Canal Walk - quick catch up and Wolverton to Fenny Stratford

I've done a few more sections of the Grand Union Canal since I last posted about it. Some hasn't changed much since I last did it over 10 years ago. Some seems to be much busier (Stoke Buerne, in particular, had a small museum, a decent size café, boat rides and ice cream), or far more developed - walking around the Braunston tunnel (you can't walk through) was better signposted, and the path led through an open park with landscaped grass. 

I have done a bit more wandering this time - checked out Rugby, which felt like a town of two halves - lovely thatched cottages seen from the bus, well kept bits and then the shopping centre and the part near the station where there is clearly less money (found a good chip shop though). 

Rugby Station, February

There are still long stretches of not very much. 

Busier though, the more it moves south. Locks and villages and new flats. Up market pubs where it's table service and feels a bit awkward just asking for crisps and cider (although the staff have been consistently fine about it) and little local ones with cheese rolls and Kitkats on the bar because they can't get kitchen staff. 

As part of exploring more off the canal I also visited the library and small museum at Rugby and nosed around a few churches. I've read quite a lot of plaques and notices about Bletchley Park and how people were billeted around and the buses they took, and others about long-gone railways and factories. 

In one eye and out the other, some of it, but it's giving me a sense of the place I didn't get last time. 

Then there are big things - like the huge Milton Keynes park and fun fair I realised I was skirting yesterday and decided to go and look at.  

Fenny Stratford, where I finished yesterday, is still served by the railway - a small train that shuttles back and forth on the same tracks between Bedford and Bletchley. So my plan is to go to Bletchley, actually have a wander there first (although probably not visit Bletchley Park as that feels like a whole day thing) and then head to Fenny Stratford and continue the walk. 

Catch Up Post on Crime Reviews

Anthony Berkeley - Jumping Jenny and Not to be Taken

It's a little while since I read these books now, but my main take away from both was how we are introduced to intelligent characters – not just in their own estimation but by the estimation of those around them, and also borne out in other areas of their lives - and they then proceed to do incredibly stupid things. Monumentally stupid things. Things you can’t imagine anyone doing.

For example, in Jumping Jenny (having decided the victim was thoroughly unlikeable and whoever killed her has done a public service), our sleuth (and he is a sleuth so absolutely should know better) then proceeds to run around covering things up and moving chairs and generally giving the impression either he is guilty or someone else in the household is. 

Actually, the constant dinging in the reader’s ear about how unlikeable the victim was is also an issue. It’s true she is irritating, and I certainly wouldn’t care to be married to her either, but there is really something quite pathetic in her need to be the centre of attention, and drink as much as she does. It all seemed to me more likely due to low self esteem than any of the more judgemental pseudo-psychological reasons given here (incidentally, this reminded me of the modern habit of people who know little about mental health ‘diagnosing’ ADHD or autistic traits in strangers. You can just imagine this scenario in a modern setting, with everyone blaming ADHD or a personality disorder, and not giving a thought to why this woman is so unhappy and attention seeking).  

There is also something very unpleasant about the detective’s eagerness to meet her and then reaction against her, as if it’s her fault she doesn’t live up to the picture he apparently had in his head, and the people at the party who keep on telling him how awful she is, which she surely must be aware is happening, and which must be making it all so much worse. 

Of course, even if she was a monster it would be no excuse for a conspiracy to cover up murder – but I’m letting Berkeley off that one as I think I can detect a kind of macabre humour that just didn’t quite land for me, and became increasingly convoluted and therefore boring. It may work much better for someone else.

Pluses are that the set up is strong – a Halloween party with everyone dressed as famous murderers and a gallows set up on the roof with two male and one female cadaver, and the kind of amicably divorced ex-couple that I assume would be rare at the time (1933) but clearly not non-existent.

 

With Not to be Taken (1938) the book felt a lot tighter, and I found I could forgive a lot because I liked the narrator.

It starts, more or less, with one of those discussions about eugenics that seem to have been in the zeitgeist in the 30s and 40s – there’s one in Curtain, and it comes up in Gladys Mitchell too. I suspect there was a reaction against this sort of thing after WW2 (the TV production of Curtain, while excellent, is set after the war, and this discussion struck a false note for me as it would no longer be a purely speculative discussion and you'd expect some reference to the fact).

I also enjoyed the sibling relationship between the doctor and his sister - although I was a bit boggled that the dispensing was generally done by the sister, who however talented, is not qualified and presumably has taken no oath (and all the neighbours are apparently fine with this and after there is a poisoning, and it's explained in court, the court are all fine with it too).

Impossible to tell, nearly 90 years later, whether that would be realistic. 

I've also been reading a lot of Catherine Aird. She's someone who has been on my radar since I read about her in, I think, one of Martin Edwards' books, but who I didn't get to until after her death in December last year. The series starts with The Religious Body in 1966, which is a really strong start - the murder of a nun in a convent, our police detective out of his comfort zone, the nuns irritatingly determined to neither help nor hinder. I've been dipping in and out of the series after that, and haven't yet found one I didn't like, although I did eventually gorge myself to the point the humour became repetitive. That's a me problem - these books were not meant to be read in quick succession. 

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand was another early summer read. The only note I've made on this book is that murderers are by nature horrible, but the murderer in this book is particularly nasty. I can't really say much more without spoiling it. A great start, with the agony aunt in a women's magazine going off to visit one of her correspondents essentially on a whim, and then finding, when she gets there, that there's no such person.

Or at least, that's what she's told...

 

Death Under Sail, by C P Snow was apparently his first ever book and only ever murder mystery. Of course he was a very popular writer of both fiction and non fiction (I seem to remember him being one of the authors mentioned in Howards End is on the Landing as not being much read anymore). 

This is a tidy little story, although at first my brain kept defaulting to thinking it was written in the 70s not the 30s, I think partly because of the 'cover' (it's an ebook) and partly because of the set up with two young men and their girlfriends or fiancees and two older chaps all on holiday sharing a boat, and the casual way even the oldest member of the party takes it.

Of course the cabins are segregated – but when the police arrive one young woman is in a cabin on her boyfriend's lap and people are surprised the police officer is a little shocked.

Later, when they all have to move off the boat and into a friend's house, the heavy disapproval of the only servant (and the fact there is a servant) rooted it much more firmly in it's time. 

Other crime reading has included some George Bellairs (Death of a Tin God got a tiny bit involved, lots of moving from France to Ireland and back out to the Isle of Man). Margery Allingham, Georgette Heyer and Richard Hull.  I seem to remember all being enjoyable, but none have really stuck. 

BTLS has been in Italy

 

The Greenwell Mystery - E C R Lorac

I would normally start a review like this with the mild disclaimer that I’m not a huge fan of thrillers, so I might be missing some of the enjoyment others would find in this book.

That said, I don’t think the issues I had with this one are going to be unique to me. Mostly, frankly, it’s a question of pace. There is so, so much talking, even for a book over 90 years old. Too many cases of men sitting down over a drink or a smoke and describing their activity in far too many words when it would be better for the author to describe the action and leave the conversation as ‘X told X what had happened and the address of the house they had finally followed him to…’

It opens promisingly. A talented young scientist (Campbell) has been working on a way to make fuel more efficient. If successful it will of course be worth a fortune.

The very night Campbell makes a breakthrough he disappears. Supposedly the owner of the business, Blakely, had rung him and invited him to his country place that evening, and all excited to show his mentor his work, Campbell packed up his papers (luckily not quite all of them) and went. 

But that invitation wasn’t from Blakely. 

Blakely believes it’s kidnapping, and calls in Scotland Yard to get MacDonald on the case, but of course all through our sleuths have to consider the possibility that it's a blind, that Campbell always meant to run off to the highest bidder as soon as his work was complete. 

There are good bits – the girlfriend fails to fall into the fairly standard trap of someone pretending to be Campbell’s friend and trying to kidnap her, and turns the tables rather nicely. Campbell’s ingenious use of a cat to get a message out. 

There's no lack of action - stake outs and break ins and a pilot who flies MacDonald across the country to stage an emergency landing on someone’s country estate (as with other earlier Loracs I have read MacDonald still has a bit of gentleman sleuth about him, and has some posh friends).

But still there is so much talking, and often in such a long winded way, that the plot just stagnates. I also felt cross that a very, very significant telephone call happened off the page, which meant that the reader didn’t know what the main sleuths knew.

That call is between MacDonald and Blakely, which leads to my other whinge. Throughout the book Blakely remains one of the main sleuths, and however much he protests he believes in Campbell’s innocence and however avuncular Lorac makes him every time he appears,  I can’t help feeling he has a vested interest and shouldn’t be involved in the investigation at all.  

Finally, as well I think I had a problem with stakes. Frankly, I didn't see enough of Campbell to feel worried about the possible kidnapping. I did feel some engagement with the brother and sister who are his girlfriend and friend, but they seemed to fade out after a bit and only came in again at the end.

As far as the industrial espionage element went I just didn’t care (I mean, so what if one rich person might end up not as rich as he expected, and another rich person might be better off?), and every time it came up in the text I had to resist the urge to skip forward.

I should add that I read this in the British Library reading rooms, as copies of the book are quite rare. It’s not one that’s been republished yet (only 3 years from falling out of copyright in the UK though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was fairly shortly) and I can only see a few reviews online.

All are more positive than mine.   

Birmingham to Calias Lane (via the Canal)

Strictly speaking this is two buildings in Birmingham, one in Leamington Spa and a stretch of canal that happened to be nicely framed by a tree. I've walked three stages of the canal now, and the next (Calias Lane to Long Buckby) gets me past the long stretch without a train station, and as the days are getting shorter as well it should all become much more manageable without my having to be too hot on timings or stop overnight. I started in February, so it was a bit of a muddy one but thankfully no actual rain.  

I've been attending an art class as well. Oil painting, which is incredibly messy (I always manage to get paint on my face and fingers) but good fun. It's an evening class and the teacher keeps saying it's not long enough to paint in really, but I think most of us don't expect to turn out a Rembrandt - just learn some more techniques and restrict the mess to somewhere that doesn't have a carpet. 

Anyway this is the painting I'm happiest with so far. 

Tilbury and the Thames

The Affair on Thor's Head - E C R Lorac

 

The Affair on Thor’s Head (1932) is the second of E C R Lorac’s books featuring Scotland Yard’s Robert MacDonald. Called out this time to the coast after a hut burns down and the original  theory – that the old man that lived there came back from drinking and had an accident with his stove - won’t fly.

Instead the charred body appears to be that of a visiting sailor come out of the past to right a wrong. We know this because he got chatting to a local doctor up on Thor's Head earlier that day when both men had stopped to admire the view (incidentally Lorac waxes as lyrical on the fineness of the man as the view, and does a lovely job of both) and told him about his pursuit of a swindler from a voyage he took 25 years or so before, and about an injury that happened to his arm on that trip. 

So when the skeleton is examined the doctor naturally recognises the injury. Hence murder and MacDonald, following up what seem like dead leads from that horrendous sea trip 25 years before; involving alcoholics, con artists, a mad lady (although she may be the same as the alcoholic, I’m a little unclear) a newly married man slowly dying but determined to see St Helens, a doctor who took the post because he thought it would be a rest (hah!), and such atrocious weather that it was believed the ship might never make port.

Just as well that it was such a memorable trip though, as otherwise it seems unlikely that MacDonald would be able to jog the memories of all the various people whose memory he has to jog to get to the bottom of things. This could be very tedious but somehow manages not to be, and while the book is currently out of print (I read it in the British Library) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was republished in the next few years – it seems a much more polished book than the first (The Murder on the Burrows) and has a great sense of place. 

I do struggle to believe anyone wouldn’t spot the murderer by the halfway point, even with the red herrings and distractions like people wandering around at night despite having rocks heaved at their heads or being shot at. Not to mention local prejudices, liaisons, lifeguard outposts and two young students who want to try their hand at amateur detection – but MacDonald is painstaking and undistracted and I was always sure he was working on the right lines. It becomes not whodunnit but how to prove it. 

Incidentally I’m resolved not to comment again on how often Lorac or one of her characters talks about MacDonald’s Scottishness and the supposed attributes of Scots, but will quote one final paragraph on the matter and for future books (and my own amusement) content myself with a rough tally.

'You forget he's a Scot, and Scotsmen are the least foolhardy race under heaven'. Said, I believe, just before MacDonald was lowered down a cliff face late at night to look for a corpse and not long after someone bunged that rock at him. Just saying.