The Pram in the Hall

'There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.' There is some truth in this famous statement by Cyril Connolly. I guess that Connolly was thinking more of male writers and the necessity to support a family and the need to write for money. Still it is worth noting that many of our greatest women writers - Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontes - have been childless. 

There is no doubt that when you have children, hugely rewarding though it is, time, energy and the mental space that writers need are in very short supply. On the other hand, being a parent does supply you with some great material. Here's an example: years ago I delivered my daughter to a children's party. The child in question had just joined my daughter's school so I barely knew her parents and they barely knew me. There was a great scrum of parents and kids when I arrived. I can't remember now if I left my mobile phone number, but I do remember that as I drove away I realised that the parents of the party girl didn't even know where I lived. What would they do if some reason I didn't return to collect my daughter?

I jotted it down as an idea for a story and when, last year, the theme of 'Guilty Parties' was announced for a CWA anthology, I thought of it right away. The anthology is out now and 'What's the Time, Mr Wolf' is in it. It's lovely to find myself there along with old friends, like Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Peter Lovesey and many others that I have met at conferences, and yes, parties (guilty or otherwise) over the years. The hardback is a bit pricey, but no doubt it will be out as a paperback and an ebook in due course, and you could always order it from the library. It's a great way to sample the work of writers you might not have read before.

The Red Right Hand

I'm surprised that I'd never heard of The Red Right Hand by Joel Townsley Rogers (published 1945 and now available as e-book) until recently. What a novel! The author runs full tilt at the plot, pulling the reader along with him, and keeps going, the pace never slackening, until finally, finally, he skids to a halt at the end of the novel, leaving the reader breathless and astonished at the audacity of the conclusion. The first person narrator is Harry Riddle, a young surgeon, and the opening lines set the tone of the novel: 'There is one thing that is most important, in all the dark mystery of tonight, and that is how that ugly little auburn-haired man, with his torn ear and his sharp dog-pointed teeth, with his twisted corkscrew legs and his truncated height . . . could have got away and vanished so completely from the face of the countryside after killing Inis St. Erme.' What is most worrying Riddle (aptly named!) is the puzzle of how 'the murder car . . . could have passed by me while I was at the entrance to the Swamp Road just before twilight.' The killer must have passed Riddle - all the eyewitness accounts confirm it - yet it didn't. Or so Riddle thinks, for as the novel continues we suspect more and more than Riddle isn't a reliable narrator. Could he even be the murderer?
The novel is like a piece of music in the way that it returns again and again to theme of the disappearing car, adding an extra element each time. The narrative moves back and forward in time, plot twists are thrown in with wild abandon, and yet somehow the writer keeps it all under control. In his excellent introduction, Martin Edwards comments on the 'torrent of coincidences' and that's true, but it's such bravura performance that one is swept unresistingly along, and I agree with his verdict that it is a stunning novel. It reminded me a little of Frederic Brown's Night of the Jabberwock (also newly available as an ebook), but only a little. The Red Right Hand is one of a kind and I loved it.

Death Walks in Eastrepps

Every now and then I grind to a halt. It doesn't happen often. Maybe I've got a cold or maybe I am under the weather for some other reason. Or maybe I just look at the tottering pile that is my intray, I looked at my inbox stuffed with emails, I look at the overflowing laundry basket and I think 'the hell with it.' I try to have a suitable book in store for this contingency - or more than one book. So it was that I retired to bed earlier this week with Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding. Beeding was recommended to me by Martin Edwards, the go-to man for classic Golden Age crime fiction, and I'd been saving this book for when I needed a treat. The cat joined me and draped himself over my legs: he doesn't understand reading, but he does understand snoozing and is always happy to have a companion.

Francis Beeding was really two writers so is a member of a select group of crime-writers that includes Emma Lathen and Ellery Queen. My copy of Death Walks in Eastrepps is published by Arcturus in their Crime Classics series and is an attractive edition. It was first published in 1931, but is surprisingly contemporary in its concerns - a serial killer, the power of the press to influence the course of a murder investigation, a crooked financier - I did guess the plot twist, but no matter. It was an interesting and unusual motive for murder. The blurb claims that 'this thrilling page-turner was once pronounced one of the ten greatest detective stories of all time.' That is pitching it a bit high, but it's very readable and hadn't dated. And it was a particular pleasure to read it from cover to cover in one sitting, something I don't do often enough.

Night of the Jabberwock

Martin Edwards' blog with the wonderful title: 'Do You Write Under Your own Name?' is a favourite of mine and I often pick up tips for books I might enjoy, especially in his forgotten books section. Not long ago he wrote a review of a novel by Fredric Brown which made me think that I'd like to reread a novel I hugely enjoyed when I first read it, Brown's NIGHT OF THE JABBERWOCK. I took it away to read on holiday. I don't think I've read it since I started writing myself and this added a whole new dimension. The first time I just read on, heart in mouth, absolutely mesmerised, really unable to put it down. This time I marvelled at the plot, which dovetailed like a piece of finely made furniture, appreciated the economy of the style and admired the skill with which Brown enlists our sympathy hor his quizzical, down at heel and humane narrator. It's scary, suspenseful, and funny, too. I laughed out loud. It would have to figure on a list of my all-time favourite crime novels. Martin, if you read this, I want to know if you have read it. If not, you have a treat in store.
Another of Martin's recent commendations was THE BURNING COURT by John Dickson Carr. Carr specialised in locked room mysteries, and there are two in here. I partly guessed the solution to one of them, but I am not terribly attracted to the puzzle novel, and what for me really distinguishes Dickson Carr's novels is their creepiness. This one is truly sinister. I won't spoil the ending, suffice it to say that just when I thought I knew what was going on things took a turn that I really did not expect and I ended the novel feeling, well, gobsmacked, really.

A while ago I blogged about Anne Fadiman's little book, EX LIBRIS, and a kind reader let me know that she was giving a lecture in Sheffiel last night so I went along. She spoke about the difficult relationship between Coleridge and his son, Hartley, drawing on their correspondence. It was excellent, and when I spoke to her afterwards, she was charming. I'm going to hunt out some of the other things she has written.

Martin Edwards Guest Blog

Martin Edwards is one of my favourite contemporary crime-writers. His first series featured the lawyer, Harry Devlin, and were set in Liverpool. There's a second series set in the Lake District and the fourth of those, THE SERPENT POOL, has just come out in paperback. I loved the previous one, THE ARSENIC LABYRINTH (great titles!). Martin has gone from strength to strength in recent years and I'm looking forward to reading the new one. I've been meaning to ask him to do a guest blog for a while. One of his strengths as a writer is his sense of place, and here he writes about what draws him to the Lake District:

Martin Edwards writes, 'Books burn in the opening scene of my fourth and latest Lake District Mystery, The Serpent Pool, just issued in paperback in the UK. And the man who owns the books, an avid collector called George Saffell, watches bound and helpless as the flames race towards him.

It is a dark opening to a novel set in a beautiful part of the world. The Lake District’s landscape is fascinating at any time, and the main action of The Serpent Pool takes place at the start of a new year, in the cold days of early January, when fog descends from the fell slopes, and the forecasters warn of avalanches. Researching the real-life scenes of the fictional events of my book was enthralling (at least for me - my teenage children would prefer me to research a series set on the world’s sunniest beaches…)

Few areas anywhere that are as small as England’s Lake District (it is roughly thirty miles across) can boast such a rich literary tradition. William Wordsworth was the most famous of the Lake Poets, but Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey still have admirers. Among novelists, Hugh Walpole (whose few crime novels are well worth a look, incidentally), Melvyn Bragg and nowadays Sarah Hall, have all used the landscape of the Lakes to great effect. As an essayist, Thomas De Quincey (who lived in Dove Cottage, former home of the Wordswoths) is beyond compare.

De Quincey’s dark shadow falls over The Serpent Pool. Apart from ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’, a masterpiece of hallucinatory writing, he was most famous for ‘On Murder, Considered as one of the Fine Arts’, and this inspires Daniel Kind, to study his work while writing a book about the history of murder. In so doing, Daniel encounters a range of characters with something to hide, including the secret behind the violent death of George Saffell. I hadn’t read De Quincey before working on this novel, and I came to admire his writing, even if I remain deeply unconvinced about the benefits of opium to the creative process.

While Daniel focuses on De Quincey, Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett, who heads the Cold Case Review Team, investigates the unexplained death, six years ago, of a woman called Bethany Friend, who was drowned in an isolated patch of water known as the Serpent Pool. Hannah’s relationship with rare book dealer Marc Amos is on the skids, and as the winter weather worsens, the tension builds to a climax at the Serpent Pool. There Hannah comes to learn the truth. And when I wrote the final scene, I couldn’t help remembering that famous remark of Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Copper Beeches’:

‘It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’

I can only hope the Lake District tourist authorities forgive me for introducing murder and mayhem into this most gorgeous of locations!'