Beware of Johnny Washington: Based on ‘Send for Paul Temple’
Republished for the first time since 1951, Beware of Johnny Washington is Francis Durbridge’s clever reworking of the very first Paul Temple radio serial using his new characters, the amiable Johnny Washington and newspaper columnist Verity Glyn. Includes as a bonus the first Paul Temple short story, ‘A Present for Paul’.When a gang of desperate criminals begins leaving calling cards inscribed ‘With the Compliments of Johnny Washington’, the real Johnny Washington is encouraged by an attractive newspaper columnist to throw in his lot with the police. Johnny, an American ‘gentleman of leisure’ who has settled at a quiet country house in Kent to enjoy the fishing, soon finds himself involved with the mysterious Horatio Quince, a retired schoolmaster who is on the trail of the gang’s unscrupulous leader, the elusive ‘Grey Moose’.Best known for creating Paul Temple for BBC radio in 1938, Francis Durbridge’s prolific output of crime and mystery stories, encompassing plays, radio, television, films and books, made him a household name for more than 50 years. A new radio character, ‘Johnny Washington, Esquire’, hit the airwaves in 1949, leading to the publication of this one-off novel in 1951.This Detective Club classic is introduced by writer and bibliographer Melvyn Barnes, author of Francis Durbridge: A Centenary Appreciation, who reveals how Johnny Washington’s only literary outing was actually a reworking of Durbridge’s own Send for Paul Temple.
Читать Beware of Johnny Washington: Based on ‘Send for Paul Temple’ онлайн беплатно
‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’
Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929
Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by John Long Ltd 1951
'A Present for Paul' first published by the Yorkshire Evening Post 1946
Copyright © Estate of Francis Durbridge 1946, 1951
Introduction © Melvyn Barnes 2017
Jacket layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
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: 9780008242053
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008242046
Version: 2017-09-07
Contents
VII. A CALL FROM SCOTLAND YARD
XII. JOHNNY MAKES A SUGGESTION
XVIII. ‘THE BEST LAID PLANS …’
FRANCIS Henry Durbridge (1912–1998) was arguably the most popular writer of mystery thrillers for BBC radio and television from the 1930s to the 1970s, after which he enjoyed a successful career as a stage dramatist. His radio serials are regularly repeated today, while his stage plays remain among the staple fare of amateur and professional theatre companies.
He was born in Kingston upon Hull and educated at Bradford Grammar School, Wylde Green College and Birmingham University, and as an undergraduate he began to pursue his schoolboy ambition to become a writer. Although he later worked briefly in a stockbroker’s office, his career as a full-time writer was assured by the BBC in the early 1930s when he responded to the broadcaster’s voracious appetite by providing comedy plays, children’s stories, musical libretti and numerous short sketches.
It was nevertheless his first two serious radio dramas, Promotion and Murder in the Midlands, that showed the sort of scriptwriting he particularly favoured. In 1938, at the age of twenty-five, he established himself in the crime fiction field when the BBC broadcast his serial Send for Paul Temple. Listeners ecstatically submitted over 7,000 requests for more, no doubt finding his light touch and characteristic ‘cliff-hangers’ a welcome distraction from worries about the gathering storm in Europe. Almost immediately Durbridge became one of the foremost writers of radio thrillers, with a prolific output that he further expanded by sometimes using the pseudonyms Frank Cromwell, Nicholas Vane and Lewis Middleton Harvey. To place him in context, in the mid-twentieth century his closest comparators were Edward J. Mason and Lester Powell (both coincidentally born the same year as Durbridge), together with Ernest Dudley, Alan Stranks and Philip Levene.
Send for Paul Temple was broadcast in eight episodes from 8 April to 27 May 1938. In this first case for the novelist-detective he meets newspaper reporter Steve Trent, who tells him that she has changed her name from Louise Harvey in order to pursue a gang of jewel thieves. The murder of her brother, a Scotland Yard man, unites Temple and Steve in their determination to unmask the Knave of Diamonds. That achieved, they create crime fiction history by deciding to marry—thus securing a quick return to the airwaves in
