The Psychic Detective

[Johnlprobert]

Robert Hale 1993 (although it may as well have been published on the moon it's so bloody hard to get hold of!)

So here we are - at last the Probert Towers library has a copy of this one, completing the RCH collection! Written in 1993 it's an origin story for the pairing of these two detectives. It starts off very well indeed with Fred being rescued from a fate worse than death (and her awful parents) by Francis St Clare who takes her to his huge old rambling house where he thinks she's the ideal person to help him rid his house of spectres.

This does seem to involve her being tied up a lot in provocative poses wearing torn clothes to "emphasise her vulnerability" and "encourage the nasties", and at one point she's put in a cage. Then, once she ends up in the seventeenth century, she spends all her time suspended wearing very little and at the mercy of Lord Ramsay's whip. There's some attempt at justification for all this but as a good friend once said to me - where lovely ladies are concerned the concept of "pointless nudity" is redundant. And how right he is.

As a novel it's breezily written and loads of fun so far. In fact things have been progressing nicely but oh dear RCH's tendency to 'write blind' has meant a dream sequence chapter where he himself has turned up confessing he's not sure where the plot goes next. "They normally work themselves out so don't worry' his sexy secretary Myna has reassured him, so we'll have to see if she was right.

This brings back so many memories of good RCH (the Birkinesque dissection of characters he doesn't like, horrible monsters, light hearted bouncy dialogue) and the bad (terrible, terrible rhymes, the fact that he really should stop at 100 pages because he obviously gets bored). But on the whole I've been having a blast with it, unlike some of his later books which were pretty hard going and quite possibly the work of a man without any kind of editor at all.

It's a long, long time since I've treated myself to an RCH binge and I'm loving this. I think after this it may be time to revisit some of his old classics.

And now it's Chapter 12 and Madame Orloff has turned up - oh how marvellous...

[dem]

Aug 25, 2011 7:08:09 GMT Johnlprobert said:

at one point she's put in a cage. Then, once she ends up in the seventeenth century, she spends all her time suspended wearing very little and at the mercy of Lord Ramsay's whip.

i think i'm going to faint! lovely, lovely stuff, lord p! i like your reviews best when you are enthused, and goodness, you seem to be having a whale of a time with The Psychic Detective! that's a point well made about him getting bored around the hundred page mark. sometimes its even earlier, invariably both story and readers suffer. personally i tend to break into a cold sweat the moment he resorts to the "hilarious" poetry as it's a fair bet the going will be excruciating from there on in. credit to the cover artist - he or she has done the feisty Fred proud, though Francis looks a bit on the anonymous side (i'm not sure how i pictured him; he's a bloke, anyway, so who cares?)

[Johnlprobert]

So I made it to the end of this and...well, it's rare that a book can leave me red faced (and I was reading this on the 11-30 to Paddington I'll have you know) but goodness me I must confess The Psychic Detective went in a direction I really wasn't expecting at all.

I know that all members of the vault would be as shocked as I if I were to recount what happens in detail, but because I realise I am performing an academic service here, and because this particular text is difficult for scholars to obtain I am sure everyone here will appreciate that I am recounting the following out of duty to the Vault:

Fred, Francis and Lord Ramsay get transported back to Francis' manor house, which we have been told has its own purpose built gymnasium. Fred gets tied down to the vaulting horse, is divested of her lower garments and is thrashed with birch twigs while the evil villain extols the 'sheer whiteness and perfection' of the poor young lady's buttocks.

This is apparently all in aid of 'charging her up' until she's ready to 'explode with psychic energy' which evil Lord R intends to harness. The fact that it then gets really, really silly with Fred's soul going into a mouse that has to be fed laxatives to get it to come out again does nothing to distract the reader from the fact that they've just read a fair few pages of the kind of material designed to give the average Daily Mail reader a fit.

doesn't cover it (and neither do Fred's panties until much later on in the book. "Ooh my bum hurts" she says at one point and absolutely no-one is surprised). I must confess I don't remember RCH having little...episodes like this in any of his other books but as I'm about to engage in an RCH retrospective I shall of course be reporting back.

Yours still quite stunned by the entire episode (in fact Lady P had to calm me down on the train)


JLP

[noose]

It sounds absolutely brilliant. I think Wordsworth should reprint it
Thanks for giving us the low down on that most elusive of books Mr P!

[dem]

my poor lord probert, you sound fair traumatised by the whole unseemly experience as well you might! disgraceful that a respectable gentleman of your standing should be exposed to such smut. And what of her magnificence? I trust you weren't reciting to your fellow passengers? There was nothing on the news about a major derailment.

i can only applaud your diligence in repeating every last nuance of Fredericka's humiliation to warn us against purchasing a mucky book out of innocence. i for one shall not be making that mistake.

And, uh, you are quite sure The Psychic Detective never went to a mass paperback edition, eh? dash, blast and confound it all.

[Craig Herbertson]

Aug 30, 2011 10:32:34 GMT dem said:

my poor lord probert, you sound fair traumatised by the whole unseemly experience as well you might! disgraceful that a respectable gentleman of your standing should be exposed to such smut. And what of her magnificence? I trust you weren't reciting to your fellow passengers? There was nothing on the news about a major derailment.

i can only applaud your diligence in repeating every last nuance of Fredericka's humiliation to warn us against purchasing a mucky book out of innocence. i for one shall not be making that mistake.

And, uh, you are quite sure The Psychic Detective never went to a mass paperback edition, eh? dash, blast and confound it all.

Can I reiterate the above. Lord Probert has clearly saved us all from a fate worse than death and preserved the modesty of any young ladies or indeed servants who might have come to harm. Can't wait for the paperback...

[Johnlprobert]

Aug 31, 2011 11:06:45 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

Aug 30, 2011 10:32:34 GMT dem said:

my poor lord probert, you sound fair traumatised by the whole unseemly experience as well you might! disgraceful that a respectable gentleman of your standing should be exposed to such smut. And what of her magnificence? I trust you weren't reciting to your fellow passengers? There was nothing on the news about a major derailment.

i can only applaud your diligence in repeating every last nuance of Fredericka's humiliation to warn us against purchasing a mucky book out of innocence. i for one shall not be making that mistake.

And, uh, you are quite sure The Psychic Detective never went to a mass paperback edition, eh? dash, blast and confound it all.

Can I reiterate the above. Lord Probert has clearly saved us all from a fate worse than death and preserved the modesty of any young ladies or indeed servants who might have come to harm. Can't wait for the paperback...

Thank you all - I could only brave such.....depravity with the support of the Vault!

[lemming13]

Now this is a lovely welcome back to the Vault after the horror that is the long summer break (when the incessant hanging about of not only bored spawn but bored friends of spawn make Vault visits impossible); some juicy smut academically fascinating material to broaden our minds. My thanks added to the others, Lord P, for enduring this on our behalf.

[Johnlprobert]

Sept 12, 2011 10:26:42 GMT lemming13 said:

Now this is a lovely welcome back to the Vault after the horror that is the long summer break (when the incessant hanging about of not only bored spawn but bored friends of spawn make Vault visits impossible); some juicy smut academically fascinating material to broaden our minds. My thanks added to the others, Lord P, for enduring this on our behalf.

Thank you so much! It's nice to be appreciated!

[Craig Herbertson]

Extremely good and erudite, interesting and as always funny take on it John. Had to check my cellar after but they're still quiet...

[dem]

very nice to have you back, lemmy. that's the way to do it - straight in on the erudite stuff. If only DAW had known Chetwynd-Hayes had this one up his sleeve they'd not have dropped him after The Other Side failed to score in the US (very under-rated collection, imo, even if the stand-out is a rewrite of his early classic The Jumpity-Jim: should persistently 'hilarious' titles be reasonable grounds for shooting an author?)

[lemming13]

Sept 13, 2011 7:45:19 GMT dem said:

should persistently 'hilarious' titles be reasonable grounds for shooting an author?

Only in the kneecaps, dem, if they can also come up with classy stuff like this.

[Johnlprobert]

Sept 13, 2011 7:45:19 GMT dem said:

(should persistently 'hilarious' titles be reasonable grounds for shooting an author?)

Well considering some of RCH's more criminal titles include things like The Muggle-Fluggle and The Flippity-Plop (or something like those) there is a case that his editor should have said "No Ron I think you need to go back and have another think about those" possibly with a loaded gun pointed at him, but British publishing in the 70s just didn't adopt the Mediterranean approach.

[David A. Riley]

Sept 13, 2011 21:04:49 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Sept 13, 2011 7:45:19 GMT dem said:

(should persistently 'hilarious' titles be reasonable grounds for shooting an author?)

Well considering some of RCH's more criminal titles include things like The Muggle-Fluggle and The Flippity-Plop (or something like those) there is a case that his editor should have said "No Ron I think you need to go back and have another think about those" possibly with a loaded gun pointed at him, but British publishing in the 70s just didn't adopt the Mediterranean approach.

Going off those RCH titles, I think his spirits lives on in whoever wrote In the Night Garden on Cbeebies. www.inthenightgarden.co.uk/en/visit-characters.asp

[Johnlprobert]

Sept 14, 2011 7:42:51 GMT David A. Riley said:

Sept 13, 2011 21:04:49 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Well considering some of RCH's more criminal titles include things like The Muggle-Fluggle and The Flippity-Plop (or something like those) there is a case that his editor should have said "No Ron I think you need to go back and have another think about those" possibly with a loaded gun pointed at him, but British publishing in the 70s just didn't adopt the Mediterranean approach.

Going off those RCH titles, I think his spirits lives on in whoever wrote In the Night Garden on Cbeebies. www.inthenightgarden.co.uk/en/visit-characters.asp

Oh God you might be right David!