A Bloody Shovel by Charles Latimer
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| Thanks to Cobra CZ/Getty Images |
Publisher: not known
Source book: The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler
Charles Latimer started out as an academic. He had produced three books by the time he was 35. His first was a study of the influence of Proudhon on nineteenth century Italian political thought. The second was The Gotha Programme of 1875, and the third an assessment of the economic implications of Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Good for his career I dare say, but not very likely to appeal to the general public.
So, depressed by his academic writing, Latimer has switched to detective novels. A Bloody Shovel was an immediate success. He followed it up with “I,” said the Fly and Murder’s Arms. Not long after the publication of his next book, No Doornail This, Latimer resigned from his university and went abroad to finish writing his fifth book in the sun.
Shortly after completing yet another book Latimer meets Colonel Haki in Istanbul. Colonel Haki is a fan of English and American detective fiction but waits for books to be translated into French. He tells us he finds books by French writers to be inferior and doesn’t bother with them. Latimer’s first book has been translated as Une Pelle Ensanglantée and the Colonel struggles to understand the allusion of calling a spade a spade, or calling a spade a bloody shovel: I don’t think it’s a French idiom, and it won’t give the Colonel a clue to the murderer’s identity.
It turns out that Colonel Haki, not a very nice man, has written a draft of a detective story himself, well, several pages of notes for a detective story. It is called The Clue of the Bloodstained Will (the Colonel is deprecatingly not convinced this is the best title and supposes that Latimer can do better). He gives Latimer a copy of his draft and obviously expects him to trot off and transform the notes into a bestselling novel without delay.
It is possible that The Mask of Dimitrios contains further fictional books but I just can’t read it. Here’s the book itself, beside me on the sofa, and I just cannot carry on reading. It’s extremely dull. And I don’t care much for any of the characters.
Charles Latimer apparently also appears in The Intercom Conspiracy (published a whopping 30 years after Dimitrios), in which he disappears from Geneva Airport while on a promotional tour for his new book.
I think you could probably write a book today called The Mask of Dimitrios. The plot would have to be completely different, but you could make the title work. However, I suspect any self respecting publisher would be quite unhappy with a title like No Doornail This. What do you think?
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| Thanks to The Art of Nature/Getty Images |
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