The Right Voice for the Job: The First Person

When people talk about Narrative modes and Narrative Point of view it all sounds very complicated. Often it's instinctive. It's the choices of whether the story is told as 'I' or 'you' and whether it's in the Past Tense ('I said') or the Present Tense ('I say.')

Narrative modes in fiction are the methods that writers use to tell their stories. In other words, everything that encompasses basic storytelling elements.

Narrative Tense

Narrative Tense is when the story happens. Stories may be told in the Present Tense or in the Past Tense. The Past Tense is still the conventional tense for telling a story and many writers find it the easiest to handle. The Present Tense is more immediate, taking the reader into the heart of the protagonists' lives, combined with First Person point of view it can be incredibly powerful.

Narrative Point of View

The narrative point of view (POV) is the way of linking the narrator to the story.

If the reader doesn't feel interest, liking or empathy for the main characters (the narrating characters) they are unlikely to carry on reading.

In the First Person:

1.) The narrator refers to him or herself as I.

2.) Usually the I character is the protagonist, but that’s not essential.

3.) A story can feature multiple first-person narrators.

4.) The narrator is virtually always a character in the story (apart from stories told by a narrator who says that another person first told the story to him).

There are disadvantages with the First Person POV:

1.) It is hard to describe the narrating character without resorting to artificial strategies.

2.) The voice has to be right and the viewpoints expressed sympathetic. If not the First Person POV can irritate or alienate the reader.

There are many examples of First Person narratives, often a character telling a story where they are not the leading protagonist, such as Watson narrating the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or Hastings describing Hercule Poirot's investigations.

The Fragility of Poppies is due to be published this summer (2015.) It is a crime novel but it has a large amount of relationship/romance in it too. The action is divided between Annie Evans' life as an artist and art tutor, and her husband, Rick Evans' life and work as a detective inspector. At times their lives run parallel, at times together and sometimes they collide.

When I started to write The Fragility of Poppies, I instinctively wrote in the First Person, Present Tense. At first I intended the whole book to be in Annie's voice but then I realised I needed Rick's First Person narration too.

The use of two First Person narrators, both speaking in the Present Tense, made an interesting challenge. The hardest thing was to make sure that the two voices were easily identifiable. It was also challenging to make the time-lines of the two narrating characters run concurrently.

These are two starts of chapters, about a third of the way into the book, after the reader has already met the narrating characters and their work. They are both set in the morning, at the start of a working day.

 

1.) Annie Evans: a teacher at a F.E. Art College.

I wake up too late to go home before work and I feel glad I’ve brought a suitable change of clothes, but when I walk into the departmental office I wish I'd skived off for the day. The atmosphere's distinctly nasty. Lucy is listing all the changes Maris has made and scowling at Neil, who has lost his usual indifference to her attitude. He's in a foul mood and holding his head at a funny angle, which actually isn't funny because he's obviously in pain.

"Where's Sara?" I ask.

"Off sick," says Neil. "She went home in tears because someone upset her."

I follow the direction of his glare. "Lucy, what did you say to her?"

"I merely commented on the state of her desk. That girl has no idea of order."

"She manages if she's left to work in her own way." For the money the College pays we can't expect better than Sara and, in the past, we've had a great deal worse. "Lucy we're grateful to you for stepping into the breach but I asked you to keep things running, not to close the departmental office. Sara isn't your responsibility."

I half expect her to walk out on us and, from the blistering look he's giving me, Neil thinks the same. Instead she gives me a grim smile and says, "So keep my nose out? Fair enough, I'll try."

2.) Rick Evans, Detective Inspector at Galmouth Police Station in the south of England

I wake up when they're well into the post-mortem. They've got to the bit that requires drilling through the centre of my head. The pain helps me suss out I'm not dead and whoever's doing the drilling is doing it from inside. I make it to my feet, do an urgent pit-stop at the cloakroom, then out to the kitchen. I drink half a gallon of water followed by black, sweet, instant coffee and manage to choke down paracetamol.

When I get to the Incident Room, Roebuck sends for me. He looks down his nose like he's trying to decide what stone I was under before I crawled into his office.

"You're late."

"Sorry, sir.”

He glares at me and I think he's going to take me off the case. I don’t want that, not until we know about the kid and whether the link to Elmwash is for real. To my surprise he says, "I've got two important jobs for you. The Family Support Officer has had to take some leave. Can you liaise with the Frewers until she gets back?"

"Yes sir." That's shoving me right into the heart of the case.

"And there's something else. You know the Elmwash investigation inside out. I want you to interview the witnesses in this case and review the evidence to see if you can spot anything significant."

"Significant, sir?"

"Anything that ties this in with the Elmwash case."

"The Elmwash killer's dead."

"No, Ernest Clift is dead. I trust you'll approach this with an open mind. Take Detective Constable Kelly with you, it's best to have a woman on the job."

What would he know about having a woman on the job? “Yes sir.”

Ronald Knox (1888-1957)

In the early 1970s I was studying at Bristol University and my degree was in theology. I enjoyed reading Christie and Sayers and the other well known authors of the Golden Age, but it seems strange to me that I was aware of Knox as a theologian decades before I realised he wrote detective stories. As part of my preparation for the Bath Spa Crime Fiction Conference, I wrote this article about Knox, first published in Mystery People.

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was born in Leicestershire into a high church Anglican family. His father Edmund Arbuthnott Knox became Bishop of Manchester. Knox was the youngest of four academically clever sons, and it can be argued that he was the most brilliant of them all. Knox was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the first classics scholarship as well as graduating with First Class Honours. It is interesting to note that Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, was educated at Eton and Balliol, where he graduated with a First in history. The birth date attributed to Wimsey is 1890, which would make him a slightly younger contemporary of Knox.
Knox was a brilliant classicist and won numerous prizes and scholarships. In 1910 he became a fellow of Trinity College, but could not begin tutorials until 1911, and so accepted a position as classics tutor to the young Harold Macmillan. Although Knox was later dismissed by Macmillan's mother, who disliked his high-church convictions, Knox and Macmillan remained good friends for the rest of Knox's life.
In 1912 Knox was ordained as an Anglican priest and was appointed chaplain of Trinity College. In 1917 he had to leave this position when he left the Anglican Church and became a Roman Catholic. This must have been an immensely hard decision, involving both his spiritual journey and the severe disruption and distress it caused to his family; Knox's father and one of his brothers were Anglican priests. In response to his conversion, Knox's father disinherited him, cutting him out of his will. Knox joined the teaching staff of Shrewsbury School, where the staff was severely depleted by teachers serving in the First World War. During the War, Knox also served in Army intelligence, (another point in common with Lord Peter Wimsey.)
In 1918 Knox was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and joined the staff of St Edmund's College in Hertfordshire, where he remained until 1926. From 1926-1939 he served as Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford. In 1936 he was honoured by the Pope with the title of Monsignor, which gave him the status of being a member of the Papal household.
Throughout his adult life, Knox wrote, lectured  and broadcast on Christianity and many other subjects. He became one of the most respected and influential theologians of the first half of the 20th Century. He was also a very successful satirist. In his 1911 lecture Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes, Knox set out to parody the German School's influential Biblical analysis by applying its methods to the stories of Sherlock Holmes. The German School picked apart the text of the Bible in obsessive detail, fretting over minor inconsistencies. Knox used these same methods to parody a critical study of the stories of Sherlock Holmes, claiming that, after the death of Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, Watson became prey to drink and delusion and, unable to make a living as a doctor, 'made up' the later Holmes' stories. Knox intended to mock the German School's method and the obsession of the fans of Sherlock Holmes, but many Holmes fans simply took the lecture at face value, using it as the foundation for their own intense study of the stories. Conan Doyle also missed the joke. After the lecture was published, he wrote Knox a four page letter discussing the points he had made and refuting his criticism. In the end it seems that the joke was on Knox, because, for the next thirty years, Knox was assumed to be an authority on Holmes, and was regularly approached by editors hoping he'd agree to review the latest Sherlock Holmes adventure. In his biography 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.'
Knox's reaction to pretension was always to satirise it. When he was irritated by the various 'conspiracy theories' that claimed that Shakespeare had not written his plays he included in his Essays on Satire (1928) an essay called The Authorship of In Memoriam,'which pretends to believe that Tennyson's great poem was written by Queen Victoria.
On 16th January 1926, Knox's mischievous humour spread into his broadcasting career, when he enlivened one of his regular BBC Radio programmes with a simulated live report of revolution sweeping across London. The broadcast was called Broadcasting from the Barricades and had fake reports of a Government minister being lynched and the Savoy Hotel, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben being destroyed. Knox's broadcast coincided with a snowy weekend, preventing many national newspapers being delivered, and it caused panic throughout the country. The broadcast had been prefaced by a statement that this was a work of humour and imagination and contains numerous ridiculous references that should have made it clear that this was a joke. However, not all listeners tuned in at the beginning of the broadcast, indeed many were turning on for the programme after Knox's and only caught alarming and authentic sounding snatches of the report. It is clear that Knox did not intend to deceive: he gives his characters ridiculous names and ludicrous jobs. The rioters' ringleader, Mr Popplebury, is described as 'Secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues.' The unfortunate Mr Wotherspoon, the minister lynched and left dangling from a lamp-post is described as 'Minister of Traffic', a post which did not exist. Knox and Lord Reith (the head of the BBC) both believed that he had delivered sufficient clues that this was a spoof, but this was a rather naïve assumption, not improved by the excuse offered by Knox's brother talking to the Daily Sketch, 'I am inclined to think my brother over-estimated the people's sense of humour.' The First World War had ended only eight years previously and many people were still suffering from the distress and damage it had caused. This was a period of political and civil unrest, when both Government and people were afraid of the perceived threat of Communism and Socialism. Four months later the country would be disrupted by workers claiming their right to fair pay and decent working conditions by holding the General Strike. Added to this, people were not accustomed to 'special effects' as they have been in more recent generations. Above all, people believed the report because it was a broadcast by the highly respected and trusted BBC and the broadcaster was a highly respected academic and priest. There is some evidence that Knox's Behind the Barricades was the inspiration for an even greater radio deception, Orson Welles' radio broadcast The War of the Worlds (1938.)
In 1925 Knox published his first book of detective fiction, The Viaduct Murder. It tells the story of four golfing friends who discover the body of another member of their golf club under a railway viaduct and decide to investigate because, as one explains, 'I've got the greatest respect for the police as a body, but I don't think they're very good at following up clues.' The Viaduct Murder is a long and somewhat tedious book, with no real engagement with the characters involved.
The Three Taps (1927) is the first of Knox's books to feature Miles Bredon, who became his sleuth for the rest of his detective writing career. Like Knox, Bredon was an Intelligence Officer in the war; he is now an investigator for the Indescribable Insurance Company (Knox used his sharpest satire against such institutions.) In The Three Taps his task is to investigate whether a death is suicide, accident or foul play. He is accompanied in his investigations by his old wartime friend, Police Inspector Leyland, (other members of the police force are conspicuous by their absence) and by Bredon's long-suffering wife, Angela.
In Evelyn Waugh's biography of Knox, he explains that he regarded his detective books, 'as intellectual exercises; a game between reader and writer in which a problem was precisely stated and elaborately disguised. He was not seeking to write novels. He had no concern with the passions of the murderer, the terror of the victim, or the moral enormity of the crime.' This lack of passion does come through the writing and the interest in reading Knox's detective stories lies in who committed the crime and how it was done, not in a deep involvement with the characters. That said, the plots are ingenious and intriguing, and worth reading for the relationship between Miles Bredon and Angela, which is charming and full of banter. Aside from paid detection, Miles Bredon's main interests are golf and playing long and complicated games of Patience. He is very preoccupied with the concern that his employment as a private investigator has damaged his status as a 'gentleman.' In his relationship with Leyland, the police detective is very much the junior and subservient. When Bredon declares that he will not share all the information he has gathered on a case that he is not employed to investigate because he is staying as a guest in a house with several of the suspects, Leyland assures him that he understands and asks humbly if he will pass on what he can. When Wimsey raises similar reservations, Detective Inspector Parker is far less sympathetic about his friend's sensibilities. On the whole, Angela Bredon is more forthright with her husband than his other friends and associates tend to be, but then, as Knox records, the strength of this relationship depends on the fact that Bredon 'did not realize that his wife was a tiny bit cleverer than he was, and was always conspiring for his happiness behind his back.' (The Three Taps, 1927.) Certainly Angela Bredon is an attractive and strong character, and the witty exchanges between Angela and Miles light up the books.
Knox was a man of great humour and wit, which he brought to his work as a broadcaster, writer and teacher. His acerbic wit is a quality that he gave to his fictional creation, Miles Bredon. It is easy to imagine Bredon describing a baby as 'a loud noise at one end, and no sense of responsibility at another.' And, if Bredon had cause to ponder on the length of a good sermon, he would certainly agree with Knox that 'a good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.'
One of Knox's great qualities as a writer was his exquisite descriptive prose. His skill at setting the scene is incomparable, whether it is an exciting night journey or an early morning awakening to the news of a tragic death. In The Body in the Silo (1933), Knox uses his descriptive powers to change the feeling of the book from playful excitement to ominous dread. 'There was no doubt about the thrill of this midnight chase, though it was all 'pretend' and Bredon's car had before now taken the road at this pace on sterner errands. Shadows of haystacks, of cattle in hedges, loomed enormous; startled rabbits made the pace for a few yards, and disappeared at the last moment into the long grass; late-retiring householders looked out in angry décolleté, from their windows; straggling villages seemed interminable in the dark.' … 'It was none of your bright mornings, full of sunshine and cockcrow and fresh smells of earth. The heat had brought up a heavy dew, which wreathed the garden in fantastic shapes of mist; the opposite bank of the river showed faint and unsubstantial, the air was breathless, still charged with heat, but unpropitious to clean thoughts and the melody of birds. They went out as if into an evil fairyland.'
From 1928 onwards, a group of prominent detective novelists agreed to meet and discuss their craft.
Also in 1928 Knox wrote the Ten Commandments of detective fiction. As with so much of Knox's work and life, the Ten Commandments are a mixture of dry humour and serious directions. The tongue-in-cheek title shows that he was approaching them with a fair proportion of satire. Most of the Commandments are irrelevant to 21st Century crime fiction and many of them were broken by Knox's own contemporaries in The Detective Club. It could be argued that Knox himself did not always stick strictly to the spirit of the Commandments but they are interesting to consider as part of the history of detective fiction.
Knox's Ten Commandments:
1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
In 1930 the gathering of like-minded writers became formally known as The Detective Club. G.K. Chesterton was the first president and Knox was one of the founder members. Chesterton and Knox were close friends for many years and both had been converts to the Roman Catholic faith. When Chesterton died in 1836, the sermon at his Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral was delivered by Knox. It is ironic that Chesterton's iconic detective, Father Brown, was a Roman Catholic priest but was unlike Knox in so many ways. Father Brown was a parish priest, humble and unassuming in manner until issues of justice or spiritual well-being required him to act; he was short, shabby and unimposing. Knox never served a parish; he was a man of imposing appearance, swift wit and academic distinction, a friend of high-born and powerful people. In fact, on his last visit to London, Knox stayed with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at 10 Downing Street. It is an even greater irony that Father Brown is remembered by crime readers everywhere, while Knox is remembered chiefly as a Roman Catholic theologian.
Between 1925 and 1937, Knox wrote six detective novels, all but the first of these featured Miles Bredon. He also wrote three books of short stories and three collaborative works with other members of the Detection Club.
Knox was concerned that the Church authorities disapproved of his detective fiction, and when his close friend and patron Lady Acton also showed her disapproval he gave up writing crime fiction. The popular story is that Lady Acton demonstrated her disapproval by throwing a copy of his last book, Double Cross Purposes (1937) overboard into the Mediterranean. Knox also gave up his chaplaincy at Oxford University and became Lady Acton's chaplain at her family seat in Shropshire. Here he concentrated on his greatest work of theology, his translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate. This was the work he truly cared about and which mattered far more to him than his detective stories.
Knox died of cancer in 1957. After a requiem mass in Westminster Cathedral, he was buried at St Andrew's Church, Mells.

The Body in the Silo
by Ronald Knox
The book opens with a lively exchange of views between Miles Bredon and his wife, Angela, regarding whether they should go and visit some acquaintances on the Welsh border.
'”It's no use,” said Miles Bredon. “The man's a bore and the woman's a pest, and if I did ever say I'd go there I must have been drunk at the time. Let us leave it at that.”... “You were, rather, as far as I can remember,” admitted Angela. “I can't always wait until you come round. The pity is that I didn't give you an extra glass to lay you out, put you straight in the car, and decant you at the Hallifords' there and then. A sensible wife would always cart her husband about the country in a sack.”'
Angela has her way and they go off on their visit. Lost in country lanes they are advised by villagers to look for the silo, a formidable landmark, '”Like as it might be a church tower.”' Following this advice they come upon 'a large building made like a lighthouse, forty feet high, with no windows, except a skylight in its conical top, no door, and indeed no opening at all except on one side, where a series of square hatches, one above another, led right up to the roof.' Their host, Mr Halliford, is playing at being a farmer and the silo is his favourite toy. The vast building is filled with grass and hay, which ferments and provides food for the cattle in winter. It can be a dangerous place, as the fermenting grass gives off carbon gases, and being trapped inside the silo can be fatal.
The entertainment is as dire as Bredon fears. Previously having made herself and her guests loathed throughout the countryside with scavenger hunts, Mrs Halliford is determined to hold an eloping hunt, where an 'eloping' couple are pursued in cars through the countryside and towns. In order to maintain authenticity, she insists that this has to be at night. This programme is put into action and, in an atmosphere of artificially created excitement, the hunt takes place. The pursuers travel either as married couples or singly, and one non-driver elects to stay at home. This means that nobody has an independent alibi when, the next morning, a body is discovered in the silo, having died of carbon gas poisoning.
The Coroner brings in a verdict of Accidental Death but Bredon has grave doubts about its validity. These are strengthened when his friend, Inspector Leyland of Scotland Yard turns up and is keeping covert surveillance on the Halliford household. Despite his objection to investigating a family with whom he is staying as a guest, Bredon cannot resist a mystery and is soon on the trail of clues, many of which were laid deliberately to mislead.
The Body in the Silo is a whodunnit, with few clues in the characters of the suspects but all the physical clues are meticulously offered to the reader so that they can try to solve the puzzle for themselves. The problem in intriguing and the interaction between Miles and Angela Bredon is warm and amusing. It is an interesting read for lovers of classic Golden Age crime fiction.


Kindle: ASIN: B0094IXYJI
The Body in the Silo is back in print but it is expensive for a paperback.
Publisher: The Murder Room (31 Jan. 2013)
ISBN: 978-1471900457

Murder & Mystery in the Ancient World: reviews of Danger in the Wind & The Marathon Conspiracy

 

Writing historical crime fiction has many challenges, as I know from writing Victorian Murder Mysteries. The challenges of writing crime set in the Ancient World must be even greater. To do the vast amount of research required and have a mastery of ancient texts is daunting enough, but this research has to be incorporated seamlessly into the narrative: lifestyle, geography, history, politics, all have to form the background without the reader ever thinking 'oh no, here comes another dreary info dump.'
Having accomplished this, there is the problem of making the attitudes of the past accessible and acceptable. In the Ancient World, one of the main sticking points is slavery. The only way to make your Roman or Greek protagonist credible is for them to accept the attitudes and culture of the time, although in deference to modern sensibilities, the hero or heroine always treat their slaves well. (In Rosemary Rowe's case her hero is actually a freed slave.)
I enjoy the lighter historical crime fiction, such as that delivered by Lindsey Davies, Rosemary Rowe and Jane Finnis. I was delighted to discover a series that was new to me, set in Athens, at the time when democracy was a new concept, and immediately put Gary Corby's Nicolaos series on my 'buy and read list.'

I have included two of the most recent book reviews that I have done for books by Corby and Finnis, although I would urge new readers to start at the beginning of the series.

As far as I know, Jane Finnis was the first author to create a female Roman detective. Finnis chose to set her Aurelia Marcella series in Roman Britain, in Finnis' native Yorkshire, far distant from the political hub of Rome and this sense of being in an outpost adds to the sense of danger.. Aurelia is an innkeeper, running a mansio for travellers, although because she is a woman, the deeds are in the name of her twin brother, Lucius. He is a Government Investigator, as is Aurelia's lover, Quintus, and between them they manage to involve Aurelia in many dangerous plots; not that Aurelia needs any help to find danger, she is very skilled at finding murder and mayhem for herself.

Danger In the Wind
by Jane Finnis.
(ISBN 978-1-59058-892-5)

It is 100 AD and Britannia seems to be settling down under Roman rule.  Aurelia Marcella, innkeeper of the Oak Tree Mansio, situated not far from York, is more concerned with domestic matters than political.  Her twin brother, Lucius has returned from the south, bringing with him the girl he intends to marry.  Vitellia is beautiful, rich and sweet-natured but Aurelia thinks she lacks the intelligence and force of character to make her brother a good wife.  To add to Aurelia's troubles her cousin Jovina invites her to visit her for her birthday party, a pleasant social invitation, except the last paragraph begs Aurelia to come and help her because 'there is danger in the wind.'  Jovina and her soldier husband are stationed in Isurium, an undistinguished fort further north and Aurelia has not seen her for some years.  On the same day a traveller is brutally murdered while staying at Aurelia's mansio and he proves to be a soldier, also stationed at Isurium.
Lucius is an investigator for the Emperor and he discovers that Eurytus, the Emperor's tax collector and the most hated man in Britannia, is also due to visit Isurium and there are threats of native uprising in the area.  Lucius, as Head of the Family, forbids Aurelia to go to Isurium.  He should have known better.  Aurelia is not a woman who would allow anyone to dictate to her in such matters and she heads straight up north to Jovina's aid.
Events in Isurium escalate alarmingly and Aurelia finds herself in a web of passion, greed, jealousy and political intrigue, which swiftly leads to violence and family tragedy.  As Aurelia struggles to prove the innocence of a kinsman accused of murder and to prevent native unrest erupting into a full-scale rebellion, she is grateful for the help of her brother Lucius and Vitellia, who proves not to be as lacking in spirit as Aurelia feared.  Above all, Aurelia is glad of the presence of her lover, Quintus Antonius Delfinus, a senior Imperial investigator, with whom Aurelia has shared many adventures.
Danger In The Wind is the fourth book featuring Aurelia Marcella and, as a series it gets better all the time.  The honest, witty and direct voice of Aurelia recounting the story; the warm (and at times mischievous) characterisation; the historical detail, which transports the reader to that time and places without ever becoming intrusive and the fast-paced who-dunnit style of the Aurelia books make them all page-turners.  I  read Danger In The Wind in less than two days.

As soon as I read the first lines of Gary Corby's The Marathon Conspiracy I was hooked. I love the ingenious way he weaves historical characters and fictional characters into a funny and gripping narrative. Corby's next Nicolaos and Diotima book Death Ex Machina has just been published and I am looking forward to reading it.

The Marathon Conspiracy
by Gary Corby
(ISBN: 978-1616955359 )

Nicolaos wants to take time off from investigating and concentrate on the preparations for his wedding to Diotima, his partner in investigation. Life is tricky enough with both sets of parents set on their own agenda and bickering to get the wedding celebrations run their way, without Nico's boss, the great Athenian statesman, Pericles, sending for him to investigate a somewhat unusual situation. 'Pericles didn't usually keep a human skull on his desk, but there was one there now. The skull lay upon a battered old scroll case and stared at me with a vacant expression, as if it were bored by the whole process of being dead. I stood mute, determined not to mention the skull. Pericles had a taste for theatrics, and I saw no reason to pander to it.'
The skull belongs to Hippias, the last tyrant to rule Athens. The Athenians had fought the great Battle of Marathon to get rid of the hated tyrant and thought he had died in Persia. What are his remains doing outside the city walls, discovered by two girls who attend the Sanctuary of Artemis, the Ancient World's most famous school for girls? The political fall-out of who amongst the Athenians now in power might have been a traitor and secret supporter of Hippias causes danger and unrest. One of the girls who discovered the skull is killed and the other disappears. When Nico and Diotima go to the Sanctuary of Artemis to investigate they realise that somebody is willing to kill them to prevent them discovering the truth. It is a race against time for Nico and Diotima to solve the historical mystery, the present day killing and abduction, unmask the Athenian traitor, not to mention managing to attend their own wedding.
This book is great fun. It is the fourth in the series but, from the first page, it is totally accessible even for those who have not read the earlier Nico and Diotima novels. Although it is very funny and moves at a great pace, it never makes the mistake of trivialising the murder of the young girl and the scenes with her distraught mother are beautifully handled. I wholeheartedly recommend this book and intend to read the others in the series.


 

Everybody Hates Critics, but I'm a Reviewer... Honest Guv!

'From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1.) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.' Isaac Asimov.

Recently, on Facebook, I read two entries by authors who were devastated by nasty reviews of their books and were doubting the validity of their work. There was nothing I could do to help, except send encouraging messages and urge them not to quit. I'm sure they won't. At least I hope not. Nobody who loves writing should give up because of a stranger's ill considered, or possibly spiteful, words.

That set me thinking: why would anybody take the time and trouble to write a really nasty book review? For that matter, why take the time and trouble to read an entire book that you despise? I suspect that very few of these reviewers are employed to do the job, so why read and review something that gives them so little pleasure?

I suspect that many of these 'reviewers' are getting mixed up with the old-fashioned role of the critic, the two words have been interchanged a lot. Traditionally the critic was employed by the media to review a book/ film/play/concert/piece of artwork, but, as the title 'critic' suggests, the most popular critics are often those who, in a fluent and derisive way, are nasty about several aspects of the work they are reviewing. Amongst creative people, the popular perception of such critics is that they are embittered by their own creative failure. As Robin Sharma puts it: 'Critics are just dreamers who got scared and gave up.'

When writing a review, the reviewer should remember that they are exposing not just the book and its author to public scrutiny and judgement, they are exposing themselves as well. Ego trips, spite and jealousy, or simple showing off, will all be obvious. They should also remember that, in the crime genre, critics are one of the categories of people that frequently end up as murder victims and their killers often claim it was 'justifiable homicide.'

I write crime novels: Police Procedurals and Victorian Murder Mysteries, and I've just completed a cosy/comedy crime book. So I've been on the receiving end of reviews, although I admit I've been fortunate so far. The worst star rating I've had on Amazon was a 3 star and the reviewer was perfectly civil, and that is far outweighed by the numerous 5 stars and occasional 4 stars I've received.

I'm not saying an author should ignore all but fulsome praise, just evaluate it and work out what the reviewer is actually saying and whether, even if it's said crassly, they have a point the author can learn from. When I receive feedback of any sort I consider it carefully. Sometimes a reviewer will put their finger on a weakness that I can amend, at least in future books.

'In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions.' Roger Ebert. 

I review books for Mystery People and the thing that I try to keep in mind, and hope the readers of the reviews do too, is that this is my opinion, not some great Everlasting Truth carved in stone.

Deciding which books I review for Mystery People has an element of luck in it from the start. The editor, Lizzie Hayes, sends a list of books that have been submitted to her, and her team of reviewers race to email her in order to ask for the ones they fancy. There are often books by authors I know and admire, which makes things easy, but the choice of others are a matter of a lot of luck and a little judgement, (done at high speed before another reviewer beats me past the post.) Sometimes books are not as exciting as I hoped but, as a rule, they are interesting, and occasionally, I've discovered an author whose work I love. Most notable of my new finds in the last year is Gary Corby, whose fabulous mystery series is set in Ancient Greece.

My reviewing process is basically the same for any fiction book that I review.

Having read the book I would:

1.) Write a brief account of the central characters, state whether it is contemporary or historical, mention the location and outline the start of the plot. I am careful not to put in any spoilers and will use the 'blurb' on the book's back cover to guide me as to how much the author wants revealed.

2.) Comment on any outstanding features, such as a fabulous title.

3.) Include any facts, such as whether it is the 1^st book in a series, or the 101^st.

4.) Write about my reaction to the book, making sure I put in all the positive points (e.g. lively characters, clever plot, satisfying ending, but not giving the ending away.) That doesn't mean I ignore anything that is less than positive, but, unless it is a glaring, factual error, I make it clear that this is my opinion. After all, I could find a character irritating that many other people love.

5.) I include any information that the reader might find useful, (e.g. exceptionally small print, which is hard to read.) I have been known to suggest that, in my opinion, readers should start at the beginning of a series; although, in other cases, characters and situations are are so clearly drawn that I feel the order of reading matters a lot less.

6.) I sum up, often suggesting the readers who would potentially enjoy the book.

7.) I provide the information readers would need: ISBN or ASIN number and publisher.

I would try to match the style of my review to the over-all tone of the book and, if appropriate, use a brief quotation from the book to show the style and quality of the writing.

For me the important thing about reviewing is to offer positive but honest feedback and to share information about books so that other people can seek them out and enjoy them too. And of course, to let authors know that some reviewers enjoy their work and admire what they do, and are happy to say so.

Light Fever: Teenagers Create New Art Exhibition

Fort Nelson is a Victorian Fort, situated on the top of Portsdown Hill, overlooking Portsmouth, a town with a great naval history. It is a national monument and has been restored to the condition it would have been in a hundred and ten years ago, in the 1890s. Fort Nelson houses the Royal Armouries, Britain's national collection of arms and armour.

Spinning Wave

For the last few months, Fort Nelson has opened its doors to a group of teenage artists who have been working on an exciting art project in light graffiti, which they have called, Light Fever. The art was inspired by the architecture and artefacts of the fort. Light Fever is part of the Artswork, Strong Voices programme, a two year programme funded by the Department of Education. As well as the images displayed in the Fort Nelson gallery, the teenagers produced a moving soundscape, using a poem by the First World War Poet, Gilbert Frankau.

The teenagers were supported in their work by many people and organisations: Artswork; Portsmouth Autism Support Network; the staff of Fort Nelson; Butterfly FX digital artists; and Ben Claydon, freelance creative. The teenagers would like to thank Gilbert Frankau's grandson and literary executor for permission to use his poem. The four teenagers doing the Silver Arts Award also want to thank Jo, Ursula and Eileen, our wonderful mums for their help and support.

Jack Halsall is one of the teenagers who has participated in the Light Fever project. He supplied the information above and the rest of the blog is a question and answer session with him.

Question: I love the artwork you have produced and the soundscape is incredible. Did you have fun doing the art and making the soundscape?

Answer: Yes, it was a lot of fun. I loved messing around with the lights and I was surprised afterwards by how good they looked.

Question: When you started this project, several months ago, did you realise how much hard work was involved?

Answer: I knew it was going to be a lot of work but there was a bit more work than I was expecting and some of the things, like putting up the exhibition, took a lot longer than I expected.

Question: Which bit of the creative project did you enjoy most?

Answer: Taking the pictures and then seeing how they looked afterwards and choosing which which ones to include in the exhibition.

Question: There are lots of different styles of light graffiti in the different pictures, did you need to use different techniques to get these effects?

Answer: Yes, for some of the pictures we used stencils, and for others outlining objects and freestyle, which was basically just throwing lights around and seeing what they looked like afterwards.

Question: Which technique did you most enjoy doing and do you think it was the most effective?

Answer: The most fun was freestyle. Stencils were the trickiest to do, but if they were done correctly they were the most effective.

Question: When people (like me) who don't know a lot about digital art, look at the final images, we don't really understand how much work has gone into it at the editing stage. Tell me about what happens between the camera and the finished project.

Answer: I'd like to use the image of the skull as an example. We took lots of photos of the skull with different lights (some red, some green, some white) and then we merged them together when we were editing and it was really effective. I enjoy using Photoshop to edit and enhance images.

The Skull of Death

Question: Have you been tempted to experiment with any light graffiti by yourself, away from the project?

Answer: Yes. I did some light graffiti with my grandfather, which was great fun. Although he didn't have the high-tech equipment that we could use for Light Fever, we still produced some epic pictures using his camera and glow-sticks.

Question: What did you find especially inspiring about creating art in Fort Nelson and the Royal Armouries?

Answer: The tunnels were wonderful places to do light graffiti. Not only were they really dark but also they were full of atmosphere and the feeling of being very old. We had a lot of fun with the old skull and produced a brilliant piece of artwork. We also used swords and armour. My favourite one was when it looked as though electric was coming out of the sword.

Question: I understand that, as individuals, you have been looking at other light graffiti artists. Who on the contemporary light graffiti art scene do you admire most?

Answer: I really admire Michael Bosanko. I love the way he uses his surroundings and makes the inside of a building look as if it's in a different dimension. I also like the circles he uses in the landscape, which look like portals. My favourite thing about his work is his use of modern images: he did a Dalek and Pac Man, before I saw Bosanko's Pac Man, I did a very different one and I did the Minecraft Creeper.

Question: The poem used for the soundscape was beautifully read and the sound effects supplied by the rest of the group were very effective. The poem was written in the First World War by Gilbert Frankau and I thought it was perfect for an exhibition at the Royal Armouries. Is it true that Gilbert Frankau's grandson, who gave permission for the poem to be used, may visit the exhibition?

Answer: We have invited him to join us at the Private View and we hope very much that he will come.

Question: You were part of the team that put up the art exhibition in the gallery at Fort Nelson. How did that go?

Answer: It went well and we all had a lot of fun, but it did take a lot of time and a lot of argument of what should go where. At one point there was a danger of my Creeper picture being mounted upside down.

Question: How did you feel when you saw the final exhibition?

Answer: I was impressed by how good it looked. For the first time I could see it as a professional exhibition. I feel very proud of it and so were the other people who were putting it up.

The Creeper

Question: Of all your images, which is your favourite?

Answer: The Creeper. I like the way it is coming towards the viewer. I'm really pleased with the way that it worked out. I hope lots of people come to our exhibition and enjoy it.

MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR.

I'm pleased to be part of the MY WRITING PROCESS BLOG TOUR. 

I was nominated by my good friend, the superb writer, Charlie Cochrane.

http://charliecochrane.livejournal.com/409063.html

Charlie and I first met at a RNA Christmas lunch many years ago, but in the last few years we meet up regularly as part of the Deadly Dames panel. I've loved Charlie's Cambridge Fellows series for years and, a couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to get hold of a review copy of her brilliant new contemporary crime/romance, The Best Corpse for the Job, which is out in e-book in November and paperback in December. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the start of another riveting series.

At the moment I'm writing the last few chapters of The Curse of the Concrete Griffin, a cosy/comedy crime novel set in a retirement village for older people. This is an unusual departure for me as usually I write police procedurals, but I started it at a point when I was recovering from a bad health blip and wanted something a bit lighter to play with. However, I have just finished editing and restructuring The Fragility of Poppies, a cross genre crime/romance novel, and normal service will be resumed in the near future, as I have the outline plots and first chapters ready for the next two police procedurals in the Serious Crimes series, Karma and the Singing Frogs (the next in the Mia Trent Scene of Crimes novels which started with The Terminal Velocity of Cats) and The Tyranny of the Weak, (which will be the next in the series featuring Kev Tyler and Gill Martin, who were introduced in About the Children.)

It is almost impossible to write a fictional police procedural that is totally true to life; describing any major crime would be both dull and confusing, with descriptions of large amounts of paperwork and an unwieldy number of personnel, but I do try to keep the police procedure plausible and reasonably realistic. Although I think it's great if I can keep the reader guessing the identity of the criminal until the end of the book, it's more important to me that, even if they've spotted the perpetrator, they feel involved enough with the investigators to want to follow through and see how it all ties up. I try to write character based books and I got very bored with out-of-control, alcoholic, maverick cops. I prefer my detectives to be fundamentally decent and professional. I like intelligence and integrity in my central characters and it's a bonus if they happen to be witty too.

I come into the category of writers who write what they want to read. I write about crime because it matters, so maybe it's an attempt to make sense of some of the terrible things that happen to ordinary people who don't see it coming. That sounds awfully heavy and pretentious and it's just as true that I like the puzzle aspect and I'm fascinated by why people do the crazy things they do. About the Children was my greatest challenge, because it's about the death of children but it was a book I felt that I had to write. I know a lot of people have been wary of reading it because they were afraid they'd find it too upsetting and I've been very pleased that several people who were worried but plucked up the courage to read it said that they had not found it harrowing. I think this is because it is written through the viewpoints of the detectives investigating the crime, and, although they care, they maintain a professional attitude.

My fiction writing jerks sporadically into life in the gaps between teaching, article writing and helping Home Educate my disabled grandson. When I manage to clear a day for writing I tend to write between 2,000 and 3,000 words, but that doesn't happen as often as I'd like. Regarding the actual writing process: I always know where I'm starting a book and usually I have some idea of the end as well. My detectives are pretty well established in my mind, so it's just a case of checking where they've got to in their lives since the last time I visited them, but of course new characters have to be encountered and explored. The trickiest thing for me is writing a scenario where it's not immediately obvious who has committed the crime; so that even the thickest constable exclaims 'Aha! He dunnit!' I quite often have a final scene in my mind, usually after the crime is solved and explained. In both About the Children and The Fragility of Poppies I knew the end scene, but I didn't know what was going to happen throughout the book until I got there. That's what makes it so much fun. I wouldn't want to write a book that I'd already plotted out; I'd get bored with it long before I reached the end.

I've only got one nominee to continue my next stage of the blog tour, but she's a fantastic writer who will take us to galaxies we've never explored before. My good friend and colleague Wendy Metcalfe writes Science Fiction and Future Crime, both with a strong ecological theme. Her first two books in her Future Crime series are already available: Panthera, Death Spiral and Panthera, Death Song, and the third book will be published early in 2015.

John Creasey (1908-1973)

 
 

At my book launch yesterday, a conversation between Catherine King, who writes Victorian & Edwardian sagas, and comedy crime writer L.C. Tyler about the importance of being entertaining, reminded me of one of my Golden Age heroes, John Creasey. It's incredible that anybody could write well over 500 books and still have time for the rest of his life; it's even more amazing that many of his books were really good, especially the early police procedurals featuring Gideon of Scotland Yard. 
John Creasey was born in Surrey, the son of a poor coach-maker, he was the seventh child in a family of nine. He was educated at Fulham Elementary School and Sloane School, where one of his teachers identified his creative ability and encouraged him to be a writer. He left school in 1923, when he was sixteen, and was employed in various factory , clerical and sales jobs whilst trying to become an established author. Creasey's determination to become a successful writer was quite remarkable when one realises that his working-class family laughed at his writing ambitions, and for fourteen years his submissions were unanimously rejected. He is said to have accumulated 743 rejection slips. In 1930 he received his first acceptance by the publishers Andrew Melrose and in 1932 Seven Times Seven was published. Seven Times Seven is a stand alone, romantic thriller, in which an young man, Peter Maraday, comes to the rescue of a beautiful young film star, Patricia Tremaine, when she is threatened by a criminal gang. In 1970 Creasey wrote a brief Author's Note at the beginning of the reprint of Seven Times Seven and described his delight at reading his first review in The Morning Post, which said, 'Seven Times Seven is a racy and amusing as well as up-to-date story of a gang of crooks whose operations are world wide,' it also remarked that Creasey, 'spins his yarn with speed and ingenuity.' However, he records that he soon came back down to earth and, being unemployed, had to cycle to the local Labour Exchange and 'sign on.' At the end of this Author's Note, Creasey wrote, 'Today, with thirty press-cutting books in all, and over 20,000 reviews, that first book and first review still give me the greatest of thrills.'
In the first page of Seven Times Seven, Creasey's description of Peter Maraday makes the mocking, humorous note of the book very clear, 'Peter's jaw swept round from his ears like the business edge of a scimitar and gave the final touch of masterfulness which his face needed to make him the perfect picture of a strong, silent man... He was massive, muscular and masterful, to quote his pet description of himself. From which it may be gathered he was not modest.'
When Peter becomes involved in saving Patricia Tremaine, he does not work alone; he has a group of friends, kindred spirits who style themselves the Company. In this the book has a similarity to the early Saint books.
Seven Times Seven has much in common with Creasey's first series featuring Department Z, in which Gordon Craigie and his band of young, intrepid agents guard the nation from espionage. The first Department Z novel was The Death Miser (1932) and there were 28 books in the series, which Creasey continued producing until 1957. The first Department Z books, written before the Second World War, are remarkable for their political insight, predicting the dangers of the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini before many politicians were acknowledging the problem. The books set in the Second World War are filled with the tension, fear and danger of those dark days, while the Post-War books show another threat to the Department, political pressure that their usefulness is redundant.
In 1935, three years after the publication of Seven Times Seven, Creasey felt he was sufficiently established to give up the 'day job' as a grocer's clerk and become a full time writer. At this time he also married Margaret Elizabeth Cooke and they had one son. Under his wife's name, Creasey wrote and published fourteen romantic novels, starting with For Love's Sake (1934.) Creasey married four times and had three children, one son by his first wife and two by his second.
Creasey was a remarkably prolific writer and, over his forty-year career as a published writer, wrote  the incredible total of 562 full-length novels (that's over 14 a year.) He knew that it would be folly to flood the market with a new John Creasey every 27 days and so he wrote under a grand total of 28 different pseudonyms. Creasey wrote between 7,000 and 10,000 words a day and claimed that he could write a book in two weeks and still have half a day free to play cricket. He also once suggested he could be shut up in a glass box and left there to write a whole book.
In the 1930s and 1940s Creasey also wrote Westerns under the pseudonyms William K. Reilly, Tex Riley and Ken Ranger. Initially Creasey's knowledge of America came from books and films but later he visited the US and made a second home in Arizona. His third wife, Jeanne Williams, was American and wrote historical western novels.
In 1937 Creasey created a pseudonym 'by request' when Cassels asked for 'a different kind of story.' Creasey created Michael Halliday and very much enjoyed writing stand-alone novels under this name. He used the same name to launch an experimental series with his two sons as characters in the books. In America Creasey had to rename the Michael Halliday books because of a clash of names with a well known American author and the pseudonym Jeremy Yorke was born. Creasey continued to experiment and in 1966 created Dr Emmanuel Cellini, a quiet, gentle psychiatrist. The Cellini books achieved immediate success, especially in the United States.
In 1938 Creasey was living in Ashe, Hampshire, and took the name of the village for his pseudonym, Gordon Ashe, under which he wrote the Patrick Dawlish series, which featured a 'Bulldog Drummond' style character and his group of hard-hitting friends. Drawn by chance into combating crime, Patrick Dawlish and his friends fought the good fight in 35 books between 1938 and 1960, when the offer of an official position at Scotland Yard led Dawlish to another 15 adventures under the series known as the Crime Haters, which ended in the year of Creasey's death.
It is interesting to note that in physical description Patrick Dawlish is not unlike Peter Maraday of Seven Times Seven: he is a massive man with a face that would have been handsome if it had not been for his broken nose. Creasey is a master of suspense as is obvious in the opening of Death In the Trees (1954). 'Dawlish was alone in the room with the dead man. He heard no sound but his own breathing. He saw only the big white flabby face, the lock of black hair falling over the forehead, touching one big, protuberant eye. The bullet which had entered the right temple, had made little mess. In the centre of the wound was a dark dot, about it a red swelling, beneath it and dripping to the back of the chair, a tiny rivulet of blood.' By contrast, Engagement With Death (1948) opens with a light, domestic request. '”Do try to find out whether it is really true that Pop Fairweather intends to marry Georgette Lee,” Felicity wrote. “I'm fond of the old boy and I'd hate to think of him making a fool of himself.”' Creasey was always incredibly versatile.
In his early adventures, Patrick Dawlish sometimes has to act outside the law in order to serve Justice, as did the Toff, the Honourable Richard Rollinson, whose adventures start with Introducing the Toff in 1938. There were 59 books about the Toff. He is a gentleman sleuth who moves with as much ease through the Underworld as he does through Mayfair. Like Leslie Charteris' Saint, the Toff has a calling card that mirrors his nickname, a line drawing of a 'toff' wearing top hat, monocle and smoking a cigarette in a holder. However, the character most like the Saint is the Baron, a gentleman criminal along the lines of Raffles. The Baron's name is John Mannering, an antiques dealer cum cracksman. There were 37 books in the series about the Baron, starting in 1937 with Meet the Baron. In Help From the Baron (1955) he is described as: 'John Mannering, tall distinctive in a way that reminded her of her father, but as English as anyone could be. His good looks seemed to belong to an earlier age, needed a wide-brimmed cavalier's hat or the clothes of a Regency buck to set them off... His easy manner and ridiculous good looks fascinated both men and girls.'
Creasey also used his novels to highlight his political ideas and warn about dangers he saw on the horizon. This was especially true of his Dr Palfrey series. In works such as The Flood (1956) and The Famine (1967) Creasey was using his characters to warn of global threats.
Creasey had two series featuring Scotland Yard detectives. His personal favourite was Detective Inspector Roger West, a man so good-looking he was given the nickname 'Handsome West.' West was married and had two sons, to whom Creasey gave the same names as his own sons by his second marriage, Martin and Richard.
Creasey also invented his pseudonym J.J. Marric by using the first three letters of his sons' names. Marric was the name under which he wrote his series of books about Gideon of Scotland Yard. There is a story that the Gideon books were written in answer to a neighbour of Creasey, who was a police detective, and challenged Creasey to write about the police as they really were. Commander George Gideon is a towering figure both in build and in personality. Even his name is indicative. George is a solidly English name and also takes in St George, the patron saint of England who fought the dragon of evil; and Gideon is the biblical figure of great strength, a leader of the people.
In the Roger West books Creasey concentrates on one, or at most two, crimes and criminals; but the Gideon books show a panoramic view of crimes that occur across London and further afield, as Gideon dispatches his detectives to different counties to assist in investigations. The policemen are very human characters, some likeable, some irritating; some good at their job, others less efficient, and occasionally one or two are corrupt. Many of them turn up regularly in the Gideon books, such as Lemaitre, the chain smoking, incorrigibly impulsive detective who has a taste for brightly coloured bow-ties and Alec Hobbes, quiet, controlled and upper-class; both of whom at some point act as Gideon's second-in-command.
Gideon has a large family, three boys and three girls, and the memory of the child who died in infancy. At the start of the series, this loss has put a barrier between Gideon and his wife, Kate, who resents his devotion to his work and feels neglected and, above all, cannot forget that Gideon was not there when she needed him. However, they work through their problems and have a happy marriage, matured by adversity. In Gideon's Fire (1961) Kate acknowledges that Gideon's work is not just important, it is part of his very being. '”George,” Kate said quietly, “don't ever let me try to stop you from doing what you have to do.”'
The Gideon books received many accolades. In 1962 Creasey won an Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America for Gideon's Fire. In 1969 he received the MWA's greatest honour, the Grand Master Award. In 1987, H.R.F. Keating selected Gideon's Week (1956) as one of the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published.
In 1953 Creasey founded the Crime Writers' Association in an attempt to raise the profile of crime and mystery writing and gain the genre more respect.
Because of childhood polio, Creasey was not accepted for active service in the Armed Forces in World War Two, but he did receive an MBE for services in the UK's National Savings Movement in the Second World War.
Remarkably for such a prolific writer, Creasey had an active political life. He supported the Liberal Party and stood for parliament in the 1950 General Election. However he grew increasingly unhappy with Liberal Party policies, especially regarding the Suez Crisis. Later he attempted to found his own Independent Party. He had radical political ideas and advocated shared political control of nations and industrial democracy with managers, workers and investors (whether private or the State) sharing ownership and control of all industry and commerce.
Several of Creasey's books were made into films, most notably John Ford's version of Gideon's Day. Gideon also formed the basis of a television series starring John Gregson, and The Baron was also televised in a series starring Steve Forrest.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about many of Creasey's series was that his heroes had wives, bright, intelligent women who were not conveniently disposed of so that the hero could get involved with a different woman every book. Both Janet West and Kate Gideon may have issues with their husbands' devotion to crime solving but they are not planning to walk away.
Creasey has a great gift of simple, descriptive language that brings a scene to life and this is exercised to the full when describing his heroes' wives. This is clear in the description of Mannering's wife in Help From the Baron (1955): 'And Lorna, his wife, was remarkable; the kind of woman one might hope to be. It wasn't only her looks, although she was quite handsome. Her expression? She could look haughty and be aloof. It was poise, perhaps, a manner which somehow made it obvious that she was nice to know. She had the figure of a young woman, moved lithely, and had as much dress sense as Dior.'
Then there is Patrick Dawlish's adored wife, Felicity, described in Give Me Murder (1947): 'She sat by his side, with one leg resting on a footstool, for the Marine did really see to the comfort of its guests. The leg was shapely and silk-clad. She wore a soft green linen dress, trimmed with lemon-coloured silk. She was not particularly good-looking, but her face was friendly and pleasant, and her very large grey-green eyes were beautiful. Her hair was wavy and a little untidy; she looked fresh and delightful as the breeze stirred the curls at the nape of her neck.' And in A Puzzle In Pearls (1949): 'As Mrs Dawlish climbed out Roger saw her face for the first time. He had gained the impression of someone of unusual beauty. He saw now that though that was not factually true, the impression would be for him, and for most people, lasting.'
It becomes clear that Creasey is less interested in describing female beauty and is conjuring up a far more elusive quality, charm, as when Janet West is seen through her husband's eyes: 'Roger stood her away from him and studied her for a moment; his gaze moved from her dark hair, with some grey to add a touch of distinction, to her clear grey-green eyes, and to her face. Not every man would call her beautiful, but he did.' (Triumph for Inspector West, 1958.)
Last of all there is George Gideon, waiting to meet his wife: 'Then Gideon saw his Kate coming towards him, tall and upright, and for once wearing a flowered dress, red on black, not the spotless white blouse and dark skirt which had been almost a uniform for years. He'd heard much talk of this dress, but hadn't seen it before. It suited her, giving a touch of flamboyance. She was a fine-looking woman with a good figure, she walked well, and her face lit up when she saw him. That did a lot to take Gideon's mind off gloomier thoughts. They were not a demonstrative couple, but they touched hands and then fell into step.' (Gideon's Month, 1958.)
Occasionally, when reading descriptions of Kate Gideon, a slightly cynical thought intrudes that no hard-working, middle-aged housewife in the 1950s, who had borne seven children, raised six of them and known the grief of losing a child, could have worn quite so well, but that is the way Gideon sees his wife and his pride in her is a vital part of their relationship.
It is incredible that the Gideon books, with their vast cast of police personnel and local villains, were the only books in which Creasey used a timetable to remind himself of past characters and events. For all the other series, the characters were alive in his memory: 'They live in my mind... I can see them and hear them much more clearly than most people whom I know in life.'
The remarkable thing about John Creasey is not that he wrote so many books but that they are of such a high standard and they get better as they go on. Although some of the series bear a resemblance to each other, over-all they are remarkable for their different tones. It is as if Creasey became J.J. Marric or Gordon Ashe etc. and discovered each unique persona's writing voice. Although Creasey never flinched from describing evil deeds and showing the horrors of violent crime, he always made it clear that such acts were wrong and would be fought by upholders of good, such as George Gideon. He retained the integrity of his writing and never wrote overtly sexual or sadistic scenes, explaining that, 'I can't write what I don't like.'
It is admirable that most of the books originally published before 1953 were thoroughly revised before being reprinted. Creasey explained his reasons for doing this: 'The newer books should be better written than the older ones; to bring out new editions of old titles, knowing them not to be comparable with new titles, cheats not only the readers but me. Everything of mine should be as good as I can possibly make it at the time of publication.'