Fantasy and Fugue

by Roy Fuller

Harry Sinton is a murderer. He knows it. There can be no doubt about it. His mind is filled with fearful knowledge, his trembling hands fouled by invisible blood, his soul reeks of murder.And yet - though murder is the most vivid of crimes - he cannot recall any of the details of the crime he is sure he committed. His killing of a drunken poet is blanketed in a fog of amnesia.Frantically - but with desperate cunning - he seeks to discover the facts surrounding his disastrous act in order to establish an appropriate alibi. His heady investigations take him on a feverish chase through the literary and Bohemian circles of London. With every step he takes, he comes closer to the dreadful truth that lies in wait.As he did in The Second Curtain , Roy Fuller is able to weave enormous suspense out of human fears and emotions. His characters are extraordinarily real, moving in that sinister borderland between the psychological novel and the thriller.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Poems (1939) was Roy Broadbent Fuller's first book of poetry. He also began to write fiction in the 1950s. As a poet he became identified, on stylistic grounds, with The Movement. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford University 1968-1973.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Sinton is an upper middle class British guy living in late 1940s London. He has a brother; they're both unmarried, they seem to be in their late 20s or perhaps in their 30s, well-educated, and they run a publishing house together.

Written from Harry's first person point of view, Murder in Mind begins with Harry distraught, distracted, nervous, waking up in his flat. He is convinced he's murdered someone, but he has no memory of it. He's had some kind of nervous breakdown, within the past few weeks or months, and has asked his housekeeper to lock him inside the flat and safeguard the key so that only she can let him out.

He begs her to let him out one day and discovers who he might have murdered: a poet, Max Callis, whom his firm has published. Callis has apparently committed suicide, but Harry suspects in actuality he has killed him. He begins to visit various friends and colleagues in order to surreptitiously glean information about Max's death, Max's life, and any clues about his own behavior. He also reflects back on his father's recent death several months earlier; his father had suddenly taken ill with some digestive malfunction and gotten increasingly and mysteriously worse over the course of several days, finally dying. Harry begins to suspect, with horror, that he might have murdered his father in addition to Max Callis. He goes as far as to confess to a former girlfriend, who also might have been Max Callis's girlfriend, that he killed him. This girlfriend tips off the police, who go looking for Harry. Harry dodges the police, spending the night in a hotel and meeting with friends at clubs.

The London of the novel (which was published in 1956) is discreetly prosperous. Everyone drinks, sometimes starting before noon, and as the vast majority of characters are men, they all belong to clubs, where they take most of their meals. Rationing still seems to be happening, and waiters at the clubs are proud to be able to produce roast meats, after-dinner cheeses, cakes and Neapolitan cream for their clientele. (I always enjoy these details of British novels. Can one ever read too much about potted shrimps and jugged hares*? About cabinet pudding, whatever that is?)

The novel is very psychological, occasionally veering into Freudianism (at one point I was sure it was all going to be about Harry's superego vs. his id, although thankfully these terms never appear). Fuller plays with themes of criminality and madness by having Harry attend a dramatic adaptation of a Dostoyevksy novel and see himself in its characters. Ultimately (in the last few pages) the novel discards its psychological trappings and turns into a thriller, its ending satisfying for those who like nice, clean wrap-ups and clearcut villains.

Murder in Mind would make a nice accompaniment to Hangover Square, another novel about madness, amnesia, and criminality. The latter novel is better, and darker.

* Wikipedia: "In 2006, a survey of 2021 people for the television channel UKTV Food found that only 1.6% of the people aged under 25 recognized Jugged Hare by name. 7 out of 10 of those people stated that they would refuse to eat Jugged Hare if it were served at the house of a friend or a relative."

[CQM · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second Roy Fuller after The Second Curtain is another cracker. Fantasy and Fugue is slightly harder work but the rewards are ample. A nightmare journey around London avoiding the police and meeting acquaintances, colleagues and family in an attempt to either engineer an alibi or work out the truth.
Fuller piles on the psychology but never at the expense of a good read.
Fuller is rapidly rising in my estimation.

[pareidolia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going through a nervous breakdown, Harry Sinton believes to have killed a man, although he has no memory of the crime. His attempts to construct an alibi for himself make him look increasingly suspicious.
Set in London's literary scene, Fuller's short novel comes with a hefty helping of Dostoyevsky (I will never get used to the English spelling of Russian names, this looks so wrong), mirroring poor Sinton's plight and providing clues for the audience, while Sinton's mind spirals ever deeper into paranoia.

The ending probably wouldn't fly due to political correctness reasons nowadays, but thanks to a lifetime of reading exactly this kind of murder mysteries, I kind of saw it coming (and I'm not without sympathy, nor do I suspect Fuller to be).

[Johanna Juntunen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Psychological thriller, nothing was like it seemed....

[Derek Collett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third novel in Roy Fuller's 1940s/1950s 'crime' trilogy and the one with the least crime in it (in truth there's hardly any at all).

Harry Sinton has suffered a mental breakdown and believes that, whilst not in full possession of his faculties, he has killed a love rival, a poet called Callis, and promptly forgotten about it because the act was so ghastly that his memory has blotted it out. The whole of the rest of the book is taken up with Sinton's peregrinations, musings and theorizing whilst he seeks out, and interviews, Callis's friends and acquaintances and tries to piece together what has really happened.

I don't rate Fantasy and Fugue anywhere near as highly as the two previous books in this trilogy, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the story is just not very strong. Secondly, its telling is dark and morbid and Fuller's characteristically playful and endearing sense of humour is suppressed as a consequence. Thirdly, the characters are plainer and less sympathetic than those in the other two books and the situations are largely dreary (there are far too many drinks/meals between Sinton and one or other of his male interviewees in restaurants or dingy gentlemen's clubs). The book is rescued for me by three things. Some good comedy featuring an hilariously sycophantic waiter in one of the gentlemen's club sequences; a superb piece of writing in the middle of the book in which Sinton's father dies slowly over the course of the family Christmas gathering and Sinton wonders whether he has poisoned him; and an agreeably exciting thriller-style conclusion.

This book is well worth reading but the dark undertones and downbeat 'psychological' theme will certainly not be to everyone's taste.

[Priscilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring, couldn't finish. Cut words and phrases out of it for a writing project.