‘The Hitchcock Murders’ by Gavin Collinson

Published by Cutting Edge Press,
20 February 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-908122-85-8

A killer is targeting women in London every Tuesday, with crimes gruesomely resembling scenes from Hitchcock’s films ... and if DCI Jilani can’t find him, the series will continue.

This highly original first novel is a fast-moving ride. Using multiple third-person narrators, we cut from scene to scene as quickly as if we were under the great Hitch’s direction, switching characters, going from present to flashback, and playing with time in the final confrontations. Film buffs will have great fun identifying Hitchcock references, and the novel ends with a filmography.

DCI Josa Jilani is a vividly-drawn character: young, determined, resourceful, outspoken and suddenly thrust into prominence as a token woman Muslim policewoman who knows that her superiors are just waiting for her to fail. She’s helped by the mysterious Daniel Blake, former police helper who carries a burden of guilt for the death of his best friend – the relationship between them is convincingly and enjoyably worked out. The London background comes across well, particularly the South Bank and BFI scenes. There’s a good double twist at the end, and the perp is fairly clued, yet still a surprise. All in all, an astonishingly assured and satisfying debut.

An original, emotional roller-coaster of a PP which isn’t just for film buffs. Highly recommended

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor.

Gavin Collinson is the Interactive Producer for the BBC’s flagship drama, Doctor Who. He grew up in Blackpool where he worked on camp sites, in cafes and as a journo on his local newspaper. He later moved to London and largely by accident, became part of the team that launched Maxim, before a short stint at the BBC. He next found himself working for the British Film Institute where he helped organise the Hitchcock Centenary, meeting many of the people Hitch had collaborated with throughout his career. After the BFI Gavin joined ITV’s Coronation Street before returning to the BBC in 2009 to become part of the Doctor Who team. The Hitchcock Murders is his first novel.

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘The Long Way Home’ By Louise Penny

Published (UK) by Sphere,
26 August 2014.
ISBN: 978-0-7515-5264-5
Published (USA) by Minotaur,
July 28, 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-250-02205-9

This is the tenth novel by Louise Penny, and the newest in the ChiefInspector Gamache series (that is until the next one, “*The Nature of the Beast*,” is published on August 25, 2015).  It takes place eight months after the events in the prior novel, the equally wonderful “*How the Light Gets In*,” and finds Gamache, now in his late fifties, newly retired from his position as head of homicide for the Surete du Quebec, having had enough of murder and killers and anxious to “at long last, rest in peace in the little village in the valley.”  That, of course, being the village of Three Pines, “so small and obscure it doesn’t appear on any map,” where he has found a peaceful and worry-/anxiety-free existence.

All the other beloved villagers are also present: Myrna, a “large black woman” who had been a practicing psychologist and runs the local bookstore; “demented, drunken, delusional” Ruth Zardo, an eccentric, award-winning poet, and Rosa, her beloved pet duck; Gabri and Olivier, the lovers who run the bistro and the B&B; Jean-Guy Beauvoir, formerly Gamache’s second-in-command and now his son-in-law.  But this time out, the plot centers around Clara Morrow, one of the closest friends that Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, had in the small village.

Clara is a brilliant artist and portraitist, married to Peter Morrow, a celebrated artist in his own right but now overshadowed by his wife’s growing fame and respect.  One gains insight into the world of art in these pages, and sees that beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder, whether in art or one’s surroundings, and presents art in its many nuances, to a far greater degree than I remember in the earlier series entries.

One morning Clara tells Gamache that her husband, from whom she had separated one year prior, has gone missing.  The strain in their marriage had caused them to agree to have no contact for a year, and then to reunite on the anniversary of that date.  Gamache, aided by Jean-Guy, Myrna, Ruth, and Clara herself, embark on a quest to find Peter, taking them to the far reaches of Canada, to places where “time had its own rules.”  The writing is poetic prose at its best, and, as well as the ubiquitous “lump in the throat” that one finds throughout the book, is completely captivating.
Highly recommended.

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Reviewer: Gloria Feit

Louise Penny was born in Toronto in 1958 and became a journalist and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, specializing in hard news and current affairs. My first job was in Toronto and then moved to Thunder Bay at the far tip of Lake Superior, in Ontario. It was a great place to learn the art and craft of radio and interviewing, and listening. Louise had always dreamed of writing and says ‘ now I am. Beyond my wildest dreams (and I can dream pretty wild) the Chief Inspector Gamache books have found a world-wide audience, won awards and ended up on bestseller lists including the New York Times. Even more satisfying, I have found a group of friends in the writing community. Other authors, booksellers, readers - who have become important parts of our lives. I thought writing might provide me with an income - I had no idea the real riches were more precious but less substantial.’  Louise lives with her husband Michael in a small village.

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.

Rule Makers and Rule Breakers of the Golden Age

The Golden Age

Rule Makers and Rule Breakers of the Golden Age

by Carol Westron

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this article.

When we speak of the Golden Age of crime fiction the first names that come to mind are Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, closely followed by Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey. In the late 1920s Christie and Sayers were both well into their detective fiction careers, but they were not the writers who decided to set down a list of rules for the genre. Of course, the position of women was very different then: it wasn't until 1928 that all women in Britain were allowed to vote, and in 1918, when the first law was passed to enfranchise some women, neither Christie nor Sayers were old enough to vote. My instinct is that neither woman would let the expectations of society prevent them from doing what they wanted, certainly not Sayers, with her strong Feminist principles. Perhaps it was simply that they were too busy writing and stretching the boundaries of the genre to bother about formulating rules.

So who were the men who felt themselves uniquely fitted to the challenge of creating a set of rules for writing crime fiction? Who else could it be but a Roman Catholic priest and an American art critic?

However, they were not the first. In 1922 AA Milne had published his only detective story, The Red House Mystery, and, in the 1926 edition he included a foreword that laid out, with his characteristic humour, the things he felt essential for a detective story.

1. The use of straightforward language.

2. Clues to be revealed throughout the book not kept to the last chapter.

3. To do this he advocated the use of a Watson figure, so that clues should be presented in accessible

dialogue form.

4. Milne also preferred no love interest in detection books, because he felt romance detracted from the business in hand.

In 1928 a group of mystery writers came together and formed what, a couple of years later, became known as the Detection Club. One of the members, Ronald Knox, created ten rules of detective fiction, which he ironically called the Ten Commandments. Knox was a brilliant scholar who converted to Roman Catholicism and became a priest. As well as being an eminent theologian, he wrote essays, pastiches, and broadcast on numerous radio programmes.

Knox had a dry, sense of humour and an unfortunate lack of appreciation of the fact that other people didn't always realise when he was joking. In 1926 he made a radio broadcast entitled Broadcasting From the Barricades, which described a scene in which London was being destroyed by a rampaging mob and a Government Minister was hanged from a lamp-post. It should have been clear that this was a spoof: it was announced at the beginning, the names were absurd and so were the government departments, but many people tuning in slightly early for the following programme were alarmed. After all, the BBC was not expected to make jokes and it was earlier in the year of civil unrest that led to the General Strike. And it was only a few years after the First World War, and many people were attuned to expecting loss. Knox's recording career was tarnished by this practical joke.

Knox was also hoist by his own petard when in 1911, he delivered a satiric lecture, followed by an essay: Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes which claimed that Holmes had really died at the Reichenbach Falls and the later stories were the fabrications of an alcoholic and delusional Watson. From that time Knox was regarded as an expert on Holmes and continually appealed to for essays and talks. In The Life of the Right Reverend Ronald Knox (1959) Evelyn Waugh reports Knox's response to one such request: 'I can't BEAR books about Sherlock Holmes. It is so depressing that my one permanent achievement is to have started a bad joke.'

In 1925, Knox started writing detective novels in an attempt to increase his income. In 1927 he introduced his series character, Miles Bredon, an investigator for the Indescribable Insurance Company. It is generally accepted that Knox had no intention of his Ten Commandments being carved in stone. They show the humour and intelligence typical of Knox, mocking many of the crime writing clichés of the time, such as an over-abundance of secret passages, identical twins, supernatural agencies and unknown poisons.

Despite his rejection of Holmes and Watson, he agrees with Milne about the value of a Watson-like figure.

His rejection of the use of Chinamen is especially interesting. The Yellow Peril was over-used in crime fiction at this time but he is also making a serious social point. As the historian Julia Lovell wrote in 2014: 'In the early decades of the 20^th century, Britain buzzed with Sinophobia. Respectable middle-class magazines, tabloids and comics alike spread stories of ruthless Chinese ambitions to destroy the west.'

Van Dine spends pages describing the glories of Philo Vance and his possessions and as long again with Vance showing off with literary quotations of  dubious relevance. Even worse, Rule 5: The culprit must be determined by logical deductions – not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. In The Canary Murder Case (1929) Vance and his companions revisit the scene of a locked room mystery and, wishing to relax, Vance selects a record labelled as classical music to play on the phonograph. The record, by chance proves not to be music but a recording of the victim's last words,which were spoken from behind a locked door. This destroys the main suspect's air-tight alibi. It also damages Van Dine's credibility.

The Rule most frequently broken by other Golden Age writers was the prohibition of a love interest in detective novels. Of the rule makers, only the celibate priest, Ronald Knox did not disapprove of romance. Both Milne and Van Dine felt that love proved a distraction from the main business in hand, although they phrased this objection very differently:

Van Dine: 'There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.'

Milne: 'A reader, all agog to know whether the white substance on the muffins was arsenic or face-powder, cannot be held up while Roland clasps Angela's hand 'a moment longer than the customary usages of society dictate.' Much might have happened in that moment, properly spent; footprints made or discovered; cigarette-ends picked up and put in envelopes. By all means let Roland have a book to himself in which to clasp anything he likes, but in the detective story he must attend strictly to business.'

So many Golden Age writers broke the romance rule that it is impossible to list them: Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham, Tey and Heyer all had romances in many of their books. Sayers, Marsh and Allingham had their sleuths fall in love, eventually marry, and continue detecting. Patricia Wentworth divides the action between her elderly female sleuth and a variety of young lovers who come to her for aid. So did Christie with her lesser known series detectives, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. And it was not just women writers: Michael Innes had Appleby fall in love and marry, and the love John Creasey's heroes had for their wives dominates his books. Of course, Leslie Charteris turned the matter around: the Saint books started with him meeting and falling in love with Patricia Holm, sharing several adventures with her, then fading her out, so that Simon Templar can enjoy encounters with other women.

In her full-length novels Christie sticks to murder, although several of her short stories feature lesser crimes or no crimes at all. However, Josephine Tey clearly did not feel that a good mystery had to have a corpse and wrote several books, such as Miss Pym Disposes (1946), The Franchise Affair (1948), and To Love and Be Wise (1950), in which either the death was unintentional or no death occurred.

If, as I suspect, Van Dine did model Philo Vance on the early Peter Wimsey, I would have enjoyed seeing his reaction to the penultimate Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night (1935.) In it Sayers broke: Rule 3, a love story; Rule 7, no corpse; Rule 9, two detectives; Rule 11, a servant did it; Rule 16, exploring side-issues.

Sayers proved to be an equal opportunity author in her final Wimsey novel, Busman's Honeymoon (1937), when again a servant committed the crime. And in Five Red Herrings (1931), the death was tried as manslaughter rather than murder.  Also she bent Rule 20j in Have His Carcase (1932), when Wimsey and Harriet Vane decode a letter which has an important bearing on the plot.Both Sayers and Christie use the identical twin motif in short stories.

In the 1920s and 1930s spiritualism and seances were popular both as a serious attempt by the bereaved to contact loved ones and as an entertainment. As well as short stories based on spiritualism, Christie uses seances and the ouija board to either set the scene for a murder, as in The Sittaford Mystery (1931) and Dumb Witness (1937); to obscure the truth: The Pale Horse (1961); or to startle a killer into confessing, as in Peril at End House (1932), which definitely breaks Van Dine's Rule 20b. Sayers also uses a phoney séance in Strong Poison (1930), although not to gain a  confession.

As for the Commandment/Rule that Knox and Van Dine agree about: that the detective or official investigator or character whose thoughts we have been in should not commit the crime. Both Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer had a police officer committing the crime: Christie in Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) and Heyer in A Blunt Instrument (1938), but when it comes to breaking the record for contravening this Commandment and Rule, the prize must go to Agatha Christie. At the beginning of her career, with the narrating character in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926); also with the narrating character of her dark, stand-alone novel, Endless Night (1967); and in Curtain (1975), the last Poirot novel, written at the height of her career and stored in a safe until near the end of her life.

I do not believe that any of the Golden Age greats deliberately went out of their way to break the rules, they just had fun playing with the permutations of the genre. Christie was particularly inventive, which meant that she broke the rules with exceptional panache. As Anthony Horowitz said of Christie, 'It is as if she was given five or six basic stitches and somehow used them to create the Bayeux Tapestry .' (Introduction to the Hercule Poirot Novels Collection published by the Folio Society.)

In the end keeping the rules or breaking them does not matter, it's the resulting book that counts. As AA Milne said in his 1926 prologue: 'The only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I wanted to write it.'

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.  She is the moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published July 2013. Her second book About the Children was published in May 2014.

www.carolwestron.com

‘The Deadliest Sin’ by The Medieval Murderers

Published by Simon & Schuster,
29 June 2015.
ISBN: 978-10-47111-438-0 (PB)

A party of pilgrims on their way to a holy place to pray for deliverance from a particular form of evil; an overnight stop in a wayside inn, extended by bad weather; a suggestion that they entertain each other by telling stories. Sounds familiar?

Most students of English literature will recognize the concept; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are still quoted and retold to this day. The Deadliest Sin follows a similar pattern, albeit with fewer stories and more authors. Whereas Chaucer wrote all twenty-plus tales himself, this collection is the work of a group of historical crime writers who band together not only to promote their work, but also to write collaborative novels and collections of stories.

In this collection, loosely gathered into a novel using Chaucer’s basic plot, the pilgrims’ destination is Walsingham, and they seek deliverance from the Black Death, which is raging through Europe and felling half the population. The members of the party attempt to outdo each other with stories of evil, taking the Seven Deadly Sins as their theme. Each has a murder at its core; some are especially dark, while others adopt a lighter tone.

Michael Jecks sets the ball rolling with a tale of Lust among soldiers fighting in France. Ian Morson follows with a story of Greed in ancient Venice, and another of Gluttony in Trebizond, possibly better known today as Turkey. Susannah Gregory joins up with the alter ego Simon Beaufort which she shares with her husband, for a return to the UK for a tale of Sloth based around a Welsh monastery. Philip Gooden’s story of Anger brings us to a village in rural Kent, and Bernard Knight takes us to the medical community of Bristol for the consequences of Envy. Finally it’s Karen Maitland’s turn: a story of Pride among the minor clergy of Lincoln.

As well as richly realized stories in the their own right, the seven tales are an opportunity to sample the work of half a dozen accomplished historical novelists whose names are well-known among aficionados of the sub-genre, but possibly less so among the wider reading public. Some feature series protagonists already developed by the individual authors; other authors opt to explore new ground. All are well written, and make it clear that these experts on medieval murder are also knowledgeable about everyday life in 14^th century Britain and Europe.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

The Medieval Murderers

The Medieval Murderers,  are, see left to right, Bernard Knight, Philip Gooden, Simon Beaufort, Susanna Gregory, Karen Maitland and Ian Morson,.

Bernard Knight  was born 3 May 1931. He is a British forensic pathologist and writer. He became a Home Office pathplogist in 1965  and was appointed Professor of  Forensic Pathology, University of Wales College of Medicine, in 1980.

Philip Gooden writes both fiction and non-fiction. His historical novels include the Nick Revill series, set in Elizabethan London, and a Victorian sequence, the most recent title for which is The Durham Deception. Philip Gooden also writes books on language, including Who’s Whose? and Faux Pas?, which won the English Speaking Union award for the best English Language book of 2006. He was chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2007-8.

Michael Jecks is the author of thirty-two novels in his Templar series, all published by Headline and Simon & Schuster. A past chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, he is also a founder of the Historical Writers’ Association and Medieval Murderers. He is a regular speaker at libraries and festivals worldwide. He is currently working on the final novel in his Hundred Years War trilogy.

Simon Beaufort is the pseudonym of Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh when they write jointly. Together they have written eight Geoffrey Mappestone novels and contributed to several Medieval Murderer books.  Recently, they have ventured into more modern times The Nimrod Murders is set in early 20th century London, and The Murder House takes place in 21st century Bristol.

Susanna Gregory was raised in Bristol, she early on became familiar with its great medieval history. After graduating from university, she spent three years in Leeds, as an officer in the West Yorkshire Police, where she was exposed to numerous unpleasant practices and grisly details, which have contributed to her characters and plots. Upon leaving the police, she conducted post-graduate studies at the University of Durham before earning a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her primary post-doctoral research has investigated environmental contamination in the world’s seal population by looking at the build-up of pollutants – particularly heavy metals – in the teeth and bones of different seal species. She has also done fieldwork with whales and walruses, and has spent seventeen field seasons working with marine mammals in the Arctic or Antarctic, as well as many years lecturing on Antarctic tourist ships. At the undergraduate and graduate level, she has taught and supervised research in comparative anatomy and biological anthropology. She has also served as an environmental consultant, including working on the Greenpeace Climate Change Database.

She now lives in a hamlet in southwest Wales with her husband Beau Riffenburgh, who is also a writer, see Simon Beaufort.

Karen Maitland  was born 1st January  1956. She is a British author of medieval thriller fiction. Maitland has an honours degree in Human Communication and doctorate in Psycholinguistics.Karen has now recently moved to the lovely county of Devon, having lived for a number of years in the beautiful medieval city of Lincoln, which together with the wild salt-marshes of Norfolk, provide great inspiration for her novels.

Ian Morson was born in 1947 in Derby. He is the author of the Oxford based Falconer series.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.