HIgh Tide

High Tide was a novel published by P.M. Hubbard in 1971. Almost a decade later, the story was adapted for the Armchair Thriller television series in four episodes, and I recently watched, the complete mystery on Talking Pictures. Benefiting from a strong cast, it's stood the test of time pretty well, even if by modern standards the background music seems very intrusive.

Hubbard is a writer who has been recommended to me by several good judges, but I've not read much of his work. In my shallow youth, I was deterred partly because he has a very low-key style, and wasn't especially interested in complex plotting, and partly because his main interests, such as small boat sailing, didn't coincide with mine. But I've come to appreciate his qualities more, and I intend to read him more extensively.

High Tide is an atmospheric thriller rather than a complex puzzle, but it does feature a neat variation on the "dying message clue". Curtis (Ian McShane, at his best in this role) has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for manslaughter. He was responsible for the death of a man called Maxwell, whose mysterious final words prompt a rather menacing chap (played by Terence Rigby) to pursue him. Curtis figures out the meaning of the message,and befriends a pretty but mysterious young woman as he tries to find out what Maxwell was up to.

His quest - undertaken by boat, in characteristic Hubbard fashion - leads him to a house occupied by an ill-matched couple, played by John Bird and the glamorous Kika Markham, who seem to have the clue to the mystery. The sequence in which Rigby's character gets his come-uppance is rather memorable. I enjoyed seeing this, and it's helped to strengthen my interest in Hubbard..

A Mystery of the Deep Sea

There is nothing new about the importance of forensic pathology in detective fiction, and I was reminded of this when watching the opening episode of The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, a very enjoyable collection on DVD of the first series of this excellent TV show from the 1970s. The mystery in question was ‘A Message from the Deep Sea’, and the author of the original tale on which the episode was based was R. Austin Freeman.

Freeman’s detective was Dr John Thorndyke, and if you haven’t come across him, you have missed a giant of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Thorndyke specialised in what he liked to call ‘medical jurisprudence’, and – often assisted by his friend Jervis, he used his scientific expertise to unravel countless puzzles that defeated the hapless chaps from Scotland Yard and sundry rural forces.

In this episode, Dr Thorndyke was played by John Neville – a handsome actor, whose casting provides a reminder that Thorndyke was supposed to be a handsome man, though the emphasis was always on his detective skills, his personal life never intruding as it would be in the hands of a modern writer. The puzzle involved the throat-cutting of a young woman, and the police suspicion of a classic ‘obvious suspect’. In an inquest scene, Thorndyke establishes that the evidence proves the guilt of another – a chap who foolishly makes a run for it, only to be captured by the burly cops Thorndyke has arranged to be stationed in the makeshift courtroom.

I enjoyed this episode. Neville makes Thorndyke rather more charismatic than I remember him from my teenage years, when I read many of the Freeman short stories, plus several of the novels. Jervis was played by James Cossins, best remembered as a hotel inspector in an episode of ‘Fawlty Towers’, while one of the cops was played by Terence Rigby, better known in the 70s as P.C. Snow in Softly, Softly.