Monday 13 July 2015

Christina James: The Telling Detail of Her Panoptic Vision. (In the Family.)

The art of the ‘police procedural fiction’ is supremely challenging and writers who succeed in transmuting the sheer slog of evidence-gathering – often, in truth, months of drudging unproductive investigations – into a riveting dramatic narrative commanding the reader’s intense empathic identification with both the protagonists and antagonists are very rare indeed. One thinks of Thomas Harris or James Ellroy or P. D. James as preeminent in the expression of the verisimilitude of true crime detection characterised by breathless suspense.
http://www.saltpublishing.com/products/in-the-family-9781907773242


Rara Avis.

Such a rara avis is Christina James, whose crime novel In the Family (the welcome debut of her Detective Inspector Yates series) demonstrates her deft assurance in sifting the ambiguities of subjective and objective reality, in the personal witness of suspects and detectives alike, as one would expect from the incident room of a by-the-book evidence-based police investigation . . . so, in James’s unique narrative diction for documenting the progress of this baffling multiple murder case, you’ll find style is form and form is style, in every sense of the term ‘form’, particularly. (Felon’s cant included).

It follows, then, that James has borrowed not a little of her unfussy, factual, panoptic narratives from the approved style and disciplines of first-person police incident reporting, prioritised as: Immediate impression of the crime scene faithfully rendered; Raw, direct, undoctored quotation of witness statements; An abundance of minutiae so no specific detail escapes the observer's notice (who knows what observations are crucial to the case?); Concise descriptive clarity to avoid misinterpretation of the report by alert critical readers; Hearsay reported as hearsay, not as evidential fact; Avoidance of over-legalistic or technical terms in favour of to-the-point, fact-based reporting; Honesty in retelling events, even if they reflect badly on the investigator's handling of the case (writing an untrue account may jeopardise the investigation later, or challenge the credulousness of the reader!) to name the principal guidelines observed; nor does the frequency of coppers’ regulation tea breaks pass unnoticed.

So here, exhibited by In the Family, is a triumph of documentary viscerality to relish . . . from the very start you feel you are right there, actively present at the inciting incident (a body in a shallow grave off a motorway slip road) from which the tentacles of the investigation proliferate.

Ars est celare artem . . . you might find it useful not to forget that,’ an expert witness reminds us on page 179. And, certainly, James, like the murder suspect of her creation, demonstrates the truism that it takes true art to conceal art and induce in us (and the investigation team) the suspension of disbelief. 

To this end characterisation and mood are augmented by almost preternaturally vivid and palpable evocations of fast-moving action, a super-reality summoned by well-drawn characters realised with the crispest of strokes: An eminent criminal psychologist possesses the ‘elegant angularity of a whippet’; a school’s ‘sea-green thick-rimmed cups’ are remembered from parents’ evenings; fingernails ‘bitten to the quick . . . varnished pillarbox red’; ‘She was already weary of playing hostess to his curmudgeonliness.’ [A Flaubertian sentence of subtle shades and texture!]; ‘She rolled her eyes at him. [It occurred to the inspector] she looked a bit like a mad dray horse herself’; ‘. . . the tiny cockloft of an office . . .’; ‘. . . he indicated some half-rotted apples on the ground.’; ‘. . . ten chocolate ginger biscuits carefully set out in an overlapping circle on a plate.’; ‘He was still loath to invest in proper toilet paper: there was a store of the squares of tissue in which oranges had been wrapped . . .’; ‘. . . the teacup slid a few inches across her slippery pale blue nylon overall.’; ‘. . . she was wearing a crimplene skirt of a curious yellow ochre hue . . . Rather incongruously, her feet were shod in scarlet leather moccasins.’ 

This word-painting with a purpose is of the highest order.


Parricidal Murderesses.

But more than this, our interest is centred on James's entirely novel treatment of avarice as a kind of criminal pathology, recalling the sociopathic manipulative behaviour of parricidal murderesses motivated wholly by greed for insurance payouts or inheritances, such as the notorious Mary Ann Cotton (between 1857 and 1872 she poisoned three husbands, her mother, a lover, eight of her own children, and seven stepchildren) and sisters Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins (executed 1883) for poisoning family members and friends for small insurance settlements; and, more evocatively, from my own deepest darkest Sussex, Mary Ann Geering, hanged from the scaffold at Lewes prison in 1849 for the poisoning of her husband and two sons to gain death and sickness benefits from a Friendly Society, sums described by the defence counsel as so trifling that the jury could not impute so grave a crime to so small a motive.

It is the re-emergence of this sinister kind of cupidity – the kind that covets easy money and abandons received moral codes – which we find so troubling in the 21st century, especially when the motives for such crimes are complicated by familial duress . . . or even influenced by the secret emotional pressures of incestuous consanguinity.

‘It’s brass that interests us,’ one interlocutor of the prime suspect pronounces and one learns that the prime suspect does not disavow her complicity with this view. This is dangerous territory for moralists because, after all, covetousness is numbered among the seven cardinal sins and among the ten commandments so to relabel a ‘sin’ as a ‘pathology’ smacks of fashionable psychosociological revisionism. 


Panoptic 360-degree Neo-docu-novel.

Nevertheless, Christina James – from the 360-degree panoptic vantage of her neo-docu-novel and with the skill of a forensic pathologist – can be said to be reinventing for our times the ‘Fortune-Hunting’ novel of the 19th century (was their any other kind in the Age of Materialism?), wherein the hero and heroine in want of a fortune are invariably named Sterling and Libra.

Please be assured, discerning reader, In the Family is truly an unputdownable novel of disturbingly (and determinedly) acquisitive criminals viewed from the Panopticon of James’s infallible authorial omnipresence by whom the very hairs on the heads of her characters are numbered . . . because, as all lovers of classic detective fiction are aware, it’s the telling detail that counts . . . and here, throughout the chase, you may be certain it is the telling detail that’s spot on.

Friday 10 July 2015

A BAD CASE and Other Adventures of Disturbed Minds


http://www.saltpublishing.com/products/a-bad-case-9781844719624


From Publisher’s Announcement

What links Clorinda to the mysterious disappearance of her new friend Theresa, in broad daylight, on the streets of New York? What is the true relationship between high-born, nine-year-old Elise von Alpenberg and her sinister guardian, Kepler von Thul? Why does young Marthe’s uneasy interview with the notorious spy, Anthony Blunt, stir up suspicions of complicity against her boss, the Establishment socialite Barbara Ely? And who is the true Fourth Man? And what connects Barbara to Constance Bryde, an unfaithful wife enmeshed in the cat-and-mouse surveillance operations of a divorce solicitor’s enquiry agent? Or how will jilted mistress, Rhona, deliver a long-overdue comeuppance to her Significant Other, the supercilious on-screen Talking Head? And who, you may well wonder, is the next doomed subject of portraitist Deverell-Hewells’s murderous thoughts? And, finally, can Nina discreetly maintain the façade that hides the eternal triangle of her complicated lovelife? These questions and more are answered in Eisner’s third series of mordant case histories intimately documenting bizarre dramas triggered by the subclinical dependencies of disturbed minds.

Published this year
Pages        :       244pp
Format     :       Paperback
Trim Size :       203 x 127mm
Publisher :       Salt Publishing (21 Jan. 2015)
Language :       English
ISBN-10   :       1844719626
ISBN-13   :       978-1844719624


From Publisher’s Clippings File for Catherine Eisner’s Fiction


A meticulous recorder of behaviour, pitch-perfect on accents and the faultlines between class, sex and age, Eisner imbues each account with an unsettling verisimilitude that reaches its peak in ‘An Unreined Mind’
Cathi Unsworth The Guardian

Eisner’s collection is subtitled, Hidden Lives of Love, Madness, Murder, Loss and Deception, and while the sense of madness and loss is amplified by the book’s extraordinary and disturbing cover, there is also a tremendous sense of fun here. The title story is the last testament of its asexual narrator. It’s a odd story, full of strange characters and erotic imagery: the narrator’s husband refers to her as his ‘long noodle’, and poor Uncle Irving’s body has to be identified by dental records – all that is left of him is his toupee. The stories in this collection are dark and the characters are ‘driven by bizarre and sometimes criminal compulsions.’
Carys Bray Postnatal Confession

I’ve long been an admirer of Catherine Eisner’s piquant and highly original fictions in the literary journal, ‘Ambit’, and of her singularly rich pictorial and sensuous prose. Here at last she is given a very much broader canvas for her character studies of women at the end of their tether, though it’s the minute detail of their dysfunctional, drug-dependant (and even criminal) lives I admire so much. 
Johanna Behrendt  Editor

Eisner herself intrigues me almost as much as her work. This is because she is profoundly knowledgeable in so many different fields: she understands the pop scene of the 1960s; she obviously knows a lot about the publishing industry; she exhibits more than a passing acquaintance with a wide range of ‘mind-altering substances’; she is erudite, although she wears her learning lightly, pronouncing telling mots justes upon the giants (and some of the minnows) of Western civilisation’s authors, artists and musicians across many centuries; she understands Latin and several European languages besides English; she has an acute ear for dialect (in A Bad Case, southern Irish, especially) as well as the varying cadences of speech that derive from differences in social standing; and, if she has not lived among the British aristocracy, she has clearly had opportunities to observe it at first hand. Wow!
Christina James  Crime Novelist

Eisner has mastered the twist in the tale and her stories cascade vividly into derangement.
Cameron Woodhead  The Age 

. . . a genuinely unsettling voice, at once comic, intelligent and slightly, scarily deranged . . . a true technical triumph. 
Kate Clanchy  MsLexia

Erotic . . . enthralling . . . very pictorial . . . very original.
Neville Marten  Ink


Extracts from Narrative (Pages 145 – 196 A Bad Case)

In the humdrum is the beginning of murder.
        Since breakfast, by slow degrees, a dark cloud had descended upon my consciousness, assuming a quality of sinister significance to which I was compelled to give thought.
        I shivered, and at last conceded that an acute and homicidal hatred, with all the cunning of actual lunacy, now exercised an absolute mastery over my will. 
        I removed my fountain-pen from the breast pocket of my medical white coat and marked an X on the breakfast tablecloth beneath an offensively large bread crumb.
       Just then I did not wish to be reminded of my marriage to Ingrid but once the idea had gripped my mind no steps I took could shake it off.
       For mad I most certainly was that morning of the abandoned breadcrumb.
       Once the grotesque problem of murder began to dominate my thoughts, it haunted me like a presence, and temptation grew apace.  
       The descent into Hell is easy.


Do I need to describe my wife when an artist greater than myself has captured her essence . . . It’s a living likeness! For long ago she had reached that moment in the passage of a woman’s life when, as it is said, the mirror no longer returns the expected consoling reflection and, therefore, must be turned to the wall.
                                                                   Royal Portraitist Prof. Anthony Deverell-Hewells
                                                                   Now You See It, Now You Don’t.


Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. 
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Stoneburgh Spy Campus (Pt. 5): Tyrants, Ideologues and Spies are ‘Stronger by Treachery’ says Weisse

‘Bones are strongest at their broken places,’ declared Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener (Stoneburgh Military Academy’s lecturer on politico-criminalistics), as he commenced his second lecture on Day Two of the Psychodynamics of Espionage conference, though, in my own view, his choice of expository text seemed to condemn his listeners to the aridities of a secular sermon.
      But, surprisingly, the Prof then darted off on a tangent to illustrate how his text provided a precise metonym for current breaches of border security by insurgents, namely the strengthening of incursion tactics at Calais, the point of Britain’s weakest offshore defences . 
      ‘The bones of a born survivor heal from a break,’ he explained. ‘They are strongest in the place where they were once broken.’ 
      He then planked down a pair of wire-cutters on the lectern with a rhetorical flourish.
      ‘Similarly, the clandestines camped in Calais (whose political allegiances are of the most troubling dubiety) are now known to be surpassingly inventive in exploiting a chink in the armour of UK-bound hauliers – in this case, literally – and it is by this weakness that they strengthen their tactics to traffick hostiles into Britain.’
      Weissener paused and flipped a switch.
      At once an x-ray view was projected on to the screen behind him, revealing a cargo of trafficked illegals, massed inside a curtainsider truck. (They were so crammed together that some unfortunates among the human freight had been forced to stand.)


      ‘I don’t think it has yet been observed by the international Press, Weissener continued, ‘that the desperate conditions in the illegal camps at Calais resemble in many ways the PoW camps of two world wars insofar as latterday camp inmates are driven to attempt astonishing feats of ingenuity in their pursuit of new means of escape.’
      He produced a length of cable and invited a conference delegate from the assembly to – stooge-like with a sickly grin – snip it with the wire-cutters.
      ‘Zapp! And that is how easy it is to get under the wire,’ Weissener told us grimly. ‘The wire in question is the high-tensile TIR cable [Transports Internationaux Routiers standard] that secures the curtainsider trucks transporting goods through the Channel Tunnel.
      ‘Yes, anti-slash armoured curtains may well be up to spec, and double padlocks clearly in evidence, BUT these are to no avail if would-be clandestine entrants to the United Kingdom have clipped the security cable and RECONNECTED IT WITH SUPER GLUE once they have penetrated the cargo space. This ploy means that – though the TIR cable is seen to pass through all fastening points and remains taut – the glued severed ends are actually concealed behind the curtainsider’s strap fasteners. 
      ‘And, yes, the vigilant driver may well re-test the tension of the cable, say, after he’s been occupied at the pumps, YET – to return to my original proposition – the vehicle’s defences “are strongest at their broken places.”  Or “strongest” certainly in the opinion of those clandestines whose deceptions have gained them admission to their free ride out of continental Europe.
      ‘Another thing. It is even known that padlocks are sheared off the tensioned TIR line then reassembled with super glue . . . the more easily later to prise them silently apart undetected.’    

Pregnable Embassies

 ‘Notwithstanding this . . .’ again the lightning of the Prof ’s darting mind seized on another aside, ‘. . . there is a complacency prevailing in the haulage industry that’s very similar to the reliance placed by security agencies on the impregnability of those impressively substantial, antiquated, square-cornered, steel-plated safes in which our embassies overseas continue to hoard classified documents.
      ‘Fact. The seams of such safes can be easily detected and forced open with basic workmen’s tools such as a heavy hammer and cold chisel . . . even the best examples of this Victorian construction can be ripped open by driving a wedge or chisel into the riveted seams, usually found at one of the top corners. Once the rivets are popped, the corners can be peeled back . . . however, forgive me, for those safe-crackers among you I am anticipating the instruction you’ll receive for the next addition to your crime sheet . . . your Advanced Peterman Course this afternoon.’ [Polite laughter] 

Outlawry Strengthened by Broken Pledges

At which point, I truly believed Stoneburgh’s most eminent theoretician had veered so far from his subject that he would find no way back. 
      I was wrong.
      ‘And now, you may ask, to what purpose do I mention these breached defences so easily penetrated by the exigent guile of self-taught outlaws “riding the rails” to Dover?
      ‘The lesson I adduce and which I wish our counterespionage agencies to take most to heart is: A successful law-breaker is strengthened by transgressive acts.
      ‘Being outside the rule of law, the “incursionists” crossing borders bound for this nation have no code of conduct to observe and the ease with which they evade international law-enforcers makes them stronger in their defiance of the polities of our hard-won democratic way of life.’
      The effort of this peroration caused Professor Weissener to pause and reach for a glass of water. He was clearly troubled by the extreme complexity of his own circuitous argument.
      He wiped his forehead and resumed, wandering off the point (judging by the response of his listeners) to cite any number of political and martial acts of treachery to substantiate his views. 
      ‘The future historian will, no doubt, describe the present-day incursions upon Britain in an allegorical vein, and it’s true that no more striking example of deception by would-be insurgents is the sublime instance of the Trojan Horse, the symbol of a broken pledge since the ‘gift’ to the Trojans was dissembled as the Greeks’ offering of atonement to the goddess Athena.
      ‘Some of you may take this interpretation to be visionary, but the insidious peril I am combating is an actuality and one that may turn a foot soldier into a rebel leader, and make a declarant of broken promises stronger by treachery. 
      ‘Hence arises a grave mischief.
      Tyrants, ideologues and spies are stronger by treachery.
      ‘Modern history is replete with examples: Hitler and the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (by his treacherous invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler reclaimed territories gained by the Soviets); Churchill and the forced repatriation – at the end of WW2 – of Cossacks (including women and children) to the USSR and their certain execution (an act of betrayal that has not tarnished Churchill’s reputation as revered ‘Saviour of the Nation’); the ambiguity of de Gaulle’s seeming promise to Algeria’s pieds noirs – “Je vous ai compris!”– and his subsequent u-turn did nothing to constrain his high-handed presidentialism during the succeeding decade of his politique de grandeurHoratio Nelson’s betrayal of Neapolitan revolutionaries in 1799 in violation of the terms of an armistice has not toppled the admiral of ‘Immortal Memory’ from his pedestal nor impugned his gentleman’s ‘code of honour’; the posting to Washington of the master-spy Kim Philby as chief British intelligence officer at the capital served only to raise his espionage activities to a new level of treachery and strengthen his hand . . . and so on  . . .’

A Trojan Horse Assumes Many Guises.

Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener glanced at his watch and gathered together his lecture notes.
       ‘But here I must end my illustrations. My subject is treachery. Your job is counterespionage. Major problems of vital national security continue to confront us and your goal is to identify those who break the sacred bond of trust before they assume the false integrity that can make them seem unassailable despite the denunciations of whistleblowers, as was the case with that arch traitor and double agent, the odious dipsomaniacal snake in the grass Kim Philby.’
      I smiled to myself, and such was the sustained impression of a secular sermon that I expected him to add, ‘Here endeth today’s lesson,’ but, instead, Weissener again flipped a switch and a final image was projected on to the conference screen above him.
       ‘Before I close I would earnestly impress upon you particularly the notion that a Trojan Horse can assume many guises, and we should heed those doubters who, like the seer Cassandra, saw through the incursionist deceptions that threatened Troy but were ignored, and hence had to face defeat and submission to a hostile occupation.’

Re. The trafficking of ‘incursionists’.
‘I would earnestly impress upon you particularly the notion 
that a Trojan Horse can assume many guises.’
Professor Hans-Jürgen Weissener
(The limitless ingenuity of bootleggers in the Prohibition Era.)

Calais Stowaways:
Penalties for hauliers caught with clandestines on board are variable, according to levels of negligence, with a maximum level of £2000 per stowaway.


Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. 
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
(where the counterespionage operations of Stoneburgh may be read in Red Coffee)
and Listen Close to Me (2011)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 
and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html
(In the latter two volumes, Stoneburgh operatives feature in Lovesong in Invisible InkListen Close to Me and Inducement)
see also extracts from the Stoneburgh Files here:
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/oreville-spy-campus-introduction-to.html
and
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/stoneburgh-spy-campus-pt-2-turnaround.html
and for observations on double agent George Blake
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/stoneburgh-spy-campus-pt-3-religio.html
and
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/stoneburgh-spy-campus-archive-pt-4.html
see also extracts from the Stoneburgh Files here:
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/a-singular-answer-memories-of-interview.html
and for more insights on 
Anthony Blunt
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/slaves-to-seconal-droguee.html