I’ve just listened to a reading of Marsh’s Surfeit of Lampreys, and have recently read and commented on Hammet’s Maltese Falcon. I’m going to presume that you know the two books. Their plots are public knowledge. If you don’t know them, you should read the books, they’re most rewarding; if not, you could always consult wikipedia.
I recently compared Marsh to Hammett from the perspective of the hard boiled Maltese Falcon. Now I’m looking at the two from the other end: Marsh’s Surfeit of Lampreys is her tenth, or so, Allyn whodunnit, written a decade, or so, after Falcon.
There’s something about the Falcon that make me feel the characters he writes about aren’t quite entirely human. There’s a je ne sais quoi missing. It’s as though they’re just not interested in beauty: the Maltese Falcon wasn’t a beautiful object, just a large lump of money. I think this is less a criticism of Hammett, more an admiration for his ability to capture the essence of a certain kind of damaged criminal.
A weakness of Marsh’s works, and a strength of Hammett’s, IMHO, mostly reflects the times and places of their writing. Marsh is too interested in toffs for my taste, with their servants and associated minions. She doesn’t, or at least not in her first ten books, explore the living and lost among ordinary people. Then again, nor does Hammett, but at least his characters cross and ignore class barriers. It is more for modern times that class is thrown where it belongs, under the bus.
Marsh’s Surfeit of Lampreys has very different characters than Hammett, and they feel far more real to me, even though they’re mostly toffs and entourage, and I’m a solo pleb. There’s great humour in her characters’ interactions, which is missing in Hammett’s. But, well, Hammett helped create the hard–boiled genre, and that is most certainly not where Marsh lies, so I think I’m just commenting on the difference between the Californians and the Queens. I would prefer to meet and talk with Marsh’s toffs, although I’d prefer to go down the pub with Hammett’s working men.
Anyway, Surfeit of Lampreys is a great listen, and it’s a good mystery. I saw two faults, though. First of all, the performance was fine, except that Philip Franks’ French was dreadful: I don’t know whether he is useless at the language, or was taking the piss, but, whichever, his accent make the classic clichéd schoolboy oik seem a master of French pronounciation. Secondly, and this is perhaps something of a spoiler, it was the same motive in this book as many of Marsh’s earlier novels: money. Furthermore, the nature of the first murder didn’t quite work for me: I’m not convinced by the story of one persons’s persuasion of another immediately before the crime to commit it. But that’s all. Overall, the book is rather fun.
In other words, this one is not one of her best novels, but is still very good, and most certainly worth the read should you have the chance to pick up a copy.