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BOOK REPORT Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by PD James
This one was an autumn treat for me. I adore PD James, one of the best and simply most enjoyable of the post-Golden Age period in crime writing. Alongside Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter, and later Val McDermid, she established a continuation of the finely wrought detective puzzle, but with a greater emphasis on psychological depth and atmosphere. These qualities existed in Golden Age writing, but its most renowned practitioner, Agatha Christie, was very light on them, and there was a feeling that the plot dominated everything. Later writers took the whodunit formula and made it into a whydunit, with as much a focus on motivation as identity and method.
Sleep No More collects half a dozen of James' short fiction, culled from magazines. James was such a meticulous writer that there are no duds. I've yet to read her first and last books, but it's hard to imagine a writer with such a strong grasp of plot and character fumbling too much.
The stories here display her craft at its wittiest. These are dark and devious fireside tales, but injected with a uniquely British gallows humour, and by Mr Millcroft's Birthday have become almost straight (if black) comedy in the Ealing Studios tradition.
The first story, The Yo-Yo, follows a theme of an older gentleman recalling a past involvement with murder. A retired magistrate finds a yo-yo at the bottom of a memory box and recalls how, as a young boy in the 1930s, it played a role in the investigation of a sadistic schoolmaster's mysterious death. Another theme played out here is World War II, and how it served to render even murderous dramas like this one pallid. It's a haunting and melancholic tale, troubling in how it makes you see the good things that came from a man's unnatural death.
The Victim follows a man who was once married to a fashionable celebutante before she was famous. Sexual jealousy is the order of the day here, as the dry and milquetoast librarian feels driven to plot a rival's death when his wife reveals her true, selfish nature. The murder plot here is brilliant, and also rather gruesome. James wasn't a sadistic writer, but she could take a mordant amusement in the depiction of violent death.
The Murder of Santa Claus is the longest story in the book and the most traditional, straightforward murder mystery. A group gathers at a snowbound country house in the late 1930s to celebrate Christmas with a greedy, vindictive, utterly selfish patriarch. A cracker with a line from Macbeth in it presages murder, and the story is told by a crime writer recalling the event as it transpired when he was sixteen.
This adds a metafictional touch, the writer admitting to his own status as a hack. “[I'm] no HRF Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a PD James,” he says. This one is likely to be considered the best story in the collection by most readers, and it's certainly the most rounded, feeling almost like a compressed novel. It's remarkable how James manages to fit a full three-act narrative into a short story.
The Girl Who Loved Graveyards feels a bit more Rendell in approach, following a young orphan as she grows up with an overview of a cemetery, reflecting on the mysterious death of her father and how it consigned her to the care of benign but indifferent relatives. When she reaches womanhood she finds her answer to the mystery, but it may be darker than she thought possible. This one has possibly the best opening of the collection, with an autumnal and sun-bathed graveyard glimpsed from a shabby London terrace, and a little girl with a morbid imagination.
A Very Desirable Residence is a domestic murder tale about a middle-class marriage built on hate and emotional sadomasochism, and a victimised wife who may be a shade more cunning than she seems. The last story, Mr Millcroft's Birthday, arguably contains no crime at all. The funniest story in the collection, it's a suspenseful and fleet-footed comedy about a couple of siblings having to contend with the machinations of an elderly invalid father, who nevertheless has more than his wits about him.
If you appreciate the crime genre at all, you should appreciate Sleep No More. In the ranks of suspense writing, it's a gourmet selection.
Sleep No More collects half a dozen of James' short fiction, culled from magazines. James was such a meticulous writer that there are no duds. I've yet to read her first and last books, but it's hard to imagine a writer with such a strong grasp of plot and character fumbling too much.
The stories here display her craft at its wittiest. These are dark and devious fireside tales, but injected with a uniquely British gallows humour, and by Mr Millcroft's Birthday have become almost straight (if black) comedy in the Ealing Studios tradition.
The first story, The Yo-Yo, follows a theme of an older gentleman recalling a past involvement with murder. A retired magistrate finds a yo-yo at the bottom of a memory box and recalls how, as a young boy in the 1930s, it played a role in the investigation of a sadistic schoolmaster's mysterious death. Another theme played out here is World War II, and how it served to render even murderous dramas like this one pallid. It's a haunting and melancholic tale, troubling in how it makes you see the good things that came from a man's unnatural death.
The Victim follows a man who was once married to a fashionable celebutante before she was famous. Sexual jealousy is the order of the day here, as the dry and milquetoast librarian feels driven to plot a rival's death when his wife reveals her true, selfish nature. The murder plot here is brilliant, and also rather gruesome. James wasn't a sadistic writer, but she could take a mordant amusement in the depiction of violent death.
The Murder of Santa Claus is the longest story in the book and the most traditional, straightforward murder mystery. A group gathers at a snowbound country house in the late 1930s to celebrate Christmas with a greedy, vindictive, utterly selfish patriarch. A cracker with a line from Macbeth in it presages murder, and the story is told by a crime writer recalling the event as it transpired when he was sixteen.
This adds a metafictional touch, the writer admitting to his own status as a hack. “[I'm] no HRF Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a PD James,” he says. This one is likely to be considered the best story in the collection by most readers, and it's certainly the most rounded, feeling almost like a compressed novel. It's remarkable how James manages to fit a full three-act narrative into a short story.
The Girl Who Loved Graveyards feels a bit more Rendell in approach, following a young orphan as she grows up with an overview of a cemetery, reflecting on the mysterious death of her father and how it consigned her to the care of benign but indifferent relatives. When she reaches womanhood she finds her answer to the mystery, but it may be darker than she thought possible. This one has possibly the best opening of the collection, with an autumnal and sun-bathed graveyard glimpsed from a shabby London terrace, and a little girl with a morbid imagination.
A Very Desirable Residence is a domestic murder tale about a middle-class marriage built on hate and emotional sadomasochism, and a victimised wife who may be a shade more cunning than she seems. The last story, Mr Millcroft's Birthday, arguably contains no crime at all. The funniest story in the collection, it's a suspenseful and fleet-footed comedy about a couple of siblings having to contend with the machinations of an elderly invalid father, who nevertheless has more than his wits about him.
If you appreciate the crime genre at all, you should appreciate Sleep No More. In the ranks of suspense writing, it's a gourmet selection.
Published 6th Oct 2022
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