Guest Post by T.G. Campbell, Author of the Bow Street Society Mysteries

We’re delighted to have a guest post this week by crime novelist T.G. Campbell, author of the wonderful Bow Street Society mysteries.

We love the two books in the series so far, The Case of The Curious Client and The Case of The Lonesome Lushington. They bring an engagingly fresh approach to historical detective novels with a collaborative sleuthing team of vividly-drawn, lovable characters. The cases are intriguing page-turners with Conan Doyle-style twists and the rich setting of 1890s Victorian London is lovingly evoked –

MURDER OF THE LONE DETECTIVE

Admirers of the World’s Greatest Detective would agree there is only one Sherlock Holmes. Purveyors of the English Golden Age of Crime Fiction would admit there can be only one Belgian solving crime with his “little grey cells”. Skip over the pond to the mean streets of 1940s Los Angeles and the likelihood is you’ll think of Humphrey Bogart’s Phillip Marlowe. What do all these detectives have in common? They stand alone in their respective worlds as the pinnacle of deductive reasoning. They also have the tendency to keep their thoughts to themselves while the readers, like Doctor Watson and Captain Hastings, scramble to make any sense of things. Yes, we, as readers, are shown precisely what Holmes, Poirot, and Marlowe see & hear but we are often left awestruck by not only a mystery’s solution but also the ingenuity of the Detective’s deductive reasoning.

Whenever we read a mystery featuring any of these Detectives we bring to it the subconscious expectation that it will be they who will lift the veil of confusion and resolve the conflict caused by the murder. They, and Detectives like them, may be assisted by others along the way but, generally, the sidekick doesn’t step in at the last moment to announce the correct identity of the murderer. This rule applies even in novels where the Detective openly airs his internal musings to a trusted colleague or friend. In short, these lone Detectives are put on a plinth as masters of their craft by us as readers – and there isn’t anything wrong with that. In fact, it is this consistent element within these stories which serves to reassure us that all will be well in the end. We have seen the Detective work his/her magic previously which makes us confident he/she will do so again.

What if there was more than one Detective, though? Furthermore, what if there were several Detectives who stepped into a mystery series only when they were required? No longer would you have this omnipotent Detective who always kept his cards close to his chest. Instead you would have a collective whose very success relied on their relying upon one another’s abilities. The Detective’s plinth would be lowered and we, as readers, would feel equal to the Detectives we were reading about rather than to their bumbling sidekick.

This is the idea I wanted to explore when I created the Bow Street Society. Every one of its members has been recruited, from the public, because they hold a great deal of knowledge in a particular field and/or are adept at a specific skill. For example, the first book, The Case of The Curious Client, features a Magician, Architect, and Veterinary Surgeon among the Detectives investigating the central mystery. They are not hard-boiled Private Detectives, retired police officers, or incredibly scientifically minded. They are, in short, average. Yet it is their averageness, and passion for their chosen occupation, which makes them perfect for solving crime. For example, an autopsy performed by the Veterinary Surgeon on a dead cat in The Case of The Curious Client helps the collective reach the final solution. I consciously made the decision that there wouldn’t be one, lone member of the Society who would deduce the solution. That is why, when it is given, they have all played a part in reaching the truth.

When it came to the Society’s next book, The Case of The Lonesome Lushington, I wanted to go one step further. The Architect, Lawyer, and Veterinary Surgeon who’d appeared in the first mystery were not included or even mentioned in the second. For the plain and simple reason their skills were not applicable to the case so they weren’t asked to investigate it. In the first book I’d stepped away from the idea of the lone, omnipotent Detective but in the second I’d stepped away from the idea of a static, rigid collective of Detectives, too.

One could argue that connections with characters can’t be formed if they’re not included in every book. I would beg to differ. Who is assigned to a case is decided upon by the Society’s Clerk, Miss Rebecca Trent. The reader doesn’t know who she’ll choose until the case has been accepted. Therefore part of the intrigue is discovering if your favourite character will be selected or not – this time. I fully intend to have reappearances of the Lawyer, Architect, and Veterinary Surgeon in future Bow Street Society books. Any connection the reader makes with particular characters would therefore never be in vain.

There are, within this fluid collective, core characters that’ll always be featured to safeguard the reassurance of order, however. Miss Trent is one (she being the only person who knows the name of every Society member) and Mr Samuel Snyder, the Society’s Driver, is another. It must be pointed out that, though Miss Trent is the Society’s Clerk, she isn’t a Detective. Instead she organises and disciplines the members whenever necessary but otherwise keeps to the side-lines. Mr Snyder, on the other hand, is a Detective who works with the other members in addition to driving them around.

The Bow Street Society is designed as a reflection of us all. Within its universe the mundane becomes pivotal and we discover we all have the potential to solve the most baffling of crimes. The lone detective, or rather the idea of it, is murdered and we are all, quite simply, the ones whodunnit. Not because we despise the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, and Phillip Marlowe but because we all, deep down, want to be as brilliant as they are. In the 1896 London of the Bow Street Society, you now can be. The only question that remains therefore is this: what would be your field of expertise as a Bow Street Society member?

Biography

T.G. Campbell (short for Tahnee Georgina) wrote her first crime fiction story at the age of sixteen as a gift for her best friend. At only 40 pages long it fell considerably short of a “novel” but it marked the beginning of a creative journey that would eventually spawn the first of the Bow Street Society mystery novels; The Case of the Curious Client.

In April 2017 The Case of The Curious Client won a Book Award with Fresh Lifestyle Magazine (http://www.freshlifestylemag.com/book-award-the-case-of-the-curious-client-a-bow-street-society-mystery.html ).

Website: www.bowstreetsociety.com

 

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Harry’s Game – The Television Series

A few weeks ago I wrote about Gerald Seymour’s classic thriller Harry’s Game.

Recently we watched the television series of the book, made by Yorkshire Television in 1982 – at a time when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still continuing.

For more about the story itself please see my previous blog.

It’s always interesting to see how a thriller is adapted for television, and Harry’s Game is more faithful to the book than most. Although some scenes were filmed around Belfast, notably in the City Centre and the Falls Road, much of the location filming was carried out near the Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds, on a housing estate scheduled for demolition.

The filming has a gritty reality. For those of us who lived through the times of the Troubles, it was uneasy seeing Saracen armoured cars on the streets again, the reconstructed riots and soldiers dashing from street corner to street corner on foot patrol.

Seymour’s book relies very much on tenseness rather than violence to make its point. The superb direction of the film series, by the admirable Lawrence Gordon Clark, provides tension by the spadeful. Even if you know the book well, the film keeps you on edge.

One reason is that it’s thankfully free of incidental music, though there is the haunting end theme by Clannad. I wish that more directors of film and television would realise the importance of silence. If you’re showing tense scenes you don’t need an intrusive studio orchestra.

Lawrence Gordon Clark made his reputation in film documentaries and this shows in the realism here.

Not having seen the series since it first aired, I was interested to see how the acting stood up over thirty years later. The film is very well cast. The late Ray Lonnen – is quite superb as Harry, giving very much a portrayal of the character in the novel. The IRA gunman Billy Downes is played by Derek Thompson, best known now for his long-running role as Charlie Fairhead in the British hospital series Casualty.

Both characters in the book are two sides of the same coin – family men as well as combatants in an miserable kind of warfare. To give this premise reality, you need two strong leads, and both Ray Lonnen and Derek Thompson are very believable.

The film series has a very strong supporting cast: Maggie Shevlin as Mrs Downes, a mother trapped in a tragic time; Gil Brailey as the woman who comes to know and understand Harry; and Tony Rohr as the IRA commander – a chilling and subtle portrait that lives in your thoughts long after the film has ended. There isn’t a poor performance in the whole series.

I seem to recall that the programme was shown over three consecutive nights on its first airing. It was later repeated as an edited down film, so if you’re buying this make sure you’re getting the original three-parter. The box set we have has a great interview with Ray Lonnen, who came across as a lovely chap.

Thirty-five years later this is British television at its best – a drama that makes you hold your breath.

Peter Lovesey’s ‘The Reaper’

Peter Lovesey’s superb stand-alone, The Reaper, is an unusual take on ‘clerical crime’. It’s a novel I absolutely love and cannot recommend too highly. Although it was only published seventeen years ago, in 2000, The Reaper has much in common with certain Golden Age novels – it reminds me of Francis Iles’ work – and classic films.

This is the story of a very unusual rector, the Reverend Otis Joy, whose parish is the rural Wiltshire village of Foxford. The novel is prefaced with a revealing quotation from Samuel Butler:

Vouchsafe O Lord, to keep us this day without being found out.

Very apt because this story isn’t a whodunit, it’s a will-they-get-away-with-it? The rector is a serial-killer.

Have faith – we try hard not to reveal spoilers and ruin anyone’s enjoyment of a novel new to them. This information is in the synopsis and we see the rector spring into action as early as page eight.

Otis Joy is young, charming and sets the female hearts aflutter among his congregation. He fills pews, delivers charismatic, actor-style sermons and throws himself into good works. Almost all the villagers think he’s by far the best rector they’ve ever had.

Peter Lovesey has great fun in taking a classic English detective novel setting and turning it on its head. All the usual suspects are here, the vicar/rector himself being a stock character from vintage crime. Only this time, he’s our anti-hero. Love interest is supplied by young, unhappily married parishioner, Rachel and her femme fatale pal, Cynthia, the Chair of the Women’s Institute. Lovesey is wickedly good at female characters, not always the case with male writers.

The plot is played out amid the village year, the summer fête, harvest supper, jumble sales and carol-singing. The villagers are rife with speculation, gossip and a touch of malice. Where does their priest disappear to, on his day off?

The rector ad libs brilliantly through the unexpected scandal of the Bishop’s unfortunate demise. However things get complicated when the parish treasurer gives up his post and an obnoxious young accountant in the confirmation class, fancies taking it on.

The scene is set for a devilishly clever, black comedy, where you really shouldn’t laugh but you do. And you really shouldn’t root for an amoral serial-killer but you do. In the same way we cheer on the marvellous Denis Price in Ealing Studios’ Kind Hearts and Coronets. The rector’s life starts to unravel in a series of Peter Lovesey’s trademark twists, with a rising body count and desperate complications.

The novel unfolds like a deliciously dark Hitchcock. Alfred would have loved this. The Reaper belongs to that very special crime genre where humour meets murder. Hard to pull off and Peter Lovesey makes it look effortless. A genre better known on screen, in a sense, The Reaper belongs with The Ladykillers, Arsenic and Old Lace, Family Plot and even Frenzy. All of them fabulous.

The pace gets ever more frantic and I suspect many writers couldn’t deliver a sufficiently punchy ending. I recall reading an interview with Peter Lovesey where he said, as a child, he wanted to be a conjuror. And in a way, he is. A master of distraction, he’s also an incredible plate-spinner, always revealing the best trick of all at the end. The denouement is dazzling and the ending unexpected, very satisfying and absolutely right. Peter Lovesey always pulls it off.

 

Clerical Crime For Easter

As it’s nearly Easter, this seems an appropriate time to look at an engaging sub-genre of detective fiction, the clerical mystery. From Cadfael to Sydney Chambers by way of Father Brown, a religious setting – and possibly sleuth – has an enduring popularity. I’m always drawn to this background, one of my favourite non-crime novelists is Anthony Trollope, famed for his setting of the cathedral close at Barchester.

It has been said that Vicarage is one of the most popular key words that will sell book titles, particularly in the United States. Why is this so appealing? Perhaps because in detective fiction, it’s an effective shorthand. There’s something about the word that conjures images of a traditional English mystery; summer fêtes on the village green, eccentric characters gossiping over the tea-cups, arsenic in the potted meat sandwiches or cyanide on the cake-stand.

The Murder At The Vicarage (published in 1930) is a prime example. One of Agatha Christie’s best-known novels, featuring Miss Marple at home in St Mary Mead, where a caller is murdered in the vicar’s study. Two more wonderful novels where things are far from rosy at the vicarage are Sheila Radley’s A Talent For Destruction (1982) and Redemption (1988) by the much-missed Jill McGown.

Redemption, which takes place largely on Christmas Eve, was reissued in 2015 with a snow-scene cover – presumably to catch the fashionable market for Christmas crime novels. The publishers chose to use its American alternative title Murder At The Old Vicarage. Nice enough but I prefer Jill McGown’s own choice with its deeper symbolism.

Most sleuths in clerical mysteries tend to be Anglican, though Cadfael and Father Brown are Roman Catholic. The Church of England provides a background with a hierarchy and code of conduct which should not be transgressed. Both give plenty of scope for worldly motives. The rivalries and machinations of a cathedral close are not so different from those found in running a big business.

The Church also introduces a seemingly peaceful, ordered setting where the intrusion of murder is all the more shocking. This is heightened if the suspects are a closed circle among the clergy and lay-helpers.

The detective is usually an amateur sleuth, with some connection to that religious world, though not necessarily a full member. Writers have come up with some ingenious backgrounds for their protagonists. My absolute favourite series is the late Michael David Anthony’s superb mysteries, set around Canterbury Cathedral. His sleuth Colonel Richard Harrison is Secretary to the Diocesan Dilapidations Board.

Kate Charles’s Book of Psalms series, features David Middleton-Brown, a Norfolk solicitor who is an expert on church architecture. D.M Greenwood’s sleuth is a deaconess, Theodora Braithwaite. Written in the 1990s before the ordination of women in the Church of England, Theodora was a semi-outsider, allowed so far but unable to be a priest. Kate Charles’s later, Callie Anson series features a woman vicar.

Where the detective is part of an enclosed religious order, they are of necessity, a maverick who likes to visit the outside world. Ellis Peter’s Brother Cadfael is a herbalist who journeys around the Welsh Marches and Veronica Black’s Sister Joan runs errands from her convent on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.

Amateur sleuths invariably require a police ally – in Cadfael’s case in 12th century Shropshire, the Deputy Sheriff. Martha Ockley’s series features Faith Morgan, a former police detective who becomes a vicar. (Martha Ockley is a pen-name of Rebecca Jenkins, daughter of a previous Bishop of Durham).

Even with police assistance, ‘clerical’ detectives tend to solve the crime with their knowledge of human foibles rather than forensics. In a sense these are morality tales for our time, often posing questions about moral versus legal justice. The serpent slithers into Eden and at the end of the novel, order is restored. Good people are left to pick up the pieces. Though all detective fiction is concerned with good and evil, a background of clerical crime can be uniquely effective.

Finally, a clerical mystery has a head-start when it comes to an evocative sense of place. The Norfolk Fenland village setting of Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors is probably one of the atmospheric novels of the Golden Age. From a peaceful village church to the edgy central London of Alison Joseph’s Sister Agnes or even the cathedral precincts of Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a religious setting lends itself to be charming or shadowy, cosy or sinister, ancient or modern.

Here are a few detective/mystery novels I enjoyed, which happen to have some sort of clerical setting:

Catherine Aird The Religious Body (convent)

Alice Boatwright Under An English Heaven (country church)

Colin Dexter Service Of All The Dead (Oxford church)

Ann Granger Candle For A Corpse (country church)

S.T. Haymon Ritual Murder (cathedral)

P.D. James Death In Holy Orders (Anglican college)

Charles Palliser The Unburied (cathedral)

Ruth Rendell No Man’s Nightingale (Kingsmarkham church)

Robert Richardson An Act Of Evil (first published as The Latimer Mercy) (cathedral)

 My favourite clerical stand-alone is Peter Lovesey’s The Reaper.