Harriet Devine's Blog

The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths

'The nighthawk is a nocturnal bird of the subfamily Chordeilinae, within the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae, native to the western hemisphere', Wikipedia tells me. But I doubt if anyone will think this is going to be a book about birds. It is, of course, the 13th Ruth Galloway mystery by the wonderfully productive Elly Griffiths. As well as this series she's also written several Brighton Mysteries, which I haven't really taken to, a brilliant standalone called The Stranger Diaries, and The Postscript Murders which I didn't like. And she's the author of another quite different series under a pseudonym. So you'd think she might be running out of steam by now on her oldest and most popular series, which features archeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and her friend and occasional lover Detective Inspector Harry Nelson. But no. Bodies are still being discovered in north Norfolk, both ancient (calling on Ruth's expertise) and modern (calling on Harry and his team). 

The Night Hawks of the title are a team of detectorists with a particular interest in ancient burials. Their name comes from the fact that they prefer to do their metal detecting at nighttime - not that they do anything exactly illegal, but they prefer not to be disturbed. At the start of the novel, they've just happened on what appears to be an Anglo Saxon burial on the beach, complete with skeleton and ancient weaponry - but one of the team has also spotted a body in the sea. So Ruth and Nelson are both called to the scene.

Ruth, who had left Norfolk for Cambridge in the previous novel, is now back at the University of North Norfolk, and has in fact become the Head of the archaeology department. She has a new colleague, the rather irritating and slightly suspect David Brown, who insists on accompanying her to the newly uncovered site. The police are there too - Nelson, of course, plus his trusted colleague Judy - and her Druid husband Cathbad has also got involved, as he's a part-time Night Hawk too. Ruth is very wary of metal detectorists in general, believing they sometimes mess up important archeological evidence, though these ones seem to have been very careful.

Soon, in addition to the original dead body - quickly identified as a young local policeman - there is a double murder in gloomy Black Dog Farm, quickly followed by the murder of one of the detectorists. Black Dog Farm is soon revealed to be a very unsavoury place altogether - a place where a dodgy scientist has been carrying out illegal testing of drugs on anyone willing to participate. Are all the murders linked? And which of the possible suspects was responsible? 

Of course there's pleasure involved in trying to work out who did it (I certainly didn't succeed) but also, for readers of the earlier books, great delight in watching the development of characters who've been there since the beginning. Ruth and Nelson's daughter Kate (or Katie, as he insists on calling her, much to Ruth's annoyance) is nearly twelve, as bright and lively as always, and Nelson and his wife Michelle's son George is now three. Both families have more or less accepted this unusual situation, though neither of the two women involved is particularly happy about it. We meet Ruth's father for the first time - fairly recently widowed, he has fallen in love with a delightful Caribbean woman called Gloria, much to the disapproval of Ruth's conventional brother. And then there's Ruth and Nelson - not a great deal of action here throughout most of the novel, though it's clear that Ruth is thinking a great deal about the man who she recognises is the love of her life. But fear not - there are some dramatic developments later in the novel and interesting revelations right at the end.

If you're a fan of this series, you've probably read this one already. If not, it's never too late to embark on the continuing adventures of a delightful group of people, with an unmissable combination of suspense, humour and romance. 

 

 

The Secret Vanguard by Michael Innes (1940)

This was a re-read - or a re-re-read -or maybe even a re-re-re-read. I never get tired of the erudite, witty crime novels of Micheal Innes, who in real life was J.I.M.Stewart, an Oxford University Professor. The best of them are the ones in which he incorporates his literary interests into the plot, and this one is an example. The novel starts with a poet - one who Inspector Appleby describes as the 'Cow-and-Gate poet' because his poems are as mild and digestible as baby food - meeting an unexpected death. A chapter or two later we are on a train. A young woman called Sheila Grant, travelling to Scotland, is intrigued by a conversation between two men who are sharing her carriage. The conversation turns to poetry, and before long one of them is quoting a verse from a poem by Swinburne - or is it Swinburne? It certainly sounds like the mellifluous verse of that Victorian poet, but Sheila knows the poem in question and remarks that the verse is misquoted. This turns out to have been a mistake, and she is captured and held prisoner as soon as she gets off the train. There was a secret message in the misquoted passage, and now Sheila knows too much. For this is the beginning of WW2 and the men who capture Sheila turn out to be German spies.

In fact this is really a spy thriller rather than a conventional crime novel, and none the worse for that. It has definite shades of The Thirty-nine Steps, John Buchan's 1915 novel of German spies and chases around the Highlands. Appleby is working for Intelligence, and he knows the enemy has a sinister plot to destroy a vital oil refinery. Most of it takes place in the wilds of Scotland, and there are numerous foreign villains lurking about in unexpected places, lots of fake identities, and a  good deal of action in railway trains, rail trucks, and speed boats. Sheila meets up with Appleby to help in the race against time, soon aided by the attractive young man who aided her escape.  It must have been written in 1939 as war is on the horizon but has not yet broken out. The misquoted Swinburne, of course, provides an essential clue to the solution of the mystery.

A fascinating historical read then, and so well and intelligently written. It makes me think that readers in 1940 must have been rather better educated than many people today. Or maybe Innes was read by a rather select audience. Anyway this is a rather brief contribution to Simon and Kaggy's 1940 Club, an event I never miss (unless I do). Here's a link to the reviews page on Simon's blog https://www.stuckinabook.com/1940-club-all-your-reviews-1940club/#comment-111321

 

 

 

The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham (1929 Club)

I'm resurrecting this sadly neglected blog in order to join in Simon and Kaggsy's latest Club. And when I looked for Books Published in 1929 (thank you Wikipedia) there was immediately no contest. As I've probably said many times on here, I have loved Margery Allingham's Albert Campion novels since my mother first introduced me to them when I was about twelve and have been reading and re-reading them ever since. If you'd asked me a week ago I'd have told you that I'd read them all, so imagine my surprise when I discovered I'd never read this, the very first of them. And what a revelation it was. 

If you're not familiar with this series of novels, Albert Campion is what would be known today as the series detective. But he's a most unusual kind of detective - a private one, certainly, but one willing to take on any kind of challenge from a wide variety of sources - in this novel he's working for His Majesty's Government, but at other times he may be associated with Scotland Yard, or helping an old family with inheritance problems, and more besides. He has acquaintances in the criminal fraternity too, and his manservant, Magersfontein Lugg, is a reformed burglar. The books are better described as mysteries as murder doesn't always feature in them, and Campion himself is a bit of a mystery - careful reading of the series will reveal certain hints, but all we know for sure is that he's the younger son of an aristocratic family and that his real name is Rudolph. It's also often said that as a character he was originally conceived as being a spoof on Dorothy Sayers' Peter Whimsey. In this novel, his first appearance, this does seem very plausible, as he appears bizarrely effete and foolish, given to making silly jokes and apparent non-sequiturs. Underneath this rather effete exterior, though, he is revealed to have a sharp mind and the capacity to take drastic and effective action when needed.

The biggest surprise here, though, is that Campion is only a minor character in the novel. He does play an important part in one episode, but he disappears before the end and he gives no indication that he will turn into the series detective. That job, it seems, was intended by Allingham to be given to Dr George Abbershaw, Home Office pathologist, whose quick wits and good sense not only extricate the rest of the characters from a very dangerous situation but also solve the final mystery - who killed Colonel Coombe? Abbershaw is an attractive character, but apparently Allingham's publishers were so taken with Campion that they insisted he should be given the leading part in subsequent novels. Good thinking on their part!

So what's this novel about? It's a bit of a romp, set in an isolated country mansion called Black Dudley, where a house party is taking place. The guests are a bunch of young society people, male and female. Campion is among them, but it turns out nobody knows who he is or who invited him, so everyone is highly suspicious of him.  The guests soon discover they have been infiltrated by members of an international criminal gang, run from who knows where by the mysterious arch villain Simister (who will reappear in subsequent novels). The two men who have found their way to Black Dudley are a German calling himself Dawlish but unmasked by Campion as Eberhard Von Faber, a wholly ruthless and all round nasty piece of work, and his sidekick, the shifty Gideon. During an evening party game, Colonel Coombe, Black Dudley's owner, is murdered, and the crooks reveal that they are searching for some vital papers which have somehow been mislaid in the house. The villains will stop at nothing to recover the papers, and that includes violence and enforced imprisonment of the young guests, none of whom appear to know anything about the lost papers. So there are violent physical fights, shootings, secret passages, imprisonments in impenetrable rooms, a deranged religious maniac maid, attempted arson, a car chase, and the intervention of the local hunt. 

I'm not sure whether, if I had read this one first, I'd have been as keen to pursue the rest of the series. It all seems a bit juvenile, and is very firmly a product of its time, though none the worse for that. But as someone so familiar with the later novels, it was fascinating to see Campion in this first incarnation. Over time, of course, he matures, and shows his abilities both as a man of authority and a man of action. I'd be hard pressed to say which of the 20 or so novels was my favourite, but I have a tremendous soft spot for Sweet Danger (1933), partly because it was the first one I ever read, but also because in the novel Campion meets the feisty young Amanda Fitton, who some years later will become his wife. I was also deeply impressed a few years ago by Traitor's Purse (1941), which is more of a psychological thriller and a superb one at that, and often considered the finest book of the series. But I've loved them all, even this rather strange first novel, which I'm delighted to have had the chance to read.

Maigret Goes to School (1954 Club)

I'm having a bit of binge on Maigret at the moment, watching episodes of the 1960s TV series with Rupert Davies as the celebrated police inspector. So it was easy to choose a book to review for Simon and Kaggsy's 1954 Club - you could probably find a Maigret for every year of it, given Simenon's incredible output (75 Maigret novels and 28 short stories). I haven't watched  this one yet - it will interesting to see what the TV adaptation is like. I read it first in 2017, after I'd  rescued it from a terrible fate  - it was headed for the tip. And for such a slim little volume, it gave me the most enormous pleasure, so it's good to revisit it.

It's the first day of spring, and everyone, the police included, is in a holiday mood. The sun is shining and the air feels surprisingly warm. In the police station at the Quai des Orfevres, Maigret notices an unremarkable, slightly unattractive man sitting patiently in the waiting room the police know as Purgatory. He's been there for some time and shows no sign of leaving. Eventually Maigret discovers that he is Gastin, a schoolmaster from the Charente, a seaside region in Western France, who is suspected of having killed an unpleasant old woman, his neighbour. He's come to ask the famous detective for help. There's no evidence that he did the murder, but he and his wife are universally disliked in the village - they are seen as foreigners, having moved from a different area, so they have been seized upon as responsible. Will Maigret come back with him and find the real murderer?

Under normal circumstances the detective would say no, but the springlike weather, and memories of holidays by the sea, eating mussels and drinking the local white wine, are enough to sway the balance, and soon the two are on the train heading for the village. Naturally enough things are not the same as in Maigret's happy memories - mussels are out of season, and the wine is rather coarse and strong (and he drinks far too much of it). Even worse, the sea is not visible from the village. Soon after his arrival, Gastin is arrested, and Maigret is left staying in a seedy old inn and trying to make sense of the complicated relationships between the inhabitants, several of whom seem to be permanently drunk. There are no obvious suspects for the crime, which everyone feels was well deserved and long overdue.

However a young boy, son of the local butcher, has given a statement saying he saw Gastin coming out of his garden shed just at the time the murder was committed. It was done with a .22 rifle, a weapon owned by most of the young boys in the village, which makes things difficult. Maigret interviews people, if they are sober enough, and spends a lot of time talking to the boys, mostly aged around 12. He also enjoys watching the old men in the inn, realising they are quite a bit like children themselves, still interacting in the ways they did when they were at school together. Eventually of course he solves the case, and rings Mme Maigret to say he's catching the afternoon train home. He decides they'll go and see a film together as soon as possible.

This is a totally charming book. Yes, a murder was committed but honestly the woman was asking for it, and neither the other inhabitants nor the reader is going to feel too sorry. Nothing in the village is going to change, but I guess that's French villages in the 1950s for you. I live in a French village myself, and everyone seems pretty friendly and well behaved though no doubt there are the usual animosities under the surface. 

Simenon apparently said Rupert Davies was 'the perfect Maigret', and I certainly prefer him to Michael Gambon, who played him in the 1990s - and the. less said about Rowan Atkinson's recent attempt the better. But for real French style and authenticity, my vote would go to Bruno Cremer, in the French version that ran from 1991 to 2005. But best of all, of course, is to read the books!

Death in the Grand Manor by Anne Morice

I love Dean Street Press for many reasons. Primarily, obviously, because they publish the kind of books I love, reprints of unjustly forgotten writers of the mid to late twentieth century, but also because once they've discovered a writer worth reprinting they go the whole hog and publish everything they've written. Such has been the case with the novels of Anne Morice, who started publishing in 1970 and continued producing a novel a year - and two in some years - until her death in 1989 at the age of seventy-three. So she was a rather late starter, but achieved a great deal, and was much admired by contemporary critics. She was elected to the Detection Club in 1976. The first twenty-three of her novels feature Tessa Crichton, a bright, sparky young actress who finds she has a talent for solving murders. In her final year she turned to a new protagonist, Tubby Wiseman; the second of this new series appeared posthumously in 1990. Morice's books started re-appearing at the beginning of this year, and there are more to come through the rest of 2021.

I'd probably have stumbled on these anyway, as I love a witty mystery, but I had another reason for plunging in with this first of the series - I actually knew the author, whose daughter became a great friend back when we were both 18, and who I've kept in touch with ever since. I was aware that her mother became a novelist in her fifties, but only found out recently that the books had found a new home. If this one's anything to go by, they are going to be full of reminders of places and people she knew, thinly disguised of course but totally recognisable to anyone who knew her. She came from a theatrical family (her sister was Angela Fox, mother of James and Edward, grandmother of Laurence and Emilia) so it's no surprise to find Tessa's acting career is an ongoing theme in the novels.

One damp and cheerless day last July, my cousin, Toby Crichton, telephoned to invite me to spend a few weeks at his house at Roakes Common, and, in doing so, put his finger on what I can only describe as the fatal switch. Possibly, the reason I can only so describe it is that I am writing this saga in the intervals of rehearsing for a Victorian melodrama and the florid prose is rather infectious. Doubtless the style will cool down, as the narrative proceeds, particularly if I am lucky enough to secure a contemporary part, in the course of it.

It turns out that Toby has an ulterior motive for his invitation. His flamboyant wife Matilda (a 'rotten actress' but a surprisingly popular one) is off on tour, and he wants Tessa to keep company with his eleven-year-old daughter Ellen. Having just completed a TV series, Tessa is happy to go; she loves Ellen and Toby and loves the house, which stands on a horseshoe-shaped common in a country village not far from London. It's a little community all its own, and most of the neighbours are very pleasant and friendly. Not so, however, are the nouveau-riche Cornfords, who have bought the manor house. Toby has always defended them when the rest of the neighbours complained about them, but things changed when they were suspected of killing Ellen's beloved dog. Of the two Cornfords, it is Mrs Cornford who is most hated in the community, so naturally enough it is her corpse that turns up shortly after Tessa's arrival. Having just met a totally gorgeous young man who turns out to be the detective assigned to the case, Tessa decides it would be enjoyable, and probably helpful, to do some investigations of her own. She proves to be extremely good at it, and indeed solves the mystery on her own, though not without getting into some danger into the bargain.

There's a great deal to enjoy here. Village life, with all its highs and lows, is always an attractive setting, and seeing it through the eyes of a sophisticated but affectionate Londoner adds a bit of spice. It's a pleasure to meet Toby, a successful playwright who seems to have hit a barren patch - he retires to his study every morning, only reappearing for lunch, but spends his time in there reading, though he claims to be working for a deadline. Ellen is a charming eleven-year-old, clever but not precocious, and very attached to her father, who brought her up on his own after her mother died: her stepmother Matilda seems to be almost permanently on tour, so Toby is still the centre of her life. And then of course there's Tessa herself, and it's her narrative voice that carries the novel: she's honest, bright and witty, and her observations on the life of the village and its inhabitants will prove to be vital in solving what seems to be an insoluble mystery. She has a great turn for a one-liner, as here: 'Sackcloth and ashes would have been overdressing for the mood I had sunk into by then'. Unlike that other great observer of village life Miss Marple, Tessa has her own life and career elsewhere, and her various auditions and engagements add an enjoyably theatrical flavour to the mix. And of course there's her burgeoning romance with the handsome policeman, to whom, I gather, she will be married in the subsequent novels.

I'll be reading more of these so watch this space.

 

 

The Crooked Shore by Martin Edwards (Blog Tour)

I was very pleased to discover that a new addition to the Lake District Mystery series by Martin Edwards was going to be published. It's been nearly six years since the last one - the seventh in the series - came out, and I've read them all, though I don't seem to have reviewed all of them on here. My review of number seven, The Dungeon House, is here, if you're interested.

Admirers of the series won't need telling that it revolves around cold case investigations. The police department that deals with these is headed by DCI Hannah Scarlett. As a young policewoman she was mentored by senior detective Ben Kind, and from the first book onwards she has been the friend, and later the lover, of Ben's son Daniel. Daniel, a historian, writer and TV personality, often has a part to play in the solution of the relevant mystery, and this novel is no exception. It's his on-off relationship with Hannah that gives the stories an added frisson of suspense, with each novel leaving the reader in doubt about how things will end up between them. As I said in my previous review, I see him as looking exactly like Daniel Craig, which is a plus for me.

 The cold case Hannah takes on in The Crooked Shore is that of the disappearance, some twenty years earlier, of teenage Ramona Smith. Her body was never found, but a bloodstained backpack near the beach suggests that she was murdered. And in fact a local man, Gerry Lace, was charged with her murder but acquitted, only to commit suicide by wading into the dangerous quicksand waters on the beach. As the novel opens, a character called Kingsley is on that same beach, and witnesses a young man doing the exact same thing; uncannily, he proves to be Gerry Lacy's son. It's this link that has prompted the re-opening of the case, and an investigation into possible mistakes made by the original detective - who proves to have been Hannah's adored mentor Ben Kind. Naturally this causes her a lot of grief, but the job must come first.In addition to the primary investigation, a  good deal of the action revolves around Tory, an attractive, wealthy, middle-aged woman who lives in an upmarket retirement community in the area. She has two admirers - Kingsley, the man from the beach, who obviously doesn't stand a chance, and Logan, her much younger pianist lover, with whom she is completely besotted. The interweaving of these characters with each other and with the main plot seems complex, but proves to be surprisingly relevant. More than that I can't say without spoilers.

Of course the unique selling point of this series - apart from its attractive main characters and engrossing plots - is the setting in England's beautiful Lake District. It's an area I know well, and each novel skilfully combines real places with invented ones. The Crooked Shore of the title is not a real location, though it's placed on a real coastline, that of Morecambe Bay in the south of Cumbria. It sounded so real to me that I was disappointed to find out that it wasn't. If you've never visited the Lakes, I defy you not to long to go when you read this or any other in the series.

So yes, it's a series, but if you're not familiar with the previous novels you can just as easily read The Crooked Shore as a standalone. However, don't be surprised if you find yourself seeking out the earlier books to learn more about the attractive central characters.

Two New Shiny Reviews

If you're familiar with my reviewing, either on here or on Shiny New Books, you'll have noticed that I have a strong leaning towards reprints, translated fiction especially French, and non-fiction, generally with a literary or theatrical theme. But of course I enjoy some newly published books too, and I've reviewed a couple on Shiny recently.

 The great American novelist Laura Lippman is a huge favourite of mine, and I've reviewed several of her novels here and on Shiny. Each one has been entirely different from the last, but all equally entertaining and skilful. Dream Girl is billed as a psychological thriller, and Lippman describes it in her Afterword as 'my first work of horror'. It certainly includes some tropes of that genre, but it's also witty and perceptive in its depiction of the central character, successful novelist Gerry Anderson. Throughout the novel he's confined to a hospital bed in his posh Baltimore apartment following a fall down the floating staircase. In a lot of pain, he is heavily sedated, which gives his first person narration an increasingly dream-like and confused quality. The novel's title refers to Gerry's hugely successful novel of the same title, and to the fact that that book's main protagonist appears to actually exist and to be attempting to contact him. Great stuff. My full Shiny review is here.

Another review that's just appeared is Tessa MaWatt's The Snow Line. I have to confess I'd never heard of Tessa McWatt, who is evidently a much admired writer. If The Snow Line is anything to go by, I'm not surprised. I was drawn to the novel by the fact that it's set in India, and deals with a journey up into the snow-capped Himalayas. But it's so much more than that. The novel centres around a group of four people who meet at a wedding in the Punjab. Three are young and of Indian heritage, though both live elsewhere for various reasons. The fourth is Jackson, an elderly white man, returning to the country he worked in many years earlier to find a suitable place to scatter the ashes of his beloved wife. Jackson's quest, aided by the other three characters, forms the backbone of the plot, but it's much more than a travel adventure story. It deals sensitively with colonialism and the Indian diaspora, and beautifully depicts the inner life of the 86-year-old Jackson, who lives more and more inside his own memories, good and bad. Excellent novel, and here's my Shiny review. 

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Mary Kelly's brilliant 1962 novel, Due to a Death. A central character in that novel is the rather mysterious Hedley Nicholson who, we gather, has taken time off whatever his work may be to process events that he has recently experienced. What those were is never revealed in that excellent novel, but in The Spoilt Kill, published the year before and the winner of the CWA Golden Dagger Award, Hedley is centre stage and narrator. We know from the start that he is a private investigator: he's been hired by the head of a long-established pottery firm in Staffordshire to investigate the leakage of their original designs to foreign competitors, who then flood the market with cheap copies. Posing as a writer of a history of the firm, he's allotted an office and given free run of the factory. This much we know about him from the start, and we also learn that he feels his age - he's in his early 40s but has grey hair about which he is very self-conscious - and that he's had a relationship that went wrong. And it soon becomes clear that he likes women - he's strongly attracted to a young woman who works in reception though he would never approach her, and he soon finds himself falling in love with one of the prime suspects. 

The Spoilt Kill, not unlike Due to a Death, begins with the discovery of a body. Here it is discovered floating in a vault full of liquid clay. But the identity, and even the gender, of the dead person is not revealed until much later in the novel. After this opening come two sections: 'What Happened Before' and 'What Happened Afterwards'. In 'Before', of course, Hedley gets to know the factory personnel, all very pleasant people. He soon realises that the most obvious way the designs could have been stolen would be via the designers. They are of course highly valued in the company, but perhaps one of them might welcome a bit of extra money? He soon homes in on the top designer Corinna Wakefield, an attractive, talented, but obviously unhappy young woman. He soon befriends her, initially with a view to spying on her life and her movements. But it doesn't take long before he realises he is falling in love with her. And the more he falls for her, the worse he feels; she's lonely and welcomes his friendship, but he dreads the moment when she will inevitably discover his real purpose in getting to know her. In 'Afterwards', of course, the identity of the victim is revealed and the process of denouement starts moving inexorably forward. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that someone confesses but is shown to be covering up for someone else. The identity of the killer is a sad shock - sad because of the story that lies behind their actions. Sad too is the ending of the novel.

It's impossible not to be mysterious about the plot. But the plot is only part of what Mary Kelly is doing here. The life of the factory is wonderfully evoked, as is the rather grim landscape of the Potteries. Here's what Hedley sees when he looks down in the valley called Etruria, where the Wedgwoods once had their factory:

I stared down into the pit, at the black buildings silhouetted against the flushed sky, buildings, some of them, flickering within, as if a river of liquid gold were rolling through them. Clouds of steam and smoke drifted across the shadowy vale, rosy steam, lit from the fires below. There was a continuous hollow rushing sound, broken by clanks of shunting. An engine, raised on a bank, black and red, like a slide, moved slowly backwards and forwards. The whole pit seemed to breathe as it worked; for though it was past midnight on Saturday, and the Newcastle neighbours’ windows were dark, naked lights on gantries and signals glittered all over Etruria.

It's not too fanciful to see this as a sort of vision of an Inferno, and it seems to reflect Hedley's gloomy and fearful state of mind. Kelly's portrayal of this is wonderfully strong and evocative, as is that of Corinna, about whose life the reader learns more and more as the novel proceeds. This is superb piece of writing, unquestionably worth its Golden Dagger.

Due to a Death by Mary Kelly

I want to grip people by the mystery and to have attention to the last page due to the unsolved secret so that they cannot leave it. That is what I want - to grip them and force them to read to the bitter end. That is why I sometimes try something new. In Due to a Death I first give a tantalising view of the end without telling the secret...

So said Mary Kelly in an interview a few years after this novel was published in 1962. And my goodness did she succeed. I was awake at an unearthly hour, unable to stop reading till I got the the bitter end - and bitter is not a bad word for the conclusion of this truly remarkable novel. I've been a lover of The British Library Crime Classics since they first began, and have read a large number of them, though not always reviewed them. They vary tremendously in style and subject matter, of course; some are quite lighthearted, some quite dark or bleak or scary. But this one, I have to say, is in a class by itself. 

So yes, the novel's opening chapter gives a glimpse of what's going to happen at the end. It's totally mysterious -  a man and a woman (the narrator) are in a car. Something very frightening and disturbing has just happened. Both of them seem to be bleeding from some kind of injuries. A police car appears to have been chasing them, but it overtakes and speeds off. Soon we learn that the body of a young woman has been found on the nearby marsh. Rumours are quickly spreading in the village shop: 'Must have been the usual, then, poor thing'. The narrator knows she must think hard about the events that have led to this situation: 

sift the past for fragments of memory, sharp, coloured, dimensional, like cubes of mosaic, which separately seemed insignificant; put together they took on meaning, formed a picture itself demanding to be explained, like a dream, or rather a nightmare so dreadful I couldn't bear to explain it...

The rest of the novel shows her slowly and painfully doing just that. Agnes, for that is her name, is a young woman married, not very happily, to Tom, an accountant and keen amateur naturalist. They live in a run-down village called Gunfleet, on the edge of the marshes. Their only social life - visits to the local pub, meals, picnics - is shared with Tom's two friends, Tubby and Ian, and their wives and children. Then a mysterious stranger, Hedley Nicholson, appears in the village. Nobody knows who he is or what he is doing there, but he and Agnes become friends of a sort: he takes her out for driving lessons and they have long and intense conversations. His intelligence - and lets face it, his mystery - are a welcome contrast to the rather superficial people she's generally thrown together with. And she soon realises she's getting far too emotionally involved.

But that's only part of what's going on here, though it is also integral. I'm not really sure if this is even a crime novel, though the young woman's death in the first chapter suggest this, but more than anything it's a mystery novel. Mysteries abound, all of them in the end proving to be inextricably bound together. There's the question of Agnes's parentage: brought up in a 'good' orphanage after her single mother's death when she was two, she has received financial support through a local solicitor and, when pressed by Hedley, admits that she suspects it must have come from her unknown father - but why is so anxious not to investigate further? There's Agnes's worry about the real activities of Tom and his two friends - are they really going out on their supposed explorations of the native flora, and if so, why are all three suddenly and inexplicably short of money? Why is Agnes so drawn to the quiet, sensitive Ian, who she longs to protect from his bossy, stingy wife Helen, who makes her husband and children eat the sandwich crusts next morning for breakfast? Mysterious activities go on at the local garage, and Hedley's car gets damaged when apparently being driven by someone else. And, of course, there's the question of what really happened to the girl whose body turns up in a ditch on the marsh. And Agnes, as we come to realise, is not always the most reliable narrator, though Hedley's probing questioning eventually gets to the root of her secrecy.

Due to a Death is a remarkable novel for several reasons. Of course there's the complex and wonderfully planned plotting, and the subtleties of the character development. The grim, bleak landscape of Gunfleet is strikingly evoked: 

From the lay-by there was nothing to be seen of the estuary; only, overhead, a wide marine sky embossed with pearly clouds, and the slow plumes of the cement works' chimneys; through the windscreen, concrete posts and barbed wire half-swamped by chalk-dusted thickets; and behind the fence, breaking the surface of the grey undulations like a bathers' warning, a red rust-pitted disc: Police Advice - Danger, Keep Out.

I somehow managed to miss Mary Kelly's earlier novel, A Spoilt Kill, which won the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award (though I'm putting that right very soon). Readers of that novel will know that Hedley is a private detective, but that knowledge is not essential to enjoy this one. Sadly, she stopped writing in the early 1970s, but I hope there will be more of her books to come from Crime Classics. The quality of her writing is exceptional - this really does deserve to be called literary fiction. I'll leave you with a passage of description that I liked a lot:

I walked down to the street that evening, to see if the men were coming. The sky was the colour of sugared almonds, orange, pink and mauve.The old women stood with folded arms at the doors; the old men, smoking, hovered round their runner beans; and between the marigolds sat neutered cats. Woodey's wireless sounded from an open window, some soprano launching emotion into the air. At the end of the street a car started. I could hear the dim throb of the jukebox from The Ship.

Definitely one to read and enjoy.

 

Painting the Darkness by Robert Goddard

A man comes back from the dead - or does he? That's the theme of Painting the Darkness,  Robert Goddard's third novel, published in 1989. I first discovered his intelligent, twisty historical mystery novels in the mid-nineties, and read a number of them, though apparently this one passed me by. Twenty-eight novels after his 1986 debut Past Caring, he's still writing, but I'd more or less forgotten about him, and can't remember what reminded me how much I used to enjoy his work. Anyway, I spotted this on Audible, brilliantly read by Michael Kitchen, embarked on it sometime in April, and have only just finished it. It was over 20 hours long, and it was less than two hours from the end when you finally found out whether the protagonist was the real deal or not.

The novel starts in 1882. William Trenchard and his wife Constance have spent a peaceful afternoon in the garden with their little daughter Patience. Mother and daughter have gone inside, and William is enjoying the quiet satisfaction of a happy domestic life. But, only an hour later, his life, 'and that of every occupant of The Limes, St John's Wood, had changed utterly - and forever. An hour was all it took for ten years to overtake them'. A polite, well-dressed man appears outside the garden gate, claiming to be Sir James Davenall, to whom Constance had been engaged eleven years earlier. Everyone had been waiting eagerly for the planned marriage - but one day, with no warning, James had disappeared without trace, and was believed to have committed suicide. though no body was ever found, and nobody could explain why he should have done so. Constance had been heartbroken, but after slowly recovering had agreed to marry Trenchard. She knows he will be a good husband, though her feelings for him are not the same as she had for James. At first, she totally rejects the newcomer as a fraud, but his astonishing knowledge of private matters between the two of them, and his explanation of the reasons for his disappearance, soon convince her that he is indeed her long lost lover. From then on she defends him against all attacks, and realises she is as much in love with him as ever.

Not so the rest of the Davenall family: James's mother, and his younger brother Hugo, who has inherited the Baronetcy, the property and the wealth, totally reject him. His old nanny, however, welcomes him with open arms, and his solicitor cousin Richard, initially sceptical, comes to believe that he is telling the truth. How else could he possibly know so much about some things the family would prefer to stay hidden? But despite these new supporters, Hugo is enraged and determined not to lose the great advantages he's inherited, which have enabled him to live the drunken, dissipated life he enjoys. A court case ensues, which drags on for many weeks. What will be the outcome? And will the real truth be revealed?

The great question to be answered is, of course, how this man can so closely resemble James if he is indeed an imposter. However, the old Baronet Sir Gervaise, father to James and Hugo, was notoriously free with his favours, so perhaps he is a result of one of these casual liaisons? However, attempts to prove this are thwarted at every turn. If there ever was a novel for keeping you guessing, this is surely it. I found my beliefs and loyalties swinging wildly as various pieces of evidence on both sides appeared and were discounted. Whoever James turns out to be, he is a great deal more likeable than the shallow, unpleasant Hugo and his cold, hard mother. I was rooting for James all the way through, and wishing him a happy marriage to the faithful Constance, whose husband is now out of the picture for reasons I won't be explaining to you. But who is the beautiful woman who has been spotted with James a few times? And what part in the story will be played by Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, always known as Pion Pion, the dissolute cousin of Emperor Napoleon III, who glides in and out of the action, not always with honourable motives?

So - this is a very long novel, but I was hanging on every word. I obviously can't tell you what the final part of the novel reveals, but you won't be disappointed. I love stories about returning claimants - The Return of Martin Guerre is one, made into a film with Gerard Depardieu in 1983, with a US version, Somersby, starring Jodie Foster and Richard Gere, ten years later. Then there's Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, and Daphne du Maurier's brilliant The Scapegoat, both of which I enjoyed enormously.  This one certainly deserves to be on that list.

I enjoyed reacquainting myself with Robert Goddard so much that I've just started another of his novels. I'm a bit apprehensive that I may not enjoy it so much. Have to wait and see.

. 

 

Flowers for the Judge by Margery Allingham (1936 Club)

Mr Campion was silent. For a moment he was aware of forces and counter-forces beneath the quiet lives surrounding Barnabas Limited. There were revelations to come, he knew, some of them hideous, some of them piteous and others fantastic in their unexpectedness. He also knew that the man in front of him did not dream that once the searchlight of police and Press was turned upon them there could be nothing hidden, nothing protected, and that beneath the glare little intimate things would stand out in unnatural prominence.

I wasn't very well prepared for the 1936 Club - life has been rather hectic in the past couple of weeks - I did a scan of my bookshelves and everything that looked hopeful was published in either 1935 or 1937! Then I spotted this and was very happy because I can never have enough of Margery Allingham and of course of Albert Campion, her wonderful private detective. I can't remember when I last read this, but it wasn't all that long ago and then it would have been a re-read, or a re-re-re-read.  But I've been re-reading her from time to time since I was introduced to her by my mother when I was about 11 - it was Sweet Danger, if you know what that is, and if you do you'll know it was a perfect first meeting with Campion and with Amanda, who would many years later become his wife. 

Amanda doesn't appear in Flowers for the Judge, but Campion does. He was first introduced in 1929, at which point he was a rather effete-seeming young aristocrat - possibly a parody of Peter Whimsey - but over the years he grew in maturity and strength. He has a brilliant mind, though he still tends at this stage (1936) to hide it sometimes under a vacuous exterior. He is, as we gather in this novel, the heir to a Dukedom, and many of his friends are from the cultured upper levels of society, but he also has numerous acquaintances in the seedy criminal world. It was from this world that he recruited his valet, Magersfontein Lugg.

Though published in 1936, Flowers for the Judge is set in 1931 for some reason. However, the story begins twenty years earlier with the mysterious disappearance of Tom Barnabas. A member of a large and well-established publishing family, Tom left home one morning dressed for business, and halfway down the road apparently vanished into thin air. This never-explained mystery has been largely forgotten, but it's brought to mind in the novel's present because another family member, Paul Brande, has just walked out of the flat he shares with his beautiful American wife Gina and doesn't reappear. Paul and Gina are not happy together, and she assumed at first that he's just taking a short break. But after three days, she and the members of the firm get worried. Finally, Paul's body is discovered in a basement strong room, where he has died from exhaust fumes coming through a grating from the garage next door. At first this looks like an unfortunate accident, but it turns out that a rubber pipe has been fixed to the exhaust of a car belonging to a young man called Mike Wedgewood, the youngest of the cousins who run the firm. Mike is in love with Gina, though the relationship has not developed. However, it gives Mike a motive, and he can't provide an alibi, saying he was out walking alone round London on the evening in question. And, most damning of all, he had visited the strong room during the time Paul's body was there, but strenuously denies seeing it. So, after the inquest, he is arrested for murder.

It's now up to Campion to investigate, which he does with the help of Lugg and some of his criminal friends, and with the support of Richie Barnabas, an eccentric cousin who lives upstairs in the building. And, although Mike goes to trial, everything turns out OK in the end. And, in a final prologue, we get to find out what happened to Tom Barnabas back in 1911.

I read somewhere that this is thought to be one of Allingham's best novels, and I would definitely concur with this. The plot is satisfyingly complex and the denouement provides some enjoyable twists. There's some skullduggery along the way with an original unpublished manuscript by the Restoration playwright William Congreve, and lots of excellent background detail. Allingham writes with wit and intelligence, and I was happy to read that Agatha Christie much admired her. Her characterisation is superb, and she sums people up in a sentence or two so that they become unforgettable. Here's Gina's housekeeper, Mrs Austin, after the news of Paul's death: 'Mrs Austin was kind; sympathy and friendliness oozed from her every pore, and yet she was enjoying the tragedy with the shameful delight of the under-entertained'. However, I was slightly bothered, for the first time, by Allingham's rather patronising attitude of people of a lower social class. Mrs Austin is one, but above all there is the wonderful Lugg. He and Campion have a wonderfully symbiotic relationship, and Lugg not only fusses over his master and obviously cares for him, but also helps him with his various criminal connections. However, Campion is endlessly scathing about Lugg's attempts to 'better' himself, and he's treated rather too much like comic relief to be altogether comfortable. I've never noticed this before, and it didn't spoil the novel for me at all, but it did add an interesting sidelight.

Anyway I'm delighted to have read it, and though rather late in the day, I'm happy to have made a contribution to the 1936 Club.