A very Hitchcockian homage
Nicola Upson's "Josephine Tey" series has really grown on me. From my initial moment of disquiet at discovering that Two for sorrow was not quite the novel I'd expected it to be, to unadulterated delight in reading The death of Lucy Kyte. In both books Upson melds the real life author, Josephine Tey, with real criminal cases, that lie in the past but affect the present day, blending fact and fiction superbly well together. This was something that Josephine herself was adept at - you only have to read The Franchise Affair, or her superb, user friendly, interpretation of the mystery of Richard III, The daughter of time, to realise this.
I came across Fear in the sunlight fairly recently in a bargain bucket in, of all places, a garden centre (proof that if you're a bookhound, they will leap out at you in the most unexpected places). I bought it solely on Nicola Upson's name, and the Josephine Tey connection; and it's been sat on my TBR stack ever since. I happened to be leafing through the pile after reading some positive news for all us TBR types, when I noticed the chapter headings in Fear in the sunlight - The Pleasure Garden, Young and Innocent, Shadow of a Doubt - I'm a huge Hitchcock fan, and realised immediately that these were also titles of Hitchcock films. The Pleasure Garden was his very first feature, way back in the days of silent cinema.
And sure enough, Upson had also wound Alfred Hitchcock, and his wife, the extremely talented, Alma Reville, seamlessly into the fabric of a classic crime story. It may have been published recently, but this is a classy vintage read in the best of traditions.
Josephine Tey and her friends are holidaying in the quirky village of Portmeirion, where they are celebrating Josephine's 40th birthday. The Hitchcocks are also in town, partly for a holiday, but principally because they are informally auditioning cast and crew for a future film project. Hitchcock also wants to talk to Josephine about adapting her novel A shilling for candles (later filmed as Young and Innocent). Unknown to most of the guests, Hitchcock is planning to play a murderous trick on them, but his game is interrupted when two brutal murders take place, followed (in a scene reminiscent of Vertigo) by a suicide. If Josephine and her friend, Archie Penrose, are not entirely convinced by the murderer's identity, the local police are satisfied. Then, many years later, long after Josephine's death, Penrose, on the verge of retirement, receives some news that will make him revisit the scene of the crime...
I think that Fear in the sunlight is one of Upson's very best books, I loved the way in which she interweaved several real lives and situations with her, very fictional, murder. In other books in this series, Upson has focused on true crime, letting her fictional (but based on fact) characters deal with fictional crimes which have their roots in the past. There is a similar situation here in that the novel deals with past crimes that come to have an impact on the present and, indeed, the future; where it does differ though dramatically from the other books that I have read in the sequence is that the crime remains resolutely fictional, while many of the characters are only too real. This works surprisingly well, and I found it a very moving book in many ways.
Tey, in real life, died long before her time - she was just 56. And there is a sadness that permeates this novel, as we move backwards and forwards in time, from a gloriously alive Josephine Tey to Archie, a few years after her death still mourning and missing his friend. It is a novel about loss, the loss of life, the loss of hope, the loss of innocence; a sort of reflection in fact of Hitchcock's title for his adaptation of Josephine's novel.
I haven't given a spoiler alert for the fact that Josephine is dead by the end of the novel, for it's clear from the beginning as it time-slips around that this has happened, so reader bear with me. I was glad however that I have read the series out of order, as although Fear in the sunlight precedes The death of Lucy Kyte, it feels as though it comes much later. There is a sadness about it that is very reminiscent of other end of series, such as the last Poirot - Curtain, or Miss Marple, Sleeping Murder, both written during the Second World War, and not published till after Agatha Christie's death in the 1970s. There is, I feel, a very genuine sadness in the novel, a sadness not just of an author saying a fond farewell to a much loved character, but of Nicola Upson paying tribute to a fellow author, who she clearly admired (and quite rightly, I think) both as an author and a person.
I loved this novel. I thought it worked so well on so many levels. A cracking crime story, a homage to a master and mistress of crime, and the inherent sadness also marks a farewell to a different world. That brief period between the wars which marked the Golden Age of detective fiction. An age of highs and lows, from the bright young things of the Roaring 20's to the Depression, an age of enormous developments in the arts - not least the arrival of sound in the cinema, an era that seemed to be on the brink of massive progress only for life to change dramatically again with the advent of facism and war.
I highly recommend this, but it might be advisable to read it out of order. The time-slip moving between Josephine alive and Josephine dead makes it a tricky one to fit into the wider sequence, but it is, without doubt, one of Nicola Upson's very best books.
It's also the first book I've completed in my, slightly revamped, version of the Vintage Mystery Challenge, ticking off a character is an author or journalist class in the Bronze (post-1990) category.
I came across Fear in the sunlight fairly recently in a bargain bucket in, of all places, a garden centre (proof that if you're a bookhound, they will leap out at you in the most unexpected places). I bought it solely on Nicola Upson's name, and the Josephine Tey connection; and it's been sat on my TBR stack ever since. I happened to be leafing through the pile after reading some positive news for all us TBR types, when I noticed the chapter headings in Fear in the sunlight - The Pleasure Garden, Young and Innocent, Shadow of a Doubt - I'm a huge Hitchcock fan, and realised immediately that these were also titles of Hitchcock films. The Pleasure Garden was his very first feature, way back in the days of silent cinema.
 |
| A work in process - part of my TBR chunks. |
Josephine Tey and her friends are holidaying in the quirky village of Portmeirion, where they are celebrating Josephine's 40th birthday. The Hitchcocks are also in town, partly for a holiday, but principally because they are informally auditioning cast and crew for a future film project. Hitchcock also wants to talk to Josephine about adapting her novel A shilling for candles (later filmed as Young and Innocent). Unknown to most of the guests, Hitchcock is planning to play a murderous trick on them, but his game is interrupted when two brutal murders take place, followed (in a scene reminiscent of Vertigo) by a suicide. If Josephine and her friend, Archie Penrose, are not entirely convinced by the murderer's identity, the local police are satisfied. Then, many years later, long after Josephine's death, Penrose, on the verge of retirement, receives some news that will make him revisit the scene of the crime...
 |
| Portmeirion - a surreal place on the coast of Wales |
Tey, in real life, died long before her time - she was just 56. And there is a sadness that permeates this novel, as we move backwards and forwards in time, from a gloriously alive Josephine Tey to Archie, a few years after her death still mourning and missing his friend. It is a novel about loss, the loss of life, the loss of hope, the loss of innocence; a sort of reflection in fact of Hitchcock's title for his adaptation of Josephine's novel.
I haven't given a spoiler alert for the fact that Josephine is dead by the end of the novel, for it's clear from the beginning as it time-slips around that this has happened, so reader bear with me. I was glad however that I have read the series out of order, as although Fear in the sunlight precedes The death of Lucy Kyte, it feels as though it comes much later. There is a sadness about it that is very reminiscent of other end of series, such as the last Poirot - Curtain, or Miss Marple, Sleeping Murder, both written during the Second World War, and not published till after Agatha Christie's death in the 1970s. There is, I feel, a very genuine sadness in the novel, a sadness not just of an author saying a fond farewell to a much loved character, but of Nicola Upson paying tribute to a fellow author, who she clearly admired (and quite rightly, I think) both as an author and a person.
I loved this novel. I thought it worked so well on so many levels. A cracking crime story, a homage to a master and mistress of crime, and the inherent sadness also marks a farewell to a different world. That brief period between the wars which marked the Golden Age of detective fiction. An age of highs and lows, from the bright young things of the Roaring 20's to the Depression, an age of enormous developments in the arts - not least the arrival of sound in the cinema, an era that seemed to be on the brink of massive progress only for life to change dramatically again with the advent of facism and war.
I highly recommend this, but it might be advisable to read it out of order. The time-slip moving between Josephine alive and Josephine dead makes it a tricky one to fit into the wider sequence, but it is, without doubt, one of Nicola Upson's very best books.
It's also the first book I've completed in my, slightly revamped, version of the Vintage Mystery Challenge, ticking off a character is an author or journalist class in the Bronze (post-1990) category.
Comments