Celia Fremlin: Hours Before Dawn

I remember Sarah Weinman mentioning Celia Fremlin as one of the domestic suspense writers who she needed to pay more attention to. When I found one of Fremlin's books in Finnish translation, I picked it up. It was one of those books I'd always known existed, but hadn't paid any attention to them.

But boy, what a good book Hours Before Dawn is! I read it almost in one sitting. I had to take care of some business during the reading, but I really wouldn't've liked to. I heard later that The Times Magazine had included the novel in their list of hundred best thrillers, and I couldn't agree more.

Hours Before Dawn was first published in 1959, and it is a perfect embodiment of domestic suspense: the lead character is a still youngish woman with three kids and an impatient husband, and the mystery concentrates almost entirely on what happens inside their little house. Her smallest kid clearly has colic, and he shouts and screams all the time when he should be sleeping. This bugs the husband and the neighbour and keeps the mother awake. I don't know of any other crime novel that deals with colic - and actually makes the colic baby the center of the mystery.

There's indeed a mystery, but Hours Before Dawn is still a crimeless novel. There are no murders, stabbings, thefts, frauds, shakedowns or what have you. Yet this is one of the most powerful crime novels I've read in a long time.

I read the Finnish translation (see the picture; the Polish-style cover is by Finnish graphic artist Heikki Ahtiala), but the book seems to be readily available in affordable reprint.

Dan Brown's earlier thrillers

I've mentioned in passing one or two times that I'm editing a reference book on thriller writers for a Finnish non-fiction publisher. I've been reading Sidney Sheldon lately and let me tell you, it's no pleasure. I had to take a break and start Brian Garfield's The Paladin - it's the last one I haven't read yet. Garfield is God compared to some other writers I've been tackling with, even though The Paladin is not Garfield at his best.

I've been writing also the history of the thriller genre to act as a foreword to the whole book, and it is more difficult than it seems at first, since the boundaries of the genre are so flexible. I think I'm now finished with the article (I'd post it here, but it's understandably in Finnish only; well, that hasn't stopped me before) and just now I got to thinking: what kind of reviews did Dan Brown's early novels receive before he wrote The Da Vinci Code (which, in case you don't remember or even know, I thought was the worst book ever given its popularity and media attention)? It would be interesting to read them, since the reviews now are quite predictable. (I'm pretty ashamed of Nelson De Mille giving a blurb to Brown saying something like "Brown is pure genius". If this guy is pure genius, then I'm Jesus Christ.)

By the way, someone here claims that Garfield's novel The Paladin is stated being based "on fact". I'm pretty certain that Garfield himself says on his short preface that the novel is based only on what "Christopher Creighton" has told to be true. Garfield says that he can't know the truth himself. I'd believe Garfield only wanted to write a thrilling story.