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Not John Grisham

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I cannot say I have ever been a huge fan of the courtroom drama although I appreciate that this sub-genre of detective fiction most certainly has its devotees. My suspicion is that these fans are themselves likely also to be in the legal profession in one form or another and find the books to be comforting reinforcements of their extensive educations and rapier sharp wit/intelligence. This may be a rather unkind generalisation/assumption on my part of course, suggesting that my mistrust of the sub-genre may be rooted firmly in a sense of personal inadequacy; a certain begrudgingly accepted awareness that I never was nor will be Quite That Bright. Oh, I get by and I don’t believe myself to be entirely stupid, but, well, you know, perhaps that is not for me to say.

Anyway, if a blog is not a place for personal admissions then I am not sure what is, so let me also say that whilst attempting to refresh my shoddy memory about other courtroom drama stories that I have read over the years I made the rookie error of looking at a Goodreads list of ‘122 Best Legal Thrillers’. That this list appears to be almost entirely populated with John Grisham books perhaps illustrates only the tendency for these kinds of lists to be wildly skewed in favour of whatever happens to be the most popular/best selling items that are roughly contemporaneous with whenever the list is being compiled. One sees this tendency in any chosen media type and it is entirely understandable, if also endlessly frustrating. I should note here, of course, that I have never read a John Grisham novel and that whilst they may be marvellous things of estimable quality, that’s not really my point. Which is? Well, which is that on a blog called Unpopular one ought not to expect much energy being expended on those things that fall easily into what we might term The Mainstream. That one ought to expect, perhaps, a little light being shone under some of the smaller stones; a scratching about in the shadier, more cobwebbed corners of the bookshelves.

What did surprise me a little, however, looking at ‘122 Best Legal Thrillers’ was the complete lack of reference to Earl Stanley Gardner, whose Perry Mason novels were enormously popular in the 1940s and 50s. And whilst I like Perry Mason well enough, he is not a patch on the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam characters for whom Gardner (writing as A.A. Fair) wrote a lengthy series of magnificently trashy Noir Pulp novels in the same period. No space either on that Goodreads list for Cyril Hare, which perhaps is not surprising as the list appears to be heavily US-centric and Hare’s books from the 1940s and ‘50s featuring lawyer Francis Pettigrew are tastefully, parochially English. Whilst having been fairly regularly reprinted down the years they nevertheless seem to fly just below the radar, and I heartily recommend them all.

Missing from the list too are John Mortimer’s ‘Rumpole’ stories which I have never really got into but are most assuredly ‘good’, or Sarah Caudwell’s peerless Hilary Tamar novels which are not courtroom dramas but make tremendous use of characters from the legal profession and any excuse to remind ourselves of their brilliance ought to be grasped.

Also lacking in the Goodreads list are the novels of Sara Woods although this may not be so surprising since most of her 48 book run featuring serial lawyer/detective Anthony Maitland have been out of print since the latter half of the 1980s when just over a dozen were reissued by US publisher Avon. These editions, pushed out just after Woods’ death in 1986 and coinciding with the posthumous publication of the final few Maitland stories, have cover designs that could scarcely be more redolent of the 1980s, yet simultaneously also cleverly hark back to, when exactly? The 1930s? 1940s? The stylistic visual references are hard to pin down, and this is particularly apt because, at least in my reading of the first five Maitland novels (newly republished by the happily resurgent Dean Street Press imprint), this seductive slipperiness of period is largely inherent in Woods’ writing. For whilst ‘Bloody Instructions’, ‘Malice Domestic’, ‘Error of the Moon’, ‘The Third Encounter’ and ‘Trusted Like the Fox’ were all originally published in the early 1960s, for the most part they manage to come across as being infused marvellously with a spirit that feels older than one might expect.

The estimable Curtis Evans once more turns in tremendous introductions to these reissues and does a fine job of setting Sara Woods within the context of the times, literarily speaking. These notes necessarily reference Christie, Marsh and Sayers whilst also nodding to the more contemporaneous P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, with Evans making a sound case for rating Woods much more highly than the past forty years of invisibility might suggest she warrants. One reason for this slip into relative obscurity might be the fact that Woods, a Yorkshirewoman transplanted to Nova Scotia in 1958 at the age of 42 was ambivalent about self-promotion, allowing her books to speak for themselves rather than, in the parlance of the current age, expending most of her energies on Building The Brand. It is to the immense credit of Dean Street Press, therefore, that a resurrection of her work is underway, and on the evidence of these first five releases Woods and Maitland ought to find a welcoming new readership.

That said, I must say that the first instalment, 1961’s ‘Bloody instructions’, is for me by some distance the weakest of this selection. Perhaps inevitably the book reads as something of a fumbling in the dark, the necessary initial workings out of characters and approach. Being resolutely in the courtroom drama camp seems to fence everything in rather and I found if difficult to warm to any of the characters. In a contemporary review Francis Iles/Anthony Berkeley called it “a most accomplished piece of work“, and whilst this is true up to a point, it also feels that in hindsight the original publisher Collins might have been minded to hold this one back. Anyway, I’m not sure if Berkely-Iles’ recommendation coloured me against it from the off (I’m not for the most part a fan of Francis-Anthony), or if the theatrical angle allowing the (rolls eyes) Shakespeare quotations into the mix pushed my buttons in an irritating manner, but for me it never pulls itself out of the realms of the rather sedate and ordinary.

Better by significantly more than half is 1962’s ‘Malice Domestic’ in which the recurring characters of Anthony Maitland and his famous uncle Sir Nicholas Harding start to become more fleshed out and appealing. Again, there is an odd uncertainty about time period sitting over everything like a fine mist and if one wonders what the audiences of the early 1960s might have made of this, it is perhaps inevitable that our 21st Century reflections are themselves coloured wildly by the intervening 60 odd years of cherry-picked Pop Cultural references. So there’s not much Adam Faith or Billy Fury here, but perhaps there is a hint of Johnny Keating’s ‘Theme from Z-Cars’… In truth though Woods’ novel feels like it reaches back into a pre-war era, with its central trope of ‘inherited madness’ and the classic(al) themes of generational conflict/wilful misunderstandings, jealousy and financial gain all neatly threaded together in a pleasingly coherent manner.

Things continue to develop in the next couple of books in the series, with both ‘Error Of The Moon’ and ‘The Third Encounter’ (originally published in January and June of 1963 respectively) doing a fine job of drawing more detail into Anthony Maitland’s backstory as a WW2 secret service agent. ‘Error Of The Moon’ sketches the first lines of this in the form of a novel that more obviously roots itself in the early 1960s. A narrative around the development of anti-missile systems on the desolate Yorkshire moors allows Woods to use her memories of the dozen years spent farming the landscape to conjure a sense of place with aplomb, whilst also turning a hand to something that has the air of espionage thrillers being popularised at the time by John Le Carré and Eric Ambler. It may be tempting to wrinkle one’s nose at this and suggest Woods might be Jumping On The Bandwagon somewhat, but it is worth pointing out that she in fact wrote all four of these early Maitland books in the period of 1958-61, thus putting her firmly in the context of a Le Carré contemporary. As an espionage thriller ‘Error of The Moon’ may not scale the same heights as ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ but then what does? And anyway, Woods’ novel is much more rooted in the murder mystery tradition than Le Carré’s work, although having said that I would suggest that it compares favourably to ‘Call For The Dead’ in which Le Carré introduces George Smiley in a work that, like ‘Error of The Moon’ also owes as much to classic detective fiction as to thrillers.

If ‘Error of the Moon’ sketches the first lines of Anthony Maitland’s backstory then ‘The Third Encounter’ adds colour and form. A shade of confusion may exist in the book being called ‘The Third Encounter’ whilst being the fourth instalment of the series, but this does perhaps also carries its own mystery. Having written all four books prior to approaching a publisher, might Woods herself have felt opener ‘Bloody Instructions’ in danger of being rejected in favour of ‘Malice Domestic’ as the debut? Might she originally have thought ‘The Third Encounter’ would be published before ‘Error of the Moon’, thereby allowing a more linear unfolding of Maitland’s history? Did Woods, indeed, pen them in that order? Or is the title simply a reference to the narrative of the story, in which the denouement does indeed (spoiler alert? Probably not really….) feature the third encounter between Maitland and his wartime nemesis, with the discord of the ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ inferences being a particularly humorous/cruel dig at the orderly infatuations beloved of so many devotees of the genre? Who knows (and who really cares, yes?), for what really matters is that ‘The Third Encounter’ is a thoroughly entertaining read and that its oscillations in time between the early 1940s and the early 1960s are elegantly carried off. Well executed too are explorations of the themes of identity, loyalty, love and betrayal, making it perhaps my favourite of these early Maitland stories.

Now quite why this batch of Dean Street Press reissues leaps over the fifth book in the series (January 1964’s ‘This Little Measure’) to arrive at ‘Trusted Like The Fox’ (also originally published in January 1964, according to Goodreads) I am not sure. Perhaps there is some disagreement/confusion about publication order (guaranteed to frustrate those aforementioned obsessions with order amongst many of the prospective readers) but regardless, ‘Trusted Like The Fox’ initially feels like it is taking rather a backwards step in being, like ‘Bloody Instructions’ much more firmly positioned within the courtroom drama context. If that might initially feel like a disappointment (and I must say that it was so for me) this is quickly dispelled by the realisation that Woods has apparently already mastered the balance so that the book develops and unfolds in a much more satisfying manner. Here Woods again plays on the theme of identity whilst also once again massaging a narrative that slips between the ‘present’ of the early 1960s and the ‘past’ of the early 1940s, pointing out as it does the threads of connectivity and the manipulation/obfuscation of facts in order to tell preferred stories according to individuals’ needs and desires. As with ‘The Third Encounter’ there are also references to questions of righteousness, loyalty, betrayal, love and self-preservation/narcissism which feel oddly prescient/relevant in 2024, although it is also arguable that those are timeless themes of relevance at any given point in history.

These five books then are (‘Bloody Instructions’ arguably aside) enormously welcome additions to the reissue market and allow the name of Sara Woods to be recognised by fans of detective fiction who might otherwise have been denied the pleasure. I look forward to the next batch with eager anticipation.

‘Bloody Instructions’, ‘Malice Domestic’, ‘Error of the Moon’, ‘The Third Encounter’ and ‘Trusted Like the Fox’ are set to be published on 2nd December 2024 by Dean Street Press.

More Moray

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The tragic death of publisher Rupert Heath at the start of this year was hard to take on a personal level, for whilst we had only fairly recently begun to exchange emails and messages he already felt like someone I might have known for most of my life. From an objective perspective too his death has been an immense loss, for his Dean Street Press imprint was such a steadfastly reliable source of great books by often un-heralded and ‘lost’ writers of the Golden Age and beyond. There may have been some I warmed to more than others, but that is to be expected when considering such great ‘labels’. I mean, show me the person who loves every band who released a record on Factory and I’ll show you someone who may be bending the truth somewhat.

I’m happy, however, that the five Moray Dalton reissues planned before Rupert’s passing have seen the light of day, for they are terrific books and firmly in the spirit of what Dean Street Press was all about. Whilst the British Library Classic Crime series may focus on one or two titles by an author being squeezed out at a rate of one per month, DSP’s strength was always in striving to make available a body of work by any given author in a batch decent enough to get one’s teeth into. There are few things in life more rewarding than stumbling on a series of books, after all, and I will be forever grateful to Rupert Heath for giving me plenty of opportunities to indulge that pleasure. Ianthe Jerrold, Robin Forsyth, E.R. Punshon, Molly Thynne, Christopher Bush, Basil Thomson, Elizabeth Gill, the Radfords and the brilliant Francis Vivian. Even Brian Flynn, if you must. Plus, of course, Moray Dalton.

I wrote about the first batch of Dalton books released by DSP back in 2020, when they provided excellent entertainment in the early months of The Virus. I wrote at the time that her serial detective Hugh Collier was something of a wraith in the books and that whilst there seemed to be little character development this was not necessarily a bad thing. Whilst this is still true in most of the Collier series books I’ve read, in ‘The Mystery Of The Kneeling Woman’ there is a degree more colour added to the background of the Scotland Yard detective as he attempts to disentangle a mystery involving the death of a village recluse, poisoned chocolates, church brasses, bitter reflections on The Great War, obsessive revenge fantasies, small children, ‘memory loss’ and characters determinedly Taking The Blame. It’s hardly a spoiler to say that this is the book in which Collier’s love life is laid out for us and his future state of marriage explained, and Dalton confidently paints Collier as a Thoroughly Decent Chap. Perhaps one of the reasons I warm to Collier is that, besides being a fellow Scot, he reminds me of Francis Vivian’s tremendous Inspector Knollis in that he eschews all the fluff and flummery of the amateur sleuth and replaces it with quiet hard graft. Knollis famously disregards notions of coincidence and Collier is certainly hewn from the same stone, pointing out that “What some people call the science of detection is simply the accumulation of apparently irrelevant and unimportant facts.” One can imagine Knollis nodding sagely in agreement.

There is much, then, in ‘The Mystery of The Kneeling Woman’ that appeals, and there are some tremendous little digs thrown into the mix by Dalton through her various characters. The City versus Country trope is well served by the Yard detective sergeant Duffield who, amongst other things, betrays “some ignorance of life in the country” by suggesting that “one day must be very like another in these villages”. Elsewhere he suggests that the furnishings of a Country House now owned by a business magnate “smells of the Tottenham Court Road”, a line which I admit made me snort into my sherry. Indeed, Dalton enjoys playing on the trope of New Money playing at being Gentry, having one of her village characters sniffly say about the aforementioned business magnate that “he’s not one of the old landed gentry” but rather “a retired manufacturer [who] made his pile during the War.” As the book progresses there is certainly a sense that Money might be able to buy one property and titles, but it does not, as Collier later wryly observes “bring happiness.” He does, naturally, unravel all the bizarrely entwined threads of the case and gives us all a satisfyingly brief explanation at the book’s conclusion. None of your tedious extended expostulations of clever deductions for Dalton, thank goodness.

In many ways ‘The Mystery of The Kneeling Woman’ then is a romantic tragedy masquerading as a detective story (or vice versa) and is none the worse for that. The following year’s ‘Death In The Dark’ is every bit as fine and every bit as deliciously bonkers as Dalton gleefully throws circus performers, drugs, disreputable doctors and a private zoo into the mix. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!… There is a nice thread of continuity between ‘Kneeling Woman’ and this one in that it is the same small child from the previous book who pulls Collier into the mystery of this one. The major protagonist, however, is the sister (Judy) of a circus acrobat deviously framed for murder. She inveigles her way into the lion’s den (almost literally – the Big Cat in question is actually a Tiger) in a bid to Learn The Awful Truth, uncover the devilish plot and save her brother from the hangman’s noose. As you can probably tell, it’s a marvellous thriller of a novel as Collier and Judy race to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice. Bonus points for the South West of England setting, with Seaton and Sidmouth both getting a name check.

The third and last of the Inspector Collier books to be republished by DSP is 1939’s fantastic ‘Death In The Forest’. I say fantastic because it really is fantastical with a central trope of lycanthropy and a rather marvellous section that takes place during a revolution in the fictional South American country of San Rinaldo. Indeed, this part of the book reminds me of ‘Tintin and The Picaros’ with General Alcazar leading his revolution in San Theodoros. These days one could most likely not get away with such a cartoonish portrayal of what used be called ’Banana Republics’ and in some respects it is perhaps surprising that Herge did so in 1974. In 1939 however there were certainly no qualms about portraying these South American countries as a ‘backward’ realm where superstition was ancient and deeply rooted whilst notions of government merely fleeting and transitory and dependent on who had most money/power at any given moment. Which rather sounds like a description of contemporary global politics, but there we are…

‘Death In The Forest’ then continues Dalton’s preference for throwing multiple ingredients into the mix and blending them into a peculiarly delicious concoction. So as well as the suggestions of werewolves we have more poisonings, star-crossed lovers, family betrayals, domineering mothers and self-obsessed sons hellbent on a life of frippery and foppery, plus the kitchen sink besides. There is an also a delightful piece of self-reference when Collier is confronted by the notion of lycanthropy. “I’ve come across some strange things myself” Collier points out. “I was in charge of the Belgrave Manor case, you know. You mayn’t have heard of that. A witch’s coven on the Sussex Downs.” Indeed, as in that ‘Belgrave Manor Crime’, Dalton seems to take enormous pleasure in writing a marvellously entertaining piece of fantasy fiction where the basic form of the detective novel serves merely as a foundation for her active (over)imagination. I suspect that such wild flights of fancy might put off fans of the more, ah, ‘considered’ practitioners of detective fiction, but even they must surely appreciate the genius of Dalton’s deployment of the grounded and reliable Collier as foil to the fantastical. Indeed, it’s this marvellous drama of contrasts that make Moray Dalton and Inspector Collier amongst my favourite combinations.

I admit then that the lack of Inspector Collier in the final two Dalton novels to be published by DSP filled me with a little apprehension, as did the shifting of setting from the familiar South of England to Italy. I need not have worried though, for Dalton’s sense of place is, if anything, even more at play in her 1945 novel ‘The Death of Eve’ and the following year’s ‘Death At The Villa’. In contrast to her tremendously fantastical mysteries of the interwar years, these two stand-alone yet connected novels are altogether more serious and sombre affairs and admirably display the fact that Dalton is, for all the wild and unbelievable excitement of her earlier books, quite simply a Good Writer.

The two books may be standalone novels set some forty or more years apart, yet they are certainly connected by the notion that history is a thread where events pulse through eras and inform the future. ‘The Murder of Eve’ and ‘Death at the Villa’ may be set in two different Italy’s, but it is clear that Dolton is saying something about how Money and Power corrupt absolutely and that whilst Political Ideology may be used as a cloak, it is essentially the same patriarchal power structure that prevails and that it is women who pay the greatest price. Indeed, the title of ‘The Murder of Eve’ kind of flags this up from the start, just in case you miss the point being made…

Both of these novels, then, feel much more Modern than any of the Inspector Collier books, and whilst Dalton still effortlessly employs her skills to provide well-paced narratives, there is little that is light about these books other than the writer’s deftness of touch. One of these light touches is another of those lovely self-referential comments, where amateur sleuth Roger Fordyce admits that “It was comparatively easy for the detective heroes of the thrillers he most enjoyed. They usually had the resources of New Scotland Yard at their disposal, or, if they happened to be amateurs, they had a faithful, though thick-headed, friend in attendance, or a valet who was also a boxing champion and an expert photographer.” Fordyce does eventually employ the assistance of a friend in the form of disgraced piano teacher Lily who, it must be added, is far from thick-headed. From this point however Dalton rather subverts the usual form for amateur sleuthing, and this is another sign perhaps of a bleaker darkness at work. Meanwhile, for fans of Postcard Records there is a mention of Louis Wain’s cats… The book is fired through with this kind of turn of the (19th to 20th) Century detail and if its central obsession with the idea of so-called White Slavery seems quaint, then re-phrasing it as sex trafficking perhaps makes it feel more, depressingly, relevant and up to date.

‘Death At The Villa’ meanwhile portrays a much more contemporaneous Italy as Dalton sets the story in the midst of WW2. In this Italy the crumbling aristocracy struggles to survive alongside the peasantry, neither being particularly safe against the pervasive evil of fascism. That being said, it is of course the exploited peasantry who suffer most and Dalton isn’t shy about making this observation. Her main protagonists though are Richard Drew – a Thoroughly Decent Englishman (of course) – and Alda, an Italian woman whose status straddles the vanishing world of aristocracy (to which she belongs through blood, if not position) and the harsh realities of living in a fascist state. The English RAF flyer Richard naturally plays the part of the plucky fighter and is straight out of a Richard Hannay novel, which makes me wonder if the character’s name is indeed a cheeky nod to Hannay. You may not be altogether surprised to learn that the book is in part a romantic thriller that builds around the relationship between him and Alda, and in this it works admirably. Yet it is also a bleaker treatise on the savagery endlessly perpetrated by the patriarchy and alongside ‘The Murder of Eve’ it stands as a highly entertaining but essentially sober piece of fiction.

Again, bonus points too for the mention of the South West of England in ’Death at the Villa’, this time the little Devon coastal town (then village, I suppose) of Beer, where Richard Drew recalls a holiday “when he was about eight years old, a holiday when the sun always shone and there were shrimps for tea, and the object of his hero worship, a good-natured fisherman, allowed him to sit by him on the beach and help to mend nets that smelt deliciously of tar.”

It is of course a source of profound sorrow that these Moray Dalton books may be the final bow from Dean Street Press. They are, however, a mighty fine high on which to lower the curtain.