Forgotten Book - Body Blow

Last year, I acquired a book called Body Blow by Kenneth Hopkins inscribed to John Arlott. Readers of a certain vintage may recall John Arlott as a famous (and very good) cricket commentator - his voice rippled through my younger days - but he was also a poet and bibliophile. Hopkins was a multi-talented writer, primarily a poet but, like so many poets over the years, he dabbled in detection, publishing seven books between the late fifties and early sixties along with a final book under a pen-name, Christopher Adam.

To be honest, I wasn't familiar with Hopkins, and the purchase was motivated mainly by the charming inscription, which reads 'and no prizes for recognizing the original of Dr Blow'. Dr William Blow is an elderly eccentric (and a big fan of Robert Southey) who, together with the slightly more worldly Professor Manciple, featured in three novels, of which Body Blow (1962) was the last.

The book joined the Himalayan range that is my to-be-read pile, but I was motivated to read it by a series of interesting emails from Paul Roberts. Paul was a friend of Kenneth Hopkins (who sounds like a delightful person) and he told me quite a bit about his life and work. I was, for instance, intrigued to learn that the model for Dr Blow was actually the writer E.H. Visiak, who was a good friend of Hopkins. This was yet another example of the fascinating correspondence that I'm fortunate to receive, and from which I learn so much.

The story begins with Blow buying a large quantity of books by Robert Southey at auction. But when he expects delivery, what in fact he receives is a large and heavy box containing the body of a dead woman. Strange! And it's even stranger when the box disappears again, almost immediately. There are quite a few funny lines and situations in this story, and if the plot is rather barmy, this isn't untypical of humorous crime fiction. I'm very grateful to Paul for drawing Kenneth Hopkins to my attention.