That’s When the Fog Rolls In*

Have you ever seen a thick fog roll in? Or waked to find that the fog had already settled in? There’s just something about fog that can make anything seem a little eerier. Things don’t show up clearly, so it’s easy to imagine things that aren’t there, or misunderstand things that you do see.

Fog can be dangerous, too. People get lost, drivers can get into accidents, and so on. With all of that eeriness and danger, it’s little wonder there’s so much fog in crime fiction. Space permits only a few examples here, but I know you’ll think of a lot more of them than I could, anyway.

One of the classic examples of crime-fictional fog adding to the atmosphere is in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. The story has always gone that the Baskerville family is haunted by a curse brought on them by long-ago ancestor Hugo Baskerville. The story is that he sold his soul to the Powers of Evil in exchange for a young woman with whom he was badly smitten. Ever since then, the curse has taken the form of a phantom hound that haunts the family. The most recent victim is Sir Charles Baskerville, and now, the new heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, may be at risk. At least that’s what family friend Dr. Mortimer tells Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is busy with another case, and sends Watson to the family home, Baskerville Hall, in Dartmoor. Later, Holmes joins him. Here’s a bit of one of their experiences out on the moor:
 

‘So as the fog-bank flowed onward, we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense, white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.’
 

The fog certainly makes it hard for Holmes and Watson to really see well. But in the end, they discover the truth about the Baskerville curse and the death of Sir Charles.

Dartmoor fog also plays its role in Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. Mary Yellan keeps a deathbed promise to her mother and goes to stay with her Uncle Joss and Aunt Patience at their property, Jamaica Inn. From the first, it’s an eerie and unpleasant place, and Mary soon finds that it hides some awful secrets, including murder. Without spoiling the story, I can say that at one point, Mary finds herself in grave danger, and a thick fog just makes things worse.
 

‘And then, in front…barring…progress, rolled a great bank of fog out of the night, a white wall that stifled every scent and sound.’
 

If you’ve ever been out in that sort of fog, you know that it can make moving around nearly impossible.

London fogs are, of course, legendary. And Marie Belloc Lowndes used the fog to great atmospheric advantage in The Lodger. In that novel, we meet Ellen and Robert Bunting, who have recently retired from domestic service. They’ve opened their home to lodgers as a way to add to their income, but haven’t had much luck. Then one day, a man calling himself Mr. Sleuth comes to the house asking about a room. He’s willing to pay well, and he seems to be a man of quiet habits, so the Buntings take him in quickly. He’s eccentric, but all goes well enough at first. Besides, everyone’s attention is caught up with a series of awful murders committed by a man who calls himself The Avenger. Then, first subconsciously, then with more awareness, Ellen Bunting begins to wonder if there is something truly wrong about her new lodger. He goes out in all kinds of weather, including the worst fogs, and behaves strangely in other ways, too. Gradually, she begins to suspect that he may be The Avenger that everyone is seeking. There are mentions of fog in several places in this story. It makes it hard for witnesses to see the killer as he leaves crime scenes. It makes it difficult, too, for anyone to pursue him. And in a literary sense, it adds a great deal to the atmosphere of the story.

Ann Cleeves’ Jimmy Perez stories take place in Shetland, where fog can make travel to, from or among the islands impossible. That’s what happens, for instance, in White Nights. In that novel, Perez and his new girlfriend Fran Hunter are attending an art exhibition at which some of her work is being displayed. Unexpectedly, one of the other attendees breaks into tears and claims he doesn’t know who he is. Perez does his best to help the man, but the next day, he’s found dead in a beachside storage shed, apparently a suicide. But Perez begins to suspect that this man was murdered. Then, there’s another murder, and Perez has to re-think everything. And he has to do his share of it alone, too. The fog is so thick that at first, the Inverness police can’t send anyone to support him. In the end, though, Perez finds out the truth about the deaths and about the secrets that several people are keeping.

And then there’s John Meany’s In The Fog. An elderly couple, Frank and Dora Parker, are fishing one morning near their Oregon home. Then a thick fog rolls in, obscuring almost everything. Through it, Frank sees what looks like a young woman coming out of the fog with a knife.  She starts to clean it, and Frank thinks she looks as though she needs help. But she doesn’t answer when he calls to her. Next, he sees a young man come out of the nearby woods dragging a body. Soon, Frank is convinced he’s seeing the immediate aftermath of a murder. But the trouble is, Dora hasn’t seen anything. All she sees is fog and shoreline. It doesn’t help matters that Frank has dementia. It hasn’t completely incapacitated him, but how much can one rely on what he says he sees? If Frank is going to prove he’s not crazy, he’s going to have to find out the truth about what he thinks he saw.

But that’s the thing about fog. It can make you think you’re seeing things that you’re not. Or are you? Little wonder it rolls in on all sorts of crime novels.
 

ps. The two ‘photos you see were taken on the same day, of exactly the same scenery. See what a difference fog makes??
 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Train’s When the Fog Rolls In.

We Drank a Toast to Innocence, We Drank a Toast to Now*

A really well-written post from Marina Sofia, who blogs at Finding Time to Write, has got me thinking about meeting up again with people from the past. In these days of easy access to social media, it’s not very difficult to track down someone you were friends with years ago, or your first love, or someone else who used to mean a lot to you. But even so, sometimes years go by without having any contact with those people.

What happens when, after many years, you meet up again with someone from the past? Sometimes it’s a wonderful experience. It can be awkward, though. It’s easy to be nostalgic about the past instead of realistic. And people do change over time, not always for the better. So sometimes these sorts of reunions don’t turn out well. But they’re always interesting, and they can add a layer of character development to a story.

There are a few such reunions in Agatha Christie’s work. One of them is between Rosamund Darnley and Captain Kenneth Marshall, whom we meet in Evil Under the Sun. Rosamund is a successful clothing designer who’s built a reputation for herself. She’s taking a holiday at the Jolly Roger Hotel, on Leathercombe Bay, when she gets a ‘blast from the past.’ Kenneth, his wife Arlena, and his daughter Linda unexpectedly come to the same hotel. Rosamund and Kenneth grew up together, but hadn’t seen each other for more than fifteen years. They’re very happy to meet again, and they enjoy each other’s company. Then, Kenneth’s wife Arlena, who’s a famous actress, is murdered. Hercule Poirot is staying at the same hotel, and he works with the local police to find the killer. Both Kenneth and Rosamund come under their share of suspicion, too. His marriage was not particularly happy; in fact, his wife was having a not-well-hidden affair. And Rosamund might have had her own reasons for wanting Arlena dead. You’re absolutely right, fans of Five Little Pigs and of The Hollow!

Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn has a reunion in Murder at the Mendel. She and Sally Love were close friends when they were young. But then, Sally’s father died and the family moved away. Sally became an artist, and Joanne went on to a career in academia and political science. Then, word comes that Sally will be having a show of her work at the Mendel Gallery. Joanne wants to see the exhibit and, if possible, renew the friendship. The two women start talking again. But Sally isn’t the person Joanne wants to remember, and it’s not an easy reunion. Then, gallery owner Clea Poole is murdered and Sally becomes the chief suspect. The case turns out to be very painful, and has closer personal connections to Joanne’s past than she’d thought.

Ann Cleeves’ Raven Black is the first of her series featuring DI Jimmy Perez. Perez grew up in Fair Isle, Shetland, and was sent to school on Lerwick. It was a lonely time for him, mostly due to homesickness. And matters got worse when two bullies began to make his life miserable. At the time, fellow student Duncan Hunter befriended Perez and made boarding school a much better experience. But Perez and Hunter haven’t seen each other in years. Then, Hunter becomes a suspect in the murder of seventeen-year-old Catherine Ross. And Perez has to come to terms with the fact that Hunter has turned out to be an unpleasant person. That fact, plus the fact that Perez is investigating this crime, makes that reunion extremely awkward for both men.

Wendy James’ The Mistake includes a fascinating reunion. Jodie Evans Garrow grew up in a poor and dysfunctional family. But there was one bright spot in her life: her friend Bridget ‘Bridie’ Sullivan. While they were friends, the two were inseparable. Years have gone by since then; Jodie has married a successful attorney and is now mother to two healthy children. Everything seems to be going just about perfectly, until the day her daughter Hannah is involved in an accident. She’s rushed to the same Sydney hospital where years earlier, Jodie gave birth to another child. No-one, not even her husband, knows about the baby. But a nurse at the hospital remembers Jodie and asks about the child. Jodie says she gave her up for adoption, but there are no formal records. So questions begin to arise. Where is the child? If she is dead, did Jodie have something to do with it? It turns out to be a nightmare for the Garrow family. Then one day, Jodie meets Bridie again at a book club meeting. The two renew their friendship, and it turns out to be a good experience for both.

There’s a different sort of reunion in Roger Smith’s Dust Devils. Cape Town journalist Robert Dell and his wife and children are on a car trip one day when they are ambushed. The car goes over into a gorge, and Dell’s family is killed. Dell survives, though, and manages to make it back to Cape Town. He soon finds himself in terrible trouble, though, when he is arrested for the murders of his family members. It’s a trumped-up charge, and it’s clear Dell’s being framed. But he gets no cooperation from the police, and is soon jailed. His father, Bobby Goodbread, finds out about what’s happened and engineers his son’s escape. The reunion between father and son isn’t exactly friendly, as the two had been estranged for some time. Goodbread was pro-apartheid, while Dell was very much against it. That’s had all sorts of consequences for both, and makes meeting up again a difficult experience. But each man has reasons of his own to go after the person who really did ambush the Dell family. So they join forces. As the story goes on, they at least understand each other a little better, even though neither comes close to changing the other’s mind.

And then there’s Peter May’s The Blackhouse, the first of his Fiionnlagh ‘Fin’ MacLeod novels. MacLeod is an Edinburgh police detective who’s been seconded to the Isle of Lewis. The murder of Lewis resident Angel Macritchie closely resembles a murder that MacLeod’s investigating already, so it’s hoped that if he works with the Lewis police, they’ll find out who the killer is. For MacLeod, this is a homecoming, since he grew up on the island, But it’s not one he relishes. There’ve been some very painful moments in his past. What’s more, he’s gone on to a different sort of life, while many of the people he knew as a child have stayed on the island. Some people have changed considerably; others haven’t. And to complicate matters, MacLeod still sees things with a young person’s perspective, which isn’t always accurate. It all makes for some real awkwardness as he gets back in contact with people he knew years ago.

And that’s the thing about renewing ties with someone you knew many years ago. People change, they get older, and their perspectives evolve. What’s more, when you have this sort of reunion, it can be difficult to accept the difference between the nostalgic view you may have had of someone, and the reality. But still, those bonds can be strong, and renewing them can add much to our lives.

Thank you, Marina Sofia, for the inspiration. Now, folks, may I suggest you make Finding Time to Write your next blog stop? Excellent poetry and flash fiction, lovely ‘photos, and terrific book reviews await you.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Dan Fogelberg’s Same Old Lang Syne.

And He Wasn’t Into Selling Door to Door*

Despite the prevalence of online shopping and cars, some companies still have a door-to-door sales program. And of course, religious groups do that, too. So do fund-raising groups. If you think about it, knocking at a stranger’s door has real risk attached to it. Still, people do it anyway, and all sorts of things can happen.

They certainly happen in crime fiction. Oh, and before I go on, you’ll notice that this post won’t refer to the door-to-door efforts the police make when they investigate a crime. That’s another post in and of itself.

In Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, we are introduced to Mr. Alexander Bonaparte Cust, a World War I veteran and door-to-door stocking salesman. He’s a bit odd, even eccentric. But he’s soft-spoken and certainly not the violent type. He doesn’t cause trouble for his landlady, and doesn’t call much attention to himself. His perspective is one of those shared in this novel, in which Hercule Poirot solves a seemingly unrelated set of murders. The only things that really link them are a set of cryptic warnings Poirot receives before each one, and the fact that an ABC railway guide is found near each body.

In Rex Stout’s novella Kill Now, Pay Later, Nero Wolfe gets involved the case of Peter ‘Pete’ Vassos, a door-to-door shoeshiner. Wolfe has a soft spot for Vassos, in part because he does a good job. Archie Goodwin likes him for the same reason. There’s also the fact that Vassos is the only one who really pays attention to Wolfe’s commentary on the classics. So Wolfe’s included to be helpful when Vassos comes to him with a problem. It seems he went into the room of another regular customer, Dennis Ashby, but found the room empty. He left the room and went outside, only to find Ashby’s body on the pavement. Unfortunately for Vassos, he was seen going into the room by receptionist Frances Cox. Now Vassos is a very likely murder suspect. Wolfe and Archie Goodwin look into the matter and find that more than one other person could have wanted Ashby dead.

In David Liss’ The Ethical Assassin, we meet seventeen-year-old Lem Atlick. He’s trying to save up money to go to Columbia University; and, since his parents won’t pay, he’s taking whatever employment he can. That employment turns out to be door-to-door encyclopaedia sales, and to Lem’s surprise, he’s good at it. One hot day, he’s doing the rounds of a Florida trailer park when he comes to the home of a woman named Karen and her husband, nicknamed Bastard. While he’s talking to them, a man named Melford Kean comes into the trailer and shoots both of Lem’s customers. He hadn’t expected there to be a witness but he takes care of the problem neatly. Lem is faced with two choices: either he can keep quiet about what happened, or Kean will go to the police, and he’ll end up taking the fall for the killings. Lem chooses the former and ends up getting drawn into Kean’s strange world. Is he an activist? A vigilante? Something more sinister?

Several religious groups send representatives from door to door, and we see that in crime fiction, too. In Anna Jaquiery’s The Lying Down Room, which takes place partly in Paris, we learn that four women, Isabelle Dufour, Elisabeth Guillou, Marie Latour and Irina Volkoff, have al lodged complaints at their local police stations. Each has said that two religious evangelists have come to their doors, bothering them. Of course, religious evangelists come to a lot of people’s doors, but these particular two have unsettled the women. It’s not taken overly seriously until Isabelle Dufour is found murdered. Commandant Serge Morel and his team do consider the victim’s family members as they look for the killer. But they’re also interested in the evangelists. After all, they might be witnesses, if nothing else. Then, Elisabeth Guillou is found dead, killed in the same way as Dufour. Now the search for the evangelists becomes more intense, as Morel believes strongly that they are the key to the case. But they seem to have disappeared. So Morel and the team have to find them. And that will involve tracing a history that goes back a few decades.

In Ann Cleeves’ Raven Black, Catherine Ross and Sally Henry, knock at a stranger’s door (well, a near-stranger) for quite a different reason. One New Year’s Eve, they’re coming back from a party when they happen to pass Hillhead, a house that’s owned by Magnus Tait. He has the reputation of being ‘soft in the head,’ and neither girl has ever actually interacted with him. Sally, though, has heard of him and been warned away. Catherine dares her to knock on the door, though, just to wish a lonely man a happy new year. Against her will, Sally agrees and the two girls go to the door and knock. A surprised Tait invites them in and they all toast the new year. When Catherine is found dead not many days later, Tait becomes the most likely suspect. But DI Jimmy Perez isn’t convinced that Tait’s guilty. So he investigates more deeply, and finds that more than one person might have wanted to kill Catherine.

You see? Going door to door can certainly have its risks, for both the person who knocks and the one who opens the door. Oh, wait – excuse me a moment. I think someone’s knocking…

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s 4 + 20.

The Wise Old Owl, The Big Black Crow*

An interesting comment exchange with Moira at Clothes in Books has got me thinking about birds and bird watching. It’s a delightful pastime, really. It gets you out into nature, it doesn’t have to be expensive, and it can be really interesting. You might think of it as peaceful, too, but if you read crime fiction, you’ll soon see that it isn’t at all. There are plenty of examples of ways in which bird watching can get you into a lot of danger.

The novel Moira and I were discussing was Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage, in which Miss Marple has quite a hand in solving the killing of Colonel Protheroe. Miss Marple isn’t an avid bird watching enthusiast in the sense of belonging to the local Society, or going on lots of bird-watching excursions. But she does find bird watching to be a very handy explanation for the binoculars that she uses to see what some of the other characters are doing. And those binoculars give her useful information.

In Colin Dexter’s The Way Through the Woods, Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis ‘inherit’ a cold case. Swedish tourist Karin Eriksson went missing a year ago during a trip to Wales. She was on her way through Wytham Woods when she disappeared, and as you’d expect, a thorough search was conducted there. The only useful discovery was a rucksack belonging to the young woman. In it was a small book called A Birdwatcher’s Guide and a list of birds with some names checked off. Now Morse and Lewis are tasked with tracing her movements and, hopefully, finding her body, so that they can learn the truth about what happened. As they do so, we see just what trouble you can get yourself into by taking an interest in birds…

Martha Grimes’ The Anodyne Necklace sees Inspector Richard Jury called to the small town of Littlebourne when a local dog discovers a human finger. Jury’s friend Melrose Plant soon joins him there and, each in a different way, start to investigate. They don’t get very far when another grim discovery is made. Ernestine Craigie is a bird-watching fanatic, who’s happy to get up at all hours in hopes of completing her list. That’s how she discovers the body that belongs to the finger. The victim turns out to be Cora Binns, who worked for a London temporary secretary agency. Jury and Plant eventually find that her death is related to a brutal attack on another Littlebourne resident, as well as to a robbery that occurred in the area about a year earlier.

And then there’s Holger Eriksson, whom we meet in Henning Mankell’s The Fifth Woman. He’s a retired car dealer who’s taken up poetry and bird watching. One night, he goes out to watch some migrating birds, and is brutally murdered. Inspector Kurt Wallander is sick at the moment, and really didn’t need an extra case. But when Eriksson is reported missing, he has to respond. When the victim’s body is discovered, Wallander and his team have to find out who would have wanted to kill a seemingly inoffensive elderly man who just wanted to be left alone with his poetry and his birds. In the end, they discover a connection between this murder and the murder of a local florist. And they learn how those deaths are related to five murders in Africa a year earlier.

Several of Ann Cleeves’ stories feature bird enthusiasts, bird sanctuaries and bird watching. For example, in A Bird in the Hand, we are introduced to Tom Porter, a Norfolk ‘twitcher’ – bird watching fanatic – who works as a vegetable chef/kitchen porter. One morning he keeps a promise to himself to get up early and head for the marsh on a bird watching excursion. He’s found later face-down in a pool on the marsh, with his binoculars still on his neck. George Palmer-Jones is a twitcher himself, and a retired Home Office investigator. So naturally he takes an interest in the case. One thing that he notices immediately is that no-one seems to be especially upset about Porter’s death. And the more Palmer-Jones and his wife Molly look into the case, the more suspects they find. I know, I know, fans of Blue Lightning and The Crow Trap…

And then there’s D.S. Nelson’s One For the Rook. Blake Heatherington is a milliner who’s getting ready to retire. He’s got his beloved allotment in the village of Tuesbury, and is no longer interested in the increasingly annoying commute to his London shop. Hoping for a peaceful autumn, he’s getting ready for a local harvest festival. Then, he discovers the body of Peter Kürbis in his pumpkin patch, killed, it would seem, by Heatherington’s own prize pumpkin. The police are looking into this murder when another Tuesbury resident is killed. In the meantime, there’s another strange occurrence. A rookery that’s been in the area for some time seems to have disappeared. It’s a traditional sign of bad luck when rooks leave a place, and that’s certainly what happens here. One of the suspects in these murders is Dennis Nyeman, former member of the local caged bird society, and strident (and aggressive) proponent of those who want right of way through all of the local allotments. No, the rooks aren’t the killers here. But there’s certainly interest in birds in this story.

So do be careful, please, if you decide to spend some time contemplating our feathered friends. It’s important to connect with nature. But it’s not always good for the health. Little wonder a group of crows is called a ‘murder…’

Thanks, Moira, for the inspiration!

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Leon René/Jimmie Thomas’ Rockin’ Robin, made famous first by Bobby Day and later by Michael Jackson.

You Ought to be in Pictures*

It’s not surprising that a lot of crime fiction fans also watch film and TV adaptations of series and novels they like. Film allows for all sorts of visual impact that’s harder to communicate in print. Even something as simple as a facial expression can mean a great deal, and it can be very powerful to communicate that meaning through the visual media.

But books often have background information, psychological details and so on that aren’t so easily portrayed on screen. And print and film are simply different media for communicating stories. So those who adapt novels and stories for the screen often have to make some changes.

And there, as the Shakespeare quote goes, is the rub. Film makers (whether for the big or small screen) have a few options. For instance, they can be completely faithful to the printed story in all ways. But that may mean a film that moves too slowly in some parts, or in other ways is a bit clumsy (because of the differences in media). They can make some changes, so as to make the story a better fit for film. That, of course, means that the adaptation is no longer as true to the book. A third option is that film makers can create an entirely new story, but using the original characters. This frees them from the confines of the original story, but can upset dedicated fans of the novel or series. Or, they can make some big changes, but keep some elements of the original story. For instance, one big difference between Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn series and the television adaptation of it is its location. The book series takes place in Saskatchewan, but the TV films take place in Ontario. What’s more, in the book series, Kilbourn is a political scientist and academician. In the TV series, she’s a former cop. All of these options have both negative and positive consequences.

Speaking as a card-carrying, cranky, fussy purist dedicated reader, my preference is for adaptations that stay more or less true to the original story. That’s why, for instance, I very much liked Granada Television’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, with Jeremy Brett in the lead role. Some details of those stories were changed for film, but the basic plots, characters and so on reflect the original adventures. And to me, at least, Brett was Holmes.

There’ve been many, many adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work; some are more faithful than others to the original. And it’s interesting to think about the kinds of changes that have been made. For instance, Sidney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (Albert Finney takes the role of Hercule Poirot here) was well-received. Even Christie herself, who in general didn’t care much for adaptations of her work, gave her rather reluctant appreciation for this one. And yet, there are some (to me, anyway) important differences between this film and the novel. To give just a few examples, in the novel, one of the passengers on this fabled train ride is a rather frumpy, middle-aged American matron named Mrs. Hubbard. In the film, her character (Lauren Bacall had this role) is much more sophisticated and stylish; other elements of her backstory are changed as well. And some of the other characters’ names and even elements of their personalities have been changed from the original story. As fellow passenger Mary Debenham, for instance, Vanessa Redgrave is more flirtatious and less aloof than the character is in the novel. And the murder victim’s valet (played in the film by Sir John Gielgud) is called Masterman in the novel, but Beddoes in the film. Did those changes make the film better than it would have been if it were exactly faithful to the novel? That’s a matter of taste, of course.

W.S. Van Dyke’s 1934 film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, which features PI Nick Charles and his wife Nora, is in some ways quite true to the original novel. A lot of the elements of the plot are the same, and most of the characters as well. But the film has a much lighter touch than the novel does. And interestingly enough, the film was so well-received that several more Thin Man films followed, although Hammett himself only wrote one novel about Nick and Nora Charles. Many people feel that the comedic elements in the film were positive changes; certainly they were popular with filmgoers.

One possible reason for which the Thin Man franchise has been so well-liked is that Hammett himself played a key role in the films’ production. I don’t have research data to support myself here, but I think there’s an argument that film and TV adaptations of novels benefit greatly from the original author’s input. When the original author is heavily involved in decisions such as screenplay, cast choices, and the like, the adaptation is more likely to reflect that author’s intent. So even if there are some differences between the screen version of a story and the print version, the soul of the story is there.

For instance, Kerry Greenwood insisted on being deeply involved in the production of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, a series based on her Phryne Fisher novels. Here’s what she says:

 

‘So when I was asked to SELL her [Phryne Fisher] to the film people, I was firm. I had to choose the Phryne, I had to vet all the scripts, otherwise, no deal.’

 

That decision has proved to be a wise one. The television series, with Essie Davis in the title role, has been very successful (a third series is about to start soon!).

Fans of Colin Dexter’s work will know that he was very much involved in the adaptation of his Inspector Morse series for television. In fact, he based one of his novels (The Jewel That Was Ours) on an episode of the series, rather than the other way round, as is more usual. And Dexter has it written into his will that no actor other than the late John Thaw will be permitted to take the role of Morse. The only reason he’s consented to having Shaun Evans as Morse in the Endeavor series is that that character doesn’t compete with Morse as he (Dexter) wrote the character – older and (hopefully) more mature. Take it if you will as just my opinion, but that’s part of the reason that the Inspector Morse series was so well-made. John Thaw really was Inspector Morse, at least to me.

Ann Cleeves is less involved with Vera, the television series that features her DCI Vera Stanhope. But she is involved with the script writers, and,

 

‘I take the production team out to all the sites in Northumberland so they can see it for themselves.’

 

She also says that she has a good relationship with Brenda Blethyn, who has the title role.

And then there’s RAI’s Montalbano, based on Andrea Camilleri’s work, and starring Luca Zingaretti in the title role. Camilleri actually worked for RAI for several years, and has writing credits for 18 of the television episodes. And in an interesting twist, in Dance of the Seagull, Montalbano and his long-time lover Livia have a disagreement about where to go for a getaway trip. Montalbano doesn’t fall in with Livia’s ideas because,

 

‘‘They film them around there, you know….And what if I find myself face to face with the actor who plays me?…What’s his name – Zingarelli.’
‘His name’s Zingaretti, stop pretending you don’t know.’’

 

Again, this is just my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do. But I think the series benefits a lot from Camilleri’s close involvement.

Space only allows me to mention a few of these adaptations (I know, I know, fans of A Nero Wolfe Mystery, with Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton as, respectively, Wolfe and Archie Goodwin). There are a lot of others.

What do you think of all of this? Is it important to you that the series be very faithful to the original? Are you willing to ‘buy’ certain differences? If you’re a writer, which aspects of your story would you hold out for if it were filmed? Which would you be willing to give up?
 

ps. Want to read more about film and TV adaptations? Do visit Tipping My Fedora. It’s an excellent blog, and Sergio knows more than I ever possibly could about crime fiction on film. Also visit Book vs Adaptations, a regular feature at Reactions to Reading, which is one of the finest book review blogs there is. You need these blogs on your roll if they’re not there already.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Dana Suesse and Edward Heyman.