So I was delighted when a friend
recommended Nicola Upson, whose detective
novels set in the 1930s feature Josephine Tey as the amateur sleuth. The first
one I read, was Fear in the Sunlight:
Miss Tey finds herself in the picturesque Welsh coastal village
of Portmeirion , among a bunch of Hollywood stars, film crew and assorted celebrities.
Among the hotel guests are Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma, who make Miss
Tey an offer for the film rights to her book A Shilling for Candles.
Two rather gruesome murders are
committed and after some suitably Hitchcockian twists and turns of the plot,
elegantly solved. Miss Tey sells A
Shilling for Candles to Hitchcock despite her misgivings that her book will
be butchered by the Hollywood scriptwriters.
In an epilogue Josephine tells a friend that Hitchcock based his film Young and Innocent on it. And yes, as
she suspected, the plot and characters took a battering.
I enjoyed Fear in the Sunlight, and it led to my looking up the fascinating history of Portmeirion, which didn't just grow like other villages: it was designed in 1925 and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis in the style of an Italian village. It is now owned by a charitable trust. In the 20s and 30s it was a very fashionable resort, patronised by the Bright Young Things and by celebrities who had actually accomplished something for which to be celebrated. Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit there.
I also rummaged among my old books
to find the yellowing copy of A Shilling
for Candles, in which I was amused to
see my name on the flyleaf in a schoolgirly hand. How embarrassing - I used
purple ink in my fountain pen. Oh, well, I was a teenager and heavily into Marie
Corelli at the time. A Shilling for
Candles is still an intriguing mystery, if a bit dated … everybody smokes
and wears hats!
After reading that, I had to get
the DVD of Young and Innocent out of
the library, just to see how Alfred Hitchcock sliced and diced the book. Vintage
early Hitchcock … his hallmark plot of innocent man on the run with his
girlfriend, while trying to discover the real criminal. Sound familiar? Yes,
we've all seen The 39 Steps, North by
Northwest and The Wrong Man! This
one is a bit of an underrated gem, and worth a look. Lots of suspense and a few
splendidly Hitchcockian sequences, like an elaborate crane shot near the end,
quite groundbreaking for its time. I nearly missed the Hitchcock cameo, but
spotted him after all, standing outside the courthouse with a camera.
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| Josephine Tey |
Now that I have exhausted all the
side tracks that Fear in the Sunlight led
to, I'm ready for my next Nicola Upson!
