Tue 6 Oct 2009
A Review by Geoff Bradley: ALAN HUNTER – Gently by the Shore.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
ALAN HUNTER – Gently by the Shore. Cassell / Crime Connoisseur Book, UK, hardcover, 1956. Rinehart & Co., US, hc, 1956.
This is a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time. Way back, I read Gently with the Ladies (1965) but was not impressed enough to continue with the series.
However Hunter comes from Norfolk, my home county, and this book, his second, is set in the fictional seaside resort “Starmouth,” which Hunter makes clear in a foreword is based on a real seaside resort, clearly Great Yarmouth (often just called Yarmouth), which is where I was brought up (and still frequently visit).
Unfortunately the book was a disappointment. The story, involving the body of a foreigner found on the beach, did not involve me and Gently’s investigation (he is called in from Scotland Yard) is not very interesting.
Worse, the depiction of Yarmouth (sorry, Starmouth) doesn’t seem particularly accurate. True, there are two piers (though they are given new names), and the pleasure beach with its wooden “scenic railway,” but the roads mentioned are fictitious, and it just didn’t seem right.
October 6th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Gently, Geoffrey, gently!
October 6th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Over the years I’ve learned to forgive a lot regarding geography unless it plays a major role in the book. I can’t tell you the number of westerns I’ve read that put a dusty desert town in the Piney woods of East Texas or the times I’ve caught simply elementary mistakes about well known locales, so I think you have to give a writer a little leeway when he creates a fictional town — even if it closely based on a real place.
That said, how you feel about a book is how you feel, and if it bothers you, it bothers you. We all have our pet peeves. In a recent bestselling thriller the hero drives his Jag from Gibraltar to Cannes in two hours — a neat trick seeing the ferry from Gibraltar to Spain takes almost that long and Cannes is close to 1000 miles from Gibraltar — those Jag’s are terrific cars …