Читать книгу Dead to the World: Based on Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery - Francis Durbridge, Francis Durbridge - Страница 5

Wealthy American Robert Scranton asks Philip Holt to investigate the murder of his son at an English university, with the only leads being a postcard signed ‘Christopher’ and a missing signet ring …

When Dead to the World was published in March 1967, regular listeners to Francis Durbridge’s radio serials featuring Paul Temple could hardly have failed to be reminded of the plot of Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery, particularly as a new production had been broadcast less than four years earlier. Dead to the World was indeed the novelisation of that radio serial, but with Paul and Steve Temple replaced by photographer Philip Holt, his secretary Ruth Sanders and Detective Inspector Hyde. It was Durbridge’s second novel to feature these characters, their having debuted in his previous book The Desperate People, the novelisation of his 1963 television serial of the same name.

At that time, Francis Durbridge (1912–1998) was a long-standing, popular and distinctive writer of mystery thrillers for BBC radio and television who was soon to dominate the professional and amateur theatrical stage. Today he remains best known as the creator of the novelist-detective Paul Temple, whose first appearance in the 1938 BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple led to Paul and his wife Steve becoming cult figures of the airwaves, with further serials running on radio throughout the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. There were also books, four black-and-white feature films and two spin-off BBC television series. But while the radio serials have enjoyed a twenty-first century renaissance on CD thanks to the efforts of the BBC’s audio publishers, and the films and TV episodes have appeared on DVD, some of the books, including Dead to the World, have until now been sadly neglected.

The radio serial Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery was first broadcast in eight episodes from 10 May to 28 June 1951, with Kim Peacock as Paul Temple. By the time of the new production (14 October to 2 December 1963) Peacock had long been succeeded by Peter Coke, who made the role his own with eleven appearances from 1954 to 1968. But the actress Marjorie Westbury warranted the label ‘definitive’ even more than Coke, given her twenty-three outings as Steve Temple from 1945 to 1968 opposite four different actors: Barry Morse, Howard Marion-Crawford, Kim Peacock and Peter Coke.

Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery begins when the Temples meet an American couple, Robert and Helen Ferguson, on a flight from New York. Soon afterwards they learn that the Fergusons’ son Richard has been murdered at his Oxford college, and that the only clues are a postcard from Harrogate signed ‘Jonathan’ and the disappearance of Richard’s signet ring. The ensuing plot was typical Durbridge fare and resulted in yet another international success, with European broadcasters using their own actors in translations that included the Dutch Paul Vlaanderen en het Jonathan mysterie (25 January to 29 March 1953), the German Paul Temple und der Fall Jonathan (17 September to 5 November 1954) and the Italian Chi è Jonathan? almost twenty years later (12 to 23 April 1971).

So what inclined Durbridge, relatively soon after the second UK radio production of Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery, to recycle this serial as the novel Dead to the World and in the process change the character names and replace his popular duo the Temples? It was by no means the first time he had done this, leaving his fans to ponder a question that has never been authoritatively answered. Although his radio serials firmly maintained his reputation over a period of thirty years, he probably wanted to be acknowledged as something more than the creator of Paul and Steve Temple and therefore deliberately set out to broaden his appeal to the reading public by providing a little variety. The first five Temple novels had faithfully followed his radio scripts, but he broke the mould by substituting different protagonists in Beware of Johnny Washington and Design for Murder (both 1951), even though both had begun life as the radio serials Send for Paul Temple (1938) and Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair (1946) respectively.

However, having then returned to writing Paul Temple into short stories, newspaper serials, novelisations and even an original novel, it was not until 1965 that Durbridge again took one of his own radio plots, Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case (1954), as the basis for a new standalone book, Another Woman’s Shoes, which was followed two years later by Dead to the World as the only other example of him recycling his own material in this way.

Looking back, one wonders if Durbridge’s occasional penchant for replacing the Temples, while retaining the typical elements of his radio plots, was considered an affront to his loyal audience? I doubt it, as the books still delivered a generous helping of what they had always expected of him – complications, twists and cliff-hangers galore, and the obligatory sting in the tail. Dead to the World again proved to be as popular as ever throughout Europe, in such translations as Der Siegelring in Germany, Sous le signe du dollar in France, Morto per il mondo in Italy, De zegelring in the Netherlands and Umarly dla s´wiata in Poland.

Following Dead to the World, Durbridge produced fifteen more books. Apart from his non-series title The Pig-Tail Murder (1969), they were either novelisations of his iconic television serials or Paul Temple mysteries: eight of his TV serials were novelised between 1967 and 1982, and there were six more Paul Temple titles up to 1988, of which two were original novels and four were based on radio serials. (Although some bibliographies list an additional novelisation, Paul Temple and the Conrad Case (1989), this appears to be a mistaken reference to the first BBC Radio Collection release on cassette tape of the 1959 radio episodes and not a book after all.)

Whereas Durbridge’s books featuring the Temples have been reprinted over the years, Beware of Johnny Washington, Design for Murder, Another Woman’s Shoes and Dead to the World have all been out of print for more than fifty years. Perhaps a less ignominious fate would have befallen them had they been published as bona fide Paul Temple novelisations rather than with new characters! Their republication by Collins Crime Club, along with Durbridge’s first standalone novel Back Room Girl (1950), finally allows new fans to enjoy these thrilling stories in book form. Of similar vintage is the bonus Paul Temple short story ‘The Ventriloquist’s Doll’, which originally appeared in 1952 in the Daily Mail Annual for Boys and Girls and shows Durbridge’s more playful side when using his central character to appeal to a younger audience.

MELVYN BARNES

September 2017