1924: Downton Abbey and Before the Fact

Has anyone read Francis Iles's Before the Fact?

It occurred to me last week that not only is the 1924 period shown on Downton Abbey a good visualization of what Dorothy Sayers wrote about in her early Lord Peter Wimsey tales, but it's pretty close to the setting for Before the Fact. This, my favorite novel for many years, is the story that formed the basis for Hitchcock's Suspicion. The novel came out in 1932, but it begins ten years or so before, when the lead character, Lina (played by Joan Fontaine), meets her husband-to-be, the sociopathic Johnnie (done to a turn, until the unrealistic ending of the film, by Cary Grant).

So a good part of that novel would be contemporary with Wimsey and Downton, no?

"Suspicion" is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies and movies overall; so years ago, I hunted down and read the novel "Before the Fact." I thought it was a good enjoyable read, but for me, the movie was - and this is rare - more enjoyable than the book.

***Spoiler Alert***

Even though the movie suffers from a ridiculous need to have a happy ending, if one ignores that, the movie has an incredible combination of light heartedness and intense suspense / fear. And the three stars have an wonderfully natural chemistry. Also, as Hitchcock does so well, he creates a very normal, almost idyllic setting and, then, slowly tips over the furniture, piece by piece, until you realize the place is a complete disaster area.

My memory of the novel was that it has less of a contrast between simple charm and fear - between normalcy and mayhem. Again, enjoyed both, but in a rare example, I thought the movie did it better.

As to your timing point, I believe what you are saying is correct, but unfortunately, I've seen the movie since having read the novel, which was set in the late 30s and that is the time period stuck in my mind.

Fading,

Glad to find someone else who'd read Fact and appreciated it. I read it at age 14 in a collection, Three Famous Murder Novels edited by Bennett Cerf. Fact cast such a spell that I could not move on and read Trent's Last Case and The House of the Arrow for several years. Probably it's why I've always had such an interest in the psychopath/sociopath sort of character. Fact is quite witty, though not much on the lighthearted side of things.

Yes, the casting in Hitchcock's film is excellent, and I suppose it's understandable that at the time the studio felt they couldn't make a thoroughgoing murderer out of Grant's Johnnie. But then a remake was done on TV in the Eighties, with Jane Curtin (!) as Lina and Anthony Andrews as Johnnie -- and they gave us the same howlingly unbelievable ending!

Like you, I've always thought of Fact as an early Thirties story, until I realized that the novel, and Lina and Johnnie's marriage, spans at least ten years. So that would put the start of the story back to the early Twenties.