indeed make for an ongoing series of books, and of course, that TV series. Here is book 1 is already a wonderfully layered relationship getting going between Morse and Lewis, between someone who seems absolutely settled as a moral touchstone, and someone who perhaps struggles more with the challenges of what it means to be human, and in relationship with others.

And, (hurrah) shot through the grim business of dealing with crime on a daily basis, is of course the necessary leaven on humour. Sometimes this is given by characters, who have their own flashes of humour, and sometimes it is Dexter himself:

..studio 2 in Walton Street was presenting a double sexploitation bill whose titles were calculated to titillate even the most jaded appetite. The first, 20.0-3.05 p.m. was Danish Blue (not, judging from the mounds of female flesh that burst their bounds in the stills outside, a film about the manufacturing of cheese)

not to mention the following little gem:

the police car parked itself, with no objection from porters, orderlies or traffic wardens, on a broad stretch of concrete marked ‘Ambulances Only’. A policeman’s parking lot was sometimes not an unhappy one

Such lightly thrown wordplay as the last is likely to see me wanting to go further with this series. Yes, there is some slightly clunky writing, particularly in dialogue (as I think my first quote also shows) but The Last Bus to Woodstock kept me hooked and interested.

However……it is immediately obvious that there are remarkable differences between book and TV adaptation. Not least of which is the age differential between the two central characters. Morse is first introduced to us as a lightly built, dark-haired man. Various other descriptors suggest a younger man, not to mention one who wears a degree of testosterone on his sleeves!

Last Bus to Woodstock Amazon UK
Last Bus to Woodstock Amazon USA

Anthony Berkeley – The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Tags

Anthony Berkeley, Book Review, British Library Crime Classics, Classic Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Golden-Age Crime Fiction, Martin Edwards, The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Beware of the man bearing chocolates, no matter how tempting and soft-centred they seem…..

I was nudged forcefully towards this by a fellow blogger, Karen from Kaggsy’sBookish Ramblings, and surrendered without too much resistance. A book about chocolates! Even if they were advertised as being poisonous. I gently nibbled at chocolates I had bought myself, randomly plucked from hither and thither on the frequently re-stocked shelves of my favourite chocolatiers, as I settled into this delicious Golden Age Crime, with updates

The Poisoned Chocolates Case is part of the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards – who provides a delectable coda to the case (more later)

Anthony Berkeley – one of the pen names of Anthony Berkeley Cox – wrote a series of books with his central character Roger Sheringham, a classic ‘amateur detective’. In real life Berkeley, a journalist as well as detective story writer, was one of the founder members of the Detection Club, along with several major crime writers of the interwar years, including Agatha Christie.

Berkeley plays with that idea in Poisoned Chocolates, and, in fact, predates it as Roger Sheringham is the founder member of the Crimes Circle club, a select group of 6 with an interest in criminology who meet together to discuss crimes and crime writing

A Murder has been committed by Chocolate. Sir Eustace Pennefather, unpleasant, irascible lecher and seducer, is sent a box of chocolates by one of the major confectionery firms catering to the sophisticated and wealthy. The confectioners are asking for his patronage, wanting him to ‘test and review’ a new range. Pennefather is clearly no chocolate aficionado as the solicitation infuriates him and he is on the verge of binning the box. (Question: why has no purveyor of only the very best, dark chocolates not contacted me to ask if I would like a steady supply of Advance Review chocolates??) By chance, another member of Pennefather’s club is present when the chocolates arrive. Graham Bendix had lost a bet he had made with his wife Joan, on the solution of a murder mystery play. Joan had guessed correctly and Bendix’s forfeit is a box of chocolates. Sir Eustace gives Bendix the box, and Bendix takes them home to Joan. Unfortunately, the chocolates which were intended for Sir Eustace were poisoned. Greedy Joan eats several, despite the fact that they taste a bit odd,  and painfully dies.

Joan Bendix was not so serious-minded as not to have a healthy interest in good chocolates

As is almost always the case in these Golden Age cosies, the police are stumped. Chief Inspector Moresby comes, vaguely helmet in hand, to Roger Sheringham. The Crimes Circle, wonderfully delineated, one and all,  decide to solve the murder. Each of them, on successive nights, will present their conclusions to the rest of the club, who will assess the solution for its possible integrity.

Mrs Fielder-Fleming, a short, round, homely-looking woman who wrote surprisingly improper and most successful plays and looked exactly like a rather superior cook on her Sunday out…….Mr Ambrose Chitterwick blinked his mild blue eyes and assumed the appearance of an intelligent nanny-goat

This offers a marvellous selection of 6 possible solutions, with each member coming up with different motives, different suspects, different important clues and methods of investigation and analysis. Much fun is had, and this might almost be a kind of workshop for aspiring crime writers, except that Berkeley has great fun in playing with the various tropes of the genre, creating some fabulous characters, and writing with verve and dry humour.

You don’t want to sell anything?” asked the maiden suspiciously. Impregnated with all that is best in the go-ahead spirit of English business methods, she naturally looked with the deepest distrust on anybody who might possibly wish to do such an unbusinesslike thing as sell her firm something

It is also a reflection of quite an insular upper class society, where everyone knows everyone – they all go to the same plays, hotels, dinners, restaurants,  use the same ‘purveyors of fine whatever’ as each other.

I ‘m definitely going to investigate more by Berkeley, his writing is sophisticated and playful, and each individual voice was well-delineated. It was good fun to have each plausible sounding conclusion roundly debunked by rival members of the circle pressing their own better solution. Of course, the reader very quickly gets themselves in on the joke as they can’t help but try to solve the mystery themselves. The book ends with a rather pleasing question mark, which has allowed for a further ‘solution’ A later crime writer from the seventies Christianna Brand had provided another interpretation for an American reprint. To be honest, I found Brand’s ‘solution’ heavy-handed and lacking in the light-touch sophisticated sly wit of Berkeley’s six stories. And the particular ‘voice’ she chose to take further, one of Berkeley’s characters, did not even sound remotely like the character he had created,

Fortunately, Martin Edwards, editor of the whole series was invited by the publisher to provide an additional solution of his own. And, Bravo, Mr Edwards, not only does he provide yet another wonderful trope of the genre, but he holds Berkeley’s writing voice excellently, and each of the characters whom we have already met continue with the voices and style Berkeley created for each of them. Edward’s tale is like the cherry on the perfectly made, perfectly iced cake, or the star on top of a beautifully decorated Christmas tree. An Olé! moment, for sure. I felt like clapping.

A most enjoyable read for the festive season, a real divertissement. Perfact accompaniment……..a plate of lightly steamed spiniach…(look, this is a crime book review, so its not going to be the most obvious suspect, now, is it?? Pay attention!

The Poisoned Chocolates Case Amazon UK
The Poisoned Chocolates Case Amazon USA

Anthony Horowitz – Magpie Murders

Tags

Anthony Horowitz, Book Review, Classic Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Golden-Age Crime Fiction, Magpie Murders

5 stars for Atticus Pünd and another 5 stars for his careful editor Susan Ryeland

Susan Ryeland is a literary editor for Cloverleaf Books, a small, independent publisher whose success is primarily dependent on one man, ‘Golden-Age’ crime writer Alan Conway. Well, to be properly precise, Golden-Age-Crime-Genre writer, as Conway, like the rest of us, lives in modern times. Conway, of course, is the author of the hugely successful Atticus Pünd series of detective novels, and the series is an homage to Agatha Christie, amongst others, in many ways. A BBC TV series is pending, and the latest book in the series, Magpie Murders, is enticingly waiting for Ryeland’s editing work to start.

Ms Ryeland introduces herself, and then the first half of the book which you might be considering reading is Conway’s manuscript, as submitted to Cloverleaf Books. It’s helpful to keep that in mind, as you peruse, as the book entitled Magpie Murders, by the author Anthony Horowitz, also has much involvement from Susan!

Sometimes, authors play tricks games and deceptions on their readers, and we resent untoward, unsubtle manipulations, and sometimes – as here – the more we are tricked, distracted, deceived and toyed with, the more we love it, gasping at authorial audacity, crowing with delight as rug after rug is whipped from under us, and as every clue we cry ‘AHA!!! ‘about turns out to be a herring of reddish hue, we want to applaud the author for his cleverness and our own naïveté

This is a most delicious romp. I can’t really say more, because I think the less the reader knows about the journey Horowitz will take them on, the more they may enjoy it. He is a consummate craftsman of the genre, and it was a complete delight to surrender to his writerly skills

All I would say, is that the decision to allow to Susan introduce herself first is an extremely good one, stylistically. It prevents the sort of sudden tricksy surprises an author might spring which leave the reader feeling cheated – information which should have been revealed, withheld by authorial contrivance, only. And what it also does is create an interesting double perspective right at the start, and reads one way, with another reading possibility lurking whisperingly in the mind.

I enjoyed this so much that I could hardly bear to put the book down, and was also MAKING myself only read in short bursts, as I really wanted to prolong the pleasure for as long as possible.

If you are an aficionado of Golden-Age Crime writing, particularly Christie, I expect you will enjoy it even more, due to the little synchronicities which you will recognise. But, fear not, because if these pass you by, because you aren’t familiar enough, (they did me!) Ms Ryeland is remarkably helpful so that the innocent can still appreciate the jokes!

There is also some no doubt helpful advice, for those plotting their own detective novels, from Ryeland’s years of appreciation of the genre, and the editorial skills she brings to bear on her work, when reading submissions from prospective authors:

If there is one thing that unites all the detectives I’ve ever read about, it’s their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks necessary questions but he doesn’t actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn’t trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It’s a relationship based entirely on deception and it’s one that ultimately, goes nowhere.

I received this, as an ARC, from the publisher via NetGalley. And have to say, to my huge joy, given the subject matter, there were quite a lot of formatting and typo mistakes. Not having seen the ‘out on the shelves’ version, I can’t say whether these are deliberate or not, but they did add to the fun for me, rather than irritate!

Let me leave the last word to the erudite, literary Ryeland:

I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it

And the designer of that delectable cover should be commended, something Kindlers miss

The final word will be mine, after all: those amongst us who are a little squeamish about dripping-with-gore-crime-fiction, rest assured that though there are a couple of quick arresting images which might cause those who are easy visualisers to become a bit squeamy for a moment, this is not lovingly dwelled on – we are, after all, in Golden-Age territory before serial slashers and their ilk began predictably stalking the pages of crime fiction, casually dismembering women (particularly beautiful ones)

Magpie Murders Amazon UK
Magpie Murders Amazon USA

Tana French – The Trespasser

Tags

Book Review, Crime Fiction, Dublin, Irish writer, Tana French, The Trespasser

Dark, twisty and immersive, just as the reader expects from Tana French!

Tana French’s eagerly waited for Dublin Murder Squad 6 did not disappoint.

For those unfamiliar with her writing, she is a literary fiction writer, subject or territory, crime fiction. Where her lit fic credentials are clear is not only in the excellence of her writing itself, but specifically because it is character and relationship, not to mention the fact that her books have larger themes than the particular story unfolding, rather than plot which is the driver. However, for sure she knows how to keep her readers turning pages, wanting as surely as her detectives do, to unravel the crime. However – if your wish is for a speedier whodunit, howdunit, whydunit, her books might be less grippingly pursued by crime fiction fans, as the dead ends and the solves going nowhere, not to mention the turning towards solutions and the ratchet of tension take their time.

For those who are already firm French fans, this is one to be hugely enjoyed, even if, for this reader, it does not quite touch the giddy heights of Broken Harbour and The Secret Place, books 4 and 5.

As in all her previous books, there is a crime, and that crime will be much more than it seems. Though it will be a murder which has happened to an individual or individuals, the crime will have echoes which happen wider, in the cultural time and place it arose within. French’s original approach is to follow a particular detective or pair of detectives in each book. It is as if the entire Dublin Force is like a chorus, out of which the leading player or players will emerge, and through their investigation, the reader, their colleague or colleagues and the central character themselves, will gain self-knowledge, often painfully

The Trespasser begins with the investigation of what appears to be a murder due to domestic violence. Aisleen Murray, a single woman, but with the table set for a candle-lit dinner a deux, appears to have been punched in the face and hit her head on the fireplace as she fell backwards. Identifying her projected dinner guest, easily done, would seem to nail the suspect. Except, of course, that there is a more tangled trail to follow.

The centre stage detectives in this one are the two from her previous book, The Secret Place. Antoinette Conway and Steve Moran, unwillingly working together for the first time in that book, are now an established professional pairing. Sort of. Both have their histories. Conway, the senior, is wrong, or has always been made to feel wrong, on several counts. Firstly, her gender. Secondly she is mixed race, possibly of Arabic, possibly South American origin – her birth certificate says ‘father unknown’. She is a fighter, bitter, angry, does not suffer fools and takes no prisoners. To say she has chips on her shoulders is an understatement, but the chips have arisen from experience – particularly from the misogyny, overt and covert, from others in the squad. Conway does not need people to like her, or that is what she projects.

Moran is very different, charming and a people pleaser, but there is a suspicion, and some background, which shows him to be hugely ambitious and possibly not above using charm to advance his career. That was certainly what Conway thought of him when they first started working together. The two are a natural for a hard cop soft cop pairing. The cynical, distrustful Conway – who is the first person narrator of this, and the much smoother, emollient seeming Moran, have formed a professional working friendship and respect for each other, unlikely though that might seem for both of them. It has partly formed from the excitement both feel, and the ambition both have, for being detectives in the murder squad. Or, in Conway’s narration:

Murder isn’t like other squads. When it’s working right, it would take your breath away: it’s precision-cut and savage, lithe and momentous, it’s a big cat leaping full-stretch or a beauty of a rifle so smooth it practically fires itself. When I was a floater in the General Unit, fresh out of uniform, a bunch of us got brought in to do the scut work on a murder case, typing and door-to-door. I took one look at the squad in action and I couldn’t stop looking. That’s the nearest I’ve ever been to falling in love

And, perhaps the trajectory of this book is a kind of love story going wrong, a devastation of love. Conway is well past seeing anything through rose-tinted spectacles. Her acerbic dismissive view of the world and most of those in it is clear, even in her first thoughts about the murder victim

She’s on her back, knock-kneed, like someone threw her there. One arm is by her side; the other is up over her head, bent at an awkward angle. She’s maybe five seven, skinny, wearing spike heels, plenty of fake tan, a tight-fitting cobalt-blue dress and a chunky fake-gold necklace. Her face is covered by blond hair, straightened and sprayed so ferociously that even murder hasn’t managed to mess it up. She looks like Dead Barbie

Something I’m beginning to see is a pattern in French’s very different books, is that the crime her particular detective is investigating will be something of a catalyst for them – there will be something which will push the investigator’s button big time, some kind of psychological resonance.

I just hope she is well along in writing book 7, and am wondering who will make their way out of the chorus in that one

I originally ‘found’ French thanks to a couple of bloggers, firstly Jane of Beyond Eden Rock, but who at the time alerted me to Broken Harbour on her earlier blog, Fleur In Her World and secondly, Cleopatra at Cleopatra Loves Books who seduced me into chasing down The Secret Place. Now I’m needing no urging and at the front of any queue baying for a new Tana French book!

I received this both as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK and as a digital review from NetGalley. This review will hopefully whet interest – the book is published on 22nd September in the UK and on the 4th October in the States

The Trespasser Amazon UK
The Trespasser Amazon USA

Marcus Sedgwick – Mister Memory

Tags

Book Review, Crime Fiction, Fin-de-Siècle, Marcus Sedgwick, Mister Memory, Paris

“Memory…given to us in order that we may learn, understand and build upon our previous achievements”

I first came to Marcus Sedgwick from a chance find of one of his children’s books, Blood Red, Snow White, in a charity shop. Sedgwick is a magnificent writer, mainly for the YA market, managing a deft balance between page-turning plot, fascinating, complex character, crafted writing, and balancing sometimes complex themes. Blood Red Snow White was typical Sedgewick, based on the real-life story of children’s writer Arthur Ransome, taking in fairy-story and its tropes, and, where Ransome crossed world events, the Russian Revolution, a love story, and espionage.

A couple of years ago, he wrote his first book for adults, the absorbing A Love Like Blood, a very different take on the over-crowded, often drearily repetitive vampire-lit market. Which I normally avoid like the plague, except when a proven, rather lit-ficcy writer strays into the territory. So I was eager to jump at the chance of Mister Memory.

Set in post-Commune Paris, at the tail end of the nineteenth century, this is – with many, many genuinely shocking, genuinely apposite twists, several things : a tale of corruption and sexual scandal in high places; a police procedural, not to mention police cover up; a political thriller; a murder mystery; an exploration of theories of ‘mind medicine’ at the time, and a unpicking of memory itself, its mysterious workings, and philosophical reflections about it.

That’s one of the ways in which powerful men become powerful; they do despicable things, and if they get away with it, then stories are rewritten, facts are ignored. History, as we know, is written by the victor

The story, recounted through 3 viewpoints, is this: ‘Mister Memory’ himself, Marcel Després, a man who can forget nothing he reads or experiences, Inspector Petit, a man with tragedy in his past, and Doctor Morel, elderly ‘Alienist’ at the Salpêtrière hospital for those seen as mentally impaired. The third person narrator/author guides us overall.

 Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrating hysteria in a patient at the Salpetriere. Lithograph after P.A.A. Brouillet, 1887. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Commons, Wiki

Marcel, returning early from his ‘Mister Memory’ cabaret act, finds his flirtatious, sexy cabaret dancer wife in flagrante delicto with one of her many admirers. In jealous rage, he shoots her dead, an immediately gives himself up to the police. Petit, investigating the crime is astonished to discover that, far from going through normal channels of police procedure, trial and sentence, Marcel has instead immediately been whisked away to the Salpêtrière. Motivated by a personal desire to see proper justice done, as he perceives it – the death penalty, or at least transportation to the ‘dry guillotine’ (Devil’s Island) Petit begins an off-the-cuff investigation. Initially he thinks he is carrying out normal procedures, but is inexplicably and heavily warned off the case. Meanwhile, Doctor Morel, a rather dry, unempathic clinician, is fascinated by the opportunities Marcel presents, in terms of scientific understanding of the mind and its processes.

Devil’s Island, made infamous by the true Dreyfus Affair, and even more so by the largely fictional book, Papillon, adapted into a film with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman

I found this a generally very absorbing, and at times, genuinely jaw-dropping in shock and surprise, read (for the right reasons)

I have some reservations, mainly because I felt that Sedgwick, in this one, offered fewer over-arching reflections for me to think about. Though there were a few of these, he generally sews more of them seamlessly into his books.

This was also a little over-long, even at only 326 pages. There were times when the various investigations and unravellings – Petit’s, Dr Morel’s, and Marcus’-through-Dr Morel, lumbered a little. But there were always those jaw-drop moments to absolutely gather and drive renewed forward momentum in my reading.

Not to mention some passages, in the light of present political happenings, which made me wince and wryly shiver:

Do you know what memory is for?……… Most people, if you ask them, will tell you that memory is about the past – it is, after all about remembering things that have happened. But that is not what memory is for. The ability to recall past events is a mere by-product of what memory does for us. It was given to us….in order that we might be able to negotiate the future……That is what memory is about: the future, not the past. The future.

I finished my reading of this on the Hundred Year Anniversary of the battle of the Somme. In sombre mood

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK. It will be published in the UK on hard and digital on July 14th, but sadly it looks as if Statesiders will only have access to this on the Kindle on that date – hard publication is showing as 2017.

Mister Memory Amazon UK
Mister Memory Amazon USA

Cecilia Ekbäck – In the Month of the Midnight Sun

Tags

Book Review, Cecilia Ekbäck, Crime Fiction, In the Month of the Midnight Sun, Lapland

“We are as braided into this mountain as it is braided into us”

I had been very impressed, albeit with some reservations, by Cecilia Ekbäck’s first novel, Wolf Winter, set in 1717 in what was Swedish Lapland. The author created a mysterious, darkly menacing, isolated settlement in Blackäsen Mountain. Wolf Winter was for the most part, literary and historical fiction, but with crime at its heart. Ekbäck seemed both more interested, and more successful, in exploring interesting themes – specifically the tension between two very different kinds of community Swedish, Christian, ‘modern’ European and the Lapps, whose traditions were different, shamanic, more united as ‘outsiders.’ She also had a major focus on the disparities of power between men and women, and how women of independent outlook might survive in earlier times where opportunities were very restricted. One of her many strengths was a connection to place itself, landscape as a central driver of plot and a central relationship for character.

So I was particularly pleased to see that with her second novel she returned to the powerful, brooding Blackäsan mountain, and even more delighted to see that this was not going to be any kind of sequel – place remains the constant, but almost 150 years have passed. We are recognisably in a more modern, industrial era, but though there have been political changes, the potential conflicts between the Swedish settlers and the now Christianised, still nomadic Lapps, and their not completely eradicated, older, shamanic traditions, still exist. And the role of women has become even more complex. The Author’s note at the back of the book sets the historical background – from the middle of the 1850s there was a growing women’s movement, making demands for economic justice and the right to vote (which didn’t happen till 1921). There is also a very negative view of the Sami people (the Lapps), by the Swedish population

As in Wolf Winter, Ekback’s strengths are much in evidence – setting, complex and believeable individual psychology and group psychology, and events taking place in the lives of individuals in a wider context. Strong characterisation, and a generally hypnotic, absorbing narrative. Character development, unpredictability, and a powerful sense of ancient, inexplicable forces. The sense of time and place are strong.

Unfortunately, as with Wolf Winter, what was heading for sure five star all through fell off target for me in roughly the last 40 pages. At the heart of the story is savage crime, and, set within an isolated, very cut off community, everyone is suspect. Though there is no detective, central characters, 2 outsiders are drawn into trying to solve a continuing, dark, violent crime. And in the closing stages of the novel solving the crime, understanding its gestation and chilling history, as the spotlight turns on person after person and the body count rises, proved far less interesting than the absorption of all that had gone before.

Ekbäck is far more interesting and accomplished a writer of literary fiction, than she is a crime writer, but the selling/marketing of the book is ‘Nordic Noir’. The ratchet up of violence and the solving of the mystery, for this reader, would have benefitted from greater simplicity, rather than complexity.

Nordic Sami People, Lavvu, circa 1900, Wiki Commons

The story is told first person in 4 voices. Magnus Stille, an upright, scientifically minded man, working for the Swedish Board of Mines is on an assignment to investigate Blackäsen for the possibility of mining for iron ore. Foisted onto him at the eleventh hour by his father-in-law, is his disgraced, rebellious, psychologically damaged young sister-in-law, Lovisa. The third voice, third central character is ‘Ester’, whose original, Sami name before being Christianised is Biija. She is an elderly woman, recently widowed. Her tribe have gone to their summer pastures, she remains, mourning. And there is a fourth voice, whose identity reveals itself more slowly.

I don’t believe anything is ‘meant to be’. I don’t believe in destiny in that way.

But should you act or speak, there will be a response. You neglect something and that has consequences too. The universe responds.

And so, wherever we find ourselves – whether we like it or not, whether we join or not; we are a part of the unfolding of events.

I have a couple of ‘not quite convinced’ feelings about the narrative voices. Although absolutely each character is beautifully delineated and clear I was not always hearing 3 distinct voices in the ‘I’ of each narrator, the voice in the head. And (though I came to understand the rationale for this rather more by the end of the book) I was not quite convinced of the propriety of Karl Rosenblad, the State Minister of Justice, and Magnus Stille’s father-in-law, sending his disgraced, and in his eyes, morally depraved daughter Lovisa, away to journey with her brother-in-law. It was certainly something which all those they encountered in Blackäsen, and on the journey there, found extremely odd and ‘not quite right’ Lovisa is a most interesting character, it was just that I found myself musing about received proprieties.

Ekbäck’s first novel was set in winter on Blackäsen mountain, where the darkness was menacing and harsh. Here, it is the light – the eeriness of June, and perpetual daylight

Another night and I can’t sleep. How can anyone, in this perpetual sunshine? Without blinds, the light floods the room, makes my soul itch, and my legs ache. It can’t continue like this. I haven’t slept since I set out on my journey

I do recommend this, and will certainly be very keen to read Ekbäck’s next novel, but hope that she is not marketed, and indeed, that she does not think of herself as a Nordic Noir writer. The genre aspect I think is more of a bind on her writing

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK. It will be published, UK and Stateside on June 16th

In the Month of the Midnight Sun Amazon UK
In the Month of the Midnight Sun Amazon USA