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.