Con men and Karma.

A long time ago, when the Woolworth's store was an important part of every high street, I used to let my mates down by not shoplifting.

We often went through by train from Easterhouse to the cinema or swimming pool in Airdrie, Coatbridge or Shettleston. After a swim or a film we would descend on the local Woolworth's with whatever money we had left. A lot of the guys I used to pal around with would habitually go for a "five finger discount" and emerge with pockets crammed with marbles, toy soldiers or sweets filched from the pick 'n' mix. I had to live with the fact that I believed there was no point in stealing. The Catholic Church insists that, if you ever want to have the sin forgiven, you have to give back any ill-gotten gains. I used to take a lot of ribbing on the train home to Easterhouse station. I used to compound this by actually paying for a ticket. This conscientiousness pretty much continues to the present day.

(I remember Anne getting more than a little annoyed when we were trying to sell our first flat so that we could move to a "proper" house since Claire was on the way. I insisted on telling potential buyers about faults that might have been missed by their surveyor. )

Despite this hardwired scrupulosity, or because of it, I love films / books about heists and con men.

Thieves can be entertaining in fiction. Donald Westlake's Parker novels are superb and portray the criminal as a professional who sees robbery as a job. The same author's Dortmunder novels take a lighter approach but are equally entertaining. Of late I've also found myself following the misadventures of Chris Ewan's good thief Charlie Howard with quite a bit of enthusiasm.

I've already mentioned the NBC mystery movie series "McCoy" in which Tony Curtis played a con artist but in the present day I have a great fondness for "Hustle" (just started a new series on BBC!) and "Leverage". I've also tried to get Claire, my daughter, to watch "The Sting" which always remains in my top 10 films of the '70s- and that's a decade which contained a lot of tough competition. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't like this film. Let's face it. Fictional con men are a class apart from the average thief. The clue is in the designation; con ARTIST.

Sadly, real-life conmen are, for the most part, evil, cynical bastards. Fictional, "Robin Hood-ish" scam artists often quote an aphorism that goes along the lines of "You can't con an honest man". In the real world you can cheat the poor and the desperate who are the victims of most scams. In my job as a cancer information nurse I come across the damage caused by reptiles selling bogus cancer cures several times a week, every single week in life. There are hundreds of web sites making false claims about quick and easy cancer cures. One of the biggest stresses in my work is trying to pick up the pieces after explaining to someone the reason why the very expensive "medicine" they've bought for a loved one has no scientific validity and no proven success in actuality.

I often dream about being able to turn the tables on con men in real life. Victoria Coren, the journalist and broadcaster, has delighted me no end by making things uncomfortable for a bunch of leeches known as "the Jolley Gang". Led by an ex-magistrate called Richard Jolley this mob turned up at a memorial service held in honour of the great Alan Coren, Victoria's father. In her original article about the gang she revealed that she planned to embarrass its members most publicly by setting up a fake funeral service for a fictional celebrity ("Sir William Ormerod"). The only problem with her plan was that, after setting up a fake website in tribute to Sir William and ensuring his death was announced in the broadsheets, she didn't have the heart to carry out an actual public humiliation. This despite the fact that several of the vermin had written to her, in her guise as the late Ormerod's boyfriend, proclaiming their admiration for the late philanthropist and asking for tickets to the memorial service.

In a bizarre sequel to this abandoned revenge Fate stepped in and dealt a fatal blow to one of the gang. As detailed in a further article this could be evidence for the Buddhist belief in Karma......

Rivals of Columbo and Sherlock Holmes.....

Sometime in the late '60s /early '70s there was a seismic shift in American television series. Westerns were "out" and detectives were "in". There may have been an input from the cinema where Clint Eastwood had made the transition from gunfighter to cop with the Dirty Harry films. Even John Wayne tried to change genres, if not persona, in "McQ" and "Brannigan".

In the early days of American comic books there was an avalanche of brightly coloured superheroes onto the newsstands. According to Jim Steranko's "History of Comics" many of the young artists working in what amounted to studio sweatshops tried desperately to come up with unique looks and costumes to give the characters they created some staying power. Said costumes were often referred to as "funny hats" by their disdainful creators. I would imagine that much the same principle applied to the production companies churning out detective series. Each one had to have its own, particular selling point.

"Cannon"(portly, middle-aged detective), "Kojak"(bald detective), "Matt Houston" (redneck detective), "The Rockford Files" (ex-con), "Harry O" (ex-cop), "Baretta"(streetwise detective), "Police Woman" (female detective), "Cagney & Lacey"( 2 x female 'tecs), "Ironside" (disabled detective), "Charlie's Angels"(3x female 'tecs), "Longstreet" (blind detective) and "Barnaby Jones"(senior citizen detective) : these are only the first that come to mind without resort to references. Overshadowing them all was the plethora of shows which appeared under the banner "NBC Mystery Movie".

"Columbo" was clearly the king of this royal family of detective shows but I loved two of the less well-remembered scions.

"'Hec' Ramsey" combined the Western and detective genres and had a great star in Richard Boone, who had earlier starred as Paladin in "Have Gun Will Travel". There are several hints in the show that Ramsey, a man trying to introduce forensic science to the Wild West, and Paladin are actually the same character in different stages of his life.

"McCoy" starred Tony Curtis and utilised his knack for comedy in playing a reformed con artist who was someting of a Robin Hood. I always felt that it cashed in on Curtis' earlier film "The Great Impostor" which rarely shows up on TV schedules nowadays. I'd love to get a chance to compare it with the far more recent (and very good) "Catch Me if You Can".

What got me started blogging about TV 'tecs though was a British series made in the early '70s: "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes". (It was based on the anthologies of the same name edited by Sir Hugh Greene). I now have DVD sets of both "seasons" of the series and enjoy savouring each episode. It's interesting to think that the aforementioned deluge of detective was mirrored nearly 100 years before in the wake of the success of Conan Doyle's stories in the Strand magazine.

The particular episode which I watched the other evening featured the wonderful, English character actor Charles Gray who was habitually cast as a cad or bounder. So good (or bad ?) was he in those roles that I grew up thinking that if you were to look up the word "louche"(: "Disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way") in a dictionary then the entry should feature a picture of Gray in character.

He was an actor with a distinctive voice and accent. When the great Jack Hawkins had to undergo a laryngectomy as part of his treatment for throat cancer Gray stepped in to provide convincing "voice-overs" for his last few film appearances. Strangely, in the TV episode I watched Gray was playing the French detective Eugene Valmont which meant that much of his vocal distinctiveness was lost. There was also a fascinating scattering of other character actors throughout the production; many familiar faces, but the names were elusive and sent me to the IMDB database to do some detective work of my own. I fully intend to follow up on this as I watch further episodes over the Christmas break.

Magic and Crime.

I always take a book with me for the daily commute between home and work. My current choice is "The Bullet Trick" by Louise Welsh and I'm absolutely enthralled by it. Not only is it extremely well written but it features 3 of my favourite cities (Glasgow, London and Berlin). The central character and narrator is a stage magician who gets caught up in crime while plying his trade in seedy nightclubs.

Conjurors have always been a reliable staple in detective fiction. Two favourites from TV are the current "Jonathan Creek" and, from America, "Blacke's Magic". The latter reminds me of the days when my son Paul was a toddler. STV had bought a batch of American detective series including "Riptide", "Tucker's Witch" and "Partners in Crime" (with Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter) and would show them in the middle of the afternoon. "Blacke's Magic" was pretty much a precursor of Jonathan Creek and often featured "impossible" crimes such as locked room mysteries. I would have thought that, with established stars like Hal Linden and Harry Morgan who had proved their comedic talents in "Barney Miller" ( a police procedural sit-com ?) and "M.A.S.H." respectively, that this would have been a banker for TV gold. Sadly, it only ran for 12 episodes but I have fond memories of the show that coincide with changing nappies and preparing suitably mushy food.

Around the same time I discovered the delights of Clayton Rawson and his illusionist detective "The Great Merlini" through occasional short stories in old editions of "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". Naturally, I was delighted when an American publisher reprinted the 4 Merlini novels. A working stage magician as well as a crime writer Rawson is often credited with coining the phrase : "Crime doesn't pay. . .. enough."

They say that stage magic is overdue for a resurgence. The in-your-face rudeness of David Blaine and the party spoiling tactics of the "Masked Magician" in the TV specials revealing magic's greatest secrets may put that on hold for quite some time. I still hope that there will always be a place for the conjuror in the detective story.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Jolly BMJ

We Scots tend to be a bit gloomy in our outlook. This is particularly true at this time of year when the Winter equinox is fast approaching. The bad weather has been a great stimulus for starting conversations and Anne commented last week that it's definitely had the effect of binding people together in adversity. Neighbours have been really good and seem to be looking out for one another.



We seem to have taken the utter failure of our transport system in our stride. Bread, milk and petrol shortages barely meritted a mention. The single topic of conversation in which I've detected an undertone of slight panic is that some branches of Greggs the Bakers have been unable to open because of staff being unable to get to work. Three separate, otherwise rational human beings have told me that they're convinced that this is one of the signs that the Apocalypse is imminent.



Seeing as this is meant to be a crime fiction related blog I thought I'd share another sign of the times. Every year around the festivive season one of the straitlaced medical journals I have to browse in the course of my work comes up with a bit of Christmas light-heartedness. For the first time ever the BMJ has contributed not only to Medical Knowledge but also the world of Sherlockiana.

The Slow Thaw

Just back home after walking Bobo up to the park in Easterhouse. He must have had a bit of cabin fever because he was one happy dog to be given the chance to chase sticks and leap into semi-frozen puddles.

The snow and ice have been a real nuisance but the thaw can be worse as the Christmas card scenery begins to melt away revealing dark, bare trees and the snow transforms into a mush of gray and black, especially up near the main road as it bridges the motorway. The icicles are dripping away into nothingness and the TV crew filming the chaos for the BBC has long since gone. (Bobo & I may be on a segment of library footage somewhere: captured, frozen in time as well as fact, as we trudged home in the middle of a blizzard). Looking out of the front window the whole scene reminds me of the backdrop of that wonderful crime movie from 2002; "Road to Perdition".

Somehow I managed to miss it in cinemas during its summer release but managed to catch it in February 2003 when the "Glasgow Film Theatre" re-ran it before the Oscar season. (It won the award for best cinematography and was nominated for 5 others). As it turned out my timing was perfect.

Can you remember visits to the cinema as a child when you came out blinking into the daylight after being lost in a different world for a few hours ? I have fond memories of moments of readjustment to the real world after being caught up in a magical film. Sadly, with age and experience these moments have become few and far between. I still savour those rare, bittersweet moments when movie magic gradually fades as the cinematic scenery ( whether the deserts of the Wild West or the twin moons of Mars) morphs into a Glaswegian street scene. Usually there's a feeling of dissonance as fantasy is replaced by reality. In the case of "Road to Perdition" the illusion of being still caught up in the big screen action continued as I stepped into Rose Street and headed for the station. Icy puddles and driving sleet seamlessly reflected the scenery of an icy Illinois on the cusp between Winter and Spring. ( Little wonder that the cinematography of Samuel L Hall won him an Oscar).

Critics generally loved the film, especially in the UK. Sam Mendes, coming as he does from a theatrical background, tends to be a favourite of the broadsheet set. When any reference was made to the source material, Max Allan Collins' original graphic novel, the same critics tended to write it off as if Mendes had worked a Pygmalionesque trick of turning base materials into Art.

Collins is one of my favourite crime writers, and certainly one of the most dedicated. Everything I've ever read by or about him confirms that he has always wanted to be a crime writer. He's also turned his hand to Rock Music and film direction. His work is never "Arty" but it's always entertaining and he never puts on any airs or graces. I've never fully understood his undying admiration for the work of Mickey Spillane but his passionate defence of it made me reconsider an author whom I'd previously written off as a hack.

It'ss difficult for me to pick a favourite among his novels but I have a fondness for the "Nate Heller" series. "Majic Man" in particular is not only an excellent, if unconventional, historical novel it also gives a plausible, down-to-Earth solution for the real-life Roswell mystery.

Even when writing movie or TV "tie-in" novels ("CSI" , "Bones" and "Criminal Minds") a task which other writers treat as somewhat infra dig Collins always maintains his own high standards. If anything his novels read like big screen versions of the TV series they're based on.

I'm glad to say that the productive Mr Collins shows no sign of slowing down. He's even taken on the formidable task of continuing Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books. As I've hinted I'm not the world's biggest Hammer fan but I look forward to reading the Collins version.

The Big Freeze

You would think that freezing weather, snowdrifts and almost impassable roads would be a good incentive to get on with some blogging. Sadly, all I've wanted to do is hibernate. Anne and I did make a foray out to the SECC to see Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds". This musical offering resurrects Richard Burton as a hologram to narrate the story which, indirectly, led me to thinking about the novels of Alistair MacLean.

The logic may be circuitous but it is there. Burton's voice combined with the mounds of snow raised memories of the film "Where Eagles Dare". Legend has it that MacLean wrote the story to tie together elements requested by the producers (snow, a Bavarian castle, an experimental gyrocopter, a fight on a cable car). This led me to consider the large proportion of MacLean's book which feature extreme cold weather. Apart from the dramatic backdrop provided by snow and ice I'm sure that the author's personal experiences played a part in his choice of locations. "H.M.S. Ulysses", his first novel, was heavily influenced by MacLean's service in the Royal Navy. As a young seaman he served on escort vessels guarding convoys in the North Atlantic. The Arctic conditions are described in harsh detail and imprint themselves on the reader's memory.

Over the years blizzards and Arctic blasts play a big part in many of MacLean's novels. "Ice Station Zebra", "Breakheart Pass", "Night Without End" and "Bear Island" are all thrillers where sub-zero weather contributes to MacLean's typically labyrinthine plots. I used to read MacLean's novels fairly regularly and I'm glad to see that they're having something of a resurgence at the moment. Now, time to dig out the DVD of "Where Eagles Dare", the film where Clint Eastwood runs up a bigger body count than in all of the Dirty Harry movies put together.

The luvviness of Paris......

I'm just back at work after 2 weeks' rest and recreation. One of the major treats that I allowed myself while on holiday was the purchase of this year's Crime Writers' Association anthology "Original Sins" edited by the excellent Martin Edwards.

The contents list reminds me of a Christmas selection box of sweets and my initial impulse was to gorge myself on the stories. Remembering Peter Lovesey's sage advice in the introduction to his own anthology of short stories ("Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose") I managed to restrain myself, all the better to savour each mysterious morsel.


I was delighted to find that the very first story in the book ("Doctor Theatre") featured the re-appearance of one of my favourite, amateur detectives. Applause please for the actor/ sleuth Charles Paris and his peerless creator Simon Brett. Short and very sweet the story references TV reality shows and "serious" actors / "luvvies" who appear in films about boy wizards while maintaining a West End presence. The only element of dissatisfaction is that "Doctor Theatre" leaves one wanting more. This, of course, is the secret of any great performance: as Walt Disney (reputedly) said, "Always leave them wanting more."


My first encounter with Charles Paris was in the novel "So Much Blood" which was issued by the much missed "Keyhole Crime" imprint back in the early 80s. I was so impressed by the character of the journeyman actor / detective that I sought out most of the books in the series within a very few weeks. As I remember I also went to the extent of switching my tipple from "The Famous Grouse" to "Bell's" scotch in honour of my new hero. Although I only drink blended scotch very occasionally I stuck with this choice for about ten years or so until Diageo, the brand's owner, closed its Scottish bottling plant.


Simon Brett writes with tremendous wit and style and his books are always fun, often with a satirical undertone. I was late in coming to the "Fethering Mysteries", perhaps due to their Home Counties setting and my working class Scottish preconceptions, but I'm slowly working my way through them. Soon I must get around to reading the "Mrs Pargeter" series. In the meantime I can still get my "fix" of Charles Paris, as portrayed by Bill Nighy, on BBC Radio 7.( I would also recommend Simon Brett's panel show "Foul Play" which turns up perennially on the same channel).

The restless afterlife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

As of this writing he's been dead for some 80 years, 4 months and an odd number of days; yet in many ways Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) seems more alive than ever. There are a huge number of Sherlock Holmes "homages" out there, a volume of prose which exceeds the original canon by at least a factor of 10. Some of this stuff is good (Nicholas Meyer's contributions as well as those of Laurie R. King come to mind) and some not so good. Since I've veered towards the mathematical this morning then I should really try to pin a number to this ratio. As always, with just about everything, Sturgeon's Law is a rather good rule of thumb. Sadly, that gives us a figure of 90% not so good.

I don't feel that ACD would have been too perturbed by this. It's well known that he felt Holmes cast a shadow over all of his other work. What might have upset him more profoundly is his own all-too-frequent resurrection as a character in fictional works. I'm sure that most authors who venture to use Doyle in their fiction do so with great respect and affection. Julian Barnes fleshes out the story of Doyle's involvement as a "detective" in the real life case of George Edalji in his gripping novel "Arthur & George" quite masterfully. It's when other authors have tried to fictionalise ACD as some kind of action hero that I begin to get a little uncomfortable.

On television ACD was included as a character in an episode of the (usually enjoyable) Canadian series "Murdoch Mysteries". For some reason I found it irritating that the actor playing the role tried to speak with an upper crust English accent. My annoyance may be due to the fact that actual footage of ACD talking is available on "You Tube". The most basic research would reveal his strong (even after many years of living in England) Scots accent. Even more vexing was the short-lived series "Murder Rooms" which portrayed ACD as the "Watson" to Dr. Joseph Bell (Doyle's teacher and the acknowledged basis for Holmes). This was an irregular series of dramas which had many good points but played fast and loose with many of the facts of ACD's life and times.

The American writer Mark Frost has written two novels featuring Doyle as an all-action sleuth but which I found hard to enjoy simply because they stretch reality too far. William Hjortsberg's "Nevermore", involving both ACD and Harry Houdini with a serial killer who uses the works of Poe as inspiration for his murders, is also a step too far towards the weird for my tastes.

I suppose that the use of actual, living people in fiction will always be difficult for some members of a readership / audience to accept. When Anne and I went to our first "Crimefest" earlier this year (we've already booked for the next) I attended a panel where the authors, in winding up, had to very briefly talk about one thing that really annoyed them in crime fiction. The formidable M.C. Beaton, with a Scots accent as unmistakeable as ACD's, said that the use of real people in mystery stories was a pet hate. She also asked if Gyles Brandreth, the guest of honour for that weekend, happened to be in the room; presumably she wanted to make her feelings on his "Oscar Wilde Mysteries" known. Sadly, there was no sign of Mr Brandreth and so the chance of an entertaining clash of views was missed.

What is making me particularly uncomfortable at the moment is a book which claims that ACD is communicating from beyond the grave. It's called "A Study in Survival" and I admit to being fascinated by a review published in the "Fortean Times" a few months ago. I've considered buying it but, working as I do in a job where I'm often faced with other people's grief and bereavement, I'm not sure I could read it with an open mind.

Bonding, Un-Bonding then Bonding again.

Over the last couple of years I've really enjoyed watching the "Spec Savers Crime and Thrillers Awards"on ITV3. It's definitely a guilty pleasure though some of the awards are baffling. (Foyle as the "people's detective" anyone ? ).TV shows aren't my main interest. The books are. "Bad Catholics" by James Green was a delight I discovered through the 2009 shortlist as was "Blacklands" by Belinda Bauer (winner of this year's gold dagger).

Through the awards show I also started to take note of the "Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award". I was especially interested to discover that Jeffery Deaver had won this award back in 2004 for his novel "Garden of Beasts"( an historical thriller set against the backdrop of the 1936 Berlin Olympics). His acceptance speech apparently played a major part in Deaver being asked to pen the new James Bond novel. It's scheduled for release in Spring 2011 and I'll undoubtedly buy it.

I enjoy Deaver's novels and I was won back to the Bond books by "Devil May Care" the 36th. "official" novel as penned by Sebastian Faulks.

Around the age of 16 or 17 I was a mega fan of Fleming's original Bond novels. I read them all within a span of 5 or 6 months, including Kingsley Amis' pseudonymous "Colonel Sun" . Of course, the Bond films were huge at the time and influenced my reading of the books. I enjoyed both but the contrasts between the two media made me realise that not all books make good films. "You only live twice" is among the best of the novels and also one of my favourite films in the series (with a screenplay by Roald Dahl). The two have nothing in common other than the title. The novel wouldn't have made a good film although the content is among the finest writing produced by Fleming. He seemed to have made a major effort to absorb Japanese culture and the title, if memory serves, comes from haiku which Bond writes in preparing to confront Blofeld for the final time.

By the time the novels were being written by John Gardner and Roger Moore was starring in the films much of my fervour for all things Bond had evaporated. Re-reading some of the novels also made me aware of annoyances which I'd missed first time round. There are fairly frequent anti-semitic and racist references peppered through the books, most notably hints at Goldfinger's Jewish roots and Blofeld's mixed ethnicity.

I was particularly annoyed by a dialogue between Bond and "Tiger" Tanaka of the Japanese secret Service in "You only live twice". During their conversation Bond explains the inability of some of the American GIs to appreciate Japanese culture in general and saki in particular because their ancestry equipped them better for ploughing muddy fields in Ireland or Poland. My Uncle Tommy, God rest him, was evacuated from Dunkirk with the rest of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 and was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese army while later serving in Burma. I don't think that rice wine appreciation or the history of the No play were ever included among the entertainments offered to British or American prisoners in the Far East.

And yet......well, years pass and you make allowances for people as you get older. It's possible to see them as a product of their times to a great extent. Even if, as many have written, Fleming was a snob I must admit that I was touched when I read about him apologising to the (NHS) ambulance men as they prepared to take him to hospital in the throes of his final, fatal heart attack ("Sorry to be such a bother..."). Clearly a gentleman of the old school. John Pearson's biography of Fleming also softened my opinion of him to a large extent.

Head and shoulders above the rest of the Bond novels for me is "Live and Let Die", despite its casual racism (Harlem and Jamaica form much of its backdrop). This opinion may have something to do with the fact that it was the Bond novel which I had most trouble buying. Most were readily available at second hand markets like "the Barras" but "LALD" eluded me until the film came out in 1973. (The copy residing in my attic has the original movie poster on its cover).

My theory about the novel is that it's great because it's a SECOND novel. There is a myth that second novels or albums are more difficult for authors or musicians to produce. The success of "Casino Royale" was apparently something of a surprise to Fleming. In turn this seems to have have had much the same effect on him that the Villiers supercharger had on the performance of Bond's beloved Bentley.

"LALD" seethes with creativity as if Fleming is throwing everything he can into an intoxicating cocktail of pirate treasure, Fu Manchu -inspired villainy, Caribbean colour and post-war American pulp fiction. Even though the Bond novels are notoriously lacking in humour Fleming even allows himself a (dark) joke. Felix Leiter is dumped in a motel room after being nibbled on by a shark when captured by "Mr. Big" ,the book's main villain. Pinned to Leiter's chest is a note : "He disagreed with something that ate him". The book also has a thrilling keel-hauling sequence which was eventually used (much less effectively) in one of the Timothy Dalton movies ("Licence to Kill"). Now, if you'll excuse me, I've written myself into the mood to go and look out my copy of "Diamonds are Forever" to see if it's improved over the years......

Irish Noir

Even if Ireland wasn't always in my thoughts at this time of year, the TV and radio news would have brought it to my attention anyway. The "Celtic Tiger" seems to have chipped its teeth on the rock of bank debts gone bad. Some people have been predicting this catastrophe for a long time. While the economy struggles Irish crime fiction goes from strength to strength; that seems to be a characteristic of recessions / depressions.

Among the foremost of Hibernian crime writers is Ken Bruen, an author who is justly appreciated by the American audience and a true master of "Noir" fiction. A new film based on Bruen's novel "London Boulevard" is about to open in the UK starring "A-listers" Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley and Ray Winstone. I usually worry about what the process of film adaptation does to beloved books. Anyone who has read the original novels can only gawp in amazement at the utter incompetence of "8 Million Ways to Die", "Burglar" and "What's the worst that could happen?" (a film that sets out to answer the titular question straight away by putting Martin ("Big Momma's House") Lawrence in a starring role).

Fingers crossed I do have high hopes for "London Boulevard". As mentioned the cast is top notch and, here's where my heart lifts, the screenplay is by William Monahan who penned "The Departed". It's always wise never to underestimate the damage that Hollywood can do to any novel but I have a good feeling about this one. I also hope that Ken Bruen shifts a ton of books on the back of this movie. He deserves to be better known in the UK. In 2011 he'll even get a second bite at the cherry when the movie version of "Blitz", starring Jason Statham, gets released. More power to him!

Bruen's series of novels featuring Jack Taylor are extraordinary. They're the kind of books that I try to savour but inevitably end up reading in one or two sittings. They've even had an effect on my diet, which is no bad thing.

In each of the early novels"The Guards" and "The killing of the tinkers" Taylor is revealed as a man of enormous appetites; whiskey, Guinness, coke, speed, you name it. He's also partial to Celtic comfort food in the form of fish and chips. In both books the author describes the texture, the perfume and the perfect warmth of an idealised "Chippy" with loving care to the extent that I could feel my mouth watering (Proust can keep his madeleines). Unfortunately in both books as Taylor heads home clutching his supper he gets beaten up . Very badly. I can't say that these disturbing scenes have had a profound Pavlovian effect on my Irish Catholic habit of fish suppers on a Friday but now I do tend to have a good look round when I leave the shop.

November: mist and melancholia.

Remembrance Sunday is over for another year but memories still linger. In the Catholic tradition this has always been the month of the Holy Souls, certainly part of the season of mists but with more melancholy than mellow fruitfulness.

Late Autumn always brings with it a kind of pleasant sadness that seems to resonate particularly with Celts. The poet Paul Verlaine captures this mood perfectly in his "Chanson d'automne". ("The long sobs of Autumn's violins wound my heart with a monotonous languor.") Despite the commercialisation and Americanisation of Hallowe'en the final day of October and the first few days of November cast a shadow that lasts through to Winter.

At this time of year my thoughts often turn to Derry/ londonderry. For a long time I've looked on dear old Stroke City as my other home town. My family spent a lot of summers there in the '60s and '70s and I visited now and then until my Da died nine years ago (he had moved back to the city of his boyhood after my Mammy passed away). As coincidence would have it this was on the 26th of October.

Grief has a quality to it that makes you feel as if you've retreated from the world. Events pass you by and if you notice anything outside your immediate circle of loss it's as if you're seeing it though an inverted telescope. I was vaguely aware of a lot of strange revelry going on in the city. It puzzled me as I struggled with sudden bereavement. People in ghost costumes danced at the periphery of my vision with no hallucinogens or alcohol involved, at least on my part. Pieces fell into place and the puzzle resolved itself over the years: Derry had become the centre for Europe's biggest Hallowe'en festival.

The night of the 1st of November (All Saints Day) used to be a focus of some attention in Derry and throughout Ireland. This is the eve of All Souls Day and I can remember my Aunt Vera telling us about the old tradition of leaving bread and water out for the Holy Souls. She remembered one All Souls Eve in particular when, as a little girl, she'd been naughty, though she was unspecific about the details. My Granny threatened to make her stay downstairs with the food and the drink....and the visiting Holy Souls. (The Carlins have always been masters of child psychology). Nothing materialised from the threat of course but it made an impression on Aunt Vera. Me too as I write this more than 40 years later.

Derry has given me a big chunk of memories. Most of them are happy and some a little melancholy. I'm currently adding to them through the crime fiction of Brian McGilloway. As well as being an excellent writer he's the head of the English department at St. Columb's college in Derry. The Inspector Devlin novels capture the sense of the northwest of Ireland and the border between the North and South perfectly. Appropriately enough McGilloway's debut novel was "Borderlands" and involves the investigation of a crime which straddles the border between the UK and Eire.

(Before "The Troubles" began in earnest one of the childhood amusements that boggled my mind was to take a walk out from the Creggan estate ,part of Londonderry and firmly in the UK, to the border with the Irish Republic. My cousins and I dawdled to the border in about 20 minutes so that we could stand with one foot in each country or just spend our time jumping back and forth. By the mid 70s this unmanned border crossing between Donegal and County Derry was blocked off by a trench and barbed wire).

The Devlin novels are also exceptional in that the author has gone out of his way to avoid many of the cliches that so often adhere like limpets to fictional policemen. Benedict Devlin is no maverick, hard-drinking loner. His family life is an important part of each book. For more background there's an excellent interview at the "It's A Crime" website.

Comic books and Hallowe'en.

I've never made any secret of the fact that I have a great affection for comics, particularly American comics. My favourite comic company is D.C. comics. In my mind their product is always associated with crime and mystery fiction. That's not just because the acronym stands for "Detective Comics", the company's flagship title, nor because they have featured a huge variety of detectives over the years from the hardboiled Slam Bradley through Roy Raymond "T.V. Detective" to Bobo, the Detective Chimp. (I don't think this character had any conscious influence on my adoption of our mutt Bobo from the Dog's Trust last year. He may have been at the back of my mind when I bought my "deerstalker" hat though.) I formed the association between D.C. and mystery because it was through one of their comics that I first became aware of the "fair play" detective story.

Despite trawling through the internet I've not been able to track down the story title. I know that it involved Batman and Robin solving a murder where the victim had left a clue as he was dying. He was an amateur artist who worked in a travelling circus and was slain while working on a painting. Even as he was dying he managed to scrawl a cryptic clue onto the corner of the canvas: a minus sign ( -) followed by the letter Q.

I know that in a previous post I've written that I'll never give away the solution to a mystery but I have to if I'm going to illustrate how I became hooked on detective stories. Please take this as a spoiler alert and, if you're an aficionado of early Batman and Robin stories in particular, skip the following paragraph if needs be.

Anyway, of the 4 or 5 suspects one had the surname Dial. The Batman, being the world's greatest detective and able to tell that an ex-con thrown into the mix was only a red herring, knew that Dial was the murderer. The story was written long before key pad telephones and I certainly read it when we still were on a "party line" and had to spin a DIAL when making a call. The only letter of the alphabet missing from such a dial is the letter Q, hence "minus Q". This struck me as being unbelievably clever especially since I was only about 7 or 8 at the time. Looking back I should probably have been puzzled by the convoluted path that a dying man's thoughts could take but I was overawed by Batman's deductive skills.

The Mysterious demise of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.

The "Fortean Times" is a magazine that I've been buying every month for a long time. I see it pretty much as an entertainment but I must admit that SF writer Ken MacLeod turned it into a guilty pleasure for me with the incisive comments on his blog back in January.


Most issues contain a "necrolog" or collection of obituaries about individuals who existed on the fringes of the weirdness which the magazine serves up. The latest came as something of a shock when I read about the death of an author by the name of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.


It was a fairly long obituary and each new paragraph seemed to cram in more and more outrageous details of a very eccentric individual's life.From his tales of being abused as a child in Scotland (or possibly Wales), through his time living with Australian aborigines to his final years in New York where he had abducted and tied up a neighbour the details of his life seem increasingly preposterous. By the time I'd finished reading I was 75% sure that it was a hoax. You can judge for yourself. A more detailed story in the New York Times makes it seem even more incredible.


MacIntyre wasn't the most productive of writers but I'd read and enjoyed several of his short stories over the years. He was a regular contributor to the "Mammoth Book of...." series produced by Robinson publishing. I particularly remember a Sherlock Holmes pastiche involving Ambrose Bierce, Aleister Crowley and the early days of silent film. It appeared in "The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures" and was entitled "The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex". It combines many of MacIntyre's enthusiasms to entertaining effect.


Interest in the occult along with his fantasy and science fiction meant that his death was bound to be flagged up by "Fortean Times" but, in researching the details of his death on line, I also discovered that he regularly reviewed films on IMDB and was well known (or infamous) among cinephiles. The discussion on this message board will give you some sense of this. A website dedicated to the silent film comedienne Mabel Normand contains a rather cutting variation on MacIntyre's "necrolog".

Ultimately it's a rather sad end for an enigmatic character but I suspect that he would have taken a perverse pleasure in the mystery he left behind. Is his review of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" a sardonic joke or a very strange suicide note ?

Never Tell Whodunit !

The word on the street is that you should always give your taxi driver a good tip if you're being dropped off at the St. Martins Theatre in London where Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" will have been running for 58 years come the 25th of November. Fail to do so and he, or she, is likely to punish you by shouting out the name of the murderer. This would make for rather a frustrating 2 hours 20 minutes of theatre-going.

I've never managed to read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" because I made the mistake of reading a "spoiler" synopsis of the plot. A few weeks back (September6th.) there was a post on Martin Edwards' excellent blog ("Do you write under your own name?") which pointed out that there are two types of mystery readers- those who try to solve the mystery ahead of the author's revelation and those who simply go along for the story. Like Martin I'm firmly in the former group. Let's face it, Dame Agatha was a great entertainer but no-one reads her for her literary style. Take away the puzzle and the novels fire blanks, hence my inability to finish " 'Ackroyd".

When Anne and I visited Rome my second bedside book was "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane. I really enjoyed it ,as I have most of Mr. Lehane's novels, but the edge was taken off it slightly by a spoiler I happened to read on another website. This made me resolve never to give away plot details and aslo never to knowingly read another spoiler.

All of this reminds me of an idea thought up by the wonderful and much missed Bob Shaw in his comic SF novel "Who goes here?". One of the main characters enjoys reading but is often disappointed in novels picked at random. His solution: find a book that you really enjoy then use futuristic mind-wipe technology to erase it's plot and characters from your memory. By keeping the book you're then guaranteed a wonderful reading experience. Forever. If that technology becomes available I'll give "Roger Ackroyd" another try.

When does a crime novel become a travel guide ?

My Open University German exam is a thing of the past, though I've picked up my Monday evening class at the Goethe institute again. Anne and I have been back from Rome for over a week now and I note, with genuine shock, that it's almost a month since I last posted. Time for a major effort.

One thing I enjoy almost as much as a holiday is the discovery of a new crime series to savour. Heading for Rome I managed to combine the two. I'd bought "A Season for the Dead" the first in the "Nic Costa" series of police procedurals by David Hewson. The Roman setting appealed to me and I found myself caught up in a thrilling plot to the extent that the 3 hour flight passed me by completely. I finished the novel on our second evening in Rome with a single regret. I hadn't bought the second in the series.

The plot involves a series of gory murders seemingly influenced by the martyrdom of several early saints and overshadowed by politics in the Vatican. For the very first time I found myself learning about a city while reading crime fiction during my visit.

We walked along the bank of the Tiber and I was able to tell Anne a little about the church and hospital on Tiber island (cribbed from the novel, of course). In our visit to San Giovanni's church, St. John Lateran, I was also able to pick out the massive statue of St. Matthew from among the other, equally monumental apostles. He was the one carrying his own skin in a basket. His martyrdom entailed being flayed alive. Anne also pointed out that his name was in foot high letters on the pedestal making me feel, yet again, like her Dr. Watson.

Anyway, Rome was wonderful and we plan on going back next Autumn. In addition I've found a new series to follow. What's even better is that I can claim that the books are educational, the literary equivalent of a tasty, healthy Mediterranean diet.

"Salvatore syndrome": I'm booking it now.

Perhaps it's a way of avoiding study for my impending German exam (30th. September) but Anne and I are planning a holiday for the first week in October. Rome is our dream destination.


We went for an Italian meal on our wedding anniversary and I found myself wanting to study the language. I'm very suggestible that way, almost to the point where I think I may have a mild form of mental illness. Well at least an aberration. Every year at this time I get strange impulses to study foreign languages. Inevitably, I usually end up dabbling after signing up for Open University courses. There's usually a strong start followed by a limp across the finishing line 11 months later. So far I've completed the basic units for French, Spanish and (soon) German. Each supplies enough vocabulary and practice to hold a basic conversation and the content and presentation are uniformly excellent. Armed with these linguistic weapons I should at least be able to talk about the weather, discuss illnesses and injuries and give basic directions to strangers.


I'm always surprised when tourists visit Scotland in the Summer months. July and August are always months that test the saturation point of the peat fields and fill our rivers to the brim. Every day I make my way to work across George Square in the centre of the city feeling guilty as I see tour coaches discharge stunned looking Spaniards, Italians, Germans and French mesdames and messieurs into the torrents of Summer.


There was one high point when the pipe band championships were being held in town on their customary waterlogged date near the start of August. Pipers abounded in the city centre emitting weird high- pitched noises and waterspouts from their chanters and pibrochs. Even liberal-minded Continentals must have been slightly shocked at first glance. Do these strange, bearded, cross-dressing men always make love to calimari so publicly ?



Anyway,I've come to both dread and relish the challenge of being asked for directions by visitors to the city. I tell myself that, "This time I'll get it right!".
Invariably I start quite well but if the stranger becomes heartened by encountering a Brit who speaks their language ( no matter how badly) and throws more complex constructions into the mix, then I'm lost. Even if I get the gist of what they're saying my meagre ration of words never seems adequate for a reply. My strategy then becomes a frenzy of hand gestures, fractured French, shredded Spanish or garbled German intermixed with English words to fill the (many) gaps; a wattle and daub approach to communication. As if in a recurring nightmare I suddenly realise that my Open University units are balanced on top of a pile of linguistic scraps. German exclamations culled from "Commando" comics protrude from a litter of Spanish dialogue discarded by the Mexican bandits in the "Magnificent Seven".Snippets from the "Pink Panther" films occasionally skitter into the mix when my supply of French is exhausted and Franglais is my only alternative.


I can't lay claim to being the only polyglot (failed) who tackles communication this way.
If you've ever read Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose" you may remember a character called Salvatore (played by Ron Perlman in the film version of the book). His approach is disturbingly similar, with segments of Italian, Latin and Greek added to my own basic stock of Northern European tongues. I'm sure that there must be other sufferers out there.


If this condition ever gains medical recognition I want it to be called"Salvatore syndrome".

With medical conditions it's always best to make early claims on any new phenomenon.
Many years ago, when I was studying Medicine (not very well) my class had a lecture on Korsakoff's psychosis, a set of debilitating symptoms caused by alcoholism. Korsakoff was a Polish physician who practised medicine in Austria. His classic case, used to define the disorder named after him, was based on the example of a Scottish music teacher who had been living in Vienna for many years. This teacher drank huge amounts of alcohol, 2 or 3 bottles of schnapps per day .He eventually developed memory loss, nerve damage and a coping mechanism of "confabulation". This allowed him to try to cover the gaps in his memory by making up stories.
One of my fellow students summed up the injustice of medical nomenclature: "Isn't that just typical? A Scotsman does all the hard work and some bloody foreigner takes all the credit!"

Say "Hello" to the Bad Guys.

Back in the 1980s there was a gang of down-and-outs in Glasgow which carried out a number of vicious but rather unprofitable robberies, against individuals rather than big organisations. The main purpose of these crimes was to get money for booze. Cops tasked with tracking the group down came up with a name that illustrates the dark humour shared by so many policemen : the "Hole-in-the-head gang".

At the moment a new gang war seems to have flared up. Proceedings apparently kicked off in January when Kevin ("the Gerbil") Carroll was, as the Sopranos might say, "whacked" in a supermarket car park in Robroyston. Within the last 10 days two twin brothers, "associates" of Carroll, have been badly injured in separate attacks. Both were assaulted by gangsters with chisels, hammers and power drills. I wonder if the detectives investigating these incidents were looking for an outfit called "the Carpenters".

Gangsters have always been part of the Glasgow crime scene. I can remember a couple of would-be hard cases turning up at the gates of my school looking for one of my fellow pupils. Apparently he had transgressed some unwritten law and pissed these guys off. The taller of the two was the one who did the mouthing off while his wee pal carried a holdall which he would occasionally hold open to give us a glimpse of a collection of knives, cleavers, hammers and other pieces of hardware. I hadn't realised that gangsters needed caddies.

I can just imagine their conversation if they had caught the guy they were looking for:

"I say , Shuggie, this chap is more portly than I foresaw. Which implement would you suggest I use ?"

"That would depend on whether one wished to rip, slash or plunge him, sir."

"I would think that a good ripping would be in order and display my irritation quite sufficiently".

"In that case may I suggest the straight razor rather than the sharpened screwdriver ?"

The caddy would definitely have been the subservient type. Every real gangster always has a toady to accompany him. This is the type of little turd who didn't have the guts to steal your sweeties but gets his mates to do it for him. They aren't confined to straightforward gangsterism. Igor in the Frankenstein films is a good example. In politics Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Tory MP, always struck me as a prime example too.

When it comes to the gangster in crime novels I must admit that there are few examples that give me any great pleasure. I love the Godfather films and I've always felt that they improve greatly on the book . The exceptions are a series of crime novels written by Loren D. Estleman and set in Detroit starting with "Whiskey River".

Sadly, real-life gangsters are far removed from the Hollywood glamour that descends in a line from "Little Caesar" and Rocky Sullivan through to the Corleones and Tony Montana. Most don't have any class....... however, in among the "Tongs" and the "Drummy" my favourite Glaswegian gang name originates from a particular street in Bridgeton: the "Baltic Fleet". I don't know if the nod to the Soviet Navy is intentional, but I like to think so.

" Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?" or the Watchmen and me...

I grew up in Easterhouse but I went to a "selective" school; what my English cousins would call a grammar school. The story of how I got there was based on a "fix". The guy who was "Third" in the class (academically) had parents who knew the "right people"and had managed to wrangle him a place at St. Mungo's Academy. Driven by some sense of justice our teacher sent for my parents and let them know about this, off the record. The end result was that I managed to ride the wave in along with the fixee. All rather dodgy, I'm afraid. Not to mention the fact that the guy who was "Second" really resented this. I can understand that but unfortunately, whenever we met in later years, he made it quite clear that he resented me more than he did the other guy, the one who had actually cheated him out of a place.

The bottom line is that I went to a school that was a 40 minute bus ride away and had to wear a uniform that marked me out as a stranger in my home district. I also learned Latin instead of "Technical Drawing" as part of the curriculum. Hence the pretentious title quote from the Roman poet Juvenal which, as everyone knows, translates roughly as : "Who watches the watchmen ?".

From previous posts you may have gotten the impression that Easterhouse could be rather tough at times. The role of the local Police must have been difficult. I've always said that despite "E-hoose's" reputation 90% of the people living there were law abiding and generally hard working. Unfortunately for the local cops at least 99% of the 90% didn't trust the Law. I think that's probably true in most working class communities. Politics lines the Police up with people who are more articulate, more vocal and better able to use them as a service.

There's a strange duality in the average working person's relationship with the Police. It's hard to trust them because you always fear, even when completely innocent, that they'll turn on you like a Kafka-esque Rottweiler. On the other hand, as pointed out by the great Ed McBain when explaining why he used policemen (not private investigators) as the heroes in his crime novels, who else do you call when there's been a murder ? I'm not too proud to admit that the first time I ever found myself on the sharp end of a mugging I shouted "Police!" at the top of my voice as I ran away.

I grew up during the height of the local gang warfare and saw local yobs knocking down picket fences and hammering nails through sticks. This was so that they wouldn't feel left out during the amnesty organised by Frankie Vaughn. Maybe the cops thought that they'd finally put an end to the notorious Fred Flintstone gang.(You should view the legendary Matt McGinn's song on you tube to get a perspective on that particular golden age.) Matt also sums up the trust the average Glaswegian places in "ra Polis" in his song "The 2 heided man". Not much. I also note that things really haven't changed too much according to the Evening Times.

TV cops had no effect on our perception of the genuine article. Good cops like George Dixon seemed about as real as Steve Zodiac. One series did provide a nickname for the group of plainclothed " officers assigned to deal with the gang problem. At the sight of a saloon car full of big, short-haired six-foot men turning the corner every urchin in the street would scatter shouting, "It's the Untouchables!".

Many events and incidents over the years have shaped my view of the who are the "good guys" or "bad guys". At 55 I've definitely gone the way of becoming more right wing with age. About 4 or 5 years ago I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Parks Department had planted 40 or so new sapling trees in Blairtummock Park up at the arse-end of Easterhouse 10 minutes' walk from my house.

Next day I walked up with my dog to find that maybe 5 or 6 of the trees had survived a vandal-fest of chopping and uprooting. I was already living with the fact that the local yobs had discovered that the yellow waste baskets strapped to lamp standards will burn like plastic torches for about an hour if you hold a lighter under them long enough for combustion to kick in. If you ever take a dog for a walk in the vicinity be prepared to carry the poop bag all the way home. (Oh, dear God! This is beginning to read like a letter to the "Daily Mail"!)

Policing seems to be different up there. Two incidents outlined that for me.

One New Year, when I still lived with my Father in a tenement flat, I went out to discover the ground floor apartment had every window smashed in ( bedroom and living room at the front, two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom at the back). A bunch of teenage mentalists had been tanked up on alcohol and were battering one another on the stretch of grass in front of our block. A couple of cop cars drew to a halt. Safe in the parked vehicles the Polis watched them knock one another about and then pan in the windows ( one of the participants lived in the ground floor flat). The mother of the family had remonstrated with the cops about not offering any help. The sergeant on the scene rolled down his window and said"You know it'll be another 3 days before the council can do any repairs." Then the cars rolled off into the night. Another triumph for minimal intervention.

Some time later a few friends and I got invited to a small party in a semi-detached house in the West End of Glasgow. In a bunch we arrived about 11 o' clock and switched on a record .Before the first track had finished playing the local Police were at the door asking us to break up the party. No exaggeration. The neighbours must have had speed dial phones attached to the net curtains. This struck me as being an interesting illustration of Police tactics and priorities.

Part of me says, "That's life, move on and grow up" but I still resent the injustice of this and a few other brushes with the cops. Once a pair of plods tried to arrest a friend and me for sitting at the front of our tenement after they'd failed to catch any of the gang members they'd been chasing. The only thing that saved us was the righteous indignation of a wee woman neighbour from across the road. She had thrown her window open and put them bang to rights.

Another time a friend and I had been at a bachelor night party and were walking home. We became aware that we were being shadowed by a police car (subtle this wasn't).

Shaking hands we split up at the next junction. My friend headed down towards (relatively posh) Mount Vernon while I carried on up towards Barlanark and Easterhouse. Guess whom the police opted to follow ? When the car inevitably drew up beside me I managed not to say anything too stupid, or even worse, smart. One of the dynamic duo asked who I was and where I was going. I was sober and innocent so it was easy to handle but I was always aware that you never try to pat a Rotweiller. I didn't ask "Are you carrying the brain this evening , Orificer ?" Even writing about it now I still get a little frisson of resentment. And don't get me started on how the Police behaved during the miners' strike.

Still, who are you going to call if there's a murder..... ?

The Football Season, Sgt. Cribb. and forgotten bookshops.

So the Football season is well and truly under way once more. Like most of the popular sports of to-day Football has its roots in the Victorian era. That fact always reminds me of the wonderful "Sergeant Cribb" series of books written by Peter Lovesey.

Despite their very British background I first encountered these novels in American paperback editions with wonderfully evocative covers. I remember buying a copy of "The Detective wore silk drawers" and being instantly hooked by a fast-paced, humorous mystery story with a background of bare-knuckle boxing. This led me on to find "Wobble to death" which was Peter Lovesey's first novel and winner of the Macmillan / Panther prize. It was set against the background of an endurance race. The Victorian era was the fountainhead of all the great popular sports of the present day.

There used to be a wonderful, little used bookshop near the University, just off Hawkhill, in Dundee. It was owned by a Mr. Marshall and stocked an amazing amount of popular fiction. (I'll hold up my hand and admit that I spent too much time and money there. Ditto the late, lamented pub "The Scout" which stood only a few yards distant). I had always read Science Fiction but Marshall's opened my eyes to other genres.

I discovered that Westerns could be well written and imaginative. Early encounters with Louis L'Amour led me on to read John (B)Harvey ("Hart the Regulator"), Elmore Leonard, Ed Gorman and Loren D. Estleman. Just what is it with crime writers and the Western ?

I never really took to the work of J.T. Edson. The multiple series he wrote seemed to reflect the B westerns that were tacked on in cinemas as second features during the '50s and '60s. The Western authors whose works I most enjoyed all had a "big screen" quality either in setting or characters. Edson did however coin a memorable phrase when describing the "revisionist" Westerns that had surplanted those of the Golden Age. Many of the films being produced in the late '60s and early '70s were downright sleazy, particularly the stampede of low budget "spaghetti westerns" that drygulched Sergio Leone's superior product (and were resurrected by the '80s video boom). Edson dismissed this genre of film-making as"mud and rags ". Few film critics were as succinct, or as accurate.

The "Sergeant Cribb" books made me a faithful follower of Peter Lovesey's work. Can it really be nearly forty years? The author remains up there in my top 10 after all this time. I even had the pleasure of meeting him at a crime fiction "convention" in Nottingham and I can report that he absolutely lived up to my expectations. The "Peter Diamond" books get better with each new novel and the author's short story collections are full of little gems to be savoured. I recommend them, but savour them one at a time. As the title of one collection says, "Do not exceed the stated dose".

Things that go bump in the night.

After my last blogging session, about "Noir" fiction, and my mention of "Fallen Angel" I've been a bit haunted by an upcoming German language exam with the Open University. Haunted too by my claim that "'Angel" might be the ultimate "Noir" novel. On second thought, even though it
ticks so many of the genre boxes, I would have to admit that it does invoke a supernatural element that is the crux of the plot. Purists could rightly claim that this element would exclude it from the "Noir" umbrella. Taking it one step further it could even be argued that it isn't a detective story even though it sticks rigidly to the conventions of the genre.

Despite his personal enthusiasm for spiritualism Sir Arthur Conan Doyle laid down a rule about the use of supernatural in the classical detective story. Hence the often quoted words of Sherlock Holmes : "This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply".

The words may as well have been carved in stone. Monsignor Ronald Knox was later to incorporate this rule into his decalogue for the detective story. Still, there's something fascinating about crime stories which suggest elements of the supernatural.

I've already revealed that any time I happen to visit London I always try to make a "pilgrimage" to Baker Street. The depths of my sadness are even greater than that. A couple of years ago when I missed my flight back to Glasgow and opted to take an overnight coach home because I was working the following day I was cheered up by the fact that I found myself travelling along Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. I had never visited this part of London before but I'd known for many years that Thomas Carnacki ("The Ghost Finder") lived at number 427 on that very street. fortunately it was quite dark as the coach rolled on and I didn't get a chance to make a total arse of myself by trying to read the house numbers at a distance. Searching for houses that never really existed could be taken as a sign of extreme eccentricity.

(A few months back I was heartened to discover in a blog written by an American crime writer that the author had happened to be in the vicinity of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and felt the need to visit slip F-18 of the Bhia Mar marina. This, of course is the docking place of "The Busted Flush" and the eternal address of Travis McGee. I fully understood and would do the same. In fact, and I haven't told Anne as yet, if we do visit New York in the future I have two definite tourist attractions in mind. One is the "Mysterious Bookshop". The other is another fictional address. I am a sad man, but I know it.)

I recently bought the first volume of the old TV series "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes " through Amazon UK and was well pleased by the adaptation of the Carnacki story "The Horse of the Invisible". Usually the solution to the mystery posed in Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories is either supernatural or "mundane". This one twists the formula to allow for both. The cast was excellent and the production looked more lavish than I remembered.

The only slight disappointment for me was that Donald Pleasence, excellent actor though he was, didn't fit my mental picture of Carnacki. Reading the stories for the first time back in the mid-1970s I pictured Carnacki as looking like the late Roger Delgado. (Although he was most often cast as a villain he was an actor who always seemed to have a real sense of humour and humanity. Anything I've read about him since tends to confirm that sense.)

Strangely, I do picture Donald Pleasence whenever I read any of the stories in Edward D. Hoch's wonderful "Simon Ark" series. These also centred on crimes with an element of the supernatural involved but the solution is always firmly rooted in the rational. I once owned 2 or 3 American paperback collections of the early Ark stories but,sadly, no longer. When someone gets round to reprinting them I'll be first in line.

Shades of ultimate black.....

Having written a little about how the term "noir" is overused and over- extended I was pleased to find that Ed Gorman's excellent blog included links to an essay by Otto Penzler which nails that particular butterfly neatly to the wall. It articulates my thoughts so much better than my own attempt that even the title encapsulates a pretty good definition of the subject genre : "Noir fiction isn't about private eyes, it's about losers".

The bottom line is that "Noir" stories should carry a sense that the venal characters are always doomed."Falling Angel" by William Hjortsberg is probably the most brilliantly grim example of the ultimate in the genre. It climaxes not only in doom but literal damnation. Alan Parker filmed it as "Angel Heart" but didn't quite manage to capture the grimness and absolute isolation of the book's ending.

Noir or not ?

I know that I've mentioned my weakness for visiting Amazon UK when I've had a couple of beers. Despite knowing this I went to the site last weekend with 2 beers and a shot of Irish whiskey under my belt; just enough to loosen inhibitions and blur judgement, not enough for a wild spendfest. I had just watched the 2009 re-make of "The Taking of Pelham 123" and was obviously letting the film influence my consumerism.

I probably started looking for "heist" or "caper" novels but ended up buying several volumes (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan and Miami) from the Akashic Noir series. I already have the "London Noir" and "Paris Noir" anthologies edited by Maxim Jakubowski and have thoroughly enjoyed both. Akashic Publishing also have their own versions of Paris and London noir and I may sample them at a later date.

What gave me something to mull over was the sheer number of volumes the company have produced in the last few years. They have almost 40 in print with more on the way. Locations include "Wall Street", "Moscow", "Delhi", "Havana" and "Indian Country".
This makes me think two things. First of all that the Noir label is very marketable. Secondly, and this is purely subjective, the label "Noir" is now stretched far beyond the limits I would normally think of when trying to define it. The original Serie Noire novels from which critics coined the term were hugely influenced by American hardboiled crime fiction. I find it difficult to give a definition of exactly what I mean by noir fiction but some of these locations are stretching it a bit.

The label is also being used in comics at the moment.Marvel Comics have created their own pocket universe with "Noir" versions of several of their super-heroes. This is definitely out of bounds : "costumed cut-ups" as Stan Lee used to describe them have no place in noir fiction.

Ironically, DC comics, Marvel's biggest rival, has launched a "pulp" universe featuring a mixture of comic book charcters, notably Will Eisner's "Spirit" and the Batman, and major figures from the pulp magazines of the 1930s, Doc Savage and the Avenger (labelled as "Justice Inc." probably to avoid legal action since Marvel has several titles based on their super group the Avengers). Shady alleys, trenchcoats, fedoras, elevated railways, cars with running-boards: this ticks a lot more of my noir boxes than the X men ever will.

It's interesting to note that the writer Brian Azzarello, noted for specializing in crime comics, only took the job of creating a "pulpverse" because he was told he could exclude super-heroes. Cynics might give gentle cough and discreetly point to the gentleman in black and grey pyjamas with matching bat ears and scalloped cape but Batman isn't "super": he's only the world's greatest detective who's trained himself in science and martial arts. (I also suspect that he's included because DC couldn't get the rights to use "The Shadow". If they do then this group of comics will move even higher up my reading list).

(Aside : reading back the above it's rather obvious that I'm a DC rather than a Marvel "fan", though I do read titles from both publishers. To an outsider the distinction must be very hard to make. This dilemma is summed up perfectly in an episode of "The Simpsons".

Mrs. Krabappel is trying to let "Comic Book Guy" down gently as their relationship isn't working. She tries to say it in several ways before resorting to "I'm from the Marvel Universe, you're from DC".
"Ah!", he replies"I understand perfectly".
Definitely a joke for the comic fans in the audience.)

A final thought on why DC's "pulpverse" has more right to the adjective "Noir". The writer on "Justice Inc.", the back-up feature in "Doc Savage" is one Jason Starr.
I've encountered Mr. Starr, along with Ken Bruen, as the co-author of the most hilarious crime comedy series I've ever read. ("Bust", "The Slide" and "The Max"). come to think of it hilarity would normally exclude a novel from my definition of Noir. Time to go back to the drawing board...........

Saints, Preserve Us!

I've only ever visited the U.S. once. It frightens me to think that my one and only American holiday was 30 years ago this very year. Even back then it was easy to "acclimatise" because of the huge influence America had on British / Scottish culture. My friends and I grew up watching equal amounts of British and American TV series / films, listening to American music and reading American comics and books.

If you've ever seen the Schwarzenegger movie "Total Recall", or read a lot of SF, you'll be familiar with the idea of implanted memories of places you've never actually visited. The average Brit arriving Stateside carries the same kind of mnemonic baggage simply because of the cultural marinade they've been soused in since birth, starting with my own generation of "Baby Boomers".

We don't need a translator for words like "sidewalk", "flashlight", "elevator" or "faucet". We know that "jaywalking" is illegal and, after "Perry Mason", "The Defenders","Petrocelli", "LA Law" and 20 years of "Law and Order" we could probably recite our own Miranda rights for the arresting officer. He'd probably take us down to the Bullpen and run us through the 3rd. degree for being a limey wiseguy.

Rather than heighten reality this false familiarity can make large parts of America seem like a big film set. I made the mistake of timing my one-day visit to New York in the grip of a bad hangover. At one point I actually found myself touching the wall of a building near the entrance to Central Park at Columbus Circle. Such is the nature of hangovers I'm not sure if this was to check whether the building was real or whether I was. Next time I visit I'll be sane and sober, New York demands that kind of respect.

I found most of the Americans whom I met to be perfect hosts, welcoming and proud of their country. They almost all showed an interest in Scotland and a surprising number asked the same question : "Have you ever seen the Loch Ness Monster ?".

It shouldn't have surprised me. To the average American Scotland must seem like a speck on the map. Surely all the natives live within a 20 minute walk of Loch Ness ? America may have been saturated with Scottish influences in the past but the traffic is very much one-way in the present. Tartan Day may be an effort to redress the balance but Nessie is still the best known Scot, with the possible exception of Sean Connery.

At that time I had to admit that I'd only ever visited Loch Ness once and that the monster wasn't for putting in an appearance. Since then I've been in the vicinity a few times but still no sightings. It's strange connection to make but whenever I think of Nessie, which isn't often, I inevitably think of Roger Moore.

No, there isn't a Nessie /famous Scot / Connery / James Bond/ Moore connection going on here. I only wish my mind worked in such a straightforward, logical way. The connection lies in my TV watching past when "The Saint" series was a weekly feature on the Carlin family viewing schedule.

Even as a child I realised that Roger Moore was a pretty awful actor. He was always the least convincing "Hard Man" I've ever seen on the large or small screen though he has occasionally shone in roles were he sends up that very image ("The Persuaders" being a good example). If you think I'm being too severe then take the time to read Simon Winder's sensational "The Man Who Saved Britain". This is the funniest factual book I've read in ages. It does an humorous hatchet job not only on Moore but on the whole James Bond bandwagon. Only someone who was once enthralled by the whole shoddy glamour of the 007 industry could write such a bittersweet, indignant, hilarious cri de coeur. I write as a fellow sufferer who once walked through life with an imaginary John Barry soundtrack playing in the background of my life.

The fact that we stuck with "The Saint" probably had a lot to do with the simple fact that we only had two TV channels to choose from in 1960s Britain. Like most of the ITC series of the time it offered an hour (including adverts) of reasonable, undemanding entertainment. Most episodes were instantly forgettable but odd scenes stick in my mind from two of them in particular.

There was one episode that feature Voodoo and took place in Haiti. We knew that it was Haiti because a subtitle came up on the screen telling us so as some stock footage of a Caribbean harbour cut away to an interior shot of Simon Templar's hotel for that week.

(I suspect that it was always the same hotel set with furniture juggled around. There was little variety in the way that ITC series like "The Saint", "The Baron" or "Man in a Suitcase" established a sense of place.

The subtitle "London" would inevitably feature a shot of traffic in Piccadilly Circus followed by an interior shot of the hotel reception : desk with bell, leather club chair, hat stand with umbrella. With "Rome" you got traffic passing the Colosseum and interior shot : desk, bell, club chair and bust of the Venus de Milo. "Paris" was identical except for a shot of the Eiffel Tower and a quick swap of a plaster Napoleon for Venus.

Exotic locations like "Marrakech" featured ceiling fans and a potted palm as part of the decor. "Port au Prince, Haiti" would be much the same with the addition of mosquito netting at the window. Exotic hotel sets also ditched the club chair in favour of a high backed rattan chair.)

Not surprisingly, I don't recall many details of the hotel in Haiti but I do remember that this episode introduced the word "zombie" to my vocabulary. Back in those more innocent days zombies weren't as ubiquitous as they are today. I recall that I found the idea of the "living dead" more than a little unsettling having not yet reached my 10th. birthday. Nowadays I find I take them more in my stride. They're generally quite placid as long as you don't get between them and their methadone or Buckfast.

It was the other memorable episode that surprised me by leading to some unsettling thoughts more than 40 years later. This one was set in Scotland, in a hotel on the banks of Loch Ness. Not similar to London at all : reception desk, bell, leather club chair draped with a tartan shawl, hat stand with 3 umbrellas and a stag's head mounted on the wall.

Most of the plot escapes me but, in a nutshell, the Loch Ness Monster appears to be going on the occasional, nocturnal rampage. Several badly mauled bodies have been found near or in the Loch with monster-sized paw prints nearby. Simon Templar and several other guests are staying in an isolated hotel asking, "Who'll be the next victim ?". Even in the 60s the country house mystery had been around for a long time (Agatha Christie was still alive and well) but to an 8 or 9 year old most things are new and exciting. Especially when a monster is thrown in for good measure.

The big climax is what really impressed me. The murderer is revealed to be one of the guests. He had been using fake, plaster monster claws on the end of a couple of heavy poles to literally cover his tracks. He tries to make his escape in a rowing boat as Simon Templar pursues him to the water's edge.

The Saint is left helpless on the shore as the triumphant villain vanishes into a convenient bank of fog. Out of the darkness there is a sound of bubbling water, a man's scream and a loud splash... and something else. What was it ? A distant fog horn or a monstrous roar from some great, reptilian throat ? Time for a close-up as Roger Moore cocks a quizzical eye brow. (By the time he was playing Bond ten years later he had widened his dramatic range and could manage to be quizzical with both. Alternately.)

I know that this all seems incredibly naff now that I've written it down. Nowadays the viewer would be left in no doubt about the baddie's demise. The budget would be bigger and we'd get a close-up shot of a CGI leviathan chomping down on an actor laden with exploding blood bags and prosthetic limbs ready to snap off as the computer generated jaws converge on him. Perhaps it's my age, because I would never have imagined myself writing this in my younger days, but SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT TO ONE'S IMAGINATION !

Sometimes imagination can be a little too powerful as I discovered a few years ago when I found myself staying at Fairburn Lodge near Inverness. I was taking part in a work-related event but really enjoyed the facilities and great walking opportunities there. During the day. Night time was a little different, especially since this was Northern Scotland in late January. In the Summer it's great to live in Scotland, though it does tend to rain a lot. In June / July it can stay light until 10 o' clock at night. The flip side of this is that it can get really dark really early during the Winter. As dark as the Earl o' Hell's waistcoat as some colourful local might say, if he,or she, wanted to unnerve you.

As I made my way along a forest track for an after-dinner walk I didn't have or need the help of a colourful local. I managed to put the frighteners on myself. Half a mile away from the lodge I realised that I wasn't going to get a break in the clouds to allow me to stargaze. No streetlights, no moon, no stars; there was just a powerful wind gusting through the trees. Naturally enough this was when my mind decided to do a little wandering of its own.

What did I find myself thinking about as I picked my way along that rutted path, hemmed in by tall trees creaking their branches overhead ? Was it tropical sunshine, golden beaches, potted palms or exotic rattan chairs ? You won't be surprised when I write the following word : no.

No. Carlin's thoughts, in their own inexplicable, unpredictable way had meandered towards memories of the Saint standing on the banks of Loch Ness and a hideous bellow echoing in the darkness. What made it worse was that my"interior vision" of Loch Ness was 40 years distant in mind while the real thing was a few scant miles away just beyond those dark, groaning branches. I can remember giving myself a metaphorical shake at this point and saying what all we supposed adults say to our "inner child" at times like that : "Don't be so stupid!"

I didn't quite get to the point where I was whistling to convince myself that everything was OK as I found my thoughts creeping towards even more creepiness.

What was the other scary connection I'd always made with Loch Ness ?

Oh no !", I thought, not wanting to acknowledge it, "Boleskine House".

That wasn't the type of place I wanted to be thinking of on a cold, wet Winter's night. You may never have heard of it but Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin certainly had when he bought this secluded estate back in the 60s during his "occult period". It had once been owned by Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed magician, 60 years before. All sorts of terrible rituals and hauntings are supposed to be associated with it and, of course, it's built near the side of Loch Ness. For all I knew it could have been right around the corner.

I wish I could say that I gave a manly guffaw and continued on my post-prandial perambulation

like a true, British adventurer. Suddenly I came to the decision that I'd had enough of muddy tracks for that particular evening. It's amazing how quickly you can find a path back to light and warmth when you really want to. My inner dialogue went something like this:

"Move it, move it! Don't dare think of that scene where Dana Andrews is walking through the woods in "Night of the Demon"

""Night of the Whaaa..?"

"You know, that old black and white film based on the MR James story "Casting the Runes" ? The one with the big, glowing devil crashing through the trees?"

"MR James ? Didn't the BBC do all those Christmas ghost stories based on his work ? Most of them set in the middle of Winter.....? Oh, Mammy!"

"Did you just cry for your Mammy, you lady boy? Just shut it and keep those legs moving, Fat Boy. I think I can see electric lights up ahead."

That's how I found out that I'm only a good sceptic on a sunny afternoon in my own house. I also discovered that it's possible for an "inner child" to beat up a grown man of 50 and shove his logic and deduction where the sun doesn't shine.

During the Scottish summer there's usually a Nessie sighting or two. It's funny how that coincides with the tourist season. Sadly, the only recent story is about how two local Monster centres resolved a legal wrangle.

Oh, for the days when the "Fortean Times" was able to point out that the scientific name coined by the late Sir Peter Scott for the monster: Nessiteras rhombopteryx is an(unintentional?) anagram. Shuffle the letters and you come up with "Monster hoax by Sir Peter S".

Maybe St. Columba's "exorcism" of the monster back in the Dark Ages has finally worked. I wish I'd remembered that on a certain cold, windy night. What is it with those saints and Loch Ness ?