Volume 40, No. 4, Winter 2024
Buy this back issue! Available in hardcopy or as a downloadable PDF.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTICLES
- From Londinium to London: A City with a Criminal History by Alan Cassady-Bishop
- Reporting from London, WWII by Rona Bell
- Bow Street Runners: London’s First Police Force by Aubrey Nye Hamilton
- London Between the Wars by G.M. Malliet
- London’s Finest: Magic, Spies and the Arcane by Ayo Onatade
- Recollections of a London Detective by Ashley Bowden
AUTHOR! AUTHOR!
- Celebrating London and a Love of Shakespeare by Cathy Ace
- London, a Character on Its Own by S. L. Beaumont
- The Kamil Rahman Series and East London by Ajay Chowdhury
- Gertrude Bell at Whitehall by Michael Cooper
- Gemma Doyle Follows the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes Through London by Vicki Delaney
- Ruined Abbey—More History Than I Ever Expected! by Anne Emery
- Weaving a Tale From Those Childhood Memories of London by Elizabeth Elwood
- London: The Perfect Backdrop for the Crime Writer by David Fennell
- An American Lost in London by Alan Gordon, aka Allison Montclair
- My London: Real and Imagined by Narrelle M. Harris
- London: Spies and Titles by Gay Toltl Kinman
- All Roads Lead From London by Christopher Huang
- Henry von Stray: John McAleer’s Classic London Detective by Andrew McAleer
- The Wobble in the Aggie by Peter Lovesey
- The Game’s Afoot! Writing the Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Ken Pelham
- Mind the Killer by Gary Powell
- Wrong Turn—Write Path by Joanna Campbell Slan
- Mr. Campion’s London by Mike Ripley
- The Walking Guide Wars by Wendall Thomas
- Writing a Sherlockian Pastiche Set in Victorian London by Jeri Westerson
- London for Everyone by Marty Wingate
COLUMNS
- Mystery in Retrospect: Reviews
- True Crime: The London Barrister & His Fictional Counterpart by Cathy Pickens
- The Law in London—Part 2 by Jim Doherty
- From the Editor’s Desk by Janet A. Rudolph
Celebrating London and a Love of Shakespeare
by Cathy Ace
2021 was a difficult year for so many: personally, I know I had the best of it, because all I ever want to do is tap away at my keyboard, so I made a commitment to making the best use of my period of home confinement, and The Corpse with the Granite Heart, the eleventh Cait Morgan Mystery, was published that year. The book’s set in London, and it’s no mystery to me why I chose that location: I’d lived there for seventeen years in the 1980s and 1990s, and—unable to travel at all—I was happy to spend time “visiting London” as I wrote this book.
It’s hard to explain how London gets under your skin: there’s the fact that history surrounds you at every step, of course, and the place is crammed with all manner of indulgences for a foodie who loves the arts, like me. Also, I made friends with people who’d come to London from all over the world (my next-door neighbour came from St. Lucia, and was the inspiration for a character in my other series—Annie Parker, in the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries) so we’d explore the city and its environs together. I also took the chance to get good advice about where to go and what to do from new chums who’d been born and raised in London, some within the sound of Bow Bells itself, making them true Cockneys (they usually knew the best pubs), meaning I discovered parts of London that most tourists never see.
I lived at various times both north and south of the Thames (an important distinction), and close to both the Arsenal and Chelsea football (soccer) clubs (I don’t miss football crowds at all). I lived at the top of Brixton Hill during the Brixton riots (not the best of experiences) and close to Sloane Square, which is still one of my favourite spots in the world.
If I was at a loose end, I’d grab a last-minute ticket for the National Theatre, or a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, or take myself off to an evening at a gallery to stare at some favourite works of art without the crowds swirling. Or… maybe a new place to eat, or an old favourite would call my name… or what about a gig at the Hammersmith Apollo, or Brixton’s Fridge? So many things to do, and see, and experience. Odd to recall I thought little of having a few pints at The George pub, where Shakespeare used to drink! A particular highlight came not long before I moved to Canada: I was installed as a Freeman of the City of London, a great honour which was bestowed to me at the Guildhall, built in 1411. My parents came from Wales to be with me that day as I took my oath, prior to being inducted as a Liveryman in the Worshipful Company of Marketors, and we were all able to ponder the Roman amphitheatre, and wander through both the medieval crypt and the Great Hall above it, completely alone. It was a special day, which we closed with a stroll across the Thames to have tea at the reconstructed Globe Theatre.
And there’s that link again… which was also something that was eating away at me during 2021: I wasn’t even enjoying reading the works of the Great Bard in those days, so I decided to write a book that would allow me to “be in London” for a while, and simultaneously indulge my love of Shakespeare. Enter my titular corpse, in the shape of Oleg Asimov, and his two daughters—him a Shakespearean aficionado, and them being… well, I won’t spoil the book by telling you that; suffice to say that my tale tends toward the Great Bard’s tragedies, rather than his comedies.
As I sat in my Canadian home and allowed Cait Morgan to show “her” London to her husband Bud Anderson, I also got to show readers “my” London: fancy an hour or two at the National Gallery as Cait tries to get Bud to understand why she adores The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger so much? What about a peek behind the closed doors of Canada House, which is hidden in plain sight beside Trafalgar Square? Or what about a drive along the streets of south London to a grand old home that still has its servants’ quarters intact, allowing “the help” to live in, where a troubled family closes the curtains against the world beyond their home (based upon a real house where I spent a great deal of time, back in the day)? I even resurrected a renowned French restaurant that has now—sadly—closed down, above which I’d once lived, just so that Cait and Bud could indulge in the delights I’d feasted upon there myself, on many occasions. And as Cait and Bud explored galleries, and architecture, and history, I wove in many Shakespearean allusions. I had such fun writing—and “living”—this book that I felt transported… and I’ve been told by readers they’ve felt that way too. So, if you fancy a trip to London, with a puzzling, complex, closed-circle murder mystery to solve—and lots of Shakespearean tidbits along the way—The Corpse with the Granite Heart might just be your cup of tea.
Cathy Ace was born and raised in Wales, and migrated to Canada aged forty. She is the author of the traditional, globetrotting Cait Morgan mysteries, and the cosy WISE Enquiries Agency mysteries set in Wales. She’s a past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, and is a Bony Blithe, IPPY, and IBA Award winner.
The Wobble in the Aggie
by Peter Lovesey
I doubt whether many readers of this journal are old enough to have read my first novel, Wobble to Death, when it surfaced in 1970, but it qualifies as a London mystery. The plot featured a bizarre six-day “wobble” around a small indoor track in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, a now-fashionable part of the city. Such foot-races really took place there, as well as at Madison Square Garden, New York, in the last decades of the 19th century. Tempting cash prizes were offered and there was betting, cheating, comedy and drama that drew huge crowds to watch.
For a wannabe crime writer, this was rich material. Throw in a couple of murders, bring in a Scotland Yard detective to investigate, and you have a book. I wrote it in three months to meet the deadline for a first crime novel contest with a £1000 prize and came out the winner. My life was transformed. Fifty-five years later, my final novel, Against the Grain, has just been published and although it is a village mystery, it features my detective Peter Diamond, who started as a tough London cop at a time when policing was notoriously rough-and-ready. He was eventually forced to quit and move to the genteel city of Bath, where his methods soon got him into trouble in The Last Detective.
The Agricultural Hall, where Wobble to Death was set, is still there in north London, known affectionately to locals as the Aggie. It had become the post office sorting centre for parcels when I first visited in 1969. After I persuaded the doorman to let me in, I had no difficulty imagining the animal markets originally held there under a vast, curved iron-and-glass roof. And the wobbles. In 2016, I was invited back and given lunch by the present owner, who had turned it into its present incarnation as the London Design Centre. The old building is smarter than it ever was, but I can still visualise its noisy and sweaty past.
That first book inspired a series of eight crime novels about Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray, who on reflection might have qualified for the MRJ’s Partners in Crime issues. I’m wary of claiming anything as a first, but let’s say the Cribb books were among the first historical mystery series. Whether the books inspired other writers, I can’t say, but they made a splash at the time and the Sergeant Cribb series on TV can still be found on YouTube. I was proud when it was chosen in America to launch the long-running PBS show called Mystery!
Which other London locations were part of Cribb’s patch? Scotland Yard, naturally. My sergeant was one of the original officers picked for the squeaky-clean Criminal Investigation Department formed in 1878 after a corruption scandal had called for a rebranding. You hear of this in the second book, The Detective Wore Silk Drawers, about illicit bareknuckle boxing. Each novel was inspired by some form of entertainment popular at the time. The next, called Abracadaver, was about murders in London music halls. With no internet to use for research, I was fortunate that numerous used books were available as a resource from London’s Charing Cross Road, a street lined with bookshops. In A Case of Spirits, the action moved to fashionable London houses such as the one I chose in Eaton Square, where the new craze for seances was indulged in by the well-to-do.
Book 4 in the series took Cribb out of the city to Brighton, but the next one, Invitation to a Dynamite Party, had him on the trail of Irish nationalists who shocked Londoners with a dynamiting campaign at well-known locations all over the city, including London Bridge, Gower Street Underground Station, the Admiralty, the Tower of London, Westminster Hall and the Chamber of the House of Commons. The ultimate humiliation was when they bombed Scotland Yard itself and destroyed the office of the detectives supposed to be pursuing them. The Yard’s best man was assigned to stop the outrages. He was, of course, Sergeant Cribb. Each of these bombings really did take placc in 1884-5. The only fiction was Cribb acting as a 19th-century James Bond to restore peace to the capital.
The one that followed, Swing, Swing Together, was a gentler plot involving a river trip along the Thames, inspired by the bestseller of the day, Three Men in a Boat, but with death along the way.
And the final Cribb novel, Waxwork, was more sombre. I invited my readers into the oldest and grimmest prison in London, Newgate, where a woman called Miriam Cromer was confined under sentence of death. Cribb’s instruction was to find out whether she was really a murderer or had been falsely convicted. The hangman had already made his preparations.
That was the extent of Cribb’s sleuthing career until the TV series came along. Alan Dobie played Cribb beautifully and the show was aired at prime time on Sunday evenings in 1979-80. The viewing figures were spectacular, with twelve to thirteen million tuning in. Granada TV commissioned a further six scripts that I wrote jointly with my wife Jax. More London locations were used, including the London Zoo, for The Last Trumpet, about the scandalous selling of Jumbo, the famous elephant, to P T Barnum.
Sadly for us, our TV adventure came to a premature end, because Granada had cashed in on the success of Cribb by buying the rights to the Sherlock Holmes stories. Our producer, June Wyndham-Davies, was assigned to Baker Street instead of Scotland Yard, and had another spectacular success with the Jeremy Brett portrayal of Holmes.
No complaints. For a novice writer, I had more than my share of good fortune. In 1975 I retired from my teaching job in central London, moved south to Surrey and have made my living as a crime writer ever since.
Born and brought up in London, Peter Lovesey married a Londoner, taught in a London college and researched his first books in London libraries. His work has been adapted for radio, TV and film. Reviewing Peter’s final novel, Publisher’s Weekly wrote “The MWA Grand Master brings his Peter Diamond series to a richly satisfying conclusion in Against the Grain.”
Buy this back issue! Available in hardcopy or as a downloadable PDF.