Frankie's Letter

I had some great news yesterday.  Severn House are going to publish my First World War spy story, Frankie’s Letter. So that was two bottles of champagne and some pretty hearty celebrating chez Gordon-Smith.

Incidentally, the first chapter’s on the Books page of the website, if you’d like a preview.

Frankie’s Letter was a real labour of love.  First and foremost a spy thriller, yes, and, I hope, a cracking good story, but also the result of a ridiculous amount of thought and research about the First World War.  For instance, I was lucky enough to attend a two-day conference at the University of Birmingham run by Professor Gary Sheffield, one of the foremost historians of WW1, and, over an absorbing couple of days, got some real historical insights that were reflected in the book.

One point I did want to make (and this fitted very nicely with the story) was that the people who actually fought the war didn’t think it was a futile struggle. They thought it was an essential fight for survival that couldn’t be avoided, anymore than the Second World War could have been sidestepped.  After the war was over, you’d expect, wouldn’t you, to have a flood of memoirs and war-based fiction.  In fact, there was a curious silence for about ten years.  Oddly enough, the same thing happened with the Americans and Vietnam.  That also took about ten years for the floodgates of war memoirs to open.

Maybe that length of time is needed to put such a massive event in perspective.  Anyway, ten years on from 1918 brings us very neatly to the start of the Great Depression and, as the Thirties progressed, it isn’t surprising, in view of the horrific casualties, that people wondered what it had all been for.  We’re still influenced by that view, but if you want to find out what it really was all for, I can heartily recommend Richard Holmes’ books Tommy and The Western Front, Gordon Corrigan’s Mud, Blood and Poppycock and Gary Sheffield’s Forgotten Victory.

E Book, anyone?

Have you got a Kindle or e-reader?  The reason I’m asking is that Off The Record, Jack’s fifth adventure was published as an e-book on 1^st July.  Here’s a picture of Jack looking all suave on the cover.  I wish this was Harry Potter land (I wish it was anyway!) because then the cover would move and show Jack doing all sorts of exciting things, like jumping off roofs, tackling villains, dodging bullets and thinking furiously.  I’m not sure how you depict someone thinking furiously, as a matter of fact.  Rodin, of course, sculpted The Thinker in the nude (maybe he’d just got out of the bath) and Sherlock Holmes always put on a dressing-gown to think, but Jack remains fully clothed with his brain buzzing.

Anyway, Off The Record got a cracking review from the Historical Novels Society.  I’m not sure about the use of the word MacGuffin because, as I understand it, it was a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock to describe a fairly arbitrary object that the characters in a film charge round after, such as the diamond necklace or the secret cipher.  It’s desperately important but doesn’t, in itself change things.  Now I made my brain fizz with the all-singing, all-dancing recording machine in the book.  I’ve invented strings of fabulous emeralds without any bother, but I had to work at this ruddy gramophone!  I even (yes, I know, this is verging on the obsessive!) built myself a cat’s whiskers wireless just to see if I could.  Anyway, these are mere straws and I won’t pick them, so to speak with a really great review.  E book anyone?

Historical Novels Review, published by the Historical Novel Society (USA and UK) Issue 56, May 2011

Off The Record was Editor’s Choice

Recording tape and gramophones probably don’t sound like promising grounds for a novel, but in Off The Record the technology is the MacGuffin for a splendid mystery, a story so deftly put together I read it a second time to see how it worked.

The setting is 1920’s England.  The First World War still haunts people who are now enduring the fading of the British Empire, the crumbling of social tradition.

In the village of Stoke Horam, opinionated baronial Charles Otterbourne has a gramophone factory.  Nutty genius Alan Carrington comes to him with a revolutionary new idea for recording sound.  They meet but don’t mesh.  Soon bodies are showing up all over the place and detective story writer, Jack Haldean, who has captained several other novels by Gordon-Smith, comes in to make sense of it all.

Gordon-Smith’s writing is quick and sure; her characters emerge as real people within a few lines. The period dialog is especially good, colloquial with affectation and the historical detail, unobtrusive and precise, coveys a beautiful sense of the time before instant communication collapsed all our lives into a single moment.

Rereading the novel was a thorough pleasure.  The plot is seamlessly assembled; Gordon-Smith, a devotee of Agatha Christie, puts the truth always there in front of you, manipulating emphasis and expectations to keep it all a surprise.  The solution to the mystery, incorporating the technology that started everything off, ties up the whole story in a single satisfying knot.  Off The Record should appeal equally to lovers of historical fiction and detective novels and doubly to fans of both.

Cecelia Holland

The Goldfish from Glasgow - Part Two: The Tank Of Doom

This is a true story and it happened about three weeks ago chez Gordon-Smith.

It was like a scene from CSI or Bones or – if you follow me – like Cluedo.  The scene was the Conservatory, there were four dead bodies in a lavishly-appointed and, as the estate agents say, a highly desirable residence, there was no visible cause of death, no signs of violence, only these poor mortal remains.  Only one remained alive and he, one would think, would be the obvious suspect.  However…

Hang on.   Before anyone wonders why this Tale of Horror hasn’t been all over the newspapers, perhaps I should mention the four bodies in question were guppies, jolly little tropical fish who had, for reasons which were unclear, made the Great Change.

The cats were guiltless.  It’s not that they hadn’t been interested, you understand, but the glass lid baffled them.  It wasn’t, as The Other Half, postulated, extreme heat, caused by my wanton buying of a heater and whacking it up to full temperature. No, the thermometer showed the temperature to be just fine.   So what the dickens was it?

As I said last week, I’d slipped into Guppiedom by accident, as it were.  Now I went looking on the internet and found my preparations of a heated tank, a filter, plants and a bottle of Tapsafe to de-chlorinate the water were all very well, but not enough.  What had seen off the finny denizens was the chemical imbalance of the water.  Under the reproachful eye of the last remaining guppie, a little orange chap called Carrot, I hastened to correct my mistake.

I lovingly tended the water in the tank with an aquarium start-up kit. It’s pleasantly scientific to faff around with vials and pipettes and take water samples and add other chemicals to see how its all doing.  It takes about twenty days or so, and all the time, Carrot, the great survivor, hung on in there.

The Book (the leaflet that came with the start-up kit) said to add Zebra Danios and Harlequins, hardy little tykes that can take a bit of chemical imbalance and help the process along.  So in went three stripy Zebras, Spot (natch) Crossing and Serengeti, with the two Harlequins, Easter and Evans.  (Named after the Harlequin Rugby players by Lucy.)  And Carrot, despite the fact he should have been dead, continued to flourish.  Mind you, the Zebras confused Carrot.  He wanted to swim along, to shoal out with his mates, but Zebras don’t swim like guppies.  He tried, bless him, but went off sulking in the waterweed.  The poor thing obviously was having an identity crisis.

Came the great day.  The water in the test vials was clear; the tank was now chemically balanced and – thank goodness – I wouldn’t have to subject Poor Carrot to a course of Freudian analysis but could simply Add More Guppies.

I picked Jenny up from college that evening.  After chit-chat about the day, I said brightly, “I’ve bought five guppies.”

She looked at me in stark horror.  “Mum,” she said, in a sort of death-rattle whisper, “How could you?  Whatever will Dad say?  He’ll go mental!”

“Your Dad’s fine,” I said, puzzled.

“You’ve told him!!!”

“Yeah, I spoke to him earlier on the phone.”  She continued to look worried to death. “There isn’t a problem.  He doesn’t mind.”

She continued, as they say in old-fashioned fiction, to search my face, then understanding dawned.  “Hang on. You didn’t say puppies, did you?”

The Goldfish From Glasgow

It was Elspeth who started it.  When she rang up from Glasgow to say she’d bought two goldfish (CJ and Marylyn) I chirruped happily down the phone to her about goldfish.   We’d had goldfish some time ago.  Lazarus, who changed his name after I brought him back from the dead by giving him the kiss of life (you blow air through a straw over the finny friend’s gills) and Warty Pete, who lived up to his name (he could have been an extra on Blackadder) who lived a long, long time.

So Elspeth = 2 goldfish = Fine.  Until she wanted to bring them home for the holidays.  We’d long since got rid of the watery home that contained Lazarus and Warty Pete.  No problem, I said.  We’ll buy a new tank.

The expense? said The Other Half.

Sorted, I assured him. We’ll buy a cheap plastic tank.  Don’t worry.

So the kids and I went shopping.

Well, you know how it is.  Once actually in the shop (and I’m a bit of pushover for this sort of thing anyway) the My First Fishtank and the one with Spongebob Squarepants decals seemed a bit naff compared to an elegant glass cube, complete with LED lights and a combined air pump and filter. And once we’d got it home, filled it with gravel and planted it up, it looked lovely.  If Barbara Hepworth had designed fishtanks, they’d look like this. It was, I have to admit, just a tadge more expensive than I’d bargained for.

There were grumbles within the Home.

Especially when, struck by just how nice it did look, my mind turned to tropical fish.  Before the Warty Pete era, we’d kept tropical fish. I can’t say they ever did frightfully well, as they seemed to drop dead with grim regularity, but, before they made the great change, they did look nice.  Maybe this time it would be different???  After all, it was so posh,  it seemed a bit elaborate for a holiday home for two visiting goldfish.

So I added a heater to the elegant glass cube and popped in five guppies.

What about the expense? said The Other Half.  What about the goldfish?

Sorted, I assured him. We’ll buy a cheap plastic tank.  Don’t worry.

So that’s what I did (that’s what, perhaps, I should have done in the first place, I know)  adding, to turn a bog-standard B+B for goldfish into something more resembling a luxury holiday let, a pump and filter, some plants and a little arch for them to swim through.  CJ and Marylyn are, even as I write, disporting themselves happily on the windowsill of the kitchen.

But what about the guppies in their elegant cube? Fate had slipped the lead into the boxing glove and was waiting in the wings…

TO BE CONTINUED….

Sherlock Holmes and the Viking's Dilemma

I had looked into Baker Street to update my website, www.mymatesbrighterthanme.com when I found a laughable misunderstanding had arisen.  Mrs Hudson, mounted on a penny-farthing bicycle, was cycling round and round our room while Holmes, in a state of some perturbation, was attempting to make her desist by loading the contents of a box of boxer cartridges into his hair-trigger revolver and taking pot-shots at her as she whirled past.

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “Why is our worthy landlady biking round the room?”

“Because she is a little deaf,” he explained, stepping to one side as Mrs Hudson whirled past.  “I said, “Admit the VIKING, not, “Do a bit of BIKING!”

He loosed off another round of bullets and this time a shot went home.

Mrs Hudson, leaving the remains of the mangled bike behind, leapt lightly from the saddle.  “Very good, Mr Holmes,” she said and, laughing heartily at her own mistake, scurried from the room to return seconds later with a magnificent yellow-bearded, yellow-haired man, dressed in leather and swinging a huge hammer.

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “You astound me!  How did you know this man was a Viking?  What little clue, what subtle indication, what almost imperceptible fact led you to that conclusion?”

“The fact he is wearing a helmet with bulls’ horns,” said Holmes.

I was amazed at his perspicacity.

“Now, sir!” said Holmes, addressing our guest.  “In what way can I be of assistance?”

The Viking kicked the remnants of the penny-farthing out of the way and sank down upon the ottoman, his face a frenzied mask of worry.

“Mr Holmes, you are my only hope!  My only remaining relative in the whole world is my aged Aunt, who I love dearly.  Crippled, infirm and with her sight failing, she waits for me at my little home, Dunpillaging, across the wild, tempestuous sea.  Her one desire, Mr Holmes, is to own a beautiful stainless steel sink.  And can I find one? No.  My life is bitter indeed when I think of how she yearns for a beautiful stainless steel sink and how crushed with sorrow she will be when I have to Confess All and return empty-handed, feasting on the acid fruit of failure.  Which will be,” he added, “about all I’ll get to eat when she realises she hasn’t got what she wants.”

“She’ll have a sinking feeling?” I suggested.

Holmes idly hit me over the head with a violin to curtail my levity.  As I emerged from the wreckage, I felt I had struck the wrong note.  Several wrong notes, in fact.

“You say your Aunt is crippled?” said Holmes, his sympathies keenly engaged.

“Yes.”

“Infirm?”

“Yes.”

“With failing sight?”

“Yes.”

A rare smile crossed Holmes’ finely chiselled features.  “Fear not! The solution is elementary.”

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I exclaimed.  “You astound me!  What solution can there possibly be to this poor wanderer’s abstruse problem?”

For an answer, my friend picked up a builder’s hod which was lying, together with other bits and pieces, such as a speckled band, five orange pips, a blue carbuncle and a beryl coronet on the mantelpiece.  “Give this to your Aunt,” he said, pressing the hod into the Viking’s eager hands.  “This is the object of her desires, this is all she craves.  After all,” he added as our visitor got up to leave, “a hod is as good as a sink to a blind Norse.”

Crimefest

This time last week I was living in the lap of luxury, eating an enormous four star breakfast in a four star hotel surrounded by people who wanted to talk about writing.  This week I’ve just had my usual two pieces of toast with Marmite, one of my titchy little tropical fish has died, Lucy is glued to the TV watching rugby and I’ve got to do the ironing.

This is called real life.  (*Sigh*)

Last week was, of course, one of the highlights of the year, the annual Crimefest held at the Bristol Marriot Hotel.  It’s the fourth time I’ve been to Crimefest and it just keeps getting better and better.  The best thing about it, from my point of view, is being able to talk about books and writing from a standing start.  Usually you have to edge into these conversations, but here they just happen.

John Curran, for example, who’s edited the monumental Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, a labour of love if there ever was one, will chat quite happily about the Queen of Crime and gave a fascinating short talk on Golden Age writers.  Deryn Lake recounted any historical writer’s dream job, where she was asked to research the history of Rawlings and found John Rawlings, her apothecary hero, in an 18^th Century newspaper.

This is in addition to catching up at length with old friends such as Suzette Hill, Jane Finnis, Rebecca Jenkins and Lyndon Stacey and, I’m glad to say, others such as Jennifer  Palmer and Frances Brody.

I suppose one of the biggest stars was Stella Rimington, ex-head of MI5.  I was lucky enough to be on a panel with Stella Rimington.  She, of course, writes the Liz Carlyle books (highly recommended) which give a real insiders’ account which certainly sounds plausible of how the Intelligence Services conduct an operation. As the Liz Carlyle books are, of course, fiction, she’s able to add the reasons why people do what they do and it’s a great mix.

Another real pleasure was meeting Carola Dunn.  Carola, the author of the much-loved Daisy Dalrymple series, has lived in America for many years but is (as her accent immediately reveals) English.  As we both write mysteries set in the 1920s, it was fascinating to compare notes.  I have her new book, Anthem For Doomed Youth, on my to-be-read pile.

Perhaps the nicest thing about Crimefest is the complete lack of them-and-us-ism.  I’ve come across this at other events, where some guests are treated like VIP’s and the rest of us are merely invited to marvel.  I’m not quite sure why this doesn’t happen at Crimefest, but it doesn’t.  It’s a terrifically friendly atmosphere, aided by excellent organisation in a very friendly hotel.

Now I suppose I’d better do the ironing!

The Last Post

The last veteran of World War One, Claude Choules, died this week at the grand old age of 111.  It’s very strange to feel that our last living link to the war has gone.  I was born 12 years after the end of the Second World War and, throughout all of my childhood, “The War” – there was only one – was always there.  (When I read Gone With The Wind many years later the constant references to “Before the war” struck a very familiar chord.)

The influence of Second World War was so persuasive that it was only by logical deduction I knew (this is as a kid, remember) that there must have been a first war for there to have been a second.  I came across my Grandfather’s medals in a long-unopened drawer and my mother reacted with a shuddering horror.  The first world war was a sort of “naughty” war, the one we didn’t speak about, so naturally, that was the one I was interested in!

Incidentally, my mother’s reaction was a classic case of distrusting remembered experience. By her account, my granddad, who together with a approximately 100,000 other Britons, volunteered as soon as war was declared, was stuck in a muddy trench for four years with no training, hardly any food, and no respite while idiotic generals blindly sent wave after wave of trusting Tommies off to die.  There wasn’t any point to the war which had been declared because of the incompetence, stupidity and sheer heartlessness of the upper classes.

That is, of course, a total myth.  The German Army of 1914 was very large, very well trained and very well equipped.  The German war aim was total domination of Europe.  The absolutely chilling plans, as detailed by the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg in September 1914, envisaged the whole of Europe as a puppet state.  Any neutral country would be allowed a figure-head of a leader but would be under German economic control.  France would be “Forced to her knees” which meant, with free access to the Channel ports, the Germans could “Impose their will on England”.

This was a very real threat.  The Germans could have won and for a long time it seemed very likely they would do just that.  They’d had a long time to prepare for the war, while Britain managed a huge Empire with a tiny army that was more akin to a police force. (Hitler could never understand how the British managed it.)  That tiny army had to expand (Hi, Granddad!) be equipped, meet, fight and defeat the enemy in France.  After all, the Germans had invaded France and Belgium and weren’t shifting unless forcibly removed.

In the end, Britain and the Allies won a stunning victory, but the human cost was frightful.  In the Depression of the Thirties, when the homes fit for heroes had failed to  materialize, “Before the war” was seen as a golden age.  What had the war been for?  No one was any better off as a result.  It had all been, so the myth ran, pointless…

But it wasn’t.  Thanks to men like Claude Choules, my granddad and thousands like them, we lived – freely – to fight another day.  Rest in peace.