Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The House at Balnesmoor

Scottish writer Hugh C(rauford) Rae was born in 1935 and brought up in Glasgow, where he spent fourteen years working in a bookshop before turning to writing books rather than selling them. Between 1965 and 1992, he published over seventy novels in various genres under several pseudonyms, including Robert Crawford, James Albany, R B Houston, Stuart Stern (with S. Ungar), and Jessica Stirling (with Margaret M. Coghlan). He also served as past president of the Scottish Association of Writers.

The House at Balnesmoor, a/k/a A Few Small Bones, dates from 1968 and is one of Rae's earliest efforts. It follows Norman Lang, who makes a gruesome discovery near his idyllic country retreat in Glasgow's countryside, the bodies of two schoolgirls buried among the heather. The chapters alterenate between Chief Superintendent McCaig and Inspector Ryan and their investigation and the lives of the cast of suspects, including the reclusive Lang; his wife, who is prone to nervous fits; the real estate agent Galbraith, an aging libidinous bachelor; and Lang's neighbors, the Johnstones, both involved in separate adulterous affairs. As the investigation deepens, it casts a long shadow over Lang and his reputation and threatens to push his tormented  wife to the brink of madness. But McCaig begins to worry that a fatal fusion of youthful passion and neurosis gone murderously awry may lead the killer to strike again.

Rae once said in an interview that he hoped he was "crafty enough not to bury the story in an excess of detail but to lure the reader into the experience of another time, another place through the interaction of the characters." He also noted that he returned again and again to Scottish backgrounds and themes, with a particular interest in the shifting phases in his home country over the past two centuries and the hardships suffered by its people, urban and rural. It's been pointed out that Rae was one of the earliest in the "tartan noir" line of Scottish authors whose descendants include Ian Rankin and Denise Mina.

Rae went on to write only one additional book in the McCaig/Ryan series, The Shooting Gallery (1972), which was a finalist for the 1973 Edgar Award for Best Mystery. Rae eventually turned to "lightweight guns'n'gals thrillers" under the Crawford and Albany names and historical romance novels under the Stirling pseudonym because they were more lucrative. He also dabbled in radio plays and television, and two of his novels were adapted for TV in the 80s and 90s.

Comments

[Sergio (Tipping My Fedora)]

Thanks for all the info BV - I keep thinking this is an author I've encountered before but can't think of which book. Sounds like fun thogh, thanks for the thorough overview. It can be such a nightmare with prolific authors who used multiple pseudonyms.

[BV Lawson]

Apparently, Rae ended up focusing most of his efforts on his alter-ego Jessica Stirling and romance novels because they simply paid better. He pretty much abandoned his procedural and traditional crime fiction efforts that he focused on initially, but did spread out into spy thrillers, some forensic novels, etc. Most of his books are out of print, alas.