Wednesday 7 May 2014

P. M. Hubbard's A Hive of Glass (Fingerprint Books Edition, Hamish Hamilton, 1972) in British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s

Before I make a belated return to the signed editions, I've one last P. M. Hubbard book I'd like to take a look at to round off this latest run of posts on the author:


A Hive of Glass, Hubbard's third novel for adults and his fifth overall (including his two novels for younger readers). Originally published in hardback in the UK in 1965 by Michael Joseph, the edition seen here is the later 1972 Hamish Hamilton hardback, with a somewhat slapdash but still apposite photo-collage dust jacket designed by Tom Sawyer; those familiar with the novel will doubtless be drawn to the glass tazza in particular, but also perhaps the black-eyed old woman, who I take to be the blind and autocratic Aunt Elizabeth.


Hamish Hamilton was in the habit in the 1970s of acquiring lapsed hardback rights – note the seven-year gap between the Joseph and Hamilton editions of A Hive of Glass, seven years being the typical term of a book publishing contract – on crime and suspense novels and bringing them into the publisher's Fingerprint Books imprint; I blogged about a 1976 Hamilton hardback reissue of P. D. James's debut novel Cover Her Face, originally published in hardback by Faber in 1962 – a fourteen-year gap between the Faber/Hamilton editions there, suggesting Faber reacquired the rights for a further seven years after their initial term – back in 2010, and the back cover of this edition of A Hive of Glass lists many of the other authors and novels Hamilton gathered together.


I've also blogged about A Hive of Glass before; I reviewed the novel in 2011, in a 1966 Panther paperback edition, as at the time I wasn't able to lay my hands on a Joseph first. I still haven't been able to in the interim, hence why I decided to purchase this Hamilton edition, for 99p (plus postage), simply so I could own the novel – arguably the quintessential Hubbard work of dark suspense – in hardback (which format I much prefer to paperback). I'll continue to keep an eye out for a Michael Joseph first edition, but in the meantime, given that the Hamilton edition is itself becoming quite scarce, with at present just one copy on AbeBooks and only a couple more on Amazon Marketplace, this is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Plus it affords me the opportunity to introduce Hubbard into the Existential Ennui British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s gallery, where there are now seven Hubbard covers, taking the total number of covers therein to 138.

Friday 2 May 2014

High Tide by P. M. Hubbard (Macmillan, 1971): First Edition, Book Review

NB: Proffered as part of Friday's Forgotten Books, 2/5/14.

Three years ago, in an unrelated comment on this post on an obscure crime fiction novel, my friend and fellow blogger Book Glutton brought the work of suspense novelist P. M. Hubbard to my attention. Since then (for what it's worth) I've written about Hubbard repeatedly – reviewing novels and showcasing first editions, signed books and even a handwritten letter and some publishing paraphernalia – indeed this very missive constitutes part of a current run of posts on the author; but it's taken me until now to get round to the Hubbard novel Book Glutton highlighted in that comment, the first Hubbard novel he himself read:


High Tide, published in hardback by Macmillan in the UK in 1971, striking dust jacket design by Bush Hollyhead of Nicholas Thirkell Associates (who also designed the wrapper of the Macmillan edition of Hubbard's The Dancing Man that same year). Hubbard's tenth novel, it's the first-person account of one Peter Curtis, recently released from prison after serving four years for manslaughter and now travelling across the south of England, driving by night, sleeping by day, with a hazy eventual aim of buying a boat and making a new life for himself somewhere in the west country. But an encounter with an associate of the man he killed sets him on a different course: to a Cornish coastal town where the testing tides of the estuary lead to a deserted farmhouse, the damaged wife of a local novelist, and a secret that Curtis's opponents are willing to resort to murder to uncover.


High Tide was the second of two Hubbard novels I read in quick succession, the first being The Whisper in the Glen (1972); I'd expected to like High Tide more than The Whisper in the Glen – The Whisper in the Glen being more of a gothic romance than a suspense novel – but I was quite surprised when the opposite turned out to be the case. High Tide is a good book, don't get me wrong, but for me it's missing some of the depth of The Whisper in the Glen. Hubbard's evocation of place – in this case the estuary at the fictional town of Leremouth, with its surging tides and dangerous quicksands – is as strong as ever, and in common with The Whisper in the Glen – and other Hubbard novels – there's a romantic infatuation at the heart of the story which unbalances the narrative in a manner I find fascinating; but the MacGuffin which drives the plot is disappointingly prosaic, and the novel lacks those elements that, in addition to Hubbard's feel for locale, make him such a compelling writer – the pervading sense of doom of The Whisper in the Glen, say, or the persuasively creepy atmosphere of A Thirsty Evil (1974) or A Hive of Glass (1965), the latter with its memorably deranged narrator.

That said, it's also for those reasons that I could see High Tide lending itself well to adaptation – which indeed it did, in 1980 as part of ITV's Armchair Thriller series, with Ian McShane (Lovejoy, Deadwood) as Peter Curtis. Shot entirely on film and on location (unlike a lot of similar British television productions of the era, which utilised video and studio shoots), by most accounts dramatiser Andrew Brown and director Colin Bucksey made a pretty good fist of turning the novel into a four-part television drama; I've half a mind to give it a go (it's available on DVD). And it's in seemingly excellent company as well: the subsequent Armchair Thriller story was a six-part adaptation of Desmond Cory's The Circe Complex (1975), while the first series included a six-part adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's A Dog's Ransom (1972).


A final note on High Tide: in a lull before the novel's climax, Peter Curtis has to spend the night in the abandoned farmhouse with only a choice of two novels for company. One is by the aforementioned local author; the other is a Lemmy Caution novel, written by Peter Cheyney – and by chance it's to Cheyney that I'll be turning in the next-post-but-one. First, though, one last Hubbard book (for the time being): a 1972 hardback edition of perhaps the quintessential Hubbard novel.