Forgotten Book Friday: The Blank Wall

Miss Lemon is not entirely sure it's fair to saddle  The Blank Wall, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, with the Forgotten Friday label. Nevertheless, from the book's original publication in 1947,  it has had a tough go at remaining at the forefront of the reading public's mind.

Efforts by such discerning literary admirers as Raymond Chandler, who entreated his publisher, Hamish Hamilton, to bring Mrs. Holding's works to England, came to naught. Even laudatory reviews that appeared in respected periodicals such as The New Yorker, and the adaptation of The Blank Wall into two cinematic hits -- first The Reckless Moment in 1949 and then The Deep End in 2001 -- did little to keep this gem of psychological suspense from slipping the collective cultural memory.

A pity, as this wartime story of one woman's snap decision to conceal the body of a man who may or may not have been murdered by one of her family has a resonance one doesn't soon forget. Isn't it always the thing done on instinct, without a moment's thought, that causes one the most trouble to explain later?  Certainly that's the case for Lucia Holley, who is forced again and again to choose between the urge to protect her family and her own peace of mind.
   

Endpaper design for No. 42

Fortunately for us, those wonderfully intuitive editors at Persephone Books chose to republish The Blank Wall as Book No. 42, and the novel has been saved, in Miss Lemon's view, from obscurity. The publisher's note in the Persephone edition rightly points out that the acuity with which Holding depicts the psychological underpinnings of her characters' motivations sets the bar for the British masters of the genre who were to follow her: Celia Fremlin, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Yorke.  

Indeed, Miss Lemon's readers who enjoy any or all of the aforementioned authors will most certainly enjoy The Blank Wall.

The Documents in the Case

Miss Lemon just loves a good poisoning ... don't you? 

If so, her faithful readers will not want to miss Dorothy L. Sayers's The Documents in the Case (1930) a marvel of a murder mystery told entirely in the correspondence and written statements of the key figures in the case.

George Harrison, a likable chap devoted to his family and his pastimes, is unceremoniously poisoned by a stew of amanita muscaria, a mushroom famous for its deadly venom. See the photo at right and beware not to mistake it for amanita rubescens, or the comparatively benign and edible 'warty caps.' 

The hitch here is that Mr. Harrison was a seasoned gatherer and connoisseur of edible toadstools -- he even published a book on the topic and illustrated it himself. His son, Paul, finds it impossible to believe that his father would make such an amateurish mistake. So he collects the said documents and forwards them to Sir Gilbert Pugh at the Home Office. And thus an inventive and absorbing narrative unfolds, one that doubles as an armchair investigation.

Miss Lemon finds more than just the meta-form of this novel intriguing. Its creation is something of a curiosity, too. The copy Miss Lemon read, published by the New English Library in 1978, clearly names Robert Eustace as co-author. Yet many other editions -- and bibliographies of Sayers's work -- do not.

Eustace, the nom de plume of Eustace Robert Barton, a doctor and novelist in his own right, is credited by some sources with supplying Sayers with the central plot point and supporting medical and technical details that make The Documents in the Case such a marvel.  At the same time, those details are what sometimes interfered with Miss Lemon's willing suspension of disbelief. The technical whys and scientific wherefores are such that Miss Lemon found it hard to believe such minutia could be recalled in a letter or a written statement.  Unless, of course, the author was an inventive novelist himself.

How much of this work is Sayers's? And how much is Eustace's? Literary sleuths will enjoy puzzling out that question as much as they will the case of one very suspicious death.

The Coffin Trail

Looking for a well-crafted mystery in the tradition of Colin Dexter or P.D. James? What about one set in the Lake District, with well-read characters worthy of their Wordsworthian surroundings? Miss Lemon is here to tell you to search no longer.

The Coffin Trail (2004), by Martin Edwards, has all of these attributes and more. From page one, Miss Lemon found herself utterly immersed in this modern-day whodunit featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and an Oxford historian who's drawn to the Lake District village of Brackdale by shades from his past.

Ostensibly writing an article for a popular history magazine on the old coffin trails used by the villagers before Brackdale got a proper churchyard, Daniel Kind unearths more than just mouldering newspapers from the archives. He begins asking questions that stir up old resentments and make him the prime mover in a cold-case investigation into the  murder of a young woman whose body was left on the so-called sacrifice stone.

The villagers dropped blame for the murder squarely at the door of Barrie Gilpin, a maladjusted lad suffering from autism whose own body was found on the rocks not far from the sacrifice stone. Blood from the victim was found on his person.

Daniel -- and others in the village, too, including DCI Scarlett -- begin to wonder if perhaps it wasn't convenience's sake that buried the investigation with Barrie.

In keeping with the best mystery writers, Edwards endows each of his characters with motive, opportunity and skeletons in the closet aplenty. What most interested Miss Lemon were the dramatizations of the relationships between Hannah and her partner, Marc Amos, a bookseller; Daniel Kind and his girlfriend, Miranda; and the well-heeled Dumelows. Edwards portrays the calm seas and squalls all couples endure with a deft hand.

You'll find quite a bit of realism in this neatly turned out crime novel -- topped with suspense and surprise, too.

Agatha Christie's Method for Murder

Imagine a world without Agatha Christie. Miss Lemon simply can't do it. It seems as though she, and the inimitable characters of her creation -- Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Mr. Satterthwaite, Mr. Parker Pyne, indeed, Miss Lemon -- have been around as long as movable type.

And yet, as difficult as it is to believe, 2011 marks a mere 91 years since the publication of her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) and the debut of that famously fussy Belgian detective.  The success of Agatha Christie's first novel launched a career among mystery novelists that, in terms of recognition, endurance and influence, has yet to be rivaled.

Yet Agatha Christie's style is not everyone's cup of tea. Condemned by more than one critic as 'elitist,' 'escapist,' and 'wooden,' Agatha Christie's works continue to sell -- by Miss Lemon's reckoning, more than two billion of her books have been sold so far, and the tills continue to ring apace.

Escapist? Perhaps. Characters that lack nuance? One could make a case. However, there's no denying that Dame Agatha could craft a mystery cleverly enough to keep even the sharpest of armchair sleuths second-guessing the murderer's identity.

And yet, Agatha Christie never played fast and loose with the clues. Adequate evidence is always there for the reader to solve the crime -- as long as he or she is astute enough to detect it. 

In Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, John Curran points out that one possible clue to Agatha Christie's enormous success as a mystery writer is her mastery of the double-blind -- or that fine authorial touch that makes the most obvious suspect the least likely to have committed the crime. In lesser hands, mystery novels that depend on this technique tend to fall flat.

In compiling the published Secret Notebooks, Mr. Curran had the enviable task of going through more than 70 of Agatha Christie's manuscript notebooks, tracing the threads of plot outlines, character sketches and random thoughts that, strung together, provide clues to the creative ingenuity that stood behind so many of her excellent crime stories.

As a follow up to that indispensable reference source, Mr. Curran has just published Agatha Christie's Murder in the Making, in which he draws on the textual evidence he encountered in the Christie archives to come up with a theory that attempts to explain her enduring literary appeal. (He also publishes the original ending to A Mysterious Affair at Styles, rejected by her editors at The Bodley Head.)

Miss Lemon can't wait to get her hands on a copy.

As all serious admirers of Agatha Christie know, 15 September is the anniversary of her birth in 1890. This post is part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge that today celebrates her 121st birthday. Please join in the felicitations.

Ordeal by Innocence

Justice is, after all, in the hands of men, and men are fallible. -- Arthur Calgary

Oh, they are, they are! One need look no further than the premise of Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence (1958), to see the truth of Professor Calgary's observation borne out.

When the doting mother of a large family of  adopted children is found bludgeoned to death with a fire poker, Jacko Argyle, the black sheep of the family, is accused and convicted of the crime. When he dies in prison, six months into his sentence, the Argyle family thinks that justice has been adequately served, and they can at last put the ghastly chapter in their lives behind them.

But then evidence to exonerate Jacko emerges in the form of Arthur Calgary, a biologist and Arctic explorer, who recounts giving the accused a lift at the time of Rachael Argyle's murder. To Professor Calgary's great consternation, the family find his news most unwelcome.

The reason for their discomfiture becomes obvious, as each Argyle must, in his or her turn, prove their own innocence of the murder; and, true to Agatha Christie form, each one of them has something to hide.

Ordeal by Innocence is another standalone novel that features neither M. Poirot, nor Miss Marple, or indeed any of the characters -- Capt. Hastings, Inspector Japp, Ariadne Oliver -- who so often aid in the effort to set the world back to rights after injustice has been done. Even so, Mrs. Christie takes care not to stray too far from the cerebral investigation and drawing-room revelation formula that is the stamp of so many of her other excellent novels.

Speak for the Dead

Miss Lemon seems never to tire of Margaret Yorke. There's something about the crispness of her sentences and the simple delicacy with which she tells complicated and compelling stories that draws Miss Lemon back again and again.

What's more, her range of psychological portrayals is nothing short of virtuosic. She can convey the motives of a middle-aged, middle-class serial rapist with as much realism as she can the mental workings of a common street thug. The characters she creates for Speak for the Dead (1988) are no exception to her great ability.

She presents us with Gordon Matthews, an intelligent but directionless product of a privileged home. His mother is obsessed with the rigidity and grandeur of the Russian tsars, while his father whiles away his retirement drinking beer at the pub and making futile passes at the woman who runs the till at the local hardware store. Gordon, it's revealed early on, has spent time in prison for manslaughter; but what actually precipitated these charges -- and the validity of the charges themselves -- is a matter of perspective.

Upon Gordon's release, he meets Carrie Foster, a vibrant and clever girl, much more able to fend for herself than Gordon's previous wife. But not all is straightforward beneath Carrie's pleasant and capable facade. Carrie, in her turn, meets Nicholas Fitzmaurice, a sweet and innocent seeming boy -- 'such a pet,' as she likes to refer to him -- until the truths that surface become more than he can handle.

The characters' collective foibles prove to be a volatile mix and make for a mesmerizing story.

If you've not yet tried reading Margaret Yorke, you really must. Many of her titles are now out of print but are easy enough to find second-hand. They would also make an excellent candidate for Felony & Mayhem re-issues.

Knots and Crosses

Miss Lemon is probably not alone in disliking the clichéd tendency to describe all crime fiction set in Scotland as 'gritty.' Even so, there's something of the air of seediness that cannot be ignored in Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses (1987), and Miss Lemon is not entirely sure that it's her cup of tea.

For starters, the crimes described in this first of the Detective John Rebus novels are horrendous. A lunatic, someone with John Rebus's postal address, is on a spree, abducting, then brutally strangling, a succession of young girls. After each deed, the killer is kind enough to send Rebus a note: a cryptic word puzzle of sorts and always with a memento of either a knot or a cross.

What struck Miss Lemon as odd is that there's very little detection that goes on in this book. It's clear from the beginning that Sgt. Rebus is no Hercule Poirot when he cannot see that his brother is dealing drugs on a large scale, despite all the clues before him. What's more (and Miss Lemon begs your pardon if this gives too much away), the solution to the case and the identity of the killer come only after Rebus allows himself to be hypnotized. Of all things!

Based on the enormous popularity of the John Rebus novels and the success of Ian Rankin as an author, there's little doubt in Miss Lemon's mind that the books improve over time. Indeed, the narrative pace and the little foibles given to Rebus (he has the unethical habit of stealing breakfast rolls from an unattended bake shop of an early morning) are things she greatly admired. But the violence, the vindictiveness and the author's decision to bring the criminal -- and the crime -- so close to Rebus's home are examples of the grittiness she'd so greatly like to avoid.

Yes, yes. Call Miss Lemon outmoded with an eye for nothing but the country-house cosy. She'll take her lumps. Still, she'd rather have a good old-fashioned case of arsenic in the tea and a vigorous exercise of the leetle grey cells any day.