http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C43QFZ45

BOOKSHELVES ARE GRAVEYARDS OF SILENT LIVES – IF WE DON’T READ

SHORT SENTENCE by JESSICA BERENS

(www.grosvenorhousepublishing.co.uk)    Feb. 2017

This is my latest read. Jessica spent three years as Writer in Residence at Dartmoor prison and from her account of her experience I think she could. more accurately, have called the book Life Sentence, as I believe she will never forget it. Forget is what we all do where prisons and crime and punishment are concerned. The courts pronounce a sentence; the face in the dock is led to the cells and the judges and magistrates and lawyers and police officers forget them and move on; they are someone else’s problem. “Next.”

There are 150 prisons in the UK housing 86,000 inmates and the number of prison officers to look after them has been dramatically reduced by government budgeting to less than 18,000 today. Like the NHS, it is a worsening situation but, unlike the NHS, it is not prioritised in the public conscience. Jessica Berens’ book is a brave attempt to combat this ignorance and complacency.

In case you are unaware of Dartmoor I will let one Lord Stonham describe it as he did in a debate in Parliament in the late fifties when there was a motion to rebuild the prison:

“No one who is aware of the conditions could possibly countenance building another prison in this spot. Last year, 96.7 inches of rain fell at Princetown; and in one day last month, on November 25, 3.9 inches fell. Only the fish in Brighton Aquarium are wetter than that! It is not merely the wettest place in Britain, but one of the wettest in the world. In winter, fog or cloud is Perpetual and with snow and rain and continued condensation the life of officers, their families and prisoners is a misery. Since the war the Prison Commissioners have built 120 Cornish unit houses for the staff; but, however well they are built, nothing will stand up to the climatic conditions there. Owing to condensation, the walls in the houses have to be wiped down every day. If they are left two or three days fungus starts to grow.” I think modern building standards would deal with the problem of fungus, but one can still get the picture; the climate is the same.

The prison has not been rebuilt since the middle of the nineteenth century and one doubts if the conditions within have changed much either. Jessica describes the conditions in a style that parodies the numbing, bureaucratic edicts of the civil service by which the inmates and their carers are governed and she almost contains the anger she obviously feels at the failures of government and society to find a better way to treat the miscreants and victims of our human condition.

But her anecdotes of the prisoners are enlightening, amusing and often desperately sad. She used her tenure well, with a professional ability to record her experience with insight and humour. But when the gates closed behind her for the last time she could not help but carry the army of helpless souls with her – and perhaps a little of the guilt we all should feel because we haven’t found a better way to treat offenders.

A Foreword to the book by journalist, Nick Davies is equally enlightening. He quotes research he did into crime statistics for a Guardian survey. From a sample of 50,000 people asked about their experiences as victims of crime, and Home Office statistics of crimes reported, investigated, detected and brought to the courts, they found that out of a typical 100 crimes the real figure for the number of offenders brought to justice was three. To someone who writes about crime what does that say about all those television films and books where coppers solve cases in a few days? I think we should be writing about criminals not losers.

One might wonder why Dartmoor was built in such an unhealthy place, where hundreds of early prisoners died of Typhus. It was built, ostensibly, to house French prisoners of the Napoleonic wars. But it was placed on Dartmoor at the suggestion of one Thomas Tyrwhitt, who was private secretary to the Prince Regent, and on Duchy of Cornwall land, next to a granite quarry which Sir Thomas just happened to own. What a good idea when labour was scarce to have an almost unpaid, constant source of labour for Sir Thomas’ quarry and to build the prison from his granite. He laid the foundation stone himself. Perhaps he should have been Darmoor’s first resident

(sadly, since publishing this review, Jessica died in 2019)

Dickens and Mr Whicher

Sept.2016

Charles Dickens is not noted for his detective stories, but I wonder if he was about to succumb to the genre when he died? I recently reread, after many years, his last and unfinished novel; The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was, according to his contempories, only half finished when  a stroke killed him. If that is true Drood would have been as prolific as Bleak House and The Pickwick Papers which allows Dickens scholars much scope in guessing how Edwin Drood would have continued. Many famous writers have played at that game and I hesitate to argue with them.

By chance, almost immediately after reading the book I picked up Kate Summerscale’s docu-biog, THE SUSPICIONS OF MR WHICHER  (www.bloomsbury. com). TV buffs will recognise the title even if they have not read the book. Kate relates the story of a sensational child-murder in 1860 and the speculation, gossip and investigation that ensued because of it. Her book is diligently researched and brilliantly constructed and I unhesitatingly recommend  it as a perfect holiday companion.

Apart from telling the events of the murder and the later investigation by the London detective of the title, Kate exposes the explosion at that time of the popular press and how they pursued the story with ruthless and often innacurate zeal. She also explores the development of the recently formed, first detective unit of the Metropolitan police – of which Mr Whicher was one.

What, you might ask, has Mr Whicher got to do with Edwin Drood? We know, from kate’s research that the child murder fascinated famous writers of that time as much as it did the public and Dickens was no exception. Like everyone else, he opined his opinion as to who committed the murder (incorrectly as it turned out) and some of his contemporaries were brazenly influenced by the event in their writing. As well as the murder there was almost equal interest in Mr Whicher and his London detectives. That is the connection with Dickens I cannot ignore.

There is a character in Edwin Drood called Dick Datchery. He appears late in what we have of the novel. One expert thinks he may be a woman in disguise – but even allowing for Dickens’ supreme imagination and expertise I cannot think how he would expunge. “this gentleman’s white head was unusually large and his shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample.” and “…sitting long over the supper of bread and cheese and salad and ale which Mrs Tope has left prepared for him,” and change Datchery back to “an unusually handsome lithe girl.. very dark and rich in colour.” There must be another purpose for Datchery and I believe he was to become a London detective like Mr Whicher.

The period was the start of the detective novel; Wilkie Collins and a little later, Conan Doyle were to make the genre hugely successful which continues to this day. Is it possible that Dickens would not want to compete with the upstarts? If I am right and Dick Datchery was to be a detective it would explain why Edwin Drood was only half completed when Dickens had already led us to believe that the wicked Jasper was a murderer and even how Edwin Drood was disposed of – or had he?

How would Dickens have written a detective novel? Today the crime novel has a fashion of forensic detail for the crime itself with little faith in the brain power of the investigating officers a la Sherlock Holmes. But I believe Dickens would have followed his usual technique of letting the characters develop the story. Characterisation was his tenet and I don’t think he would have treated a detective story any differently. My own preference is similar; I don’t think crime-fiction should deviate much from the purpose of any other type of writing; that is, to hold the readers attention. I know Amazon and agents cry, “genre, genre, genre” but, if the story is about human behaviour, be it crime or romance, if you are interested in the characters you will want to know what happens to them. That is story-telling.

My latest novel, Getting Tyson attempts to follow the Dickens line. For the publicists it is a crime-novel, for the reader it is a story about people. I have no way of knowing how the mass of uneducated, illiterate people spoke in Dickens’ time. Victorian English still had its roots in the classical teaching of previous centuries, which is reflected in Dickens’ dialogue, and I find even his attemps to represent the speech of the great unwashed a little uncomfortable. Perhaps he was constrained by the language he was allowed to print. Fortunately, I don’t have that problem and if you are kind enough to read Getting Tyson he will bend your ears just like the bloke putting up that scaffolding around the corner.

“An upmarket crime novel about downmarket people.” 

“You write with grit, realism and great drama and the premises behind GETTING TYSON…are fascinating.”

Detective Superintendent, Mike Prosser knows that London thug, Big Dave Tyson was responsible for his daughters’ horrific murder but he can’t prove it. Mike is functioning as a copper again and is on Tyson’s case but a brilliant, charismatic lawyer keeps Tyson out of jail – until fate takes a hand. Even then the contest is fraught with more killing and dramatic escapes. It takes a French prosecutor to make the difference; she finds that her body is more effective than the law.

To view or to buy,  for e-book and paperback      http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019M4TQIG

I once walked through a wood in a sparsely inhabited part of the country. My route had been carefully chosen. There was a small town at the start of my journey and a railway station at the end of it. Between the two there were over twenty miles of heathland, woodland and moorland. The wood I have mentioned was on a ridge where the wet heathland rose to meet the moorland and was almost midway in my journey. The ancient path I was following was about a quarter of a mile from the trees and I had no reason to divert from it until the wind suddenly took an exception to the mild February day and was accompanied by an onslaught of low, darkening cloud and driving rain. I headed for the wood.

It was a large wood of mixed variety, mostly deciduous which had grown naturally over the  centuries, but there were also sections of planted conifers along the top of the ridge. I reached the cover of the older part of the trees just as the squall became most violent and I was surprised by the heat that engulfed me. Even walking there are elements of nature that escape the senses and even the eyes, elements that are fundamentally part of the lives of other creatures that share our world. If I had thought about it I would have realised that woodland on a winters day would have generated such heat and not jut the cover from the wind and rain I sought, but other creatures don’t have to think about it and the herd of Red Deer I disturbed were no exception. There was no sustainable grazing for them within several miles, where the arable land gave way to heathland, and as they crashed away from me through the trees I began to wonder why they were there in such comparatively mild weather. Then the weather answered me. The wind took a ferocious intensity and howled through the trees, very quickly dissipating the heat and driving me deeper into the wood.

Possible sleet showers had been forecast but my experience told me, as I realised it had told the deer, that this was more than a squall; this was a deep depression. Outside of the wood there was little light and inside it was dark enough for me to see eyes watching from a safe distance. Some of the eyes were too low for the deer and I assumed foxes too were wondering what I was doing there. The protection of the trees was losing ground to the onslaught beyond them and the rain that penetrated my cover soon turned to hail and I began to doubt my anorak  was adequate to protect me.

I waited over an hour, getting wetter and colder, but the depression showed no sign of lifting. It was in the days before mobile phones. I still had ten or more miles to reach safety in either direction. I decided to seek better shelter by moving upwards to where I had observed the planted conifers. I took a penlight from my knapsack and carefully picked my way through the trees. The wind pursued me, swirling malevolently in enforced shafts between the trunks and branches. I began to feel very cold and wondered if even the conifers could prevent me getting seriously hypothermic. Then I was suddenly exposed, facing a clearing in the middle of the wood. The ground dropped into a grassy depression some sixty metres long. The light was better but the wind and hail was worse. Even in extremis my mind wondered at the reason for such a strange phenomenon; a meteor strike perhaps? Then, on the other side of the clearing I saw a dark, solid shape between two trees.

I couldn’t risk crossing the depression in case it was boggy. I struggled around the perimeter until I reached what had then become recognisable as a make-shift shelter. I had time to appreciate that a degree of expertise had been used in its construction, it was supported by cross-branches lashed to the trees with strips of sapling at the front and a long branch forming a ridge from them to the ground in the rear. The entrance was facing the clearing. I shone my torch inside. There were dark shapes on the ground. I ducked inside and knelt down and discovered the shapes were blankets and they were completely dry. I shone my torch upwards and marvelled at the construction of the shelter; cut branches were closely aligned with saplings interwoven between them and stems of pine were tied around them at precise intervals which were used to secure the heavy layers of conifer branches that formed the roof and sides. It had not been constructed casually, it was built to purpose. I remained kneeling for some moments, my thoughts were myriad and the position was appropriate.

Outside the weather raged and I wondered how long I could have endured it. I remember laughing. My face was very wet so I don’t know if my relief added to it. I took one of the blankets, they were very old and heavy but remarkably intact. I draped it over the entrance and tucked its corners into the woven trellis of the saplings. Immediately the wind seemed less threatening. The blanket shivered but the saplings held it in place. I put the other blanket around my wet legs and was about to lie back, using my knapsack as a pillow, when I felt something hard under my shoulder. I shone the torch. It was a bible. The storm did not abate for several hours. At first light I carefully folded the blankets before continuing my journey. I left the bible tucked safely beneath them.

As you can see, I still think about the person who constructed so carefully the home in the woods and I am still grateful to whoever it was. But I am sad to think I will never know what happened to him – or her.