Blame the Dead

by Gavin Lyall

Martin Fenwick was a rich, respected man; a man everybody loved--until the day he stumbled onto a deadly secret that sent him on a rendezvous with a bullet that silenced him forever. Lois Fenwick, the unfortunate widow, was oddly without sorrow over her husband's death, for she was still young, beautiful, and very much alive. David Fenwick, the surviving son, was about to become a man. He wanted his father's killer, and would risk his own life to find him. James Card, bodyguard, sought only revenge, for his former employer. Martin Fenwick had died in his arms, leaving behind him only one a small package wrapped in plain brown paper. A clue that sent Card on a relentless manhunt across international borders and into the clutches of death... "Story-telling at its simplest, at its best." -H.R.F. Keating, The Times

Genres: Thriller

374 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1972

About the author

Gavin was born and educated in Birmingham. For two years he served as a RAF pilot before going up to Cambridge, where he edited Varsity, the university newspaper. After working for Picture Post, the Sunday Graphic and the BBC, he began his first novel, The Wrong Side of the Sky, published in 1961. After four years as Air Correspondent to the Sunday Times, he resigned to write books full time. He was married to the well-known journalist Katherine Whitehorn and they lived in London with their children.

Lyall won the British Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger award in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. He was not a prolific author, attributing his slow pace to obsession with technical accuracy. According to a British newspaper, “he spent many nights in his kitchen at Primrose Hill, north London, experimenting to see if one could, in fact, cast bullets from lead melted in a saucepan, or whether the muzzle flash of a revolver fired across a saucer of petrol really would ignite a fire”.

He eventually published the results of his research in a series of pamphlets for the Crime Writers' Association in the 1970s. Lyall signed a contract in 1964 by the investments group Booker similar to one they had signed with Ian Fleming. In return for a lump payment of £25,000 and an annual salary, they and Lyall subsequently split his royalties, 51-49.

Up to the publication in 1975 of Judas Country, Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers (The Wrong Side Of The Sky, The Most Dangerous Game, Shooting Script, and Judas Country), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe (Midnight Plus One, Venus With Pistol, and Blame The Dead).

All these books were written in the first person, with a sardonic style reminiscent of the "hard-boiled private-eye" genre. Despite the commercial success of his work, Lyall began to feel that he was falling into a predictable pattern, and abandoned both his earlier genres, and the first-person narrative, for his “Harry Maxim" series of espionage thrillers beginning with The Secret Servant published in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposed BBC TV Series, featured Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer assigned as a security adviser to 10 Downing Street, and was followed by three sequels with the same central cast of characters.

In the 1990s Lyall changed literary direction once again, and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the fledgling British secret service in the years leading up to World War I.

Gavin Lyall died of cancer in 2003.

Reviews

[Christoph John · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Card is a private security advisor hired as a bodyguard by a dodgy Lloyd’s syndicate to protect a blackmailed employee. When the employee is murdered, Card decides to investigate further which is where is problems really begin: shipping insurance fraud, infidelity, sex-starved widows, blood and death in France, the Home Counties and snow-bound Norway.

At times Gavin Lyall cracks a fair whip, but the action mostly slumbers and the resolution is all hearsay and tattle. Nobody actually sees any evidence or hears any first-hand accounts. The key witness is a drunk so inebriated he has day-long memory blanks and can’t physically remember where he has been or what he has done. This is a convenience for Lyall. It also increases the page count by about one hundred. The last two chapters paper over all the cracks with an efficiency as icy as the Norwegian winter.

Neatly, if ploddingly, written. A series of good characters are spoilt by a series of uninteresting ones. Most of them are prone to use slang inappropriately which passes for characterisation. Apart from Card’s cynical view of the world, nobody’s particularly interesting, filling holes in the plot rather than enlivening it. A few decent but short action sequences have to suffice for excitement.

It doesn’t bite.

[Justin Beaumont · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written with a working knowledge of Lloyds as it was then and the people who populate it. A cliffhanger study of people and their foibles. A true thriller with deep characters reminiscent of Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes. Fast moving and fun without the angst and personal introspection that seems to dog some of the modern authors.

[Tom Wilkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was alright. Very of its time. I enjoyed it enough to keep wanting to read on, but not as much as books that I couldn't put down.

An enjoyable enough detective story. Didn't change my life or particularly inspire me, but did entertain me.

[Helen Ennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not entirely to my taste - rather complicated tale, specialising in shipping details with a Lloyds connection. Seemed rather long winded.

[Rdb]

Second time.