THE ARMCHAIR REVIEWER
Allen J. Hubin


JOYCE PORTER – Dover and the Claret Tappers. Foul Play Press, US, hardcover, 1989. W. W. Norton, US, paperback, 1992. Originally published in the UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, hardcover, 1976 (shown).

JOYCE PORTER Dover Claret Tappers

   Foul Play Press has been reissuing Joyce Porter’s mysteries about England’s most stupid, lazy and unmannered copper, Inspector Wilfred Dover. They’ve come now to a 1976 title not previously published here, Dover and the Claret Tappers.

   I read a few of the Dover novels earlier and recall enjoying them, but Dover’s endless incompetencies, preoccupations with stuffing his face and rushing off to lavatories when not otherwise sleeping on the job, here just get tiresome.

   The caper begins when a gang calling themselves the Claret Tappers kidnaps Dover for ransom. Scotland Yard, and especially the long-suffering Sgt. MacGregor, is delighted to have him gone and refuses to pay a ha’penny.

   So Dover is dumped, unharmed, and since he’s made hardly a useful observation while held, the case eventually goes to the back burner. But not for good, because the Tappers aren’t done yet…

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier,
       Vol. 12, No. 4, Fall 1990.


Editorial Comment: If you are thinking what I think you’re thing, that that’s one ugly cover, I agree with you 100 percent. It’s no wonder that it wasn’t used in the US edition. But the latter was barely more than plain text on the front. Boring!