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ce brought several of my books on board after so long at sea it was fun to visit the medinas in casablanca and to see rick s cafe and tangier where it was fascinating to visit st andrew s church a unique survival with gorgeous gardens on the algarve there was a trip to cape st vincent aka the end of the world which is the south westerly most point of europe and quite special we also travelled to the historic and delightful town of lagos the ship finally docked at lisbon and the journey home took rather longer than the original trip to barbados thanks to the new id requirements and the fact that everyone s luggage failed to arrive at manchester airport but it finally arrived the next day all in all a wonderful trip i m hugely grateful to everyone at seabourn not only for inviting me but for making it such a great experience posted by martin edwards no comments friday 17 april 2026 forgotten book men for pieces thanks to steve barge who blogs as the puzzle doctor and if you don t know his blog it really is consistently interesting and i recommend it unreservedly and dean street press most of brian flynn s long neglected detective novels are available again at modest prices i ve read several of them and the latest is men for pieces which was the 36th anthony bathurst mystery and first hit the shelves in 1949 the title comes from omar khayyam suggesting that brian flynn was keen on literature however it has to be said that his own writing was unsophisticated he was mostly published by john long whose main market was the libraries and they don t seem to have bothered much with the tedious task of editing i could quote innumerable examples of flynn s clunky prose but perhaps this simple example will suffice senora garcia looked incredulously surprised but even if flynn wasn t in terms of the quality of his prose a good writer he was a pretty good storyteller and more specifically he had a real gift for coming up with interesting ideas for mysteries at the time this book appeared he had been published for almost a quarter of a century and there were times when i felt the padded and ornate style suggested a certain loss of energy a young man who works for a bank goes missing unexpectedly and a young woman who is devoted to him becomes concerned she involves bathurst and he discovers the missing man s body an apparent suicide there s a lot of inconclusive discussion and no shortage of red herrings one of them an enigmatic note a bit irritating but the story really comes alive in the later stages after a slow start the puzzle proves to be unexpectedly ingenious i m not convinced mind you that flynn plays totally fair with the reader in the way that he presents some information especially relating to two key characters good editors make a big difference to their authors for instance i have no doubt that my own writing has benefited from the work of several very good editors over a long period of time brian flynn s writing gives me the impression of an affable man in this book for example there s a very witty reference to a crime writer called charles wogan which happens to be his own pen name and i think he would probably have been receptive had his editor made a serious effort to help him to improve his writing skills ruthless editing of the first two thirds of this book would have improved it for sure nevertheless in all the books of his that i ve read there has at the very least been something of real merit that made me glad that i ve overcome my reservations about his style so i ll be very happy to read more posted by martin edwards 1 comment wednesday 15 april 2026 blood on satan s claw 1971 film review i like horror fiction and films but there s no point in denying that quite a lot of it is well horrible the title of the film blood on satan s claw didn t exactly incentivise me to watch it but then i discovered that mark gatiss whose judgments on popular culture i always find interesting rated it as an important example of folk horror he even ranked it alongside the wicker man a film i have always admired so i decided to give it a go was it trashy or terrific well i can see why there are arguments on both sides but first things first this is a movie that came out before the wicker man but although the two films have one or two common elements including the highly effective use of music i don t think anyone can deny that the anthony shaffer film is much more sophisticated blood on satan s claw was written by a young cambridge graduate robert wynne simmons and originally it took the form of an anthology film with three stories in one the director piers haggard persuaded him to combine the stories into a single tale and this was a sensible idea but the storyline remained somewhat fragmented as a result there s something disjointed about the film a major difference from the wicker man the story is set in the early 18th century a farmer ploughing a field uncovers a deformed skull which mysteriously vanishes shortly afterwards a young woman tamara ustinov goes mad as a result of an encounter with a mysterious creature in the attic of a house where a judge patrick wymark in his last role before his tragically early death is visiting in the local village a young boy is hunted and killed and then his sister suffers a dreadful fate it s clear that a girl called angel played by linda hayden in her customary sexy way is at the heart of the mischief but what exactly is going on this isn t a film for the squeamish and it has exploitative elements as piers haggard later acknowledged which i didn t like what s more it s definitely not strong on subtlety on the other hand the cinematography has been rightly acclaimed the visual presentation of the english landscape lovely yet menacing is impressive and the very unevenness of the storyline contributes to the sense that rural life is unpredictable and disturbing so very far from a masterpiece but a cult curiosity at the very least posted by martin edwards 4 comments monday 13 april 2026 goldeneye 1989 film review goldeneye is the title of a james bond film but before that it was the title of a 1989 biopic the story of bond s creator ian fleming and the first thing to be said is that it has some wonderful ingredients fleming s life the subject of several published biographies was very interesting the cast led by charles dance who is ideally suited to the role of fleming is excellent and the screenwriter reg gadney who has a cameo role in the film as james bond was undoubtedly a good writer gadney is someone i never met but he was a writer of varied accomplishments whose career i ve followed with some interest for many years he wrote well regarded spy novels was a reputable academic and also developed an expertise in art and art history on top of that he was a capable if occasional screenwriter i remember the sculptress which he adapted from minette walters novel with particular admiration and indeed i fancy watching it again before long the trouble is this is a slow moving film episodic and unsatisfactory fleming was whatever his shortcomings a gifted storyteller whose novels always moved at pace so it s weirdly contradictory that a story about his life should plod along as goldeneye does nor do i think that the characterisation of fleming in the script is particularly compelling there s too much about his complex love life but we don t really get under the skin of the man or his motivations a shame because this film brought together a number of talented people the cast includes the excellent phyllis logan and also such interesting actors as marsha fitzalan and richard griffiths adrian edmondson also features in a tiny part i really wanted to enjoy this film but i feel the definitive fleming movie has yet to be made maybe one day posted by martin edwards no comments friday 10 april 2026 forgotten book the silent murders over the course of just five years between 1928 and 1933 a g macdonell the scottish writer best known as author of england their england applied his wit and facility for writing entertaining prose to the detective genre he co wrote one novel the bleston mystery with milward kennedy under the name robert milward kennedy produced six novels as neil gordon and two as john cameron and then he moved on to other things his early death in 1941 at the age of 46 means we ll never know if he would have returned to crime writing perhaps not but his books deserve not to be forgotten the silent murders which dates from 1929 is an example in fact i d rank it as outstanding for its time if it were not for the fact that the clever idea at the heart of the story had been used by another novelist a couple of years earlier whether macdonell simply nicked it or whether the idea was simply in the zeitgeist i don t know either is possible but he makes good use of it and writes his book in such a different and agreeable way that it s definitely worth reading even if you have as i did a pretty good idea of where the story is ultimately heading the book begins with the murder of a tramp tramps were a regular feature of golden age detective fiction and this reflects social issues that aren t so often discussed for some people down on their luck it really wasn t a golden age at all but when someone else is killed and it emerges that there is an inexplicable connection between the two crimes the story begins to take shape the main detective in the story inspector dewar is an appealing character and macdonell hit on a good way of complicating the mystery the tension builds nicely although one question where was the culprit hiding out all the time didn t seem to me to be clearly answered as the book ends rather abruptly almost as if the author had run out of steam so not a masterpiece and not totally original but i really enjoyed it it s a pretty rare book the illustration comes from the excellent hadwebutknown website but that first edition will set you back 225 but deserves rediscovery posted by martin edwards no comments wednesday 8 april 2026 guest post michael ridpath and operation berlin i ve been a fan of michael ridpath s work since before i first met him which in itself is quite a long time ago he s a versatile and interesting writer and i m very glad to feature a guest post from him there comes a point in the middle of my research when it s time to read the times i suppose it would be possible to do this online somehow but that s not the way i like to do it in the basement of the london library in st james s square is the times room large red leather bound copies of the times each heavy each three feet tall line the shelves in cabinets one for each month there are special lecterns upon which you can open them and browse the foreign and colonial news is usually on about page 8 i love it down there my latest novel operation berlin takes place in august and september of 1930 and so i read through copies of the times for each day taking notes of what the berlin correspondent had to say at that time he was an old hand named norman ebbutt but he is never identified in the paper itself there is usually at least one article or maybe two on the goings on in germany each day but i allow myself to be distracted by the advertisements on page 1 for domestic servants and enigmatic personal messages in a rudimentary code by the page long descriptions of the belvoir hunt s outing a couple of days before by the minutiae of cricket scores by batsmen with at least three initials and two hyphenated last names and the advertisements of course for bovril beecham s laxatives imperial airways and the austin seven but back to our berlin correspondent my eye was caught by a short article on 29 august 1930 about a frau amlinger who had thrown herself out of a lufthansa mail plane flying from frankfurt to erfurt she was the wife of a reichswehr cavalry officer captain sepp amlinger who served in the air force during the war and who had died in an aeroplane accident in russia interesting very interesting further investigation on my part paralleled that of the times s correspondent it turned out that captain amlinger was part of a secret contingent of the reichswehr being trained as fighter pilots at a training facility in the soviet union cover ups ensued and a nice little subplot was born now all i need to do is book myself onto an imperial airways flying boat to alexandria for 55 not tempted by the beecham s laxatives though michael ridpath s operation berlin is published by boldwood books on 12 april posted by martin edwards 3 comments monday 6 april 2026 sharp corner 2024 film review stories which focus on characters who experience gradual psychological disintegration are often harrowing but if told well they can be engrossing some of julian symons s best novels such as the narrowing circle and the man who killed himself are good examples sharp corner a newish film based on a short story by the canadian writer russell wangersky is another this is a slow burning film but it s never boring josh ben foster and rachel cobie smulders quite a memorable name are a happily married couple with a young son max whom they adore they move out of the city to a new house and everything seems fine but as josh and rachel celebrate their good fortune by making love in the front room a tyre crashes through the window there has been a fatal car accident on the sharp bend in the road just outside the house one small point i have to make is that the corner that causes all the trouble doesn t actually seem that sharp to me there s a much more terrifying right hand bend in a road close to where i live no matter this tragedy unsettles the family and worse is to follow as it becomes clear the sharp corner is an accident blackspot and more crashes follow josh becomes obsessed with the crashes and his work and personal life suffer so before long does his marriage josh is in many ways a frustrating character and although one sympathises with him at first it becomes increasingly difficult to do so he is not a bad man far from it yet eventually he will do something terrible the end of the film came a bit unexpectedly and i m still not quite sure what i make of it overall though this is a thought provoking film and i was impressed posted by martin edwards no comments friday 3 april 2026 forgotten book sweet danger my copy of margery allingham s sweet danger 1933 is a precious one despite lacking a dust jacket because it s inscribed by the author and her husband pip to a friend it also benefits from endpapers which have a rather splendid map labelled the village of pontisbright where it all happened it s taken me a while to get round to reading it but i was amused to find that the prime villain rejoices in the name savanake so spelled differently from rachel whose name was inspired by henrietta savernake in agatha christie s the hollow the description often applied to sweet danger is romp and that tells you most of what you need to know about the ...