“It’s the damn weather that’s been the trouble all through.” #Dewithon @BL_Publishing @medwardsbooks

Hot on the heels of my first post for the #Dewithon comes my second! And it’s perhaps a slightly unexpected one, but when it popped through the door recently it immediately bypassed Mount TBR as I knew it would be the perfect choice! The book is “Impact of Evidence” by Carol Carnac, and it’s a new title in the British Library Crime Classics range. Although Carnac (also known as E.C.R. Lorac) did not hail from Wales, the subtitle of the book is “A Welsh Borders Mystery” and Paula at Book Jotter confirmed it would qualify! A short read at 221 pages, it was a wonderful way to while away a few hours whilst ticking another box for the #Dewithon!

Lorac/Carnac were pseudonyms of Edith Caroline Rivett, and she’s made a good number of appearances on the Ramblings under the Lorac guise. Only one of the Carnac titles has been reissued by the BL so far, “Crossed Skis“; however, I thought that was a standout, with a wonderfully evoked post-WW2 setting and a really clever mystery. So I was very keen to read this new reissue, one which features regular Carnac sleuths in the form of Chief Inspector Julian Rivers and Inspector Lancing. They were an entertaining pairing in “Crossed…”, and proved so once more when dispatched to Wales!

First published in 1954, “Impact” is set deep in the countryside, in a part of the Welsh Borders which is being subject to some very extreme weather. Heavy snows are followed by rain and rapid thaws, leading to flooding, broken bridges, blocked roads and isolated villages/farmsteads. The Lambton family, long-time local farmers, hear a crash in the distance; and after fighting through the elements, they find that another resident, Bob Parsons, has collided with the car of Dr. Robinson, an old retiree who should never have still been driving. Doddery and with bad sight, all agree that he shouldn’t have pulled out in front of Parsons’ jeep, and frankly it’s a miracle that the latter is still alive. The doctor, unfortunately, was not so lucky, but when the Lambtons and a local couple, the Derings, manage to retrieve his body from the bottom of a gulch, the plot thickens.

In the back of the doctor’s car is another dead body, and nobody knows who it is. In fearsome weather conditions, the rescuers manage to retrieve the remains of this man too, and both are taken off to higher ground, along with Parsons, who’s suffering from concussion. Obviously, some official involvement is required, but with the area cut off by the flooding, the decision is made to approach Colonel Wynne, the local magistrate. Fortunately, he’s able to pull strings and get a local inspector in to investigate. However, when the inspector suffers a mysterious fall, there’s no option but to call in Scotland Yard and so enter Rivers and Lancing, ready to investigate. Fortunately, Wynne can arrange with the army to get them transported in, and it’s here that the fun really begins. With a number of suspects, a mystery corpse, some hostile neighbours, hints of blackmail and interesting backgrounds being revealed, we’re all set for a cracking mystery!

I won’t say more about the plot, but “Impact” is certainly another cracking mystery from Carnac. There are twists and turns aplenty, and as usual with the best crime books I ended up suspecting everyone! The eventual solution was totally unexpected as far as I was concerned – I didn’t anticipate the guilty party at all! – and the end of the books was very satisfying.

However, as with all of Carnac’s writing, which struck me strongly was the scene setting and the atmosphere. She captures brilliantly the isolated Welsh landscape and a world with limited technology. Phone lines are physical and so often down because of the extreme weather; transport is often limited and many of the country folks rely on going by foot or very primitive and erratic cars; when a farm is cut off, it’s often only a neighbour with a tractor who can get through with supplies; and although there is a sense of community becauses of the isolation of these areas, there’s also the feeling of underlying tensions… As usual, Carnac conjures all this vividly and the quality of her writing adds to the enjoyment of the book.

As I mentioned, “Impact” is not a long book but it does pack so much into its 221 pages. There’s a lovely cast of characters, from the Lambton family, a traditional band of farmers, through the Derings, a nice and sensible young couple who you really don’t want to be involved in the crime, to the Evanses, a rather dubious and sloppy pair of farmers. The detecting duo of Rivers and Lancing are wonderfully painted, and I really enjoyed their interactions, and their leaps of intuition. There’s plenty of tension at points, particularly as the action moves to its climax, and this really is an atmospheric read.

So “Impact of Evidence” was a thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish, and I absolutely loved it as you might be able to tell. Carnac is one of my favourite discoveries from the BL Crime Classics range, and I really hope that more of the books featuring her two series detectives are reprinted. On the strength of the two I’ve read they’re remarkably good and really memorable – highly recommended from me!

High jinks in the Alps! #carolcarnac #crossedskis @BL_Publishing @medwardsbooks

Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac

After finishing Esther Kinsky’s wonderful but rather melancholic “Grove”, I must admit that I did feel in need of a little contrast and perhaps something lighter. Enter another beautiful British Library Crime Classic, which was just the kind of escapism I needed. And after travelling to a somewhat muted Italy, this book took me off to the crisp clear snow of the Austrian Alps!

“Crossed Skis” by Carol Carnac is subtitled “An Alpine Mystery” and it was first published in 1952, since when it’s become extremely rare – so kudos to the BL for republishing it. And interestingly, it turns out that I’ve read Carnac (whose real name was Edith Caroline Rivett) before; she also published crime novels under the name of E.C.R. Lorac and several of those mysteries have also been reprinted as BLCCs! I read and loved “Murder by Matchlight” at the start of 2019, and her stories have also turned up on BL anthologies; fortunately, too, I have more Lorac titles on the TBR…

Anyway, back to Carol Carnac and the book in hand! “Crossed Skis” opens with a group of eight young women and eight young men setting off on a skiing jaunt to Austria at the start of January. The party has been assembled in a bit of a rush, with some last minute additions, and not all the members are actually known to each other. Bridget ‘Biddy’ Manners is the organiser, and somehow manages to corral her motley crew together to catch the boat train from Victoria. The journey is relatively uneventful, the group seem to gel quite well apart from a bit of ragging, and all are looking forward to escaping from the dull, damp British winter into a brighter, more exciting setting; understandable really, as it’s clear from the narrative that the things we moan about today are often the same things being moaned about nearly 70 years ago…

The reason we get into a mess in England during heavy snow falls is that we don’t cater for it. It always takes us unawares.

However, back in London, all is not well. A body has been discovered in a rented room in Bloomsbury, burnt to death; but it’s no accidental event. A brutal murder has been committed, and a sharp-eyed detective spots the mark of a ski stick left behind outside the house. Can the crime be connected to a group of skiiers? Who *is* the murder victim? Is there a criminal hidden in amongst the Austrian party? And will Chief Inspector Julian Rivers, himself a keen skier, be able to track down the murderer before it’s too late?

That’s a simplistic summary of what is a very clever and niftily constructed work, as Carnac dexterously runs the two separate strands of her plot alongside for a large part of the book. Alternating chapters and sections watch the group of 16 arrive in Lech am Arlberg, settle into their lodgings and take to the slopes. The bright clear landscape, the plentiful food and the chance to escape from everyday cares is a striking contrast to what’s happening back at home; although cracks do start to appear with some odd happenings taking place.

It was a disgusting evening, pondered Rivers, as he left the lights of St Albans behind and accelerated on the first long straight stretches of the Barnet Road. Wet snow drove depressingly against the windscreen and slush flew out in dirty cascades from the wheels, while mist tended to settle in the hollows. Into Rivers’ mind there flashed a visualisation of crisp, dry shining snow on the Scheidegg-Wengen slopes, hot sun and the hiss of skis flying on a delectable unbroken surface of glittering whiteness. He swore softly as a huge northbound lorry threw a small avalanche of dirty slush right over his own car. Snow?- heaven save the word!

Meanwhile, back in the coldest and dampest British January you could imagine, the detectives of the CID are following up the few hints they have about the murder victim. Negotiating a still bomb-damaged city, they have little to go on, and can’t even really identify the corpse properly. However, the detectives are not only skiiers themselves, but also gifted with imagination; and a recent crime has points which hint towards the involvement of a criminal with particular skills. Gradually, they build up a picture of the kind of person they’re looking for, which points them in one direction only.

Leland Griggs / Public domain (via Wikimedia Commons)

The book’s title is apt for a number of reasons: crossed skis are bad luck, which they certainly will be for some of the party. And it’s also a good metaphor for the narrative itself, as the two straight lines of the parallel plot strand finally dovetail beautifully at the end, where there’s a very exciting and dramatic climax! It’s wonderfully inventive and certainly keeps you guessing right up until the finishing line; there were any number of suspects at the start, and although one (maybe two) characters came to the fore as the most likely, Carnac avoided the obvious.

Once again Kate realised that there was an element of terror in this mountain loveliness: the massive clouds and the snow slopes made the wooden houses seem puny. Only the gaunt stone church standing abrupt on its little plateau seem to have any quality of strength, as though, if the village were submerged, the stone tower and steep roof of the angular Gothic building might survive above it all.

Pleasingly, too, not all characters bright young things; Catherine (Kate) Reid and Frank Harris are more mature members of the party, and Martin Edwards opines in his excellent introduction that Kate is most probably a representation of Carol Carnac, herself a keen skier. If I had to make any criticism it would be that the minor members of the skiing party are perhaps a little lightly sketched in, so that some of them blended together a touch. But that’s only a minor quibble. The detectives are a lively lot, too, and I had to laugh at Carnac’s description of their reading matter at one point in their travels:

Rivers had taken with him The Way of All Flesh and Erewhon, by Samuel Butler, and two Anthony Trollopes, and he read his way uncomplaining across Europe. Lancing had bought six Penguin detective novels, from which he derived much entertainment: he left them all in the train at Langen, ”as propaganda”, he said to Rivers.

So “Crossed Skis” was a pure delight. As a mystery, it’s thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining and it certainly transported me away from lockdown for a few hours of pure escapism and puzzlement. Carnac writes beautifully, capturing her locations vividly, and that element of the book is one which really hit home with me. The book was published and set in the early 1950s, an era we don’t always connect directly with the Second World War. Yet as the vignettes of life in London make clear, this was a city which was still in many ways a bombsite; for example, the house where the murder takes place is one of a few surviving in a row, still standing in the middle of piles of rubble, where the owner scratches out a living taking in lodgers. Carnac’s prose captures strikingly the sense of being in a cold, damp, miserable post-War London with rationing and no cheer at all. No wonder the skiing party was keen to get away! “Crossed Skis” is yet another winner from the British Library Crime Classics imprint, and I really hope more of Carol Carnac’s titles will see the light of day.

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks!