The dangerous edge

by Gavin Lambert

. 1975, with dustjacket, feint toning to edges, some occasional neta ink in margin & notes on rear endpaper, Professional booksellers since 1981

Genres: Biography

1000 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Gavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry.

Reviews

[Ian B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, published in 1975 and never reprinted as far as I can tell, Gavin Lambert sets out to investigate the works and individual psyches of nine ‘crime-artists,’ eight authors and a film-maker. His title is taken from a Robert Browning poem:

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist…

Lambert is someone I’ve enjoyed discovering over the last few years: his fiction (The Slide Area the best so far), his biographies (a life of Norma Shearer) and memoirs (his friendship with the director Lindsay Anderson). This is the first book of pure criticism I’ve read from him. The subjects comprise Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Buchan, G.K. Chesterton, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Georges Simenon and Raymond Chandler, while the film-maker is – not difficult to guess – Alfred Hitchcock.

Each section provides biographical information on the particular artist, details what Lambert considers to be their relevant works, and teases out his view of the interaction between their art and personal psychology. Much of this is illuminating, some of it baffling. He will riff on details and themes from a book in the belief (I presume) that he is presenting a coherent and assimilable argument. Unfortunately, this sometimes amounts to little more than a potted recreation of that work’s specific atmosphere, so that it can be difficult to detect the point Lambert thinks he is making.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of interesting stuff here, and it has encouraged me to read more from the second half of Sherlock Holmes’s career, to investigate Simenon for the first time, and to try Chandler again. It has also confirmed my strong disinclination for G.K. Chesterton. The author has investigated so many books so thoroughly, that The Dangerous Edge is definitely not spoiler-free. However, it’s doubtful that by the time I get round to reading any of them, I will remember much of this, so I am happy to forgive him.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading everything written by Graham Greene in chronological order during this pandemic (you have to do SOMEthing!). I'm also throwing in various books ABOUT Greene from time to time. This volume is much larger than Greene, reviewing the lives of several great British and U. S. writers who have written what he calls "melodrama." In addition to Greene, he reviews the lives of Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, John Buichan, Eric Ambler, Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Alfred Hitchcock. There is really nothing new in here, but, if you want a quick review of Greene's life and his literary works, this is pretty good.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lambert produced several interesting (though lightly researched) essays on masters of mystery: Hitchcock, Chandler, Buchan, Ambler, etc. They are places to start.