• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to footer

Crime Books

Prize-Winning Fiction

  • Home
  • Reference
    • Awards
    • Blogs
    • Reading List
      • The Best of The Best
      • International Crime
      • The Last Laugh
  • Index
    • Authors
    • Titles
    • Tags
  • E-Mail Updates
  • Search
  • Rating
    • ★ 5 Stars
    • ★ 4 Stars
    • ★ 3 Stars
    • ★ 2 Stars
    • ★ 1 Star
    • ★ Not Rated
  • Genre
    • Caper
    • Espionage
    • Historic
    • Legal Drama
    • Locked Room
    • Mystery
    • Police Procedural
    • Private Detective
  • Style
    • Cosy
    • Hard-Boiled
    • humorous
    • Literary
    • Narrative
    • Noir
    • Psychological
    • Pulp
    • Thriller
  • Region
    • British
    • European
    • Japanese
    • Nordic
    • North American
  • Era
    • Early 20th Century
      • 1900s
      • 1910s
      • 1920s
    • Mid 20th Century
      • 1930s
      • 1940s
      • 1950s
      • 1960s
    • Late 20th Century
      • 1970s
      • 1980s
      • 1990s
    • Early 21st Century
      • 2000s
      • 2010s
      • 2020s
  • Best Crime Fiction

Cameron McCabe

Convert Recommended Reading

The list of Cameron McCabe’s books is short and sweet. He only wrote one crime novel.

The Face on the cutting-room floor by Cameron McCabe

The Face on the Cutting Room Floor: A crime fiction cult classic and a critic’s dream. Is it a “detective story with a difference” or too clever for Its own good? (Review)

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.
Get a Copy
Cameron McCabe

Image by Unknown

Biography

Cameron McCabe’s only crime novel was first published by Victor Gollancz in 1937 and again in 1974. Greg Press picked up the mantle in 1981, Penguin in 1986, Blackmask in 2005, and Picador in 2016. It has also been published in French and German.

His publishing record is not shoddy; I’d be delighted if somebody published a book I had written just once.

Rave reviews in Bloody Murder (a history of crime fiction) prompted the republishing in 1974. Nobody at the publisher could remember who Cameron McCabe was. Gollancz held the royalties from the book in trust until he came forward.

Who Was Cameron McCabe?

It turned out that Cameron McCabe was the pen name of Ernst Wilhelm Julius Bornemann (who anglicised his name to Ernest Borneman).

Borneman was the only son of a Jewish couple, born in Berlin in 1915. As he grew up, he became interested in Jazz and Communism. This combination didn’t endear him to the Nazi party, and he escaped to Britain in 1933 by posing as a member of the Hitler Youth on an exchange trip.

He wrote The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor on his arrival in the UK in his late teens. McCabe took much of the dialogue verbatim from the film studio where he worked. English was his second, newly acquired language.

More than a Writer

Borneman was a true polymath. He became a film editor, jazz musician and critic, psychoanalyst, and sexologist. Borneman was the first-ever recipient of the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for sexual science for his studies of early childhood sexuality. Ultimately he finished his career as a Professor at the University of Salzburg in Austria.

All of that is evidence that Borneman was a very clever man. What he wasn’t, though, was a particularly successful crime writer. He wrote two other crime novels, The Compromisers and Tomorrow is Now. Both have been lost to posterity, I couldn’t find a single online review of either, and you have to trawl through the second-hand bookshelves to find a copy.

A Flash in the Pan

The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor was a one-hit-wonder that received hugely positive reviews from the critics:

“Extraordinary work of postmodern fakery from the golden age of detective fiction” – Jonathan Coe

“A detective story with a difference” – The Edinburgh Evening News

“The detective story to end detective stories” – Julian Symons

“Emphatically not to be missed” – Reynolds News

“It presents a problem in deduction; it moves on a shifting plane; it has finite construction, a sometimes elliptical but always robust idiom and a solution that leaves one provoked” – The Cape Times

However, not everybody liked it. When asked, Borneman himself described it as “puerile”.

“I am delighted, though baffled, at the continued interest in my first-born book. I was nineteen when I wrote it, had just arrived in England as a penniless political refugee, could barely speak English. And had started writing because it was the only activity not forbidden by the British authorities…

… The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor was meant to be no more than a finger exercise on the keyboard of my new language. It had no message and wasn’t meant as a spoof on the great masters of the crime story. I simply wanted to know if my English was good enough to let me earn money with my pen.” (The Times)

Were the Critics Right?

All of this leaves me remembering the unease I felt writing diagnostic assessments in my O-level English Literature. Do critics know what they are talking about?

The only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

Read more at The Independent.

Cameron McCabes’s Books

The Face on the cutting-room floor by Cameron McCabe
Get a Copy

The Face on the Cutting Room Floor

Review

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

Try Another Author

P.D. James

P.D. James

Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford

S.G. MacLean

S G MacLean

Zoran Drvenkar

Zoran Drvenkar

Roslund and Hellström

Roslund and Hellström

Fred Vargas

Fred Vargas

Peter Lovesey

Peter Lovesey

Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon

Peter James

Peter James

Donald E Westlake

Donald E Westlake

Donna Leon

Donna Leon

Hideo Yokoyama

Hideo Yokoyama

Mick Herron

Mick Herron

Pierre Lemaitre

Pierre Lemaitre

Joël Dicker

Joël Dicker

John Grisham

John Grisham

G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton

Roberto Perrone

Roberto Perrone

Andy McNab

Andy McNab

Ellis Peters

Ellis Peters

Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell

Dominique Manotti

Dominique Manotti

Joe Gores

Joe Gores

Jørn Lier Horst

Jørn Lier Horst

Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr

Ross Thomas

Ross Thomas

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Dominique Sylvain

Dominique Sylvain

Cameron McCabe

Cameron McCabe

Volker Kutscher

Volker Kutscher

Anthony Price

Anthony Price

Iceberg Slim

Iceberg Slim

Hannelore Cayre

Hannelore Cayre

Johan Theorin

Johan Theorin

Chris Whitaker

Chris Whitaker

Peter May

Peter May

James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke

Tove Alsterdal

Tove Alsterdal

Arnaldur Indriðason

Arnaldur Indriðason

Elly Griffiths

Elly Griffiths

J.K. Rowling / Robert Galbraith

Robert Galbraith

Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

Sara Lövestam

Sara Lövestam

Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block

William L DeAndrea

William L. DeAndrea

Stephen Leather

Stephen Leather

Val McDermid

Val McDermid

Ruth Rendell

Rith Rendell

Martina Cole

Martina Cole

John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr

Martin Cruz Smith

Martin Cruz Smith

Share this:

Subscribe via e-mail


This site contains sponsored links. I receive a small commission if you buy a book after visiting a link.
This doesn’t affect the price you pay. Click here to learn more.


Footer

Follow

  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • goodreads
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Reviews

  • Maigret and the Headless Corpse
  • The Talented Mr Ripley
  • Cops and Robbers
  • The Incredulity of Father Brown
  • Trick Baby
  • Shroud for a Nightingale

Best Crime Fiction

Who are the best crime fiction authors? Enter your e-mail address in the box below to find out.

Affiliate Links · Contact · Site Map · Privacy Policy · Log In

This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, read the Privacy PolicyOK