An A to Z of British Detectives
Go Back for Murder by Agatha Christie
Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie
Write Me a Murder by Frederick Knott
Sweet Revenge by Francis Durbridge
Devonshire Park Theatre, 1996
ALLEYN, Detective Inspector Roderick
Appears in the novels of Ngaio Marsh, first written and set in the thirties. He has been described as “the true gentleman of detectives”, his upper-class background furnishing him with useful connections and the “right” manner.
Unusually for a detective, he is happily married, to a sculptress called Troy, and is known for a tender, sensitive side. But when it comes to dealing with crooks, whatever their background, he is as hard and ruthless as necessary.
He was recently featured on television, played by Partrick Malahide, with Belinda Lang as his wife.
BERESFORD, Tommy and Tuppence
The bright young things of the Agatha Christie canon, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford made their first appearance in the authoress’s second book, The Secret Adversary (1922). Like her creator, Tuppence had worked in the Volunteer Aid Detachment in World War I, and Tommy, like Christie’s husband Archie, had flown with the RFC. Like so many of their contemporaries, having known danger and excitement at an early age and now adrift in the post-war world of vapid parties and superficial feelings, the pair decide to hire themselves out as freelance adventures, and promptly get caught up in international intrigue.
They reappear several times throughout Christie’s writing life: Partners in Crime (1929), N or M? (1941), By the Pricking of My Thumbs (1968) and Postern of Fate (1973), by which time they had become grandparents but were still gadding about as energetically as they had done in their gilded youth. Unlike the ageing Poirot and Miss Marple, the Beresfords were able to grow old gracefully with their creator. In the early eighties they were successfully and gorgeously incarnated on television by James Warwick and Francesca Annis in a number of colourful outings.
BERGERAC, Detective Sergeant Jim
Created by Robert Banks Stewart, TV cop Bergerac was a replacement for Eddie Shoestring whose longevity was cut short by Trevor Eve pulling out of any further series. Played by John Nettles, Bergerac started out as the offshore policeman caught up in the problems of the super-rich tax exiles of Jersey, and ended up retiring from the force to become a freelance investigator caught up in the problems of the super-rich tax exiles of Jersey. One of his most popular adversaries proved to be international jewel thief Philippa Vale, played by the delectable Lisa Goddard. He never got her in the end, as she was too much of a lady and he too much of a gentleman.
BRAVO, Juliet
Series created by Ian Kennedy Martin (of Z Cars and The Sweeney fame) in 1981. The title refers to the radio call sign of Inspector Jean Darblay (though why she wasn’t called Juliet Delta is anybody’s guess), the new chief of the all-male Hartley Section police force.
The plots concern the professional and personal difficulties experienced by a woman in a top job in a male domain. She was first played by Stephanie Turner before Anna Carteret took over the role. The opening titles met with criticism: to emphasise the femininity of the lead character, she is seen straightening her skirt, tightening her belt, carefully placing her hat on her head, etc. But at least the producers stopped short of showing her dumping a child in the police station crèche.
BROWN, Father
G K Chesterton’s Roman Catholic priest, whose understanding of the human soul qualify him as an amateur detective – was a member of the insight and intuitive school of sleuths.
His appearance – a face “as dull as a Norfolk Dumpling” with eyes as “empty as the North Sea” – worked to his deductive advantage. His powers are often foolishly underestimated by the criminal. In Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh used Chesterton’s line about “a twitch upon a thread” (enough to draw back a criminal from the ends of the earth) as a symbol of the power of Catholicism over even the most errant of its adherents.
CADFAEL, Brother
Created by Ellis Peters (pen name of Edith Pargeter), Cadfael is an amateur detective Benedictine monk, at the abbey of St Peter and St Paul in 13th-century Shrewsbury. His previous career as a soldier has given him certain skills and knowledge, including medicine and horsemanship, which put him in constant demand in the local area outside the abbey. His calm and kindly nature encourages trust, and many bring him into their confidence, often revealing a useful clue or two.
He has been portrayed in several series on TV by Shakespearean actor Derk Jacobi. For reasons of economy, 13th-century Shrewsbury was recreated in 20th-century Hungary, where everything from technicians to tackle is cheaper than on the Welsh borders.
CAMPION, Albert
Margery Allingham created this well-to-do sleuth who featured in twenty-one out of thirty of her novels. He started out in the 1930s as a privately financed amateur detective and by the 1960s he had become a spy. Described as a pale-eyed, bespectacled “silly ass”, he was looked after by his cockney manservant, the bizarrely named Magersfontein Lugg.
He was played by Peter Davison in the 1989 television series, with Brian Glover as Lugg.
COCKRILL, Inspector
An invention of Christianna Brand, Cockrill was inimitably played by Alastair Sim in top sly form in Sidney Gilliat’s 1946 film Green for Danger. The fact that the plot hinged on the colours of two gas bottles in an operating theatre and the film was actually shot in black and white was not the most interesting thing about it. The censor at first blocked the film’s release because it was felt that wounded servicemen would lose all confidence in their nurses if they thought one of them could so easily turn out to be a murderer. But when it was pointed out to the powers that be that, although the original book was set in a military hospital, the film had carefully shifted the location to an ordinary civil one, the ban was lifted. The deal was apparently clinched over a slap-up blackmarket lunch in a Soho restaurant.
DALGLIESH, Detective Inspector Adam
Created by P D James, Adam Dalgliesh first appeared in 1962, as an inspector at New Scotland Yard. By 1986, he was appearing on television, played by Roy Marsden, now the commander of a new squad investigating cases which, for possibly political reasons, require a particular sensitivity.
If it’s sensitivity you’re after, Dalgliesh is your man. He lost his wife and baby during childbirth and has become a poet of some standing. Professionally, he is methodical and patient, using his human understanding and creative imagination to bag his quarry.
DALZIEL AND PASCOE
Pascoe having been to university, he knows that Dalziel should be pronounced ‘Dee-yell’. This is only the first point of friction between them. The crime-busting duo are one of the most recent teams to make the transition from page to screen, with Warren Clarke starring as Reginald Hill’s egregious superintendent. The author, who also lectures on English Literature, was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award in 1995.
DIXON, Sergeant George
The eponymous hero of Dixon of Dock Green, played by Jack Warner, had originally been shot dead by Dirk Bogarde’s Tom Riley in the 1950 film The Blue Lamp. However, he was resurrected for the TV series, which began in 1955, by his original creator Lord Ted Willis.
It was set in the fictitious Dock Green neighbourhood of London’s East End, and featured the everyday life of the police station, and the shenanigans of the local crooks, all overseen by the paternal eye of PC (and later Sergeant) Dixon. Detective Sergeant Andy Crawford (Peter Byrne) was his main ally at the nick, and everyone was careful never to mention the fact that old George had already passed police retirement age by the time the original series started. It was among the last of the ‘cosy’ British police series to be popular with audiences of a certain age before the grittier realism of Z Cars, Softly Softly and their ilk came in.
GOOLE, Inspector
AKA he who called in the title of the famous play written by J B Priestley in 1947. He is a typical upright policeman – polite, but always in command of the situation, a hard but fair man. He appears to have a vast, if not slightly supernatural insight into the human mind, with an uncanny knowledge of events that he was neither at, nor part of. He becomes the moral conscience of the Birlings, the family he is ‘investigating’, yet never reveals anything about himself. The play’s famous twist ending still stands as one of post-war theatre’s greatest and spookiest climaxes.
HOLMES, Sherlock
The world’s most famous detective, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first appeared in A Study in Scarlet in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, 1887. In the author’s notes for that story, he was actually called ‘Sherrinford’ Holmes. But how exactly did Conan Doyle come up with the character and his unique qualities? In an interview he expounded thus: “I used as a student to have an old professor – his name was [Dr Joseph] Bell – who was extraordinarily quick at deductive work. He would look at the patient, he would hardly allow the patient to open his mouth, but he would make his diagnosis of the disease and also very often of the patient’s nationality, and occupation and other points – entirely by his power of observation. So naturally I thought to myself – well, if a scientific man like Bell was to come into the detective business, he wouldn’t do these things by chance, he’d get the thing by building it up scientifically.” Thus Holmes has, according to his faithful sidekick Dr Watson, made deduction “as neat an exact science as it will ever be”.
The periods between cases – of intellectual “stagnation” – Holmes fills by playing his Stradivarius violin or partaking of a “seven per cent solution” of cocaine. He claims his brother, the Civil Servant Mycroft, is even smarter than he, but possessing such formidable gifts himself he can afford to be modest.
Conan Doyle eventually tired of his creation and killed him off by tossing him over the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, but the subsequent public outcry was so great that the author was obliged to resurrect him.
Holmes first appeared on stage at the end of the last century. Actor William Gillette made such a success in the part that thereafter he rarely played anything else. His most famous interpreter on screen was Basil Rathbone in the thirties and forties with Nigel Bruce as Watson. In the 1975 film Alias Sherlock Holmes Larry ‘JR’ Hagman was cast as a loony who thought he was Sherlock Holmes. Michael Caine, Peter Cushing, Christopher Plummer, Roger Moore and Robert Stephens have all essayed the role, though experts generally agree that on the small screen the definitive Holmes was Jeremy Brett in the Granada series. In Jeremy Paul’s stage play The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, it was revealed that Holmes and his arch-rival Moriarty were one and the same person – the inference being that the only enemy worthy of the great sleuth’s mettle was one invented by himself.
PS – the famous pipe and deerstalker hat were later inventions of the illustrator Sidney Paget in Strand magazine.
MARPLE, Miss
Jane Marple’s first appearance on the stage of detective fiction came in Agatha Christie’s 1930 novel Murder at the Vicarage. She was already sixty-five, which means she must have been over a hundred by the time she solved her final case. Careful reading of the works reveals that her home village of St Mary Mead is situated 256 miles from London, twelve miles from the Kent coast.
Tall and thin with masses of soft curly white hair, she is an intuitive rather than a deductive detective whose keen china-blue eyes miss little of the wickedness in village life. Reactions to her among the professionals are mixed: Inspector Slack of the Much Benham Police is “rude and overbearing in the extreme”, but Chief Inspector Dermot Craddock shows her more respect. Craddock’s uncle Sir Henry Clithering, former commissioner of Scotland Yard, once called her “an old pussy”, intending it as a compliment.
The last Miss Marple book, Sleeping Murder, was published after the author’s death in 1976, although it had been penned in the forties. Gracie Fields, complete with Lancashire accent, first played her on screen in a 1956 TV adaptation of A Murder is Announced. Other screen interpreters have included Dulcie Gray, Angela Lansbury and Helen Hayes, but the most successful incarnation in recent years has been that by the actress Agatha Christie herself marked down for the role as early as 1945.
After watching a premiere of her play Appointment with Death at the Piccadilly Theatre, Miss Christie wrote to the young woman playing Miss Price, thanking her for her telegram and inviting her to lunch, adding, “I will call on you to play my Miss Marple one day, if I can find time to write another play – too many domestic chores.” That actress was of course Joan Hickson, who since 1984 has starred in around a dozen TV films based on the books. She had also been in the 1937 Christie film Love from a Stranger with Basil Rathbone and Murder She Said in 1962 wherein Margaret Rutherford essayed the fluffy sleuth.
MORSE, Inspector
The surly known-by-surname-only Morse was created by Colin Dexter and first appeared in 1975. In keeping with his hobby – cryptic crosswords – he is a problem-solving detective rather than a psycho-analyser, studying the minutiae to reach his conclusions.
A classical music buff, he finds people difficult and is by nature a bit of a loner. Personally, although he never married, he does enjoy female company, but rarely the same one for very long. Professionally he is assisted by Sergeant Robbie Lewis who is amiable and tolerant, so both are compatible. His relationship with his superiors is not so good; the combination of him finding them unaccommodating, and them finding him unorthodox, results in many a clash.
He is very squeamish, which can cause problems at work – murder scenes and autopsies being part of the everyday routine. This and occasional ennui with the job have played a part in his excessive taste for alcohol, particularly real ale, which has done his health no good.
He was played on television by John Thaw, with Kevin Whately as Lewis. (The latter, by the way, is around ten years younger than the character in the book and hails from a point three hundred miles north of the London where the book-Lewis was born.)
OLD MAN IN THE CHAIR, The
In the first years of this century, Baroness Scarlet Pimpernel Orczy published some stories about this anonymous old seated detective in The Royal Magazine. Completely sedentary in a London tea shop, he solves the most baffling cases by simply unravelling the clues supplied to him by dashing young female reporter Polly Burton, all the time knotting and unknotting a piece of string to help the deductive process. He always seemed unusually sympathetic towards the malefactors, and in his final case, The Mysterious Death in Percy Street, there is even a suggestion he may have been a bit of a master criminal himself…
POIROT, Hercule
Although not strictly British, Poirot performed the bulk of his miracles of deduction within these shores. A former policeman in Belgium, Agatha Christie’s flaunter of “ze little grey cells” retired from the force and was already old when he crossed the Channel to team up with Captain Arthur Hastings who was “occasionally of an imbecility to make one afraid”. His first case was recounted in Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, and his last, Curtain, was published in 1976. A bachelor, he nevertheless harboured a powerful passion for Countess Vera Rossakoff, a jewel thief and leading member of the international underworld. Like Holmes, Poirot too boasted of a formidably intelligent brother, Achille, who may or may not have made a significant appearance in The Big Four.
His creator complained throughout her life that the stage and screen incarnations of her most famous detective always tended to make him too big – Charles Laughton, Francis L Sullivan, Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney were certainly several sizes up from the dapper little Belgian with the bald, egg-shaped head. Recently however TV has served her better in the persons of David Suchet and Ian Holm, the latter appearing in the one-off curio Murder by the Book, with Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Agatha Christie confronting her most famous creation in the flesh.
PYNE, Parker
In 1934, to break out of the seesaw alternation she had fallen into between Poirot and Marple novels, Agatha Christie brought out a book of short stories called Parker Pyne Investigates. A sleuth for the lovelorn, he advertised thus in the personal columns: “Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne.” Gentle, courteous and discreet, not a show-off like Poirot, he was concerned only for the ultimate happiness of his clients.
Unfortunately, this was his one and only appearance, although some of his helpmeets were to reappear elsewhere in the Christie canon: Miss Lemon was his secretary before leaving him for Poirot, and Ariadne Oliver, who was also later to assist the little Belgian, went on to pursue her own sleuthing career in the fifties and sixties.
RANDALL and HOPKIRK (deceased)
This very strange partnership, which began on TV in 1969, featured Mike Pratt as Jeff Randall and Kenneth Cope as his crime-busting companion Marty Hopkirk. The gimmick here was that each week Hopkirk was bumped off in the opening credits by a careering car driven, apparently, by the cameraman. Not content with lying still like a good corpse, he returns from the grave, complete with white suit, to help out his partner.
He left a wife, Jeannie, played by Annette André, who conveniently happened to be the partnership’s secretary, and who is occasionally propositioned by, threatened by, abducted by and eventually of course safely rescued from the villains. One of the series’ plusses was the ghostly and memorable theme music provided by that dependable veteran of TV tunes, Ron Grainer.
RESNICK, Detective Inspector Charlie
Novelist John Harvey’s prize-winning Charlie Resnick is a loner and a loser, “the sort of man that some women go for”, according to the blurb for the series the BBC put out a couple of years back. Divorced, overweight and down at heel, Resnick keeps his deductive powers honed to razor sharpness by quietly sozzling in the pub, consuming vast quantities of exotic sandwiches and listening to jazz in his seedy Nottingham flat. That aside, what he has going for him is intuition and observation which inevitably lead him in his unorthodox but unerring way to the truth. Tom Wilkinson, who played him, thought he was popular because “Everyone knows what it’s like to feel lonely and viewers feel sorry for him.” Hardly surprising.
ROWAN, Nick
A kindly young copper of the old school, PC Nick Rowan pounds his beat in the fictitious village of Adenfield from the back of a nippy little scooter in ITV’s gentle Heartbeat. Ravishing Yorkshire locations, sickly sixties pop songs on the soundtrack, and the beaming choirboy smile of old Nick himself, combine to make the series a winner. For the lads there was Rowan’s equally easy-on-the-eye wife Kate (before she died) played by Niamh Cusack, while cynics can identify with the dour Sergeant Blaketon, ‘Mr’ Derek Fowlds.
SHOESTRING, Eddie
In 1979, Trevor Eve played the laid-back easy-going, phone-in detective on Bristol’s Radio West. Comb the phone directory as you may, you will never ever come across another human being, let alone detective, with the surname ‘Shoestring’. Like all the best detectives, lest his superior brainpower make the rest of us feel inadequate, he harboured a secret human failing – a nervous condition which had been fully and successfully eradicated… or had it? The possibility that he might one week go off the deep end if pushed too far kept millions hooked for several series before the eponymous actor decided to move on.
Sweeney, The
Tyres screaming, The Sweeney careered onto the small screen in 1975 like an out-of-control Ford Cortina. The Sweeney Todd – Flying Squad (apples and pears – stairs, that sort of thing) of Scotland Yard was represented by the rough-and-ready Detective Inspector Regan (John Thaw) and Detective Sergeant Carter (Dennis Waterman) and their long-suffering boss Detective Chief Inspector Haskins. Flares and long collars notwithstanding, they cheerfully mixed it with the villains throughout every grimy parking lot, disused warehouse and moonscape of inner-city blight Euston Films’ art designers could provide. But the music was good and the plots were always fast-moving and tough as old boots. In time John Thaw slowed down to a pace more appropriate for the opera-loving Inspector Morse while Dennis Waterman crossed to the wrong side of the tracks to incarnate Minder Terry McCann.
TEMPLAR, Simon
The Saint (initials ST – geddit?) has been described as a latter-day Robin Hood (replacing the tights with a pressed pair of slacks), who started out as a master criminal and turned over a new leaf. A suave, jet-setting, freelance “instrument of justice”, he was created by suave, jet-setting Leslie Charteris in 1928. On television he was played by Roger Moore in the sixties, Ian Ogilvy in the seventies and Simon Dutton (very briefly) in 1989.
TEMPLE, Paul
Francis Durbridge’s most famous detective, Paul Temple, solved his first case on radio in April 1938.
Born in Canada, the son of a high-ranking army officer, Paul Temple was educated at Rugby and Magdalen College, Oxford. A detective novelist by profession, he collects rare first editions as a hobby and between books helps out Scotland Yard with some of their more baffling cases. He is married to Fleet Street journalist Lousie Harvey who writes under the name Steve Trent, and they live at Evesham.
Francis Matthews played Paul Temple in the seventies’ TV series, though his radio voice was provided by a variety of actors: Peter Coke has the longest run in the role, playing the part from 1954 to 1968. The theme tune for the series was originally Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, but in later years this gave way to the more bustling rhythms of Vivian Ellis’s Coronation Scot – daa, da-daa, da-da-da-da-da-daa – you know, that one.
TENNISON, Jane
Helen Mirren starred as the harassed, chain-smoking, but ultimately triumphant Detective Chief Inspector in the Prime Suspect (occasional) series created by Lynda La Plante. A career policewoman, with a disastrous track record in her personal life, she is appointed to head a gruesome murder inquiry, much to several male colleagues’ chagrin. So just for a change, for a top female cop, she has to ride out the sexual discrimination of the force. Much indignation has resulted from the fact that Mirren has not been slated to star in the projected Hollywood film, that role of honour currently being hotly disputed between Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer.
TROTTER, Detective Sergeant
Richard Attenborough created the role of the policeman in the original 1952 production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. He stayed with the play for eighteen months before leaving to concentrate on film work. Since then, an estimated fifty-plus actors have succeeded him in the role. Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound was based, in part, on the country-house-on-the-moors-style murder mystery of which The Mousetrap is still the most distinguished and venerable example.
WEXFORD, Chief Inspector Reginald
An officer of Kingsmarkham CID, Wexford was first introduced by Ruth Rendell in 1964. He is a local man who, having worked his way up through the ranks, has become a highly successful and renowned crime-solver. Cumbersome, middle-aged and slightly shabby though he may be, he is still a sensitive policeman, using his infallible insight into human character to get results. George Baker has made the part his own throughout numerous outings on TV.
WIMSEY, Lord Peter
Dorothy L Sayers’s aristocratic amateur sleuth first appeared in 1923. He gained a first class degree in Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, before serving in World War I. Although he received a Distinguished Service Order for bravery behind enemy lines, the after-effects of being buried alive during an explosion – nightmares and bouts of depression – were to haunt him for the rest of his life. After the war his interest in history, rare books, music and particularly criminology led him down the amateur sleuth route, aided by his loyal manservant Bunter.
It has been said that some authors fall in love with their creations; judge for yourself Sayers’s opinion of her smooth sleuth: “His primrose-coloured hair was so exquisite a work of art that to eclipse it with his glossy hat was like shutting up the sun in a shrine of polished jet…”
On the other hand, the professional novelist could not afford jealousy, even of her own creatures. During the course of one case Wimsey meets detective writer Harriet Vane, who is accused of murdering her lover. He manages to prove her innocence and, in the closing pages of Gaudy Night, proposes marriage. However, they don’t tie the knot until sometime later, when Harriet feels their union will be based on equal love and not merely gratitude on her part.
He was portrayed in the early 1970s by Ian Carmichael, and then in 1987 by Edward Petherbridge, with Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane.
Z CARS
One of the longest-lived and most authentic police drama series, Z Cars ran from 1962 to 1978 and made household names of the abrasive Detective Chief Superintendent Barlow (Stratford Johns) and his long-suffering underling John Watt (Frank Windsor). Originated by Troy Kennedy Martin, it focused on the activities of the police in the Northern England overspill estate of Newtown. Plotlines were based on the actual casebooks of the Lancashire force which mean the police procedure was as authentic as the domestic scenes. These, unique for the time, showed bobbies off duty as ordinary mortals who drank, gambled, had money worries and argued with their wives. In 1966 the series spawned the spin-off Softly Softly which followed the fortunes of Barlow and Watt in the Regional Crime Squad operating out of a town that looked suspiciously like Bristol.
Z Cars’ original cast also included James Ellis (Bert Lynch), Jeremy Kemp (PC Steele), Joseph Brady (PC Jock Weir), Brian Blessed (PC ‘Fancy’ Smith) and Terence Edmond as young PC Sweet, whose early death in the line of duty shocked a nation unused to such brutality directed against members of the force. That fact alone shows how long ago and far away the golden age of detective fiction now is…
PS
This was a joint effort with my gifted colleague at Proscenium, Alice Dean, and so closely did we work together on it that I can no longer remember who wrote what. Alice was the first person I ever interviewed for a job, and maybe it was beginner’s luck, but I couldn’t have made a better appointment. It killed me that for reasons way above my pay grade it turned out our days in the job were already numbered, but for however many months it lasted, Alice was as committed and supportive a colleague as I could have wished for. In fact, one of the best things about Proscenium had always been the people I was doing it with. Not only that, the offices were barely twenty-minutes’ walk from my home and overlooked Bristol City Centre, at a time when it was still pretty and worked, before the stupid destructive councillors got their ruinous hands on it. I don’t know what I did to have become so lucky all of a sudden, but we all deserve at least one job like that in life, where you feel you’re doing good work in congenial company, and I was sensible enough to be grateful for as long as it lasted.