Monthly Archives: June 2015

Last Few Days Before The Conference

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I have been away for a few days and after I finished packing my bag, I downloaded four novels from the speakers’ recommended lists: The May Week Murders by Douglas Brown, Death’s Bright Dart by V C Clinton-Baddeley, The Case With Nine Solutions by J J Connington and Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy by Freeman Wills Crofts. 

I think it is just marvellous that I can buy these books in seconds and pack them for holiday reading without taking up any space in my bag. 

It is also fantastic to see so much Golden Age detective fiction available again through e-publication after years of obscurity and being out of print. 

Looking forward to discussing these and other related topics at the British Library on Saturday. 

A Three Pipe Problem

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This week I have read The Norwich Victims by Francis Beeding, Fire Burn! by John Dickson Carr (which I picked up for just £1 the previous week at the Book Barn – what a bargain) and The Greene Murder Case by S S Van Dine. I found the historic setting of Fire Burn! gave it a very different feel. I am not sure I go for the bang on the head/time travel book-ending of the story but then it worked for the TV series Life on Mars though that only went back to the 1970’s rather than 1829 as Dickson Carr chose to do.

One of the peculiarities of manner which emerged about the pre-Victorians was their prudish reaction to the excesses of the earlier Regency era.  So along with keeping one’s hat on indoors, and always wearing gloves (useful for those of a criminal disposition), there was the treatment of smoking which is not a million miles from the modern almost blanket ban anywhere civilised. A female charcter notes to a male character that she can tell he has been smoking but doesn’t mind even though she ought to do so.

This makes such a change from the usual Golden Age novel set 100 years later. Then everybody smokes, the only question is what? Of course, pipes are favoured by some of the cerebral detectives (following Holmes we see Wimsey and Campion both indulging in pipes at one time or another). Others go for cigars (Gervase Fen, Roger Sheringham  et al – as well as Wimsey and Campion when social occasions require it). Cigarettes are more the preserve of the police detectives (Inspector Martin) or Americans (Philo Vance – though, to confuse the issue, he speaks with an effete, laconic drawl in the finest Wimsey or Campion tradition).

Women tend to smoke less, however, and this can be a pointer to their moral and hence criminal tendencies – I won’t give examples to avoid spoilers but you have been warned! Note to self – must check if Harriet Vane smoked in Strong Poison – now that would have been a red herring though it could be a marker laid down by Dorothy Sayers that Vane is in the feminist vanguard.

Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

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With apologies to one of our speakers, Martin Edwards, for shamelessly pinching the name of his Blog as a title for this post, I have been struck while going through the recommended reading list from our speakers how many of the Golden Age authors wrote under one or more pseudonyms.

Over the last week I have read The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah, The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley and Antidote to Venom by Freeman Wills Crofts.

But Berkeley also wrote under the name Francis Iles and A. Monmouth Platts. The Francis Iles pseudonym appears to have been his preferred choice for books that attempted to subvert the conventions of the genre, such as Malice Aforethought, but he also used it when serving as a book reviewer for The Daily Telegraph – read into that what you will.

Berkeley is even less trust-worthy when you consider that The Poisoned Chocolates Case is a full length novel that reworks the plot from an earlier short story The Avenging Chance, which gets name-checked in the novel as a play attended by a possible suspect. So even the book is appearing under a pseudonym. Indeed the short story solution is one of those proposed by one of the detectives in the novel but proved to be incorrect.

Likewise, John Dickson Carr is represented in the list under both his own name (The Hollow Man and Fire Burn!) and his Carter Dickson pseudonym used primarily for his Merivale detective fiction (He Wouldn’t Kill Patience). He also used Carr Dickson and Roger Fairburn.

Francis Beeding (author of recommended book The Norwich Victims which I am currently reading) is the pseudonym of not one but two authors collaborating – John Palmer and Hilary St George Saunders.

S.S. Van Dine (author of The Greene Murder Case) is the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright who was too embarrassed at writing what he regarded as pulp fiction that he preferred to do so under an assumed name.

Even Agatha Christie was at it. She wrote several romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott.

So if you’re coming to the Bodies From The Library conference -you might want to consider attending under a false name. You never know who you might meet.

Yours,

Mickey Mouse