Design For Murder: Based on ‘Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair’
Never before published in paperback, and back in print for the first time since 1951, this long-lost novelisation reworks the nail-biting radio serial ‘Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair’ with new and original characters.The Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard visits retired Detective Lionel Wyatt with the chilling news that an old adversary they never caught has struck again, strangling an innocent girl. Wyatt is reluctant to return to police work, but then another body is found – this time at his own home, with a personal message: ‘With the compliments of Mr Rossiter’.In Design for Murder, Francis Durbridge adapted his longest Paul Temple serial, Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, into a full-length novel. All the obligatory elements from the thrilling radio episodes were present, but in a new twist, he renamed the principal characters: Paul and Steve Temple became Lionel and Sally Wyatt, and ‘Mr Rossiter’ replaced the villainous Gregory. Reprinted for the first time in 66 years, fans of Francis Durbridge and of Paul Temple can finally relive this ingenious adventure.Also includes an introduction by bibliographer Melvyn Barnesplus the exclusive 1946 Radio Times short story‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’.
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FRANCIS DURBRIDGE
Design for Murder
PLUS
Paul Temple’s White Christmas
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MELVYN BARNES
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
John Long 1951
‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’first published in Radio Times 1946
Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1946, 1951
All rights reserved
Francis Durbridge has asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008242077
Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008242060
Version: 2017-09-26
Table of Contents
Chapter I: Death of a Policewoman
Chapter II: A Lift From Doctor Fraser
Chapter III: The Cottage on the Cliff
Chapter IV: Sir Donald Angus Is Perturbed
Chapter V: The Girl Who Knew Too Much
Chapter VI: Mr Linder Has an Alibi
Chapter VII: Miss Beaumont Remembers
Chapter VIII: A Warrant for Mr Luigi
Chapter IX: A Woman’s Intuition
Chapter X: Guest Night at the Palais
In November 1951, when John Long published Design for Murder, Francis Durbridge (1912–1998) had for many years been the most popular writer of mystery thrillers for BBC radio and was soon to make his mark on television and in the theatre. He remains best known as the creator of the novelist-detective Paul Temple, who first appeared in the 1938 BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple. This was an immediate hit, and led to Paul and his wife Steve rapidly becoming cult figures of the airwaves in the sequels Paul Temple and the Front Page Men (1938), News of Paul Temple (1939), Paul Temple Intervenes (1942), Send for Paul Temple Again (1945) and many more. These first five radio serials were all novelised, published by John Long between 1938 and 1948, and most recently reissued in 2015 by Collins Crime Club.
In 1950 there was an interesting development in Durbridge’s career with the publication of Back Room Girl, a novel that was not based on any of his radio serials. He followed this in April 1951 with Beware of Johnny Washington, a rewrite of his first novel Send for Paul Temple with various plot changes and a new set of characters, including replacements for Paul and Steve.
From this it appears that in the early 1950s Durbridge was trying to widen his appeal to the reading public, and although his radio serials had made him a household name his books gave him the opportunity to be recognised as more than the creator of Paul Temple. This might also have been insurance against the slim possibility that after five novels some readers might have begun to tire of the Temples, which was a factor that shortly afterwards influenced Durbridge to create a brand of record-breaking television serials that deliberately excluded them.
Design for Murder, his next book, was the novelisation of his radio serial Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair. Originally broadcast from 17 October to 19 December 1946, its ten episodes made it the longest Temple serial. The plot was vintage Durbridge, with Sir Graham Forbes of Scotland Yard enlisting Temple’s help in investigating the murder of a young woman found in the sea off the Yorkshire coast. As always Temple is reluctant to become involved, until he finds the body of another young woman in his garage and the two murders are linked by the message ‘With the compliments of Mr Gregory’.
Given the passion for Durbridge on the continent, several European countries produced their own radio versions. In Holland it was broadcast as Paul Vlaanderen en het Gregory mysterie, in Germany it was Paul Temple und die affäre Gregory, in Denmark it was Gregory-mysteriet and in Italy it was Paul Temple e il caso Gregory. The BBC maintained for many years that the original UK ten-episode scripts had been lost, but several decades later a full set was recovered and used to re-create the serial for broadcast in 2013.
