Francis Beeding
Personal Information
Description
A pseudonym for co-authors Hilary Saint George Saunders and John Leslie Palmer. >They were Oxford graduates who met while at the League of Nations in Geneva. Palmer was a drama critic who wrote books on the theatre under the pseudonym "Christopher Haddon". >Saunders served with the Welsh Guards in WWI and worked for the Air Ministry in WWII, writing the famous pamphlet, The Battle of Britain. From 1946 to 1950 he was librarian of the House of Commons. >They also wrote mainstream fiction under the name David Pilgrim. >Beeding has over thirty novels to his credit, five of which have been adapted into feature films. Of these, The House of Dr. Edwardes remains the best known, as it formed the basis of Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound.
Books
The house of Dr. Edwardes
>The single most striking quality of Francis Beeding's The House of Doctor Edwardes is the sense of foreboding and uncertainty that pervades every scene, the hallmarks of many a great mystery. From the very first page of the prologue, Beeding makes the very air the characters live and breathe in seem to crackle with an ominous electricity. >This is surely what appealed to Alfred Hitchcock when he found in Beeding's work the inspiration for his classic, unforgettable film Spellbound. Fans of Hitchcock will want to take special notice of The House of Dr. Edwardes, for, unlike other adaptations, Spellbound strays rather dramatically from its source material. Not only do the differences offer fascinating peeks into the great director's creative vision, they also ensure that even Hitchcock fans familiar with Spellbound will find much in Beeding's novel that will surprise and delight. >The "house" of the title is in fact a lunatic asylum in France, and Dr. Edwardes is the head psychiatrist and presiding genius there. And although he is a highly esteemed, almost iconic figure in psychiatric circles, there is something clearly amiss. >The novel opens with a puzzling, ominous episode in which a patient being transported to the asylum grows agitated as the car bringing him there approaches its destination. He suddenly screams "the gorge of the devil" and attacks and kills one of his supervisors. >On the heels of this terrible and inauspicious arrival is another newcomer to the asylum, Dr. Constance Sedgwick. A promising but inexperienced psychiatrist, Dr. Sedgwick accepts a position on Dr. Edwardes's staff to learn at the feet of the great man. But she arrives to discover that Dr. Edwardes has taken a leave of absence to calm his nerves, and it does not take her long to discover that the house is hardly in order. >It is probably evident from just that short description that this work has much to say about madness, power and terror. What is interesting is the two very different paths taken by two very different artists - Beeding and Hitchcock - to best give life to these ideas. Hitchcock, as any fan of Spellbound knows, borrowed heavily from Freudian psychoanalysis and its emphasis on dreams, repression and desire. Salvador Dali's surrealistic interpolations serve as vivid illustrations of the irrational throughout the movie. Beeding, however, owes less to Freud, displaying much closer affinities with the brooding, psychological landscapes of the Gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially Emily Bronte's masterpiece Wuthering Heights. The result is a compelling work - part mystery, part modern gothic. The House of Dr. Edwardes is a gripping novel that continues to provoke and inspire readers and artists alike.
The Norwich Victims
Mystery fiction. Detective and mystery stories. A middle-aged schoolteacher wins the French lottery and looks around for somewhere safe to invest her prize. Unfortunately for her she decides to consult the unscrupulous John Throgmorton, and he seizes a once in a lifetime opportunity, murdering the unsuspecting Miss Haslett and sending his secretary and partner in crime, Hermione Taylor, to Paris to collect the money. Throgmorton's devious plan is executed to perfection, and it seems that nothing can go wrong. But then he receives an unexpected visitor.
Death in four letters
Journalist Frank Dodd accidentally discovers that a British press lord is secretly in the pay of the secretive arms cartel that he wants to investigate.
The hidden kingdom
Having saved Europe from the Professor's war schemes in The Seven Sleepers, Thomas reunites with his friends Étienne and Gaston of the French secret service and discovers that the Professor is at work again — this time with a plan for world domination that will carry them to Outer Mongolia to witness the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.
Death Walks in Eastrepps
A murder mystery set in Norfolk with half a dozen murders, three arrests, two trials with subsequent hangings (Good Reads). >Death Walks in Eastrepps begins quietly - almost too quietly. Robert Eldridge is returning to Eastrepps on the London train for his customary Wednesday-night tryst with Margaret Withers. At the same time Miss Mary Hewitt is sitting down to dinner with her brother James. Later that night she will make her usual visit to Mrs. Dampier at Tamarisk House. As she leaves to go home, nothing is out of the ordinary. But Mary Hewitt doesn't reach home that night, and her corpse is found the next day in a little wood just off the path she would normally take. A brutal murderer - soon called the Eastrepps Evil - is on the loose. >The Eastrepps Evil is a phrase coined by vacationing newspaperman William Ferris; might he also be the Evil? Or is the murderer Robert Eldridge, who with cold calculation carried on a six-months' affair with Margaret Withers in order to establish the perfect alibi? Or the shiftless Dick Coldfoot, who is blackmailing Eldridge? Or Alistair Rockingham, who has an eye for the ladies and certain compulsions that go beyond merely tipping his hat? Or is it someone else in the formerly sleepy seaside village of Eastrepps?