How long is too long?

It is a feature of crime fiction as a genre that a lot of writers are expected to produce a book a year, often featuring the same detective. It's not surprising that some of these series get a little tired and even the sainted Agatha wasn't exempt from this. I've just read one of her later novels, At Bertram's Hotel, and, sad to say, it is pretty thin stuff. It was published in 1965, a full forty-five years after her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. By then Christie herself was 75. Her last novels are really not up to much in comparison with her dazzling prime. That isn't to say that crime-writers can't write successfully in old age: look at P. D. James. However P. D. James doesn't write a novel a year, and other writers who have maintained the quality of their work by letting the time stretch out between books include Martin Cruz Smith and Sue Grafton. I found myself musing on this as I read Ian Rankin's new novel, Saints of the Shadow Bible. He is one of those writers who does pretty much produce a book a year, but the standard shows no sign of slipping. Exit Music was supposed to be the last Rebus novel, but Rankin did not make the mistake of killing him off, so letting him return from retirement hasn't been too problematic. It is rather surprising though that Rebus is in such good form, considering the quantities of fags, alcohol and junk he has consumed over the years. Does a vegetable or a piece of fruit never pass his lips? In this novel he finds himself teamed up with the teetotal Malcolm Fox, Rankin's new series character, who has appeared in two novels of his own. He is am much a straight arrow as Rebus is a maverick. That's fun, as is the development of Rubus's friendship with Siobhan Clarke, once his protogee and now his senior. The novel's intricately plotted, and there's some terrific dialogue. Perhaps it doesn't quite reach the heights of Rankin's best - The Falls is my favourite - it's still a very good read.

The West End Front

I've decided this year to try to make more of my London Library subscription. I've been a member since 1984 - I think - around thirty years at any rate and since 1990 I haven't actually been living in London, though I was pretty close when I was in Cambridge. Sadly Sheffield does not have a subscription library and though I have sometimes toyed with joining the splendid Portico Library in Manchester (it has interesting events too), I know I wouldn't go enough. I manage to get to London once a month, but one of the really marvellous things about the London Library is that they will post books out to you and very prompt and efficient the service is, too. And as I am a country member I am allowed to have fifteen books out rather ten. You can keep the books out for as long you like if no-one requests them and in my case, while I was doing my Ph.D that was literally years. All the same there have been times when I haven't used it very much and that is a waste, given how much the subscription has gone up in recent years.
So I've got a pile of books now,and I have been reading with pleasure, The West End Front: The Wartime Secrets of London's Grand Hotels by Matthew Sweet. The Ritz, the Savoy, The Dorchester, Claridge's. What glamour the names of those hotels conjure up: women in silk dresses, men in evening dress or uniform, famous dance bands such as Ambrose and his orchestra. And, Sweet shows, how unsavoury the reality often was. Sweet points that if they 'were the homes of Cabinet ministers and military leaders, plutocrats and aristocrats' London's war-time hotels were also awash with spies, crypto-fascists, adulterers, con artists and swindlers, and young men and women on the make. The stories are all here: of aristocratic jewel thieves, Nazi double agents, deposed monarchs and governments-in-exile. No wonder hotels have been such a useful resource for writers: all kinds of people who are not necessarily what they seem can meet and mingle in them. Agatha Christie often used them as ways of bringing people together or even as settings: Evil Under the Sun, At Bertram's Hotel, A Carribean Mystery. And it's not just crime novels. Elizabeth Taylor's fine novel, Mrs Palfrey at the Cleremont, makes good use of the poignant setting of a residential hotel where the elderly residents eke out their days and try to hang on to their dignity.

A Race Against Time

I recently read 'VANTAGE STIKER, a little known Golden Age crime novel from 1931 by a writer called Helen Simpson. Martin Edwards mentioned it to me, and told me it was very difficult to get hold of, but as often happens, the London Library came up trumps. I enjoyed it. She is a lively and engaging writer. The novel is very much of its time and reminded me a little of Nicholas Blake's early novels. Dermot is a witty sardonic young man working in a government office. He suffered an head injury in the First World War that makes him liable to uncontrollable rages. He is the ideal person, then, to be framed for the murder of the Prime Minister (no less!)and that is just what happens. At one point a friend points out that if the true murderer isn't unmasked, Dermot could hang in a matter of weeks. As Dr Johnson is supposed to have said, 'Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' It concentrates the mind of his friends, too, and is the engine of the plot in a number of other novels, notably Agatha Christie's MRS GINTY'S DEAD. Of course it is still a plot device that's available for writers setting novels in US states that still have the death penalty: Andrew Kavlan's TRUE CRIME springs to mind, and there are many others. There isn't quite the same sense of urgency when it simply a matter of imprisonment which can be reversed. Perhaps even as I write this there is someone researching a PhD thesis on the impact of the abolition of the death penalty on the British crime novel. I wonder if in their modest way these novels helped to bolster opposition to the death penalty in suggesting ways in which an innocent person could be hanged for a crime they hadn't committed.

Chloroform

I spent Thursday to Sunday last week at Crimefest, where I moderated a couple of panels. Linda Stratmann was on one of them. She is the author of a book entitled CHLOROFORM which I'd heard was good - and it is. As far as I'd thought at all about it, I'd been aware of chloroform as a staple plot device in nineteenth century crime fiction and I might also have been able to come up with the fact that Queen Victoria was one of earliest women to have the pangs of child-birth relieved by it. But there is far more to the story of chloroform and Linda's carefully researched and well-written account is enthralling. Until its discovery surgery had been an agonising process and the risk of shock was considerable. Chloroform at first seemed nothing short of miraculous. However it was not longer before rumours of a disquieting nature began to circulate; a number of young and apparently patients failed to come round from the anaesthetic. It was to be a very long time before the reasons for this were discovered and for around a hundred years chloroform continued to be in common use. It was superseded by among other things, including ether, which I remember being given at the dentist as a child. It was vile stuff, and chloroform in spite of its risks sounds much nicer. I was amused to learn that it would take far more a whiff of a chloroform-soaked hanky that so often features in early mystery stories to put someone out. However it was nice to learn from Linda at the conference that Agatha Christie, who had worked in a hospital dispensary, was one writer who knew her poisons.
Linda's own first novel, THE POISONOUS SEED, set in 1880s Bayswater, has just come out.