There was not a spare seat to be had for the Bodies From The Library event at the British Library last Friday evening celebrating the publication of three Eric Ambler titles by the British Library. Two distinguished panels discussed Ambler and his work. 

The first focussed primarily on Ambler and his influences in the context of the Thriller genre which had, up to that point, frequently seen stiff upper lipped Englishmen thwarting Johnny Foreigner types in their dastardly plans. 

Panel 1: Camilla Shestopal, John McLaughlin, Martin Edwards, Ayo Onatade

The second panel focussed on Ambler’s legacy and how he privided the bridge from that pre-war era to the modern British Spy Thriller of the type written by such diverse authors as John Le Carre, Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth. 

  
Panel 2: Jake Kerridge, Barry Forshaw, Stav Sherez, William Ryan

The event closed with a reception at which the audience was able to quiz the panelists further on their views about Ambler over a glass of wine before the inevitable Friday evening homeward journey during which everyone may have regarded their fellow commuters with an added degree of suspicion – was any of these outwardly ordinary travellers at this moment embroiled in some Ambleresque plot that might destabilise a friendly regime and precipitate unforeseen consequences?

Looking forward to this evening’s event at the British Library – Eric Ambler: Father of the Modern British Spy Thriller, starting at 6pm. Travelling up to London early to finalise preparations with my Bodies From The Library colleagues. Hope to see you there!

Mark

Crime novelist and former rock journalist, Stav Sherez, joins the distinguished panel of speakers at the Eric Ambler event at the British Library on the evening of Friday 6th May. Stav has written for The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, Zembla and the Catholic Herald. His first novel, The Devil’s Playground,  was described as ‘altogether extraordinary’ and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger. His third and fourth books, A Dark Redemption and Eleven Days, were both shortlisted for Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the year in 2013/2014.

We are delighted to announce that another speaker will be joining us at the Eric Ambler evening at the British Library on 6th May. Camilla Shestopal is Director of Estates and Backlist titles at agency Peters, Fraset and Dunlop. She is responsible for bringing such diverse writers as Eric Ambler, Margery Allingham, Dennis Wheatley and Georges Simenon back into print both in traditional and e-book form.

We are delighted to announce the fantastic lineup of speakers for the Eric Ambler event at The British Library on Friday 6th May at 6:30pm.

We have one of Britain’s leading experts on Crime and Thriller genres Barry Forshaw and in what we think is rather a coup, we also have Ambler’s own agent, John McLaughlin, who will be able to give his first hand account of what it was like to work with Ambler.

The lineup of speakers so far (with more to be announced shortly) is:

Martin Edwards
Barry Forshaw
Jake Kerridge
John McLaughlin
Ayo Onatade
William Ryan

For more information on our distinguished panelists go to:

Speakers – Eric Ambler Evening

If, like me, you’re looking forward to the Bodies From The Library 2016 Conference, you may want to get hold of copies of the speakers’ recommendations of Golden Age Detective Fiction to make sure you get the most out of your day. The list has been compiled to give you a selection of the key works by authors who will be covered during the day’s programme. I’ve already reserved copies of several of the books from the library service in Bristol and they’re being shipped in from all parts of the South West region. (Don’t you just love the library service!)

The Bishop’s Crime by H. C. Bailey
Mr Fortune Here by H. C. Bailey
The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley
The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley
Malice Aforethought by Anthony Berkeley (as Francis Iles)
Innocence of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton
Ask a Policeman by Members of the Detection Club
A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer
Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer
The Rasp by Philip MacDonald
The Maze by Philip MacDonald:
Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh
Enter a Murderer by Ngaio Marsh:
Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey
Murder at the Manor by various authors (British Library Crime Classics Collection)

Enjoy!

Mark

Just finished packing to head off to Deal to help set up the conference venue for tomorrow’s Deal Noir event. Looking forward to meeting those of you who are coming tomorrow and to hearing the views of the excellent range of panelists who are jetting in from all around the globe to talk about the latest developments in Crime Fiction.

See you there.

I spent a rainy Easter Saturday in and around Mells in a quiet corner of Somerset. In the churchyard I tracked down the grave of Monsignor Ronald Knox, best known to fans of crime fiction as a member of The Detection Club.  He wrote several Golden Age detective novels and collaborated with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and others in three books written collectively by members of the club at the height of their popularity in the 1930s, Behind The Screen, The Floating Admiral and Six Against The Yard.

Perhaps surprisingly he is also familiar to fans of Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope as the author of Barchester Pilgrimage, a continuation of the Barchester Chronicles of that author taking the children and grandchildren of characters from the series on into the following decades.

He is perhaps best remembered in ecclesiastical circles for his translation of the Vulgate Bible from the original Latin.

I don’t know what they would have made of his 1926 BBC radio play Broadcasting From The Barricades, a hoax programme purporting to be live reporting of a revolution taking place in London, which caused minor panic across the UK. The broadcast preceded the General Strike by some four months and anticipated the impact such broadcasts might have which was exploited to the full by Orson Welles in his War of the Worlds radio broadcast of 1938.

I’m sure he would have appreciated the joke.

We are delighted to announce two more speakers at The Bodies From The Library Conference on 11 June 2016.

Our first new speaker is Susan Moody, author of Penny Black, voted Number 56 of The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time by the Crime Writers’ Association. Susan will be talking about Georgette Heyer.

Our second new speaker is Jennifer Henderson, author of the new biography of Josephine Tey, which was listed by The Observer in the best biographies of 2015 and by The Independent in its list of the best crime books of 2015.

Watch this space for further announcements on speakers who will be attending the conference.

The examination question used to be phrased along the lines: “compare and contrast…”

Having looked at each of Christie’s two greatest detectives in isolation, it is time to identify similarities and differences between them – or at least the short stories in which they appear.

If we consider the victims then we see that Poirot’s cases tend to have a bias towards male victims – they make up two-thirds of the victims – whereas Miss Marple’s cases almost exactly reverse this with slightly more than two-thirds of the victims being female.

A possible explanation for this is that Poirot, as a consulting private detective, is called in to investigate cases that are in the public domain whereas Miss Marple is more usually involved as an interested bystander in more domestic crimes. Since we are concerned with the period before the Second World War, the different spheres in which men and women moved are a significant factor. Generally, women at this time had a more domestic role than now. Married women tended not to go out to work but to stay at home and take responsibility for the household. Men, on the other hand, tended to go out to work as the main breadwinner of the family. Thus there would be a disproportionate number of men in any public setting and a proportionately greater number of women involved in a domestic scenario. Christie is therefore simply reflecting these differences in the proportion of  each sex which falls victim to crime.

If we turn to the age profiles of the victims we find that there is again a discernible difference between the Poirot and the Miss Marple cases. The chart below shows the age of the victims – bear in mind that there are some 50 Poirot cases and only 20 Miss Marple cases so interpretation of the chart must take this imbalance into consideration.

The ages of the victims in Miss Marple’s cases are decidedly skewed towards the younger end whereas there is a more even spread of victim’s ages in the Poirot cases with the most frequent age of the victims falling in their 40s.

This might again be attributable to the public nature of Poirot’s cases since the victims in this public arena would tend to require sufficient time to achieve whatever prominence in business or public life is required to precipitate their murder – or to enable them to acquire sufficient wealth to be worthwhile potential victims of some form of theft.

However, given the domestic nature of many of Miss Marple’s cases, and the tendency for inheritance to provide the motive for more of the crimes within the family (6 out of her 20 cases), it is perhaps surprising to find that the victims in the Miss Marple cases tend to be younger. It transpires that the inheritance motive tends to apply almost exclusively to the cases where the victim is at the older end of the range and that the young victims are more likely to be murdered for other reasons.  Love (as in the removal of an inconvenient obstacle in the form of a current spouse, for example) is the second most common motive for murder in Miss Marple’s cases (4 out of the 20) and this is more naturally a greater concern to the younger age groups. So on deeper analysis we see a divide in Miss Marple’s cases between older victims killed for inheritance motives and younger victims killed for motives of (misplaced) love.