Recently Read Wednesday

[john_amend_all]

It's still Wednesday? Just about.

John Dickson Carr, The Plague Court Murders (as Carter Dickson)

This is, apparently, the first Sir Henry Merrivale mystery. As in the other book with Sir Henry, he only shows up in the second half, the initial portion dealing with the first-person narrator's experience of the murder. The mystery is one of Carr's standard fiendish locked-room murders, the victim having apparently been stabbed in the back by a 17th century ghost. While in a stone outhouse, locked from the inside and outside, which in turn is surrounded by a muddy courtyard with no footprints. And there's a police inspector as witness.

This book uses another of Carr's characteristic patterns: the detectives constantly getting interrupted with the next piece of evidence before they have time to set the last one fully in place. Any time Sir Henry is about to explain what's going on, an urgent telephone call sends the group off after another clue or red herring. I didn't guess who did it, though I did spot one element that was essential to the murderer's schemes.

John Dickson Carr, The Waxworks Murder

Like The Plague Court Murders, this lays on the atmosphere with a trowel. With TPCM it was supernatural evil and decay; here, it's Grand Guignol in Paris. Featuring a sinister, green-lit waxworks, a hedonistic secret nightclub where the rich and powerful attend wearing masks, the better to have clandestine assignations, and the sort of villain who strokes a white cat as he politely pretends to the detective not to know anything about the aforementioned locations. It has the same sort of feel as It Walks By Night, the other one of the Henri Bencolin mysteries I've read.

The stand-out character here for me was Marie Augustin, the waxworks proprietor's daughter who knows more than she should. It's difficult to go into a lot of detail without spoilers, but I can reveal she's the one who finds the murder weapon and is justifiably scathing about the police not having got to it first.

John Burke, The Power Game, A fascinating novel of the ATV Television Series

thisbluespirit's mentioned the parent TV series enough times that when I saw this book in a second-hand shop, I picked it up. It novelises three episodes, the first and last being presumably the first and last episodes of the series, and then one in the middle. It gives me an idea of Sir John Wilder and the Blighs, at least, though other characters (such as Lady Wilder) don't appear in the episodes that the novelisation picked.

Exactly how the interplay of politics and infrastructure it describes might be echoed today, I wouldn't like to comment, though the fates of projects like the Garden Bridge and the Croxley Rail Link suggest that if anything, Sir John would be an improvement on whoever's doing the same thing today.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, no not the dreaded TV tie-in! I shudder to think what sins it committed, even aside from omitting Pamela, which is a fairly big omission (I didn't even think there were three episodes in any given series she wasn't in.) Which means it's probably S1 (they'd have known how popular she was after that) and if so it can't be eps 1 and 13, as she's in those, or certainly episode 1, and it would be weird for Barbara Murray to be out of the big finale, which in S1's case also heavily involved Susan Weldon. (S2 is the big Bligh showdown, which would be a terrible waste to get in mere tie-in version.) So, spill: plots, which ones did it go for? Did it have the Exports Board in? (And if so, Colin or thingy?)

that if anything, Sir John would be an improvement on whoever's doing the same thing today.

He does, er, get stuff done, you can at least say that for him!

[john_amend_all]

OK. Here's my best summary of the plots.

Part 1 ('Various Gambits'): We're introduced to the characters through the viewpoint of a man named Hartley, who has been instructed to investigate John Wilder's relationship with Sue Weldon, and whether Wilder is using underhand methods to win a contract for a hydroelectric dam in Africa (he is, but not the underhand methods that Hartley suspects). At this point, the Secretary of the Exports Board is Townley.
Part 2 ('The Knight Fork'): Caswell Bligh is using a front company to get construction equipment into Africa that isn't supposed to be there. The Exports Board (now led by Gillingham and Kemp) find out and try to force his resignation, but the Minister refuses to accept it.
Part 3 ('The End Game'): Gillingham and Kemp plan to enlarge the Exports Board and force Wilder to resign. Scooping up Sue Weldon and sundry others, they head off to Gillingham's country house to put their plot into effect. They do manage to get Wilder to resign, but he promptly leaks the story to the press and the Minister is obliged to give him a six-month secondment in Brussels.

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! Then it's definitely S1 and part 1 sounds like Ep5 Point of Balance & 3 is the finale, Confound Their Politics. I'm not as sure about #2 because Caswell is up to no good with construction in Africa doesn't narrow it down that much, but I think it might be Ep11 Trade Secrets, which is at the end I haven't rewatched so much because of sad lack of James Maxwell. (Pamela wasn't in PoB and Trade Secrets, but she was in Confound Their Politics, so the writer just cut her out. The rotter.)

I wondered if, tie-ins often being written from scripts before filming if it might still have Colin Townley in the whole way through (which I am pretty sure must have been the intention before James Maxwell ungratefully went off to the BBC to be burninated as Claude Frollo) but I'm foiled again! Thanks, though.

(Btw, someone has the whole of S1-2 up here, given that the book missed out the actual best bit (Pamela) anyway! (It's really good, honest!!) (They've also got S3, but for some reason only up to the appalling two-parter (5&6) that is best skipped over. Maybe they were so appalled they stopped.)

[john_amend_all]

#2 is also the one where Susan wants to get snuggly but all Wilder can talk about is pressure grouting. But I expect that happens a lot too :-)

If you'd like to see the book at some point, let me know.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! I think, with those questions answered, I can live in peace without seeing how much more disturbing my fave 60s shows are when some random person novelises them! (Er, commiserations?)

Unless it explains what the Wilders did with the son they apparently lost somewhere between The Planemakers and The Power Game? ;-p

[john_amend_all]

As I recall, the book's silent on that topic. I know in the DW fandom we're used to authors using novelisations to explain away discrepancies in the source series, but it doesn't seem that John Burke was that way inclined.

[thisbluespirit]

I don't think most novelisers were, really! The only bonus you sometimes get is if they've swallowed what passed for the show's bible, but most of the time they don't seem to care and you can't even tell if any other info is a flight of fantasy or actual info.

(The Public Eye one didn't even know Mrs Mortimer's real first name, and the Frontier one kept insisting that James Maxwell's character was so despicable he was Very Short (as despicable people are, I suppose, along with having my particular shade of blue eyes - so, really trust nothing I say!), so they clearly didn't look too hard at the cast list either, let alone anything else. The Enemy at the Door one was disturbing, but at least supplied some character info that I think must be genuine show background, because it fitted too well into what was said on screen but not elaborated on not to be.)

[john_amend_all]

Of course, Who has its own share of novelisers who make weird changes — thus we get such phenomena as Blonde Victoria (and I think there's another one where Jamie's ginger, because of course all Scotsmen are).