Eureka/Anthony Quinn
A series of novels depicting recurring characters is often a successful literary device and in the case of Antfony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time a classic. Another Anthony, Anthony Quinn, a former film critic on The Independent, has now written a third in his series, the first two Curtain Call and Freya were reviewed favourably on the Rust. The series starts in the thirties with Curtain Call a murder mystery which features society portraitist Stephen Wyley and a well-drawn colourful character Jimmy Erskine based on the critic James Agate. Freya, the daughter of Stephen, takes over in a novel set in the forties and fifties and featuring another exotic character Nat Fane who was with Freya at Oxford.
The latest, Eureka, is set in the sixties. The story is the making of a film called Eureka based on a Henry James short story. The scriptwriter is Nat Fane who, after receiving a Academy award, has writer’s block and can’t produce anything for the German film director of Eureka Rainer Kloss. The film is financed by a villain Harry Pulver. Although Anthony Quinn has some facility for depiction of characters, notably the boorish and self obsessed artist Jeff who is the boyfriend of aspiring actress Billie Cantrip who appears in the film it’s pretty easy to identify some of the other characters from real life. Ronnie the cockney actor is clearly based on Michael Caine, Nat Fane on Kenneth Tynan, Kloss on Herzog or Fassbender. Freya appears in the novel as a journalist, as does her father and her ex-girlfriend whom she met on VE Day, Nina.
The plot moves at a fast tempo with a fine sense of location. Although we never find out the literary secret of the writer in the Henry James story and is the key to his writing, there is a dramatic and violent denouement to the story.
Quinn is able to draw on his knowledge of films to make the filming scenes realistic. Each chapter finishes with a section of the scenario which is bit confusing at first as this is ahead of the main plot.
Quinn has surely yet more novels for each decade after the sixties. A series such as this attracts a loyal and expectant readership. As I have written before I have no problem with commercial writers, it is the quality of the final product that matters. I suspect also Quinn has a film in mind. This is no pot boiler. Quinn does his research to evoke the zeitgeist of the sixties from the drugs and casual sex to the dansette turntable and Michael Fish shirts.
