The Lake District Murder by John Bude

The Lake District Murder

Review of the novel The Lake District Murder by John Bude.

Published by The British Library in 2014.

Cost: £8.99

ISBN 978-0-7123-5716-6 (Paperback Edition - 286 pages)

This is a reprint of the novel originally published in 1935 by Skeffington & Son. It has an introduction by Martin Edwards, author and member of the Crime Writers Association. Edwards explains that John Bude is the pseudonym for Ernest Elmore (1901-1957), who wrote 30 crime novels and was the co-founder of the Crime Writer’s Association and worked in the theatre as a producer and director. The Lake District Murder was the follow-up to his debut novel The Cornish Coast Murder.

On the very first page of the book, there is a map of the area around Keswick in the Lake District, where the murder takes place.

“The story opens one March evening with a farmer finding a man’s body in a car outside the Derwent garage on an isolated road in the Northern Lakes. The macabre discovery is reported to Inspector Meredith, and at first glance, the evidence at the crime scene suggests that Jack Clayton has committed suicide.” (From the introduction by Martin Edwards)

Following the introduction by Martin Edwards, the story starts on page 11 with the body found on page 13; perhaps we might expect this given the chapter title of ‘The Body in the Car’. A local farmer finds the body in a garage where there is a car engine running, he removes a hooded oil-grimed mackintosh to from the body to uncover the face of Clayton and decides he ought to inform the local police, leaving the car’s engine running. It is only when the police arrive does anyone decide to turn the engine off. We discover that the engine may have been running for over two hours.

The detective Inspector Meredith, appears to find the death of Clayton too difficult to solve, but is certain that it is not a suicide he is investigating. His superior, the local Chief Constable, decides that as there is little to conclude from the investigation, so Meredith can pursue his enquiry, rather than call in a CID team from Scotland Yard.

We learn about little about the description of Meredith as the story progresses, even at the initial introduction in the story. It is Martin Edwards who gives us an insight to Meredith: “He is a tactful and a team player, an ordinary hard-working professional, with a long-suffering wife and an eager teenage son”. We soon find out that his mode of transport is a motorbike, sometimes referred to as a ‘motorcycle combination’, a ‘motorbike and sidecar’ and a ‘bike’. Not the sort of transport one might expect for an Inspector in the police force – at no time does he drive a car.

As it progresses, the tale is broken down into three distinct parts:

1. An investigation into the death of Clayton

2. An investigation into an illicit petrol delivery organisation

3. An investigation into an illegal whisky distillation set-up.

There are some strange aspects to the investigation, and it’s not clear if these reveal more about Inspector Meredith or the writing style of Bude. Meredith visits one of the local garages selling petrol and asks for ‘a gallon to be put in the tank. I hear it’s a good brand … I’ve never used it before’. The Nonock petrol brand plays a major part in the mystery aspects of the story, and the reader is given the impression that it is delivered widely in the surrounding area, but Meredith does not seem to have heard of the brand.

There are instances in the story that do not seem credible and lead the reader to question why Bude has introduced them. One example is when he asks his teenage son to stake out the local petrol distribution centre and take photographs of various employees from behind a convenient bush, as they move in and out of the premises. His son works at the local photographic shop and is keen to do a little job for his father, hoping it will get him a new cycle.

As the investigation progresses, Meredith visits a number of garages, and it seems quite common for staff to be smoking near the petrol pumps with no concern for safety. Health and safety may be a modern aspect, but I’m sure there would have been concerns in 2014.

I was left reflecting on one series of facts that did not fit together and returned to re-read the lines just in case I had misunderstood them. The story starts with Clayton being killed on the 24^th March and we soon find out that he is engaged to Lily Reade, and at her interview she states:

“It was all fixed up. Jack was over only last Wednesday to see mother about the wedding. We were going to get married in early April. Then after our honeymoon we were going to stay here for a week before going to Canada. Clayton was going to wait until six weeks before our wedding before telling his partner”.

Lily does not give us the date of the intended wedding, but on searching Clayton’s belongings, Meredith discovers two tickets for a boat sailing to Canada were purchased on the 20^th March for a sailing on the 7^th April, a matter of 18 days later.

When interviewed on the 25^th March, Higgins, Clayton’s partner states that he had not heard of the intended trip to Canada. However, Higgins had an argument with Clayton on the 20^th March, perhaps after Clayton bought the tickets for Canada, which seems to trigger the murder.

So it is evident from these few lines that the date of the wedding, the trip to Canada and the purchase of the tickets do not fit together. A tragic mistake in the story.

As a story, it’s pleasant to read, but I had to overcome the desire to put the book down as it drifted away from the murder between pages 84 and 246. Bude states that the investigation continues over a month and it is the lack of an investigation into the murder where the story suffers. The other two investigations are not captivating as far as a murder mystery goes and do little to enhance Bude’s skill as a murder mystery writer.

Bude does not treat the story as a Travelogue, preferring to describe just the relevant area covered by the story. He captures the atmosphere well, and it took me back to holidays I had enjoyed in the lake district in my late teens; winding roads, hills and dales, remote villages, but there is too much conversation, as at 6.30 each evening Meredith has an update meeting with the Chief Constable and they discuss next steps for the progress of the investigations.

Does the book enhance the period defines as the Golden Age of Crime, I’m not sure it does, although it’s difficult to understand what the crime stories of the period did for the reader in the 1920s.

I enjoyed the story and would recommend it to others. Rating: 4 stars

Dr James Sheppard

26 January 2015

Spiders Web by Agatha Christie

Spider’s Web

Review of the novel Spider’s Web by Charles Osborne.

Published by Harper Collins in 2001.

Cost: £7.99

ISBN 978-0-00-651493-0 (Paperback Edition - 229 pages)

This novel is an adaptation of the play Spider’s Web written by Agatha Christie. The play had its premiere on 4th December 1954 at the Savoy Theatre in London and was one of three plays by Agatha Christie being performed in London at that time.

The character of Clarissa in the play Spider’s Web was tailor-made by Agatha Christie for Margaret Lockwood who wanted to exploit her talent for comedy and it marked the first stage performance of an original Christie theatre script.

This is the third play by Agatha Christie adapted into a novel by Charles Osborne; the other two are The Unexpected Guest and Black Coffee.

Like those two books, the novelization of Spider’s Web is a straightforward transfer of the stage lines and directions of Christie's script into a written narrative. Osborne chose not to add characters, lines or scenes which would alter in any substantial way what had been presented on the stage, although minor amendments were made to produce suitable chapter endings.

The story is set in Copplestone Court, an elegant, eighteenth-century country home of Henry and Clarissa Hailsham-Brown. The text flows smoothly and fluently as the characters interact, with appropriate twists and turns making it an engaging story as the reader discovers what part they play in this comedy thriller.

Although the play premiered in late 1954, it could be set in any period and for me has a sense of the 1930s and the Golden Age of Crime. The personality of the lead character Clarissa, described as a beautiful dark-haired woman in her late twenties, is developed as her humorous side is discussed by her guests and revealed as she interacts with the other characters. She loves telling stories and ‘just supposing’ what could happen if things were different, and it is this aspect of her nature that the story revolves around and develops into what might be called a ‘Spider’s web’.

The main characters are introduced in chapter 1 and the plot is well developed with the scene set for the murder in Chapter 7. As we might expect, a number of possible individuals are put forward as potential murderers, but it is only at the end of chapter 21 that the real murderer is revealed. Following this, all the loose ends are tidied up to ensure that the heroine is cleared of murder.

It is an enjoyable read of 229 pages and at times the reader is drawn into the story, so much so that the novel is difficult to put down. But what makes it such a good novel is the writing style of Agatha Christie, she sticks to the rules of the Detective club, of which she was a member and president:

Rule 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.

Rule 3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

Rule 7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

Rule 8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

Whenever I read the Christie adaptations by Charles Osborne, I find myself disappointed by the failure to describe the scene where the action takes place. In this story, the action is played out in the tastefully furnished ground-floor drawing-room of the house, although there is a mention of walking to the garden gate that leads to the local golf course, and a page which describes the conversation between the three house guests at the golf club, we learn nothing about them.

In the case of the stage play, the audience can visually take in the location as presented by the director; room, furniture, decoration, doors and items within the room. But this is missing from the novel, Osborne has failed to provide the reader with the necessary picture. He has given the reader only a brief insight, and as the story develops the characters enter the room from the French windows, exit through a door into the hall and use a secret passage to the library. He also fails to cultivate the attention of the reader, by bringing out any of the senses that we all rely on to help us understand the world around us. It could easily have been possible to bring to the reader’s attention the smell of the evening garden, - it was damp from the afternoon rain; the smells one might expect in the golf clubhouse; or more importantly the senses that the novel’s characters would have experienced by their interaction; the look of the bun that Pippa is attempting to eat, the colour of the deck of cards used by the characters. There is a missed opportunity to bring the reader into the story.

When the police arrive to investigate what they believe is a murder, they are not convincing, but it’s partly because there is no apparent crime or body for them to investigate. They are not the lead characters and therefore must take a backseat to the main characters. The description of the two policemen is lacking: The Inspector - ‘The older of the two police officers, a stocky, grey-haired man’, the constable – ‘the younger officer, a dark-haired man in his twenties with the build of a footballer’. Apart from this description, we learn nothing more visual about them. They seem incompetent and try as they might, they find it difficult to unravel the crime, but they insist on staying and try to solve the murder. However, when the reader believes they have left the scene, we are relieved to find that they have been listening to the murderer’s conversation with Clarissa, while in the drawing-room, and capture them in action before they commit another murder.

Instead of giving us a picture of the drawing-room, Osborne (or is it Christie) develops each of the individual characters to give us an understanding of them that we can use to assist us with making a decision as to whether, we, the reader, believe them to be the possible murderer. On page 15, Jeremy asks Clarissa: “…do you ever speak the truth?” She replies: “Of course I do – sometimes,”. This is quickly followed up on page 17 when in response to a question from Jeremy, Clarissa replies; “Serious? What’s so good about “serious”?” How is the reader meant to use this insight into Clarissa when it comes to understanding her character? We find out that she is very protective of Pippa, her stepdaughter, and is prepared to do anything to keep her by her side. Although we do not always see a visual portrayal of Clarissa, the novel clearly gives the reader a character that we can emphasise with and understand.

It is an excellent novel, and I have enjoyed reading again. It’s a true Agatha Christie 'whodunit'. Rating: 5 stars

Dr James Sheppard

8th January 2015