An “inverted mystery” is a story that follows a criminal through the planning and commission of a crime–usually murder–from initial conception through the culprit’s ultimate downfall and apprehension (think Law & Order: Criminal Intent). The focus is on the criminal’s mindset and how his dark scheme unravels. Tim Major’s The New Adventure of Sherlock Holmes novel The Back-to-Front Murder is a twist on this subgenre… sort of. Beginning with the classic Sherlockian setup—a client with a curious conundrum—Major’s novel unravels the puzzling murder of a London widower whom it seems no one would have any reason to want dead, least of all Holmes’s new client. The trouble is, the client did plan the murder, down to the very last detail.
Make no mistake, despite the title, this BBC adaptation really is notAgatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence. It is without doubt writer Sarah Phelps’s Ordeal by Innocence, and it stands out as the best of her recent adaptations of Christie’s works. In many ways, the 2018 television series is better than its source material. Phelps is known for adding prurient subtext and graphic imagery to her film versions, efforts that typically seem uncomfortably gratuitous (such as the gore and sado-masochism in The ABC Murders, reviewed here at borg). But in the case of Ordeal by Innocence, the delivery is more even-handed and her departures make the story better. I came into the three-part miniseries immediately after reading Christie’s novel. Published in 1958, Ordeal by Innocence centers around the classic mystery trope of the missing alibi witness, but with a tragic twist.
One lonesome night, scientist Arthur Calgary (played by Attack the Block’s Luke Treadaway) picks up a hitchhiker, and then is unavoidably detained, unaware that his testimony could make or break a murder trial. Jack Argyll (Jacko in the novel, played here by Derry Girls’ Anthony Boyle) has been convicted of the murder of his adopted mother, philanthropist Rachel Argyll, matriarch of a clan of adopted children and assorted other household members. Jack, with his contentious relationship with Rachel and a history of petty crime, seems the ideal suspect for the crime. When Dr. Calgary appears long after the fact to clear Jack’s name, his mission of mercy and justice is met with strange reactions from all involved. It’s almost as if they want brother and son Jack to be guilty.
It’s no secret that here at borg, we’re big fans of Victorian mysteries—from Netflix’s Enola Holmes to Crimson Peak, to my own Myrtle Hardcastle Mystery series, we are always on the lookout for the next great historical whodunnit to share with you. Thanks to our friends at Minotaur Books, we have a new series to recommend. Erin Lindsey’s third “Rose Gallagher” novel, The Silver Shooter, is not only a cracking good Victorian mystery, it’s a paranormal mystery, and set in the Old West, to boot (ahem). Readers are plunged straight into an adventure with Pinkerton Special Department agents Rose Gallagher and Thomas Wiltshire as they take on a case for ranch owner Theodore Roosevelt (yep, that TR!).
We have a cover reveal today for borg readers! Take a look at this great cover by Brett Helquist, artist for A Series of Unfortunate Events and other great covers and picture books. It’s for Elizabeth C. Bunce′s second novel in her Myrtle Hardcastle Mysteries series, How to Get Away with Myrtle. As a result of prioritization by distributors and national shipping companies of food and other staples due to the pandemic crisis response, How to Get Away with Myrtlewill now join the first book in the series, Premeditated Myrtle, to launch together as Fall 2020 releases, debuting October 6 (both are now available for pre-order here at Amazon). “I didn’t think I could love a cover more than Brett’s first for the series, and then… Wow! Here we are with the cover for Book 2 already,” said Elizabeth. “We shared some ideas back and forth through the Algonquin publicity team. I love the complimentary color orange following that purple theme from Book 1. Putting that great locomotive out front sets the stage for this adventure, along with the image of the seaside resort as if it were pulled right off the brochure for the excursion service referenced in the novel. And, of course, Peony the Cat sneaked her way onto the cover again! Now that we have two paintings from Brett, it’s really fun for me to see both covers side by side.”
Screenwriter Sarah Phelps(EastEnders, Dublin Murders) is back with her next project, another adaptation of a well-known Agatha Christie work, a year from release of her first Amazon Studios project, The ABC Murders (reviewed here at borg), which starred John Malkovich and Rupert Grint. The new series is Christie’s creepy tale The Pale Horse, a supernatural mystery from 1961, directed by Leonora Lonsdale (Beast). The series stars Rufus Sewell(The Man in the High Castle, Zen, A Knight’s Tale) as Mark Easterbrook, a man of questionable character whose wife dies in the bathtub at the beginning of the story. Remember his name, because it is included last on a list found in the shoe of another dead woman. Why women are ending up dead found on the list, and why Easterbrook’s name was included, is the key mystery of this two-part series.
As Easterbrook is hounded by the local police led by Sean Pertwee(Gotham, Doctor Who) as Inspector Stanley Lejeune–who is investigating the string of deaths. Easterbrook decides to investigate himself, to beat the inspector to the answer, which takes him to the small town of Much Deeping. Much Deeping has an inn, an inn that is home to three witches, and he figures that somehow they are connected. Easterbrook’s second wife, a key player in the story, is played by Kaya Scodelario (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, The Maze Runner). This is another Christie story of lies, and the lying liars that tell them, with the oddball, quirky twists we saw in both The ABC Murders and Murder on the Orient Express.
Rounding out the cast are familiar genre faces Georgina Campbell(His Dark Materials, Krypton, Broadchurch, Black Mirror) as the first Mrs. Easterbrook and Bertie Carvel(Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Sherlock, Doctor Who) as another man interviewed in relation to the deaths.
A celebrated Agatha Christie supernatural mystery from 1961, The Pale Horse has been adapted into a mini-series, and it’s coming to Amazon next month. The series stars Rufus Sewell(The Man in the High Castle, Zen, A Knight’s Tale) as Mark Easterbrook, the story’s main protagonist, a historian who accompanies a celebrated mystery author named Ariadne Oliver to a small town called Much Deeping (Oliver was based on Christie, but may or may not be a player in the Amazon adaptation). The story’s title comes from the Revelations story from The Bible: “Then I looked and saw a pale horse. Its rider’s name was Death…” In the novel the Pale Horse is the local inn. An inn that houses three witches.
Sean Pertwee(Gotham, Doctor Who) is Inspector Stanley Lejeune, responsible for tracking down a series of murders. He approaches Easterbrook when his name is found on a list hidden in a shoe of one victim. This adaptation comes from Sarah Phelps, who adapted Christie’s The ABC Murders (reviewed here) and Dublin Murders (reviewed here). Easterbrook’s wife, a key player in the story, is played by Kaya Scodelario(Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, The Maze Runner).
Will this adaptation be typical Christie cozy mystery or one of her more over-the-top tales? (The witches are probably a hint). It looks to have some of the flair of Minky Woodcock and The Wicker Man. Take a look at this trailer for Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse:
Acclaimed horror filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock′s first attempt at developing a film from the professional partnership of French writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac was for their 1952 novel She Was No More. He got passed up, but he wouldn’t miss acquiring the rights to their next novel published in 1954–another murder mystery–called D’Entre Les Morts, translated as From Among the Dead, or The Living and the Dead. H.G. Clouzot would direct She Was No More and release it as the filmDiabolique, but Hitchcock would go on to be known best for his adaptation of their work–the film classic Vertigo, labeled for decades by critics as his masterpiece, and even the best movie ever made by anyone. As readers will learn upon returning to the original Boileau and Marcejac novel, later renamed Sueurs froides or Cold Sweat (the French title of Hitchcock’s film), and finally Vertigo in light of the film’s success, screenplay writers Samuel A. Taylor and Alec Coppel significantly modified the novel for the screen.
The novel is a masterful, gritty look at five years in the life of a Frenchman in 1940 Paris, a lawyer traumatized by acrophobia and vertigo after watching a man die falling from a building, later suffering from depression and psychosis after a bundle of life experiences results in a sort of post traumatic stress disorder. As the war comes closer, Flavières is asked by an old college friend to keep tabs on his wife, Madeleine, who he claims has developed a strange fixation on her dead great-grandmother who killed herself at Madeleine’s current age. Flavières does as asked, but soon falls in love with Madeleine. His love turns to obsession, which only gets worse as the story goes on, and he becomes a voyeur, and eventually controlling, possessive, and manipulative. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to imagine actor James “Jimmy” Stewart playing the role of the novel’s protagonist Roger Flavières, so different from Stewart’s character in the film, Scottie Ferguson, a likeable San Francisco lawyer-turned cop.
Flavières follows Madeleine everywhere she goes. As she sits and stares blankly at the gravestone of her great-grandmother, as she visits the dead woman’s apartment, as she drifts about the city in a trance state. Is she possessed by her ancestor’s ghost? This is the lingering question of the husband, of Flavières, and the mystery for the reader until the very end of the story. While observing Madeleine from afar, Flavières watches her dive into the river Seine, and he rescues her, revealing himself, but not disclosing his work for her husband. Her mysterious nature continues until he accompanies her to a church with a bell tower. She runs up the steps, but his vertigo keeps him from following. She screams, and falls to her death. To this point–the midpoint of the novel–the movie is a close adaptation of the novel, except for the setting. But the second half of the novel becomes a different journey for the protagonist than what the movie audience has seen.
We have a cover reveal today for borg readers! Take a look at this great cover by Brett Helquist, artist for A Series of Unfortunate Events and other great covers and picture books. It’s for Elizabeth C. Bunce′s next book, Premeditated Myrtle, now available for pre-order here at Amazon.
As readers over the past decade at borg know, one of our frequent contributors of book and TV reviews is author Elizabeth C. Bunce, whose first novel, A Curse Dark as Gold, I feature here every October as a recommended Halloween read. Next up for Elizabeth is Premeditated Myrtle, the first in a new mystery series in the tradition of Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Miss Fisher, Flavia De Luce, and… Quincy, M.E. I, your humbled editor and Elizabeth’s husband, have been watching Elizabeth build her mystery series from the ground up–the second book has been written and the third and fourth mysteries are underway! I know you’re going to love the adventures of intrepid twelve-year-old Myrtle Hardcastle and her equally intrepid cat Peony (who also made the cover if you look closely).
Myrtle has a passion for justice and a Highly Unconventional obsession with criminal science. Armed with her father’s law books and her mum’s microscope, Myrtle studies toxicology, keeps abreast of the latest developments in crime scene analysis, and Observes her neighbors in the quiet village of Swinburne, England, in the year 1893. When her next-door neighbor, a wealthy spinster and eccentric breeder of rare flowers, dies under Mysterious Circumstances, Myrtle seizes her chance. With her unflappable governess, Miss Ada Judson, by her side, Myrtle takes it upon herself to prove Miss Wodehouse was murdered and find the killer, even if nobody else believes her — not even her father, the town prosecutor.
“Covers are always a surprise for the author—seeing how someone else will envision your characters,” said Elizabeth. “My agent leaked the news that Brett Helquist might be working on Premeditated Myrtle, so I had to pretend for months that I didn’t know! I knew his work, of course, but what really sold me were his illustrations for A Christmas Carol. There are no ghosts in my Victorian mystery, but Brett did an amazing job capturing Myrtle’s determined energy—and even more importantly, Peony the cat! We went back and forth on a couple of sketches for hair and clothing, but what never changed was Myrtle’s perfect expression. The scene he chose to illustrate was one of my favorites to write, so it’s been great fun watching it come to life in full color.”
One hundred years ago today, March 9, 1918, mystery writer Mickey Spillane was born. To celebrate his centenary crime novelist Max Allan Collins finalized two of Spillane’s unpublished works, and they will be published later this month for the first time together in one volume as The Last Stand. Spillane was a mentor and friend of Collins, a crime novelist in his own right, most recently known for his Quarry novels, adapted into a Cinemax TV series. Collins put the final touches on both a “lost” 1950s classic Spillane crime story novella with an appropriately two-fisted title, A Bullet for Satisfaction, and Spillane’s final unpublished novel from 2006, The Last Stand, a contemporary adventure tale set on a Native American reservation. Collins includes a detailed introduction to the new volume recounting Spillane’s influence on the post-World War II paperback surge, on crime novels, and on films and books being made to this day derived from his legendary investigator Mike Hammer, including James Bond, John Shaft, Dirty Harry Callahan, Billy Jack, Jack Bauer, and Jack Reacher.
Two tough men: One like you’d expect in a Spillane crime novel, a cop who is too tough for his own good and gets thrown off the force, fighting his way back. The other, a seasoned pilot, someone out of a Louis L’Amour novel who lands in the middle of an Indiana Jones story, complete with the search for ancient artifacts and the guts to fight the toughest guy in town.
A Bullet for Satisfaction, from Spillane’s earlier years, is exactly what you want from a crime mystery, a dreary town with corrupt politicians, mob thugs, a few damsels in distress, and plenty of knives and guns and punches. Ed McBain, James M. Cain, Erle Stanley Gardner, Donald E. Westlake–if you’ve read any of these authors, you’ll want to delve into Spillane’s works, and Satisfaction is a good start. The Last Stand couldn’t be more different than Satisfaction. It begins with an airplane crash and a pilot of vintage planes named Joe Gillian, marooned in the desert with a few candy bars and some cans of beer. A set-in-his-ways ex-military pilot, he finds himself rescued in the desert and soon becomes blood-brother with Sequoia Pete, who takes him to his reservation. As a treasure hunt ensues with global implications, a local thug jealous of Joe marks him for death. Joe doesn’t seem to be in a big hurry to get out of town as the FBI drop in, seemingly to keep the peace, but a lot more is going on out in this tiny desert village. The Last Stand is heavy on banter between Pete and Joe–the relationship is very close to the sheriff and the Native American deputy inHell or High Water, but “White-Eyes” Joe is not remotely as bigoted and unlikeable as Jeff Bridge’s sheriff in that movie.
