I have mentioned before that my local library gives each patron the ability to request the library order five new books each month with the stipulation that the books must have been published within the last three years. I must admit, I would find the three-year perimeter restrictive if it was not for the wonderful selection of books getting republished, especially by independent publishers. One of my favourite of these is Dean Street Press. I first got into their books by way of their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. The titles of which are chosen by Scott of the Furrowed Middlebrow blog. Many an hour have I lost through perusing his incredibly insightful posts. If you have not visited his blog, I urge you to head over there. But I warn you, your wishlist will grow exponentially, many titles of which will be anywhere from difficult to down right impossible to find.
When Dean Street Press announced that they were republishing the first five books in Sara Woods’ Antony Maitland series it felt like the right time to start exploring their Crime Fiction titles. If you read any of my reviews of those books you will know that I absolutely love them. Sara Woods is now one of my favourite mystery writers and before DSP started republishing her books, I had never heard of her! So of course I’ve been systematically putting in requests at my library for everything DSP have published in both their Furrowed Middlebrow and Crime Fiction imprints, along with my usual requests of British Library Publishing's Women Writers and the Crime Classics series. Sometimes my requested books come in one book at a time. Then there are the times when 10 books come in at once and I have three weeks to read them in, because someone with equally refined taste in books as myself puts them all on hold, leaving me with the inability to do what I usually do, which is to renew them three times in succession thus enabling me to read at my leisure over 12 weeks. Basically that was the longest, and most round about way of explaining what I’ve been up to the past three weeks. I’ve been reading and working on reviews, because I had a lot of books that needed to be returned to the library sharpish. I’m happy to report that they are now all back at the library and I can breathe easy again without fear of the library coming after me.
Apparently, my time offline has left me feeling particularly chatty. Let’s get into the first book on my list…
The Invisible Host was written by wife and husband team Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning and was originally published in 1930. Earlier that year, before the book was even published, playwright Owen Davis adapted it for the stage. It was performed on Broadway under the title The Ninth Guest and four years later it was adapted for film under the same name. Bristow and Manning saw such success from this first novel that they moved from New Orleans to a Mississippi gulf coast mansion, giving up their day jobs as reporters. They wrote three more books together, The Gutenberg Murders (1931), Two and Two Make Twenty-Two (1932), and The Mardi Gras Murders (1932). Bristow went on to write period novels set in the Old South and Manning worked as a Hollywood screenwriter. There is more to their fascinating story, but I will let you read about it in Curtis Evans’ insightful introduction.
The first thing that jumped out at me about this cover wasn’t the blood-dripping skeleton climbing over the buildings, but the words “Was it the inspiration for Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’?”. And Then There Were None is second only to Murder on the Orient Express in my list of favourite Agatha Christie novels. The only thing that puts Orient Express up front for me is that it contains both a snowstorm and it is set on a train. A book containing one or the other of these just about guarantees I’m going to love it, but include both, and as far as I’m concerned the author could call it in on all other aspects of novel writing and I’m not going to mind. Not too much, anyway. Rest assured, Christie does not do this. I also love None. The remote island setting, the guests who are strangers to each other, and the count down as one by one each guest is murdered is like a ticking clock on a bomb. (I want to be reading None every summer and Orient Express every winter. Why do I not have a personal copy of either of these books?!) But how does The Invisible Host, the book that may have inspired Christie’s wonderful book, stack up? And how does it differ?
Let’s tackle the second thing, first. Honestly, it differs in a lot of ways. Instead of having 10 people in a house on a privately owned island off the coast of Devon in England, it is eight guests invited to a party at a penthouse apartment in New Orleans. In both books the guests do not know who the host is, and they discover what is going to happen to them from a voice that is broadcast to them through a record on a phonograph in None, and through a radio in Host.
It is easy to create an isolated atmosphere on an island. All you have to do is make sure the characters don’t have a way of getting off the island. But how do you keep eight people trapped in an apartment in the middle of a city? You wire the exits to electrocute anyone who leaves. And then ratchet up the tension with a short timeframe by killing one person off each hour.
“The game, my friends, is not one of slaughter but of skill. You have been chosen with care, for only men and women of your exceptional intellectual agility would be worthy opponents. Until dawn, it is not money, power nor prestige, but wits; yours against mine. If I should win, it is my privilege to inform you that you will all be dead—before morning.” (42)
Much like None, each of the characters has a secret that, if it were to get out, would ruin them. But in the Christie book each character is responsible for the death of at least one person, whereas in Host the secrets vary. Each of the characters are—if not prominent members of society—ones that you might read about in various parts of the paper, a film star, an eminent college professor, an attorney, a politician, a wealthy businessman, an author, a society hostess, and a playboy or man-about-town type.
It is probably best that I don’t give too many specifics, as this is a fairly short novel. The DSP edition is 186 pages of quite large font with lots of dialogue. I whipped through this book and I think it would be best enjoyed in one or two sittings. Unlike in None where the cast of characters are all strangers to each other, the characters in Host know each other to varying degrees. I have to admit I had a bit of difficulty keeping track of the relationships even though I read the book over a short period.
I do think you have to suspend your disbelief quite a bit with this book. The fact that the apartment is wired to electrocute anyone who tries to leave and the way the murders are carried out were farfetched. But I think if you enjoy Golden Age Crime you are probably going to be on board with this one. In contrast, I think None is carried out in a more believable way. But Christie had multiple days, an entire house, and an island to work with, while Bristow and Manning had a matter of hours and a penthouse apartment with a balcony. The smaller stage and time frame do limit the plotting, and the manner in which people are knocked off. I can see the dialogue and setting of this book adapting well to the stage. Playgoers come prepared to suspend their disbelief to an extent that readers may not be.
This book feels very of its time, and I mean that as a compliment. I would have been able to guess that it was a book from the 20s or 30s without being told. The fact that Bristow and Manning were reporters no doubt exposed them to a wide range of people and their experience in capturing them for print is evident in this first book of theirs.
What’s my final verdict? And Then There Were None is the better book, in my opinion. I would hazard a guess that most people would feel the same way after reading both books back to back, as I did. Christie’s book is more complex, more compelling, and more believable, which I think makes it more palatable for a modern readers unaccustomed to reading books from the 1930s. Despite this, I am happy I read The Invisible Host. I had a fun time with it and once I realised it was not going to be much like Christie’s book I was better able to enjoy it for what it was, rather than holding what it was not, against it.
If there is anyone who has not read And Then There Were None and thinks they would like to read The Invisible Host as well, but isn’t sure which to start with, I don’t think it matters. The characters in Christie’s book are by no means composites of those found in Host, and the conclusions are not the same. The inner workings of these books are not the same and you won’t spoil the plot of one by reading the other first. That said, I might have enjoyed this book more if I hadn’t read Christie’s book first. There is a reason it is one of her most popular books. But having read Christie’s book first I did get the thrill of looking for whispers of it in Host, which is its own enjoyment and part of the reason why I reread None right after this one.
I really appreciated Curtis Evans’ introduction to this book. He handles the topic of whether Christie was inspired by The Invisible Host or the screen adaptation, The Ninth Guest, head on, and yet delicately. As someone who strives to walk the line between my natural bluntness and my desire to be eloquently tactful, I was impressed.
In a recent Instagram post, Eugenie, as well as writing a superb and concise review of this book, also mentioned that this book does not contain any of the 1920s New Orleans atmosphere she was hoping to find. I quite agree. This book is set entirely in a penthouse apartment in downtown New Orleans, but I think we could have been told that apartment was in any other city in America and it would have made no difference to the rest of the book.
I will add that distribution for the four Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning paperback books Dean Street Press have republished does not include North America. However, the ebooks are available in Canada and America, or you can find a paperback through your favourite UK distributor.
Now, I finally get to go listen to the second half of episode 136 of Tea or Books? where Simon and Rachel discuss The Invisible Host and And Then There Were None. Time to put the kettle on, claim the last piece of shortbread, and grab my knitting.
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