Friday's Forgotten Books - Dover One

Joyce Porter (1924-1990) started down a literary path with a degree in English at London University before she veered off and served in the Women’s Royal Air Force as an officer (including confidential work in intelligence), from 1949-63 in the UK and Germany. Somewhere along the line, she developed not only an interest in writing novels, but a sharp sense of humor and the absurd that she wove into protagonists featured in all three of her series—whether it's Edmund "Eddie" Brown, a secret agent who's as much a threat to the British intelligence service as he is to the bad guys, or the Honorable Constance Ethel Morrison Burke, a bit of a bungler who possesses a below-average IQ.

But the most popular of her creations is the thoroughly original Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover, who quite possibly has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He's described as having a six-two frame draped in "seventeen and a quarter stone (241 pounds) of flabby flesh"; unhygienic (the only man in the Metropolitan Police Service with underarm dandruff); and "with a moustache of the type that the late Adolph Hitler did so much to depopularize." He's also mean, occasionally violent, but mostly lazy, having been promoted through the ranks as much by colleagues who wanted to get rid of him as any particular investigative skills, relying on luck and the work of others to solve cases.

Dover is aided by his aide and polar opposite, the young, well-dressed, kind, sympathetic, charming and intelligent up-and-coming Sergeant Edward MacGregor. The patient MacGregor does most of the work for which Dover gets the credit, one reason he keeps trying to be transferred away from his boss—to no avail, thanks to the Assistant Commissioner who believes in a "baptism of fire and salvation through suffering" for the younger detectives.

The first literary outing for Dover and MacGregor was the appropriately-named Dover One, published in 1964. To get him out of the building, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Dover to investigate the disappearance of a promiscuous young housemaid in the small remote town of Creedshire. Once there, Dover and MacGregor find affairs, illegitimate children, homosexuality, drug abuse and seemingly every one of the Seven Deadly Sins, as well as a cast of over-the-top characters who all have motives to kill the housemaid. The problem is—there's no body and this particular body is a rather large (16 stone) young woman who'd be hard to hide. Did she just run off? or is it a case of kidnapping or suicide? Dover doesn't particularly care, he just wants to find a restaurant in town that has a decent meal. Or take a nap.

In Dover One, as well as all the Dover novels, Porter creates an uncultured and slightly titillating world but tempers it via pitch-black humor. Her supporting characters are often repulsively racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and definitely not politically correct, but this is part of her own satirical dig at elitism and classism in the UK of the 1960s. She also doesn't shy away from other touchy subjects, including castration, cannibalism and terrorism.

Neither does she skimp on plotting, which lead Anthony Boucher to note in a 1965 New York Times review, that Porter's first two novels (Dover One and Dover Two) were "plotted with the technique of a virtuoso.'' Publishers Weekly added that the author "plants clues in the best British whodunit tradition, simultaneously honoring the genre's conventions even as she sends it up." Best-selling author Martha Grimes (the Richard Jury series) once said that Porter was one of the few series she really liked, with Porter perhaps the only writer who has consciously influenced her.

The BBC adapted one of the Dover novels for an episode of the TV series Detective in 1968, and Paul Mendelson and David Neville adapted five books from the Dover collection by Joyce Porter into radio plays for BBC Radio 4, with Kenneth Cranham as Chief Inspector Dover and Stuart McQuarrie as Sergeant MacGregor. (None of these was based on Dover One, but taken from the other 14 Dover novels and 11 Dover short stories.)

If you're in the mood for serious detective fiction, then Dover won't be your cup of tea, but if you like dark humor, then settle down with "Scotland Yard's least-wanted man," some strong British ale and maybe some tea biscuits. Lots of tea biscuits.

Comments

[George Kelley]

I read the DOVER books as soon as they were published. Wonderful series!

[BV Lawson]

And the good news is you can find most of them in their re-issued paperback formats that publishers like Countryman Press and Foul Play Press came out with in the late 1980s and into the 90s. I haven't read any of the short stories -- I'll have to check the local library for those.

[Patti Abbott]

I also enjoyed her books.

[BV Lawson]

I have to admit I haven't read any Porter books featuring her spy hero or the Hon Con Ethel Morrison Burke, but I understand that most experts feel the Dover books were her best.

[Martin Edwards]

Dover One is terrific, and so are some of the short stories. I haven't read the non Dover books, though.