‘When I get back from Paris,’ Marcel Berlins told me, ‘We’ll have one of our meals at Frederick’s in Camden Passage – just the two of us — or perhaps with Laura Wilson and Jake Kerridge.’ Marcel generally preferred such meetings to meals that publishers gave for authors. ‘We may have to pay for ourselves,’ he said, ‘but at least we don’t have to be unremittingly pleasant to everyone!’ (Needless to say, he was always pleasant, though he could be a little acerbic if he felt publicists were pestering him — even though he knew that was their job.) He was also, despite his bonhomie, a little shy — several times at some author event I found him waiting outside the venue, preferring to go in with someone he knew. But I will never see him prowling outside a launch venue again; Marcel was never to return from Paris.
I’d even booked a table before the sad news arrived from Marcel’s partner Lisa Forrell. I don’t have to talk here about Marcel being the doyen of British crime fiction critics (though he was French), writing for The Times for many years — all the many obits will talk about that. What I will miss most was a friend of many years: wry, alert to all the arts and always immensely knowledgable. And despite that sardonic edge, Marcel could behave himself at author meals — as he did at the meal for Peter James in this shot with Nick Clee and myself. I’ll also miss those phone calls when we’d both received proof copies from a publisher — he’d usually discover new talents ahead of me, and was the perfect early warning system: ‘Have you read X?’, he’d enthuse. ‘He/she is terrific!’ (‘Terrific’ was a favourite Marcel adjective.)
But finally, I can’t avoid saying what everyone who knew him will say — however much of a cliché it is. The most distinguished of writers on crime fiction will be missed. Much missed, both for his personality and his championing of so many crime writers.
