Ngaio Marsh – Death at the Bar

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Book Review, Classic Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Death at the Bar, Golden-Age Crime Fiction, Inspector Alleyn Book 9, Ngaio Marsh

Murder In The Sticks

Ngaio Marsh’s 9th outing for Roderick Alleyn, Chief Detective Inspector of the C.I.D, originally published in 1939, sees him and the trusty Foxkin motoring down to deepest darkest Devon, called thither by an upper class rubicund shouty District Chief Constablle : Colonel The Honourable Maxwell Brammington. A murder (of course) has been committed and it has proved an effort too far for the local super – who also knows Alleyn, from yore – to solve

I must confess I enjoyed this a little less than most of my previous romps with Alleyn and his coterie. This might have been partly because, this time, the great man is only accompanied by Fox. The other regulars from his team are lacking, as is Nigel Bathgate, his sometimes a little foolish Watsonish foil, who can always be relied on to excitedly draw the wrong conclusions for the solving of the puzzle, and allow the witty, urbane and ferociously intelligent Alleyn to have some fun (with Fox) when true revelation is laid out before the reader. It might also be that on this one, I was a little more aware of the challenges offered by the prejudices of the times – primarily, class, and an automatic superiority of upper class Toryism, and the foolishness, not to mention, the somewhat distastefulness of those uppity working classes who get above themselves with a belief in socialism.

So…….to the fiendish and clever murder which Alleyn will solve, not to mention our cast of suspects, murderer and victim, already on the scene before the crime haps, and our trusty Alleyn and Fox arrive to shed light on darkness – it is thus (no spoilers)

Nothing whatsoever to do with Ngaio Marsh, but this 1949 Kitty Wells song has the same title, and the player looks suitably vintage

A group of impeccable uppercrusts, a KC, his cousin, a highly admired and well known actor, and their mutual friend, ditto hightly admired etc landscape and portrait painter always go away for a few days holiday, painting, walking, chatting et al to an absolutely out of the way Devonian hamlet. They stay in a particular hostelry, the landlord is a suitably forelock tugging, dialect speaking, rustic and loyal working class salt-of-the-earth Tory, However, being 1939, a well established ‘Left Movement’ has also been gaining sway. The landlord’s son is a member, it even employs a treasurer and secretary, has quite a few members, funds etc. There are no tugged forelocks and the members of the society who are regulars at the pub just might not take kindly to knowing their places. Also on the scene is a local femme fatale, so we might have several reasons for emotions to run high. Completing the cast are a couple of easy comedy types : a local Devonian oo-ar lush, complete with funny dialect, and a holidaying and eccentric Irishwoman, an impeccable Hon, but comedy turn Oirish, to be sure, to be sure, also. Local rustics of regions cue for comedy turns and slightly superior laughter.

The crime and its fiendish solving is ingenious as ever, but I missed the various developing relationships between Alleyn and his fellow professionals, and the incursion of Alleyn’s private life, and how his professional and private worlds relate to each other. There is a very enjoyable sequence where the good and warm friendship between Alleyn and Fox, and the understated respect and love they have for each other, is shown, but I did feel (perhaps wrongly) that this particular one was much more Marsh-by-numbers, written from the surface of her work, rather than inside her lovely creations. 4 stars, still, enjoyable, but not as MUCH as normal

Death at the Bar Amazon UK
Death at the Bar Amazon USA

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Anthony Berkeley – The Poisoned Chocolates Case

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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

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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

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding – The Blank Wall

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Book Review, Classic Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, The Blank Wall

From conventional wife and mother to a suspect in murder investigations

I came across Elisabeth Sanxay Holding through the site of a blogger who writes about Film Noir, John Grant’s fascinating Noirish and a further site where he was interviewed, (alas I have lost the link) and he mentioned her as a writer of quality noir.

And she is, on this reckoning. An American novelist, born in 1889 married to a Brit, she started out as a writer of romantic novels, moving to the hardboiled detective genre after the 1929 stock market crash, for lucrative reasons – a popular selling genre! Not to mention, a genre she clearly had a talent for. She created a quiet, thoughtful detective in Lieutenant Levy, who features in this novel, though he is far from the central character.

No less a hardboiled detective supremo than Raymond Chandler rated Holding hugely

The Blank Wall, written in 1947, and set during the Second World War, particularly fascinated me because the central character, a middle aged woman, Lucia Holley, is such a very unlikely candidate to become embroiled in not one, but two murder investigations

Lucia’s husband Tom is away in the war. She writes conventional, dull letters to him

Lucia Holley wrote every night to her husband, who was somewhere in the Pacific. They were very dull letters, as she knew; they gave Commander Holley a picture of a life placid and sunny as a little mountain lake.

“Dear Tom,” she wrote. “It is pouring rain tonight”

She crossed it out, and sat for a moment looking at the window where the rain slid down the glass in a silver torrent. There’s no use telling him that, she thought. It might sound rather dreary. “The crocuses are just up” she wrote.

You get the picture, Lucia is conventional; Lucia is rather dull. She is a kind, loyal to her family kind of woman. She is a quite well off woman, normal, comfortable. She would probably be living the American Dream were it not for the war, which sees her raising her two children and taking care of her elderly father, all by herself. She is most definitely not the kind of woman to go breaking the law. Her two children, Bee, and her younger brother David are either slap bang in the middle of rebellious late adolescence or about to enter that state. They both hold their mother in slight or extreme contempt, precisely because she is so very conventional.

    An earlier cover

Bee has begun some kind of liaison with a most unsuitable older man. He is married, but that is far from the only unsuitable thing about him. Nothing has really happened, but he is not the sort of man Bee should be involved with, and Lucia, conventional though she may be, is prepared to be tigerish in defence of her children. She has had some kind of a warning show down with Ted Darby, the unsuitable man, to try to persuade him against seeing Bee.

Darby has other plans however, and is using Bee for his own ends. And others may be using Darby for their particular reasons.

Through her connection to her children, conventional Lucia finds herself embroiled with the kind of people she would never normally meet – a criminal world.

Holding is really exploring what might make anyone cross over to the other side of the law, and the tension gets turned up and continues to rise precisely because Lucia IS so law abiding and conventional by nature and nurture, so she is constantly shocked by herself, discovering that the person she always thought she was is not the person she really is, when pushed to the limits.

This is the kind of crime writing I enjoy most – the psychology of ordinary people finding themselves in extraordinary situations. Holding is superb on relationship, superb on characterisation; it is these that drive plot. She does not dwell in loving detail on the gruesome grisly blow by blow accounts of violence, the vulnerability of damaged flesh; her interest is in the ensuing vulnerability of psyche.

This book, republished by the excellent Persephone Press, gave rise to not one, but two noir films:

 Joan Bennett, James Mason : The Reckless Moment

Firstly, 1949’s Max Ophuls’ film, The Reckless Moment starring Joan Bennett as Lucia, and the wonderful James Mason as Martin Donnelly, one of the wider circle associated with Ted Darby, who is central in the story. The film exists in sections on You Tube, here is the first of 6

A very loose adaptation, updated for a more modern audience was released as The Deep End in 2001. Starring Tilda Swinton and directed by David Siegal and Scott McGehie the story now concerns a mother whose teenage son, not daughter, is having a relationship with the unsuitable older man with shady connections

    Tilda Swinton : The Deep End

I found Holding’s book taut, well written and absorbing. If at times Lucia’s conventional passivity was frustrating, and her sense of herself involved in things a woman like her just doesn’t do, that is purely down to the fact that these times are different from those times, and Lucia’s conventional naiveté would have been normal and expected.

The Blank Wall Amazon UK
The Blank Wall Amazon USA

Patricia Highsmith – Strangers On A Train

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American Noir, Book Review, Classic Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Patricia Highsmith, Strangers On A Train

How to plan the Perfect Murder

Strangers On A Train, is, as is usual with a Highsmith novel, intriguing.

Two men meet by chance on a long, overnight, train journey.

Wealthy, dissolute, needy, alcoholic Charles Bruno is classically and dysfunctionally Oedipal. He hates his father, and is unusually close to his mother who is doting and overindulgent. Bruno has achieved nothing in his life, and is progressively wasting it, surrendering to infantile ragings and sulkings, unable to take responsibility for himself. He is nevertheless a man of high intelligence, possessed of a curious puppydoggish charm, with an odd sort of compulsive charisma which can overpower seemingly stronger characters.

Guy Haines is his (seemingly) polar opposite. He is a rising star in the world of architecture. A man of vision in his field, he is creative, dynamic, self-motivated, hard-working, innovative and highly ambitious. He is clarity and light to Bruno’s muddy, confused formlessness. However, Guy does have one seemingly fatal mistake in his past – an early marriage to a chaotic, feckless and unsuitable woman. The reason for Guy’s presence on the train is he is travelling to Metcalf in order to insist that Miriam gives him the divorce he has been after for so long, and which she is withholding. And this despite the fact that the marriage ended due to her infidelities. Guy is intending to marry his true soulmate, Anne, a woman who is his own source of lightness – self-motivated, warm, creative, balanced and intelligent. She embodies the clarity, reason and intelligence he aspires to develop still further in himself.

So what could two such dissimilar men find to connect them together, following a passing-the-time conversation on a long journey?

Bruno unveils a fantasy, a seemingly offensive and ridiculous idea – the two men, who are thrown together by chance, unknown to each other, unlikely to ever meet again, should commit the perfect, because motiveless, murder for each other. Bruno will kill Miriam; Guy, Bruno’s father. Now of course upright, cerebral, reasoning, Plato-reading Guy recognises that Bruno is a little deranged, and quite pathetic………….

Farley Granger (Guy) and Robert Walker (Bruno) in the Hitchcock film

Clearly things are going to happen, and the central relationship in the book will be that between the two diametrically opposed men, one `good’ one `bad’, one strong and one weak. And it is the subtly insidious changeover between the two, how the weak becomes strong, and the strong weakened. Highsmith is always fascinatingly deeply delving into dark psychology, into the shadow self, and is terrific on sabotaged lives, particularly where the sabotage is self administered.

She sets up from the start the reader to be on the side of the upright Guy, who is always referred to in narration by his first name, just as in the third person narration sociopath Bruno is distanced from us, the reader, by using his surname.

What I particularly like about Patricia Highsmith’s take on characters who are dysfunctional, or journeying to become so, is that not only is she excellent in winding up the tension higher and higher, but she makes the reader collude in deviant and aberrant behaviour. Even in Strangers on a Train the reader may find that they want one of the murderers to get away with their horrible crime. In some ways `Strangers’ almost acts as a precursor to her later series with a wonderfully charming plausible villain – Tom Ripley, in the Ripley series of books. What is dreadful is that we want Ripley to succeed, she makes us party to events, and makes us identify with Ripley. In `Strangers’, Bruno, the sociopath, is too much of a loser for that to happen, we sit inside Guy’s head as he steadily departs from his upright path and comes closer and closer to inhabiting `Bruno world’

It took me some time to finish this book – my hands were sweating too much, and I was feeling too nauseous and anxious. As this was a re-read, I knew what was going to happen. It’s Highsmith’s skill that it is the why and the how of the story which work so well , not only the `what happens next and in the end’ .

Though I must admit that the mechanics of the final scene in the book failed to be quite plausible to me (can’t say more, spoilers – though telephones play a part)

And I had at some point seen the loosely related Hitchcock film – much was changed – starring Farley Granger as Guy – turned into a tennis player – and Robert Walker as Bruno. And Hitch’s ending had nothing to do with Highsmith’s! Hitch, unusually, made a much more saccharine film than Highsmith’s uncomfortably disturbing walk in the shadows

Strangers On A Train Amazon UK
Strangers On A Train Amazon USA