Francis Thompson as Jack the Ripper

It’s a very long time since I last read any of the poetry of Francis Thompson, though his work is probably worth another look if you are interested in fin de siecle London. He still has his admirers and I recall that there used to be a Francis Thompson Society, and that Thompson was a leading figure celebrated long after his death by The 1890s Society.

I’d almost forgotten about him until I was sent a copy of Richard Patterson’s book Jack the Ripper: The Works of Francis Thompson. A most enjoyable and intriguing read, even if it doesn’t altogether convince me that Thompson was the Whitechapel killer.

However, were I a police detective at the time, looking at Mr Patterson’s evidence, I would certainly put Thompson in the frame for further investigation.

Now, about twenty years ago, I spent a great deal of time researching Jack the Ripper. I remember long days (and nights) walking the streets of Whitechapel and many hours in dusty archives, including those of the British Library and Museum of London.  I came to no particular conclusion as to the identity of the murderer, and I thought then – and I think now – that there will never be a definitive answer as to just who Jack was.

Jack the Ripper books tend to follow the same pattern; a few chapters on the misery of the East End at the time, followed by detailed accounts of the discovery of each victim and the immediate aftermath and the police investigations. Most Ripper books then try to put a favoured suspect in the frame. Some authors go to extraordinary lengths to twist the facts to represent their chosen candidate as the Ripper.

Mr Patterson’s book takes a different approach, which I welcome. He certainly writes about the East End and the victims of this maniac but he wisely assumes that the Ripper reader is already familiar with much of the background. He then spends much of the book looking at the biography of Francis Thompson himself and explaining just why he thinks Thompson could be the Ripper.

At first glance the fragile Thompson, plagued by ill-health, seems an unlikely candidate. But Thompson was a medical student who enjoyed dissecting cadavers, wrote poetry about prostitutes, indulged in a spot of arson when he was young and was an opium addict. He was haunted by the hell-fire of an over-religious upbringing,  lived on the streets of London during the relevant period and fell in with a prostitute who at first looked after him and then betrayed him, sending him – Mr Patterson suggests – into a murderous rage.

However, even such a promising background doesn’t necessarily create a serial killer.  There are a great many sad individuals who do much of the above but don’t take it to the final extreme of murder. Though, Mr Patterson doesn’t try to force his candidate down the reader’s throat (unlike one or two Ripper authors I could mention).  The author wisely invites readers to make up their own minds.

The evidence is, as it has to be, circumstantial. There is no killer blow (no pun intended) which definitively puts Francis Thompson in the frame for the Whitechapel murders.

One problem I have with all Ripper candidate books is that we always get the case for the prosecution, but hardly much of the defence brief. And I cling to the principle that anyone accused of murder should get a fair trial. Sadly, there is no modern biographer of Francis Thompson who could look at this evidence and give an opinion.

That being said, Mr Patterson is fairer than most Ripper authors to his subject, and at the end of the day every reader and Ripperologist must make up his or her own mind.

This is a very enjoyable, well-written book and a  fascinating contribution to the age-old debate. Recommended reading for anyone interested in late Victorian crime and society.

 

 

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang by Mike Ripley

Mike Ripley’s new non-fiction book is subtitled “The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed” and it makes for wonderful reading. We’ve both very much enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it to you. Once you’ve read it right through, you’ll want to dip in and browse again and again.

I think Mr Ripley and I must be of an age, for we both seem to have enjoyed the same British thriller writers in those happy decades, the fifties to the seventies. I suspect we even had the same editions, with covers that were iconic in themselves and which still deluge me with waves of nostalgia when I see them in second-hand bookshops. (We have quite a few on our shelves).

All the great favourites are here; Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Alastair Maclean, Hammond Innes, Jack Higgins, Desmond Bagley – many still fondly remembered, and often re-read by me; plus lots of authors I’d forgotten about but enjoyed at the time. Mr Ripley’s book has made me want to seek out a host of old favourites.

Mr Ripley gives an introductory background on the golden age of the British thriller during this period, which is both witty and perceptive. He examines the indelible influence of the Second World War and Britain’s loss of Empire, weaving a fascinating look at our post-war social history.

He then looks at each author in greater detail with analysis of the giants of the genre and lesser-known writers. Anyone too young to have read these novels as they came out will find this a source of endless inspiration. And there are some fascinating insights into how thriller-writers work. If you aspire to write a thriller, this is a good place to start.

And there’s a splendid foreword by Lee Child, a writer who carries on the great tradition.

Mike Ripley’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a definitive reference book. Superbly researched with affectionate, expert commentary, this is essential reading for anyone who loves the genre.

‘The Power-House by John Buchan

First serialised in 1913 in Blackwood’s Magazine, The Power-House was published as a book in 1916. At a slim 110 pages, we’d call this a novella if newly published today but at the time of writing, it would have been considered a short novel. The Polygon edition has a very good introduction by Stella Rimington, thriller novelist and a previous Director-General of MI5.  

There’s an interesting dedication to Major-General Sir Francis Lloyd, K.G.B. Buchan ends this by saying: among the many tastes which we share, one is a liking for precipitous yarns. What a lovely description of the kind of thriller Buchan often referred to as his shockers.

The Power-House is the first full-length adventure of Sir Edward Leithen, one of Buchan’s semi-regular series’ characters. (He first appeared in Space, a short story published a year earlier). Ned Leithen is a prosperous Scottish barrister and M.P, living in London, hard-working and unashamedly unadventurous. His daily life is a round of chambers, House, club and flat.

I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions.

In many ways he’s a forerunner of Hitchcock’s ordinary chap who gets mixed up in dangerous conspiracies – although Leithen is a gentleman, a pillar of the establishment who mixes in the best circles in London clubland and country estates.

The novel opens with a preface from an editor, a device Buchan sometimes used, presumably to distance author from narrator. The preface states that Leithen recounted the following events during a sporting trip to Scotland. When six male guests settled themselves in the smoking-room for a sleepy evening of talk and tobacco.

The tale is narrated in the first person. As Leithen leaves the House of Commons, Tommy Deloraine, a fellow M.P and old pal, tells him he’s setting off abroad. He’s hot on the trail of a friend who has disappeared after getting mixed up with strange company.

Leithen has a presentiment that trouble’s brewing at home in London and decides to be watchful. Shortly afterwards, he gets his first intimation of what’s going on and the game’s afoot.

Despite being concise in length, I’ve always regarded The Power-House as one of the great London novels. Buchan was the most wonderful writer of landscape, renowned for his lyrical description of wild Scotland but equally skilled at depicting pastoral England or the crowded capital in May.

Out of doors it was jolly spring weather; there was greenery in Parliament Square and bits of gay colour, and a light wind was blowing up from the river.

In thriller-writing it’s customary for atmosphere to be sacrificed to exciting pace. With Buchan, you always get both. He was superb at evoking the dull, secretive grey streets north of Oxford Street in London’s West End. In The Power-House, you can see the seeds of several ideas later used in the Richard Hannay shockers. He returned to this part of London with great effect in The Three Hostages, published in 1924.

One of the greatest scenes in The Power-House features an early example of Buchan’s exciting set-piece chases. A stunning piece of writing, for Buchan understood that peaceful streets and indifferent passers-by can be made far more menacing than the clichéd sinister settings of lesser fiction. I can’t think of a thriller writer better at screwing up tension by juxtaposing ordinary, cheerful detail.

This is also the first time one of Buchan’s lasting themes was introduced – the fragility of civilisation, its thin veneer separating us from world upheaval. We meet the prototype of Buchan’s memorable villains. Always a compelling adversary with a double identity, cultured and welcomed among the highest in society.

It’s worth remembering that the novel would have been thought out against a background of growing unease in Buchan’s political and diplomatic circles. The rise of Kaiser Wilhelm’s sea-power had inspired another great spy novel, Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of The Sands back in 1903. The Power-House is a snapshot of London just as the long Edwardian summer is disappearing. The lights are about to go out.

If Buchan has any flaw, it’s his over-reliance on coincidence but that’s something I’m more than happy to overlook – and all writers need it somewhere. We’re lifelong fans and think him one of Scotland’s finest ever writers. Buchan’s work was strongly influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson which is recommendation enough.

Sir Edward Leithen is perhaps not as famed as Richard Hannay though he features in several more novels and short stories, all of them wonderful. The Power-House is an unmissable first adventure.

An Interview With Crime Author Jan Edwards

We’re delighted to bring you an interview with writer Jan Edwards, author of the newly published historical crime novel Winter Downs.

I absolutely loved Winter Downs, which takes place in a fascinating time in a lovely part of Sussex that Kipling called our blunt, blow-headed, whale-backed Downs. The perfect setting for the first novel in an atmospheric new crime series. If you enjoy classic, Golden Age style whodunits with engaging sleuths, a twisting plot and a wonderful sense of place – you’re in for a great treat.

Here’s Jan to tell us about Winter Downs and her writing process…

Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.

Spike Milligan had the right answer for this one, “I was born at a very young age…” Not much to be said about me as such; usual number head and hands. And the old adage that most people do not move more than 20 miles from their place of birth has never applied to any of my tribe. I am a Sussex girl by birth, though Mother was Welsh/West Country mix and Father a Geordie/Oxfordshire lad. I currently reside in North Staffordshire with my husband Peter Coleborn and the obligatory authors’ clowder of cats. But Sussex remains my spiritual home.

On the fiction front much of my short fiction has concerned folklore because that is a passion of mine. This often reads as horror/fantasy, and I am a past chairperson of the British Fantasy Society. I have two collections of short fiction available, Leinster Gardens and Other Subtleties and Fables and Fabrications. My contemporary novel, Sussex Tales, won a Winchester Slim Volume award, and is a nostalgia piece about rural communities in the early 1960s.

Tell us about your new book.

My new crime novel, Winter Downs, is also set in Sussex (a recurring theme in my fiction).

How did I jump from all of the horror to crime? I have always read crime in large quantities, especially those Golden Age volumes set between 1920s and 1950s. The period detail is fascinating and perhaps once again it is my love of folklore that has me seeking fiction that is not set in the now. I was lured into writing Sherlock Holmes fiction for several projects and adding the sum of those factors into a recent-history crime novel was a natural progression in my mind.

The crime and horror genres frequently leach across each other as both deal with the seamier side of existence. Though Winter Downs is not a horror story in the slightest. Yes it has a body count but its a pretty straight whodunnit .

Winter Downs in brief: “In January of 1940 a small rural community on the Sussex Downs, already preparing for invasion from across the Channel, finds itself deep in the grip of a snowy landscape, with an ice-cold killer on the loose. Bunch Courtney stumbles upon the body of Jonathan Frampton in a woodland clearing. Is this a case of suicide, or is it murder? Bunch is determined to discover the truth but can she persuade the dour Chief Inspector Wright to take her seriously?”

How did you decide on the setting of Winter Downs?

Sussex is never far from my heart. It is a truly magical place so if I am honest I don’t think I ever considered setting it anywhere else. Why WW2? Growing up in rural Sussex of the 50s and 60s, amongst the pill boxes and air strips left over from that time, made an impact, though I didn’t realise it at the time. The setting for my story just evolved as these things do. Probably, as I said before, because I prefer my own reading to be somewhere and some time other than the here and now, which I don’t need to read about because I’m already here… if that makes sense.

Do you have a typical writing day?

I am far too disorganised to have a routine, so answer to that question is a resounding no. I am a bit of a night owl and write most of my fiction in the wee small hours, so perhaps I have what could be seen as a writing night?

As you’ve written a period crime novel – do you enjoy research?

I absolutely adore research. I can get lost for hours reading reams and reams of notes to find one tiny fact that may appear on the page as three words. Just recently I spent two days finding out what the applicator pads in a 1930s handbag sized powder compact would be made of, (silk/velvet appeared to be the general consensus) and that snippet took up half a sentence in the final cut.

I may appear to be totally abstract in my writing processes but fact checking is the one area that I am really strict about. I may not always get it right but it will never be for want of trying. In Winter Downs there was so much to look into. For example: despite what we are led to believe from this time and distance, by Christmas 1939 almost nobody bothered to carry their gas mask with them. Then there is the gradual introduction of rationing. Knowing the month and year in which certain items went on ration, or the fact that alcohol was never rationed at all (though spirits did get scarce), are essential detail that I hope add some authenticity to the narrative.

What first inspires you when writing fiction – a setting, plot idea or character?

Each frequently feeds off of the other. It might be a news headline or an interesting fact in a book, or someone I met on a train, but in most cases I could never identify the point of sources

Full synopsis before you start – or seat of the pants?

Generally seat of the pants. Crime does need plotting, especially with a whodunnit where the author needs to sew the breadcrumb clue trail for the reader to follow. I tend to write the story first and make sure that trail makes sense in the rewrites. I suspect that is the long winded way to go about it but Gran always told me laziest people work the hardest.

What aspects of writing do you find the most tricky?

Words? Not as silly as it sounds. I am dyslexic so using the wrong word that is almost the correct one is a very real issue. ‘To and too’ or ‘of and off’ are particular issues. Recently it was draw when it should have been drawer. Fortunately I have beta readers and a top hole editor to point those out to me!

What advice would you give to new writers?

I go to a writing group and am amazed by the number of people who cheerfully admit that they seldom read books – and when they read their work out for critique by the group that lack of reading experience always shows. So my one big piece of advice is: Read! Often and widely!

Winter Downs
Jan Edwards

3rd June 2017 | Penkhull Press
ISBN 978-0-9930008-6-7
Paperback £7.99 tbc | ebook £2.99 tbc

In January of 1940 a small rural community on the Sussex Downs, already preparing for invasion from across the Channel, finds itself deep in the grip of a snowy landscape, with an ice-cold killer on the loose.

Bunch Courtney stumbles upon the body of Jonathan Frampton in a woodland clearing. Is this a case of suicide, or is it murder? Bunch is determined to discover the truth but can she persuade the dour Chief Inspector Wright to take her seriously?

Winter Downs is first in the Bunch Courtney Investigates series. Published in paper and e formats.

Jan Edwards is a Sussex-born writer now living in the West Midlands with her husband and obligatory cats. She was a Master Locksmith for 20 years but also tried her hand at bookselling, microfiche photography, livery stable work, motorcycle sales and market gardening. She is a practising Reiki Master. She won a Winchester Slim Volume prize and her short fiction can be found in crime, horror and fantasy anthologies in UK, US and Europe; including The Mammoth Book of Dracula and The Mammoth Book of Moriarty. Jan edits anthologies for The Alchemy Press and Fox Spirit Press, and has written for Dr Who spinoffs with Reel Time Pictures.

For further information please contact Penkhull Press at: https://thepenkhullpress.wordpress.com/