Operation Diplomat by Francis Durbridge

I've said plenty of times how much I enjoy the 'cliff-hanger' serials written by Francis Durbridge. Maybe they stretch plausibility to the limit, maybe they are a guilty pleasure, but they are a lot of fun. Williams and Whiting have done a great job in reprinting many Durbridge titles, including some that haven't seen the light of day in book form before. The latest example is Operation Diplomat.

A useful intro by Melvyn Barnes, the leading expert on Durbridge, explains that the original TV serial was a follow-up to the better-known  The Broken Horseshoe, and was broadcast in six episodes by the BBC towards the end of 1952. The original cast list is included and I noted several familiar names, such as Raymond Huntley and (in a minor role) Roger Delgado, later famed as 'The Master' in Doctor Who. The story was later filmed, but has never appeared in book form before.

There is a dramatic opening, with a dead body on the floor of a flat owned by Mark Fenton, the doctor who is the main protagonist. The deceased, also a doctor, is a man called Edward Schroder, and Fenton is trying to explain to Inspector Austin the extraordinary sequence of events which preceded Schroder's death. In a nutshell, Fenton was kidnapped in order to perform a life-saving operation on a famous diplomat called Sir Oliver Peters. Schroder warned Fenton that his life was in danger - but Schroder was the one to be shot.  

I enjoyed this one, especially because the cliff-hangers are really attention-grabbing. In one or two instances, the subsequent resolution of the dramatic climax was slightly underwhelming, with red herrings abounding, but appreciating Durbridge to the full does require the regular suspension of disbelief. This story was entertaining enough for me to be very glad to go with the flow. Congratulations to the publishers for making it available to a new readership.  

Fear No More - 1961 film review

Fear No More is an obscure film noir dating from 1961. The script is based on a novel of the same name by Leslie Edgley (who was born in London but spent most of his life on the other side of the Atlantic). Some reviews compare the style of storytelling to Hitchcock, but in view of the multiple - and sometimes dazzling - plot twists, I think a closer comparison is with Francis Durbridge.

This is a film with some rough edges and some pretty rough acting, but the lead character, Sharon Carlin, is well played by Mala Powers, who invests the part with the right balance of innocent charm and paranoia. She is asked by her boss to take an important message by train, but immediately finds herself in a train compartment with a dead woman's body. 

That's only the start of her misfortunes, which multiply with dizzying speed. A villain coshes her and then a cop accuses her of murder. She escapes from the cop and is almost run over by a car driven by Paul Colbert (Jacques Bergerac, a rather wooden and unconvincing performer, I'm afraid), who then offers her a lift. The plot continues to thicken impressively.

In essence, this is one of those situations where we root for a protagonist who is faced with an ingenious and implacable enemy and who finds herself unable to convince anyone that she is telling the truth. It's a good story, despite the inevitable implausibilities. The ending is clumsy and one feels that with more care this could have become a minor classic. Debatable, I accept, but for all the film's flaws, I enjoyed it.

Francis Durbridge - La Boutique and The Scarf

 

In a guest post on this blog last month, Melvyn Barnes explained the work he'd been doing with the estate of Francis Durbridge and that enterprising small press Williams and Whiting to bring to print a good many of Durbridge's stories for TV and radio. I'm a Durbridge fan and I think this is a very worthwhile project indeed. 

I was especially interested to read La Boutique, a radio serial in five parts which hadn't previously registered on my radar. The book contains the original scripts, which were especially commissioned by the European Broadcasting Union. As Melvyn points out in his intro, the story was written in 1967 and Durbridge was the first author to be invited by the EBU to write a radio serial for multi-lingual broadcasting. It shows how popular he was across the continent at that time.

La Boutique is a classic Durbridge mystery, with many of the tropes we know and love in evidence. The starting point is a meeting between Robert Bristol, a cop, and his songwriter brother Lewis. Lewis tells (with the aid of flashback scenes) the story of how he became infatuated with Virginia, whom he met in the US - only for her to disappear in highly mysterious circumstances. There's also a puzzle about a missing belt from a dress shop, La Boutique, owned by Lewis's ex-wife Eve. The plot thickens when a corpse is found - with the missing belt . A classic Durbridge cliffhanger to end episode one. I very much enjoyed this story.

The Scarf was a TV serial which was hugely popular back in 1959: it was shown on BBC TV in six thirty-minute episodes, with Donald Pleasence playing Inspector Yates and a cast which boasted the likes of Patrick Troughton and Anthony Valentine. A young woman called Fay Collins is found strangled on a farm tractor trailer and suspicion falls on a publisher called Clifton Morris. It's another story in the vintage Durbridge mould - the eponymous scarf adds to the puzzle, rather like the belt and a photograph of the shop in La Boutique, like the doll in The Doll, and so on...TV scripts aren't as easy to read as radio scripts in my opinion, because of the visual component, but this is an interesting story that is sure to entertain Durbridge fans.

Rediscovering Durbridge

I've mentioned Melvyn Barnes on this blog previously, in connection with the good work he's done in relation to Francis Durbridge. He's currently collaborating with an enterprising small press, Williams & Whiting, to bring more of Durbridge's work, a worthy endeavour. I invited Melvyn to tell my readers more about this project:

'My fascination with Durbridge goes back to adolescence (of blessed memory) when I was glued to the radio and later to television in my determination not to miss the next instalment of the latest Durbridge serial.  But Durbridge did not figure in the many years that I spent in writing books and articles about crime fiction, until the turning point of retirement from the day job provided more time to spend on research.  So perhaps inevitably Durbridge once again took centre stage, particularly as this multi-media craftsman had been largely neglected by the historians of popular culture.  And far worse than that, on the Internet he was misrepresented by inaccurate information that will doubtless remain in the ether forever.

Durbridge thus became my principal subject of research, the result being a self-published book Francis Durbridge: A Centenary Appreciation (2015).  That was just the beginning, however, as it had become increasingly clear that Durbridge left innumerable unanswered questions about his works, the way in which he recycled plots, things written but never produced, and other aspects that needed to be investigated and if possible clarified.  Indeed this presented a renewed challenge, requiring another lengthy period of research that led to the publication of a much larger book Francis Durbridge: The Complete Guide (Williams & Whiting, 2018).

So was this Case Closed?  On the contrary, Francis Durbridge is never that straightforward and some bombshell revelations soon began to emerge.  These arose from the fact that although he died in 1998 his widow lived for very many years afterwards, and understandably their two sons had long deferred sorting their father’s papers.  But now they discovered that numerous original typescripts had survived, some of them never available as novelisations or recordings nor even produced in their intended form - be it radio, television or cinema film.  Trumpet fan-fair - step forward the publisher Williams & Whiting, now contracted to transcribe and publish all of these typescripts as e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks.

My own role has involved validating, proof-reading and in particular writing Introductions for each book.  So far I have written thirty-four Introductions, with increasing excitement because these scripts will gradually become an impressive set of uniform volumes.  At the time of writing, those already published or imminent are – The Scarf (1959 television serial); Paul Temple and the Curzon Case (1948 radio serial); La Boutique (1967 radio serial); The Broken Horseshoe (1952 television serial); Three Plays for Radio Volume 1 (1945-46 Over My Dead Body, Mr Lucas and The Caspary Affair); Send for Paul Temple (the original 1938 radio serial); A Time of Day (1957 television serial); Death Comes to the Hibiscus (c.1942, an unproduced stage play) and The Essential Heart (1943 radio play), both written under the pseudonym Nicholas Vane; Send for Paul Temple (1943 stage play); The Teckman Biography (1953 television serial); Paul Temple and Steve (1947 radio serial); and Twenty Minutes from Rome (c.1954, an unproduced television play).

As indicated above there are many more to come, and for me it has been a labour of love.  But I gather that Durbridge’s son Nicholas is now laboriously transcribing his father’s handwritten diaries – so who knows what new information might emerge?'

Thanks, Melvyn. I'll be posting more about these interesting books in due course.

Francis Durbridge: the Complete Guide

One of the pleasures for me of June's Bodies from the Library event was the chance to meet Melvyn Barnes. I first came across his work when I read his Best Detective Fiction, and then its subsequent incarnation, Murder in Print. We've corresponded for some years, but this was our first meeting in person. He was at the British Library to speak about Francis Durbridge, an author on whom he is our leading authority, and about whom he's written a book.

This is Francis Durbridge: the Complete Guide. In fact, it's an updated and significantly expanded version of his Francis Durbridge: a Centenary Appreciation. That book was self-published; this one appears under the imprint of a worthy independent press, Williams and Whiting. I enjoyed the earlier book, but the new version does offer much more, and is definitely worth buying even if you invested in  its predecessor.

A brief biographical chapter is followed by a lengthy survey of Durbridge's career. Then come sections on his novels, his work for radio (there was a lot of it), his work for television (which is how I first came across his name in my youth), his stage plays, films of his stories, and (yes!) the Paul Temple comic strip.

One of the valuable features of the book is that it disentangles the numerous overlapping strands of Durbridge's output. He was prolific, sure, but he also re-used the same plots on many occasions. This can be confusing and indeed irritating, so it's helpful to be able to find out, for instance, that Design for Murder is actually a novelisation of the radio serial Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, while Paul Temple and the Alex Affair is actually a revision of the earlier Send for Paul Temple Again. This is a book I shall refer to time and again, and it's a must for any serious Durbridge fan; a bonus is an intro by Nicholas Durbridge. I should declare that I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements, but that's immaterial - I'd recommend this book anyway.

Fragment of Fear - 1970 film DVD review

I've become increasingly interested in the work of John Bingham, and as a result I sought out the DVD made of his 1965 novel, A Fragment of Fear. I've not read the book as yet (though I hope to do so before long) but I was tempted by reviews of the DVD of the film version made five years after the book's appearance. The film sounded very appealing, not least because of a terrific cast, led by David Hemmings, who was at his peak at around that time. Hemmings was, like the late Hywel Bennett, an immensely charismatic actor whose career faded somewhat, and who died too young.

The screenplay was written by Paul Dehn, who like Bingham was a former spy (he was also a poet and critic, and his other scripts included Goldfinger and Murder on the Orient Express). The film opens in Italy, with Hemmings chatting to his aunt (played by Flora Robson). He's a reformed drug addict who has recently published a successful book. His aunt is found dead in mysterious circumstances, and a strange message left with a wreath which refers to "the Stepping Stones" intrigues our hero. He falls for an attractive woman (Gayle Hunnicutt), and takes her with him to England, where they plan to get married. But his determination to find out what happened to his aunt soon becomes obsessive.

The suspense builds with some splendidly mysterious plot twists, worthy of Francis Durbridge at his best. Hemmings becomes trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare, as strange, menacing things happen to him which seem inexplicable. When he tries to explain himself to the police, they suggest he is going mad. Then Whitehall (in the person of Arthur Lowe, of all people) gets involved. What on earth is going on?

The ending of the film is perhaps controversial. Suffice to say that things aren't wrapped up in the classic Durbridge style. Really, this is a film which has to be seen as a product of its time - yes, it's enigmatic, but so was Blow Up, a Hemmings film which made a great impression when I saw it in my teens. But even though I like stories with clever and comprehensive solutions, I'm also a big fan of Franz Kafka's The Trial. And there's a touch of Joseph K. about Hemmings' luckless character.

Francis Durbrige Presents: Bat Out of Hell - DVD review -

My introduction to Francis Durbridge came when I was a boy. I happened to watch his TV serial Bat Out of Hell when it was screened by the BBC in 1966. Not long before, I'd discovered Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, whom I still admire. And Durbridge, too, is a master of the crime genre, with a particular flair for the cliffhanger. I've watched and listened to many of his serials for TV and radio, and read many of his books. But Bat Out of Hell remains my favourite of his works.
There are several reasons for this. First, it's not formulaic. In fact, the structure is highly original. We are presented, it seems, with a classic "inverted mystery" scenario. Geoffrey Stewart is a wealthy estate agent but his marriage to the much younger Diana is fraying. We soon discover that Diana is having an affair with Mark Paxton, who works for Geoffrey, and that they are conspiring to murder him for his money. The crime is duly committed - but then the fun really starts. For the body vanishes, and Diana receives a telephone call, evidently from Geoffrey. For good measure, a body turns up in the spot where Paxton had intended to bury Geoffrey. But the corpse isn't Geoffrey's.

All this in episode one, lasting a mere half hour. Old TV crime shows often suffer from a lack of pace by modern standards, but not Bat Out of Hell. The twists keep coming, as relentless as they are baffling. I can't think of any inverted mystery with such an ingenious plot, and the investigating detective, Inspector Clay is truly remorseless as Paxton and Diana find themselves living a nightmare. Durbridge's novelisation of the story, by the way, is a good one, and a few years back I encouraged Arcturus to republish it in their Classic Crime series. Copies are still easy to find.

Back to the TV series. Apart from the cleverness of the plot, the impressive pace, and a memorable cop, the five-part show also benefited from a superb cast. Paxton is played by the young John Thaw - yes, Inspector Morse himself. Diana is played by Sylvia Sims, at her most beautiful. The inspector is played by Dudley Foster, a terrific character actor whose career was sadly ended when he committed suicide. The supporting cast, also very good, includes Noel Johnson, Patsy Smart, and June Ellis, best remembered for appearing in the "Waldorf Salad" episode of Fawlty Towers.

And here's another little gem for fellow trivia lovers. Half-way through the first episode, I was startled to hear a piece of background music that seemed very familiar. But I know it as the theme from Callan, a TV series of a later vintage. It was given the title "Girl in the Dark" and was a piece of stock library music. The composer was Jack Trombey, who later wrote the theme for Van Der Valk, which became a number one hit as Eye Level for  the Simon Park Orchestra.

I'm delighted that Bat Out of Hell is now available on DVD, and I loved watching it again, fifty years on. It's worn better than many TV series of that era, in my opinion. And I can see exactly why it made a very big impression on the admittedly impressionable young Martin Edwards.

Hangman's Wharf - 1950 film review

Hangman's Wharf is a very good title, I think. It's the name of a short 1950 black and white film, directed by Cecil H. Williamson. It began life as a BBC radio serial written by John Belden, about whom I have been able to find out nothing. I almost wondered if it was a pseudonym adopted by Francis Durbridge, but there's no evidence of that.

Yet there are one or two Durbridgesque features to the storyline, including one of his favourite devices, the Enigmatic Message which lures our hero to an assignation at the Deserted House where, surprise, surprise, a corpse is waiting for him. There's also a touch of light-heartedness among the mayhem which reminded me of Durbrdge. Perhaps Belden was a disciple.

Dr David Galloway (John Witty) is a talented G.P. with hardly any patients- those were the days! An idealistic, he's opened a surgery in Shadwell, but hasn't endeared himself to the locals. When he gets a message calling him out to an accident on board a boat at Hangman's Wharf, he sets off only to find that he's been misled. But he bumps into a sinister rough-neck and a posh chap who send him packing. Then a warning shout from a young woman (Genine Graham) alerts him to the fact that someone is trying to kill him by dropping a barrel on his head.

The woman is a pretty young journalist, and he and she go to the police. But the affable inspector (Campbell Singer) doesn't beleive their story, and soon it becomes clear that someone is trying to frame the doctor for murder. The plot is nothing special, but it moves along at a decent pace. Singer is the only member of the cast with whom I was familiar, but I thought Genine Graham made the most of a limited role as the doc's love interest. I'm surprised she didn't become better known.

The Broken Horseshoe - 1953 film review

The Broken Horseshoe is a thriller based on a serial by Francis Durbridge. The director, Martyn C.Webster, had a long association with Durbridge from the Thirties onwards, and was a key influence on Durbridge's radio career, while Peter Coke, who plays the police inspector in this movie, was one of radio's best Paul Temples.

But this isn't a Paul Temple story. It's a stand-alone mystery, and it boasts some of the classic Durbridge hallmarks, although it''s not as consistently compelling as some of his later serials, in which his mastery of the cliff-hanger was so evident. The premise is a good one - a successful doctor operates on a man badly hurt in  a hit and run accident, and become infatuated with a mysterious woman who has some inexplicable connection with the patient.

The mystery woman (played by Elizabeth Sellars) persuades the naive doctor (Robert Beatty) to say nothing to the police after she turns up at the block of flats where the doctor has just found his former patient murdered. Obligingly, he discloses to her that the dead man had given him an envelope addressed to an unknown woman, and that inside it he has found only a railway ticket. In the flat where the body was found, someone has daubed on a mirror a picture of a broken horseshoe.

The doctor's persistent foolishness is rather irritating, and tends to weaken the grip of the story. The plot hinges, as so often with Durbridge, on the antics of a criminal gang, and I didn't feel that the later development of the story fulfilled the promise of the set-up..There is a reasonable plot twist, but the acting isn't quite strong enough to allow us to overlook the shortcomings. Not bad, but by no means the best of Durbridge.

The Doll (Die Puppe) - DVD review

The Doll, written by Francis Durbridge, was a highly successful TV series when first screened in 1975. Durbridge has always been very popular in Germany, and happily the German DVD of the series, which is now available under the title Die Puppe, can be viewed in the original English language version. Durbridge, an economical writer, later turned the script into a novel, which I reviewed on this blog seven years ago.

Watching the DVD, and having forgotten most of the plot twists in the interim, I found myself enjoying the story all over again. The baffling set-up is quite splendidly done, although as I said in relation to the book, the solution (and the explanation for the part played in the story by the mysterious dolls) is a bit of a let-down. Never mind: this is often the case when the premise of a murder puzzle is quite dazzling, as with so many of the stories by Cornell Woolrich or Boileau-Narcejac.

John Fraser plays publisher Peter Matty, who becomes besotted with a woman called Phyllis whom he meets in Geneva. Given that the actor playing Phyllis is Anouska Hempel, his infatuation is easily explained. She must have been one of the most beautiful stars of her generation. All the more frustating for Peter, therefore, when she disappears mysteriously while on a trip to the Isle of Wight.

The complications come thick and fast. Why did Phyllis lie about her trip to the island? Why did her photo appear in a shop window, and then get replaced with a photo of another woman? Why did a doll appear floating in Peter's bath? What is the secret nursed by dodgy journalist Max (played by Derek Fowlds, of all people)? And so on. Whilst I did find some of the answers to these questions a bit unsatisfactory, the pace of the story meant that I didn't mind too much, and the inclusion of one of my favourite songs, "The Look of Love" was an unexpected bonus. . Overall verdict: great light entertainment. .

A Game of Murder - DVD Review

I've mentioned Francis Durbridge's mystery thriller A Game of Murder previously on this blog. In fact, the book was one of a trio of novels brought together in an omnibus by Bello to which I wrote the introduction a few years back. And now I've caught up with the DVD version of the original TV series, which dates back no less than half a century.

The story is divided into six short and very snappy episodes, lasting just 25 minutes each (which rather begs the question of why they are split into three discs, each containing just two episodes; wouldn't it be cheaper to bung them all on a single disc, and perhaps offer some bonus material or other notes about the TV production, features which are sadly lacking?)

Leaving this quibble aside, I must say that this was typical Durbridge affair, with an excellent, twisty plot. Gerald Harper (in his pre-Adam Adamant days) plays Bob Kerry, a rather terse young cop whose father runs a sports goods business. Their cleaner, Mrs Lincoln, is making a big fuss about her missing dog, but this pales into insignificance when Kerry's father is murdered on a golf course. At first it seems to have been a tragic accident. But Kerry becomes suspicious, and the plot rapidly thickens as the man who claims to have hit his father with a golf ball by accident is himself murdered, and the missing dog returns - but minus his collar, much to Mrs Lincoln's dismay.

Soon Kerry is embroiled in a call girl racket, and he falls for a pretty young woman (June Barry) who seems to be untrustworthy. And what about the dodgy pet shop owner (the eternally worried Peter Copley), where does he fit in to it all? One way of solving a mystery like this is to focus on the character who doesn't really seem to fit into the storyline, but in this case, there are several such individuals. I'd managed to forget whodunit, and found myself enjoying the mystery all over again. Well worth a watch.

The Passenger - DVD review

Although, as a schoolboy, I watched several Francis Durbridge serials on television, I missed The Passenger, which was screened in 1971. I've now caught up with it belatedly thanks to a Pidax DVD. It's a German enterprise - (Durbridge was always very popular in Germany) but there's an  English language option. And the first thing to say is that this is a very enjoyable example of Durbridge at the top of his form.

In the first of the three episodes, we're introduced to David Walker (played by David Knight) and his business partner Arthur Eastwood (that reliable character actor Arthur Pentelow). They are contemplating a sale of their business, but when Walker goes home early, he catches his wife in bed with her driving instructor. He walks out, and decides to head north. While driving, he gives a lift to a pretty young woman called Judy. She disappears mysteriously, and is soon found dead. Walker duly becomes the prime suspect.

I liked the way Durbridge switched the suspicion around from one character to another. DI Martin Desnon, played by that very consistent and appealing actor Peter Barkworth, leads the hunt for the killer, and his estranged wife Sue (Joanna Dunham), who worked for Walker's company, plays a key part in events, especially after Walker dies, apparently having committed suicide in a fit of remorse over Judy's murder.

I thought I'd figured out the solution to the mystery, but Durbridge had other ideas. I must say that I'm quite attached to my solution, while I thought his left one or two loose threads! Never mind. I really enjoyed this one. There are also some good bonus features, such as an interview with Durbridge's son. If you are a Durbridge fan, this is a must-buy.

The Teckman Mystery - film review

The Teckman Mystery is a British film of 1954, directed by the multi-talented Wendy Toye and based on a story by Francis Durbridge, who co-wrote the screenplay.  It's not a Paul Temple story, but the lead character, Philip Chance is another debonair crime writer who finds himself unable to resist poking his nose into a baffling puzzle. Durbridge was never afraid of re-working characters as well as plots...

On a flight from France, Chance (played by John Justin) makes the acquaintance of a young woman called Helen (Margaret Leighton). She happens to be reading one of his books and they start chatting. When he tells her that he's flying home to discuss the possibility of writing a book about a dead test pilot called Martin Teckman, she reveals that she is Teckman's sister. It also emerges that a woman who had been working on the Teckman has died, apparently in an accident.

Once back in London, Chance finds that his home has been burgled, but nothing has been stolen. He is then approached by a mysterious foreigner and offered a vast sum to fly to Berlin and write a series of articles. Can it be that someone wants Chance out of the way, so that he does not make progress with the Teckman book? We can guess the answer to that one, can't we?

There are some recognisable faces in the cast, including Michael Medwin (still fondly remembered as Don, the boss of Eddie Shoestring in that great show Shoestring) and Raymond Huntley. There's also a cameo appearance by Justin's then wife, Barbara Murray. This isn't a Durbridge classic, partly because Justin gives a far from compelling performance, and partly because the story doesn't boast one of his most cunning plots, but it's quite an agreeable time-passer.

Forgotten Book - Send for Paul Temple

I've mentioned before that Francis Durbridge's Paul Temple is one of my guilty pleasures. I'm delighted to say that Harper Collins have just reissued five early Paul Temple books - all adapted from radio serials, - and I've just gulped down the first of them, Send for Paul Temple, my Forgotten Book for today. I'd previously listened to an audio version of this story, but it was still an entertaining example of the ripping yarn. Durbridge was no Tolstoy, but he knew how to keep his readers/listeners interested.

There's a mystery, incidentally, about the authorship of this book. What happened was that Durbridge, a young man of 25, created Paul Temple for the radio,and the success of this story prompted thousands of listeners to demand more of the same - suffice to say that Durbridge certainly obliged them, as Temple became an immensely popular long-running character. Durbridge also turned the story into a novel, but for that he had a co-writer, John Thewes, who seems rather to have been airbrushed from history.

I've consulted Melvyn Barnes, the greatest authority on Durbridge, and he is fairly sure that Thewes was a pen-name for Charles Hatton, who co-wrote several Temple books as Hatton. But why he adopted a pen-name for one collaboration and not others is unclear. Or maybe Charles Hatton was another pseudonym? Possibly he worked for the BBC, but information about him is scant.I, and indeed Melvyn, would be glad to learn more

One of the reasons I mention this little mystery, by the way, is that I've recently been sent some fascinating info about Gerald Findler, the ultra-obscure author of a story I included in Resorting to Murder. Not even that legendary mine of information Bob Adey had been able to trace any details about Findler, but a correspondent has now told me quite a bit about him. So often, interesting know-how is out there; the challenge is to get hold of it. But the internet, for all its quirks and unreliability, does make the task easier.

Anyway, back to Paul Temple. Scotland Yard is baffled by a series of jewel robberies in the Midlands. The only clue is the dying words of two members of the gang who helped with "inside jobs" before being murdered for their pains. But what is the significance of the words "The Green Finger"? The Press campaign noisily for Temple, a wealthy writer and criminologist, to be consulted by the Yard.

Soon the great man finds himself in the thick of it. Luckily, he meets a pretty and dynamic blonde reporter who uses the alias Steve Trent, and has her own reasons to help him. In the course of their attempts to solve the mystery, they fall in love. As we now know, they lived happily - and very adventurously - ever after.

Francis Durbridge: A Centenary Appreciation

My enthusiasm for Francis Durbridge dates back to my school days - I was just eleven when I saw Bat Out of Hell on TV, and loved it. That serial starred John Thaw, long before he became Inspector Morse. Later, I enjoyed reading books about the genre written by Melvyn Barnes, and although he and I have never met, I've been delighted to get to know him via cyberspace, and recently to learn about a very worthwhile project of his, Francis Durbridge: A CentenaryAppreciation. So I invited Melvyn to write a guest blog to share the news - and here it is:

"I have never been a full-time writer, having spent my entire career as a chartered librarian until retiring in 2002 after eighteen years as Director of Libraries and Art Galleries for the City of London.  But crime fiction has been a lifetime interest, which led to part-time writing and the publication of my books Best Detective Fiction, Dick Francis, and Murder in Print, together with numerous contributions to magazines and reference books such as Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writers and Scribner’s Mystery and Suspense Writers.

As a youngster during the “wireless” years I was captivated by the Francis Durbridge serials featuring Paul Temple, and later by his television serials that in their day attracted record viewing figures.  So much so, that well into retirement I decided it was time to take up the pen again and fill a gap by producing a unique account of Durbridge’s work.

It proved to be an unexpectedly complex and lengthy process, requiring several years’ research including many sessions at the British Library, the (late lamented) Newspaper Library in Colindale and the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham.  This provided countless details about Durbridge’s twenty-eight Paul Temple radio serials and plays from 1938 to 1968, his seventeen television serials from 1952 to 1980, his thirty-five novels from 1938 to 1988 and his nine stage plays from 1971 onwards.  Truly surprising, however, was the extent of his other works – nine cinema films were made from his radio and television serials, he wrote three novels as newspaper serials that were never published in book form, two plays long before he was recognised as a stage dramatist, and a Paul Temple comic strip for the London Evening News which ran for over twenty years.  Most surprising of all was the revelation of his prolific output for the radio, which not only included many non-criminous scripts but also non-Temple plays and serials featuring other detectives, using his own name and three pseudonyms.

This long period of slogging research frequently led me from one reference to another, with the final clinching of answers to previously unresolved questions.  It not only informed my introductory survey of Durbridge’s work, but it resulted in a comprehensive annotated listing of his novels and all his other works – including the first full listing of his Paul Temple comic strips.  It also enabled me to provide summaries of his plots (without spoilers, of course), with production and cast details of his radio, television, stage and cinema works.  Another important achievement was to show the links between them, to identify which were original and which were re-writes.  My ultimate satisfaction, however, came from the unearthing of so much new information, and not least in debunking the numerous errors that perpetuate on the Internet.

Francis Durbridge died in 1998, but today he retains a substantial fan base and attracts many new enthusiasts.  His serials are regularly repeated on Radio 4 Extra, re-creations of his “lost” serials have been produced on Radio 4, his novels continue to be reprinted, and there is a thriving trade in audiobooks, e-books and DVDs.

Although my earlier books were commissioned by commercial publishers, this time I decided to go it alone.  A commercial publisher would have required something more elaborate, probably with extensive biographical material and the addition of illustrations (acquired at my own expense), whereas I felt confident that I had already achieved all I set out to do.

So to order a signed copy of this 140 page paperback, post/packing included (UK only), send a cheque for £10.99 (payable to Melvyn Barnes) to 7 Netherhall Close, Old Newton, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 4RP.  And for overseas orders, information can be obtained by emailing melvyn.barnes@oldnewton.com "

I can only add that my copy arrived today and I'm enjoying reading it already.

Portrait of Alison - film review

Portrait of Alison is a 1956 film based on Francis Durbridge's tv serial of the previous year. In the US, the film was known as Postmark for Danger. The story was written at a time when Durbridge was at the peak of his powers, and of his fame, and the plot includes a host of the devices that one associates with Durbridge - above all, the seemingly commonplace, yet at the same time inexplicable and bizarre item that seems to connect mysterious and murderous events. In this case, the item is a postcard of a bottle of Chianti, in the hand of a woman.

A car crashes in Italy with fatal consequences. An artist working in London, Tim Forrester (Robert Beatty) is told that his brother was at the wheel, and a young woman passenger was killed with him. The bodies are so badly burned as to be unrecognisable, and you don't need to be Paul Temple (who doesn't actually feature in this story) to suspect that all may not be as it seems.

The plot thickens rapidly as Tim is asked by the father of the dead girl, Alison Ford, to paint a portrait of her from a photograph. The photo vanishes, as does Alison's dress, which the father had given to Tim, while the portrait is defaced. Tim discovers all this when he comes home one day - to find the body of his regular model, who happens to be wearing Alison's dress. What can it all mean?

The route to the solution is as twisty as usual with Durbridge. Portrait of Alison is typical of his best work, with a gripping (if unlikely) plot and limited emphasis on characterisation and setting. The performances of the lead actors are rather wooden, I'm afraid, but there is ample compensation in the supporting cast, which is full of notable British character actors of the Fifties and Sixties - the likes of Geoffrey Keen, Raymond Francis, Sam Kydd, Terence Alexander (later renowned as Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac), William Lucas and Allan Cuthbertson (once ubiquitous on the TV screen, and now perhaps best remembered for an episode of Fawlty Towers). Good light entertainment.

Forgotten Book - My Wife, Melissa

More than three years ago, I posted about the original 1960s TV version of Melissa, with a script by Francis Durbridge. Melissa was revived in the Nineties by the estimable Alan Bleasdale, a show I sat down to watched with great optimism when it first aired - but the results were disappointing. (Interesting - Bleasdale's literary talents seem to me to be, unarguably, superior, but when it comes to a dazzlingly intricate thriller, give me Durbridge any day. It takes a particular talent to spring constant surprises in the way he does, and to - more or less! - make sense of it all at the end.) Now, at long last, I’ve caught up with the Durbridge novel My Wife, Melissa.

For this, I have to thank Bello, who provided me with a review copy to read on my iPad – and Durbridge’s style is so smooth and easy to read that I found this an ideal book to devour on screen rather than in print form. Bello have made quite a number of Durbridge’s non-Paul Temple titles available, and they make ideal holiday fare, entertaining without being too taxing.

The story-line is classic Durbridge, narrated in the first person by an amiable ex-journalist who has been trying to establish himself as a novelist. His marriage to the glamorous Melissa has hit a rocky patch, though, and after she goes out to a party with friends, he receives a phone call from her, summoning him to meet someone who may be able to help him with his career. But Melissa has been strangled – and she was dead before the phone call was made...

The twists come thick and fast, and the serial nature of the source screenplay is apparent from the abundance of cliff-hangers. Characterisation was not  Durbridge’s strength, and we don’t really care about any of the suspects, or even the luckless Melissa, just as we don’t stop to think about the unlikelihood of most of the plot developments. Durbridge’s ability to sweep his readers along so that these flaws don’t really matter is enviable. This isn’t War and Peace, but it was never meant to be. Great fun. 

The World of Tim Frazer

The World of Tim Frazer was an enormously successful TV series in the early 60s, which made a a star out of Jack Hedley, who went on to become one of those actors who appeared very regularly on the small screen for the next couple of decades or so. The screenplay was written by Francis Durbridge, and the story-line was packed with his characteristic cliff-hangers.

En route to the Harrogate Festival, I started listening to the CD version which has now been produced - part of a small box set featuring all three of the Tim Frazer stories. They are read by Anthony Head, who has established himself as a very good purveyor of the twists and turns of a Durbridge plot, although at one point in this story he did seem slightly challenged by the surfeit of Yorkshire accents required for a pub scene.

The story is classic thriller material - an ordinary man is plunged into a shadowy world of secret agents and murder. Tim Frazer is an engineer whose easygoing nature veers into naivete when he takes into partnership an old mate called Harry Denston. Harry bankrupts the company and then goes missing. He summons Tim to a Yorkshire fishing village, but does not make an appearance. However, a Russian fishing vessel has been shipwrecked nearby and a Russian sailor is on the point of death when Tim sees him. Before he dies, he utters his final word: "Anya."

A sequence of unlikely events take Tim to Kent, where he visits an amiable couple to return the wife's spectacles, which he had found in Harry's car. The couple are looking after their young niece - a little girl called....Anya. The plot, needless to say, thickens from there. All this makes ideal in-car listening. If you can accept Durbridge's limitations - and I can - the story is great fun.

Bello and a Murder Omnibus

The rapid growth of print on demand and digital publishing is having the happy effect of reviving all kinds of detective novels that were, until recently, hard to find. One of the most significant entrants in the market is Bello, an arm of Pan Macmillan, and I’ve been impressed with their enthusiasm for neglected gems o the genre.

I first came across them when I was asked to write an introduction to an omnibus of three revived mysteries. It turned out to be a pleasurable task. A Game of Murder, by Francis Durbridge, was one of the novels – it happens to be a book I’ve covered in this blog, and I still remember watching the original TV series on which the novel was based. A very entertaining and twisty story.

Murder in Moscow, by Andrew Garve, illustrates that author’s deep knowledge of Russia and the Russian way of life. Garve (real name, Paul Winterton) was a journalist who visited the country in the early 30s and he wrote factual books about the place, as well as novels set there. The final book in the omnibus was Prescription for Murder, one of the long series of novels that the late David Williams wrote featuring Mark Treasure -  a likeable banker, in the days when bankers were allowed to be likeable. The omnibus is due to be launched at the Harrogate Festival this week, and I hope that, even though the focus of the Festival is naturally on contemporary crime, there will be a chance to interest readers in worthwhile writers of the past as well.

From talking to people at Bello, I’m convinced that the imprint (can a digital publisher be said to have an imprint? I guess so) will become increasingly prominent. Among the other crime novelists they are bringing back into the limelight is Josephine Bell, a writer as reliable as Garve. There are a lot of unknown, but worthwhile, books from the 20^th century waiting to be rediscovered, and I’m confident that Bello will be among the leaders in making sure that happens.

Forgotten Book - The Scarf

I’ve mentioned before the guilty pleasure I take from the twisty mysteries of Francis Durbridge, and my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is his 1960 book, The Scarf. I read it immediately after the new Kate Atkinson, and of course Atkinson is a much finer literary stylist than Durbridge. But he really could tell a story.

This isn’t a Paul Temple thriller – the detective work is done by Detective Inspector Harry Yates of the Hertfordshire CID, a rather interesting cop, who is not afraid to bend the rules every now and then. Yates is a laid-back man who is quietly charismatic, and he needs all his wits about him when he is called to investigate the strangling of a young model and wannabe actress, Fay Collins. The murder weapon was the eponymous scarf, and soon – in a characteristic Durbridge touch – a scarf is sent to the police. But is it the one that was used to kill the girl?

There is no shortage of potential suspects. These include Fay’s disabled brother, a farmer, an artist, a dressmaker and a tycoon. A teenage boy and the local vicar may also have something to hide. There are plot twists aplenty, and suspicion shifts rapidly from one person to another.

As ever with Durbridge, we have a few scenes in night club, a setting which he obviously thought brimming with mysterious potential. The tycoon is suspiciously keen to fix up an alibi for the murder, but in due course his plans fall apart when the person chosen to provide the alibi is found dead. But who is the culprit? I enjoyed this unpretentious thriller, written by a highly accomplished craftsman.