The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton

 The Slaves of Solitude is one of Hamilton's key novels, alongside Hangover Square and Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky.   Published in 1947, it is set three or four years later, after America has joined the war but before D-Day.   The London Blitz has forced Edna Roache and thousands out of the capital but, in her case, only as far Henley-on-Thames or, as Hamilton calls it, Thames Lockdon.   Always a renter or lodger, she finds refuge Rosamund Tea Rooms, which has become a boarding house for the duration.  There, she shares with the old, the fading, the spinsters like herself.   A former schoolmistress, Roach is currently a publisher's reader, and so long as she commutes daily she is content.   But when her employer says she can work from home, the problems of communal living, the daily grind of despondency, becomes overwhelming.

To start with, things are looking up.   Edna has a friend, the ex-pat German, Vicki Kugelmann.   She even has an admirer, Lieutenant Pike, an American GI.   She also has an enemy of sorts, the bombastic bachelor Mr Thwaites, whose whims and eccentricities dominate at the Tea Rooms.   Then Vicki moves in and slowly takes over.   She charms Mr Thwaites, catches the eye of Lieutenant Pike, slowly but surely excluding Miss Roach.

The title is not only catchy, it is accurate.   War and its retrictions has transformed a whole class of people from active participants in society to passive slaves of solitude.  For such people it is not a case of cheer up and carry on; all they can do is endure.   For Roach everything changes when she challenges the convention and stands up for herself.    Then she is able to escape, returns to London, and comes back to life.   At the end of the day The Slaves of Solitude is a comic novel, and an excellent example of what a comic novel can do.

Through a Glass Darkly - Nigel Jones

Through a Glass Darkly is the life of Patrick Hamilton.  Patrick Hamilton was a hugely successful author from the get-go, achieving bestseller status while still in his twenties.  He was even more successful as a playwright.  His stage thrillers Rope and Gaslight are still staples of commercial theatre around the world and both made famous movies.

But for all his success Hamilton's life was essentially tragic.  He was horribly injured in a road accident in January 1932 shortly after a controversial broadcast of Rope on the BBC.  He suffered extensive injuries and had to undergo early plastic surgery to repair the damage to his face.  He was 27 years old and was never entirely free of pain thereafter.  He drank to numb the pain - or perhaps he inherited the trait from his truly repellent father; in any event he was soon an alcoholic and drink finally did for him thirty years later.  He married twice but had sexual hang ups, including bondage, which led him to use prostitutes.  Yet he still turned out successful novels almost to the end of his life.  The plays alone would have been enough to sustain him, had it not been for his expensive distractions.

Nigel Jones is a skilled biographer of literary figures - his biography of Rupert Brooke was reviewed on this blog about six months ago.  Of the two, I actually prefer this.  Hamilton's sister-in-law gave him access to material never seen before, and Jones's descriptions and analyses of the books and plays add to the enjoyment.  I enjoyed Hangover Square when I was 19 and now I want to read it again.

True Bride - Thomas Altman

Thomas Altman was a pen-name of Campbell Armstrong Black (1944-2013), who wrote loads of bestselling thrillers and who is now largely forgotten. He wrote specifically so that he didn't have to endure a 'proper' job but is a much better writer than the motivation might suggest. He was, as his real name suggests, a Glasgow boy from Govan. You would never in a million years guess it from The True Bride (1982), which is entirely set in Arizona.

Ellen is heavily pregnant. She has only recently moved to Arizona for her husband's work, and yet her wealthy mother lives fairly close by. Ellen's mother is wealthy but Ellen lives in some sort of ghastly apartment compound. She has only one friend, Vicky, who is the realtor who sold Ellen and Eric the accommodation. Ellen is fat, unhappy, lonely, scared, as you might expect of a first-time mother. But things turn decidedly weird. Someone steals her best blue blouse and shreds it. Someone takes library books from her car. Someone, presumably the same someone, decapitates a vintage doll and sticks the body in a hole slashed in Ellen's mattress. A woman rings, ostensibly from Eric's workplace, to say he's been taken ill. She dashes into town - only to find the office deserted. In Eric's desk she finds a prescription for lithium.

Here, in short, we have a psychological thriller. True gaslighting in the Patrick Hamilton tradition (the biography of whom arrived, coincidentally, in the mail this morning). Is Ellen losing it or someone really stalking her? Is Eric up to no good? Does someone intend harm to her baby?

Altman displays a tremendous capacity for plotting and structure and keeps us guessing to the end. For me, the revelations along the way seemed perfectly placed. I'd suddenly figure something out and then, instantly, Altman confirmed it in the text. In fact, of course, he'd led me by the nose to an inevitable conclusion. From the prologue onwards - a brilliant hook, by the way - we are taken inside the villain's mind. Again, this is beautifully done. We think it might be Ellen but, if it isn't, there is nothing to give the game away other than 'this person is clearly unhinged'.

The only defect - and I suspect this might be why Altman isn't on everyone's reading list - is that he sacrifices character to plot. His characterisation is not hopeless - you can tell everyone apart and they all have suitable speech patterns so you know who's speaking without needing flags - but there just isn't enough of it. Ellen's mother, for example, is characterised more by her walking frame than by whatever caused her to need it. Eric is a do-gooder, Vicky a home-wrecker, the girl in the apartment complex a complete airhead. The problem is particularly acute with Ellen herself. She is having such a bad pregnancy that half the audience is going to skip those parts. The odd good day, the occasional daydream about the future, would have made all of us care that bit more.

Ellen and Eric's last name, incidentally, is Campbell. Get it?

Famous Trials 6 - James H Hodge (ed)

Another in the endlessly fascinating series, this time comprising four cases, the Regency lowlifes Thurtell and Hunt, the appalling Nodder (the one with the Hitler 'tash on the cover), IRA bomber Peter Barnes, and the so-called vampire John George Haigh.

The Thurtell case is only really of interested to those of us interested in the Regency underworld, a sordid falling out among thieves, notably chiefly for the peripheral involvement of Pierce Egan.  I've been reading the book piecemeal over the last few weeks and, to be honest, can't remember how Hunt was involved.  The case of Frederick Nodder (1937) is an early example of a murdering paedophile, revolting as all such cases inevitably are.

The collection starts to come alive with the case of Barnes, who was  one of those behind the Coventry outrage of August 1939.  Coming just a week before the declaration of World War II the incident is forgotten now but was particularly nasty.  Someone, who was never discovered, left a bomb on a bike by Broadgate, smack in the city centre, round where Primark now stands.  Five people were killed and score injured, twelve grievously. Letitia Fairfield provides a useful background to the IRA campaign on the mainland between the establishment of the Free State and independence.

Haigh, though, is the star of the show, a smalltime crook straight out of the works of Patrick Hamilton.  Haigh, of course, is the acid bath murderer, who dissolved his victims in a Croydon lock-up.  He tried to save himself from the noose by claiming to be a vampire when in reality his motive was purely monetary.  Not much of a schemer, he rather gave the game away by asking one of the interviewing detectives whether anyone was ever released from Broadmoor.

As always, great fun for fans of the true-crime genre.

The Crust on its Uppers - Derek Raymond

Patrick Hamilton meets Anthony Burgess and goes on a John Buchan-esque escapade across Europe - this 1962 one-off has to figure on any worthwhile list of 20th Century British classics.  There really is nothing like it, narrated in u first-person underworld cant by an unnamed toff-gone-bad.  How much is autobiographical?  Quite a bit - Raymond was himself privately educated, descended from wealth, and utterly debased, so much so that The Crust on its Uppers was originally published under his real name, Robin Cook.  Only his later books, notably the 'Factory' series, were pseudonymous because the world had become full of Robin Cooks (formulaic thriller writer, Labour politician etc).  The Factory novels are definitely on my must-acquire list.

If you like crime, if you like Augustan literature (I'm thinking Defoe and Fielding), if you are fascinated by social and cultural change in the era of the Angry Young Men, then I urge you to READ THIS BOOK!

Too Much of Water - Bruce Hamilton

Bruce Hamilton (1900-1974) was the older brother and biographer of the much better known Patrick (Rope, Gaslight, Hangover Square etc).  Bruce was a prolific writer of crime thrillers and a long-serving educationalist in Barbados (for which he was honoured in 1964).  Frankly, I'd never heard of him and was attracted to this book by its eye-popping cover - but I know of him now and definitely want to get to know more of his work.

Too Much Water is set aboard a small passenger ship bound for the West Indies.  Hamilton is very good at portraying his world - this is 1957-8 and therefore includes passing mention of Suez - so when he depicts a distinguished black teacher and a white planter you can be sure that the way he sees them is the way they were regarded in their world by their contemporaries.

Other facets of Hamilton's writing are more startling - a pivotal character is called Rottentosser (yes, Rottentosser!) and there is a snippet of dialogue to assure doubters that it is indeed pronounced Rottentosser.  The protagonist, Edgar Cantrell, is a middle-ranking conductor of classical music and his friend (but not his Watson) is a woman-chasing counter-tenor.

The multiple murders seem random.  Obviously they aren't, but I didn't figure out who did it or why before Cantrell told me, and there was a cunning twist or two even after the killer stood revealed.  The plotting is masterly, the writing tone light but not inappropriately facetious.  Absolutely a forgotten classic of its genre.