Once upon a time, when I was doing research and teaching, my speciality was uncovering writers and texts that hadn't seen the light of day for a very long time - like the subject of my PhD, for example, the 18th century poet Mark Akenside, hugely famous in his own day and more or less forgotten by the Victorian period. Nowadays I read very widely, but one thing that draws me in time after time is crime - not just any old crime, but something that is intelligent and not too gory. So you can imagine that discovering novels that fulfill both those interests scores pretty high on my list of reading pleasures. And that's just what's been happening over the past few weeks.
First of all it was a couple of reprints from the British Library -- The Cornish Coast Murder and The Lake District Murder, both by John Bude. Never heard of him? Nor had I -- but he was an almost exact contemporary of such luminaries as Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh et al. And very delightful his novels turned out to be. Detectives hurtling around the countryside on motorbikes with sidecars, making sure they got home for their high tea. Very little blood, lots of quiet but very fruitful thinking. And all set in charmingly ordinary bits of some of the most famous areas of the English countryside. Add to that intelligent introductions by the contemporary crime writer Martin Edwards and beautiful covers featuring 1930s travel posters and you have a recipe for some very enjoyable reading plus the satisfaction of discovering somebody new and great.
Then through the post a few days ago came a huge parcel which proved to contain no less than seven novels by Celia Fremlin. 'Britain's equivalent to Patricia Highsmith' says the blurb on the back of the one I'm reading now. Published by Faber Finds, which sets out to recover lost and neglected classics, this is psychological suspense at it finest. Fremlin's first novel was published in 1957 and she went on publishing well into the 1990s, completing nineteen novels in all. Faber is reissuing every one of them over the next few months, and I already know I'm going to want to read them all. According to Natasha Cooper, writing on the Faber website, Fremlin
explores that nightmare country where brain, mind and self battle to establish the truth. She illuminates her dark world with acute perception and great wit.
From what I've read so far, that sounds about right. So you'll be hearing more from me about these exciting reprints over the coming weeks.