Tue 8 Feb 2022
Reviewed by David Vineyard: PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery. Paul Temple #6. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1957. [In this case, author Paul Temple is the pseudonym of Francis Durbridge & James Douglas Rutherford McConnell.] Reprinted as by Francis Durbridge: Hodder, UK< paperback, 1960. Based on the radio serial Paul Temple and The Tyler Mystery by Francis Durbridge.
This one happens to involve two writers not known as well on these shores as as they should be, Francis Durbridge was an international rival to Agatha Christie in the mystery genre whose radio and television plays have been adapted in multiple languages and countries and was best known here as the creator of mystery writer/detective Paul Temple and his ex-journalist wife Steve who adventured in sixteen radio serials on the BBC from the thirties on solving crimes in the Nick and Nora manner. Three films and a television series followed in England and several German television serials of the Temple adventures.
The Temple films are available on the gray market, while most of the Temple radio serials are easily found on YouTube since they are still rebroadcast on BBC radio or can be purchased on DVD. The complete television series can be found easily but requires a multi region player.
You can find the film of Durbridge’s novel and serial Portrait of Alison with Robert Beatty and Terry Moore fairly easily. A few Durbridge BBC serials are available on YouTube, and several German serials as well.
Durbridge wrote numerous radio and television series, also creating reporter detective Tim Fraser in two books and a series as well as at least one German movie. Durbridge’s plays were hugely popular in Germany and other Western European countries, with Rossano Brazzi even starring in one Italian serial.
Douglas Rutherford, who ghosted this Temple novel and East of Algiers for Durbridge is a top flight mystery adventure writer who has been called the Dick Francis of the Grand Prix circuit. His novels tend to be set against Formula 1 racing, Motorcross, and Motor Rally racing and often have drivers as the protagonists. His style is, like Dick Francis and John Anderson (who was to sailing small boats what Rutherford and Francis are to their fields), simple, accessible, and smoothly written featuring solid plotting, believable heroes, suspense, and colorful action.
The Tyler Mystery opens with the body of a young woman found, the second in two weeks. Paul and Steve have just moved into their new flat with Steve fussing with the ambience of the new place when Sir Graham Forbes and Inspector Vosper show up consulting Temple about the murders. Sir Graham is Temple’s friend and connection to Scotland Yard who was even a suspect in Temple’s first adventure (Send for Paul Temple). Both he and Inspector Vosper have been known to consult with Temple before though reluctantly since there is no controlling him once he gets the scent.
And Paul and Steve have hardly agreed to help before someone tries to run them off the road in their Humber.
“That reason being?â€
“Sir Graham, when we know that we’ll be in sight of our murderer.â€
It all involves a mysterious conspiracy, a bit of smuggling, a horse doping scheme, and evasion of the Inland Revenue, the British tax system, before Temple uncovers the culprits in a classic gathering of the suspects.
The Tyler Mystery is an entertaining read. Its serial origins can’t help but show, but the cliffhangers are often as not suspenseful and not physical and the joints don’t show too badly.
Many of the original Temple serials were lost but recreated later for BBC broadcasts. Though Paul Coke was the longest running Paul Temple others included Barry Morse (Lt. Gerard of The Fugitive) and Howard Marion-Crawford (Dr. Watson to Ronald Howard’s Sherlock Holmes on television and Dr. Petrie in Christopher Lee’s Fu Manchu films). Francis Matthews was Temple on television and John Bentley in two of the three films.
And as one mystery is solved Sir Graham admonishes Steve about their upcoming trip to Rome: “Haven’t you heard that the daughter of an Italian Cabinet Minister has just been kidnapped? I’m pretty sure if your husband goes to Rome…â€
“By, Timothy†(Paul’s favorite exclamation), warm up the radio set. I hear the faint sound of Coronation Scot playing and variations on Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Time to settle back with Paul and Steve Temple for another evening of thrills and mystery. It may not be great art, but audiences have been entertained since before the War and still are on radio, in print, on film, and on television.
February 8th, 2022 at 7:48 pm
Hi! How are You? Me fair, been snowing like heck here in eastern Canada, The Population are getting tired and with the pandemic, it is not easy, to cope with all this. Anyway, Portrait of Alison, there is another Title for that film, Postmark for Danger, I just watched it last week, it is an excellent film, the pace is good, and the Performers are all awesome and playing Their part with aplomb, all the Paul Temple movies are great and very nicely made, and it is not that low budget. I watched every one of them, Mr Bentley is very good at doing Paul Temple, for me at least it is a bit like Jerry Cotton without Steve Trent of course, but Paul Temple is way lighter in tone though. George Nader is very good playing Jerry Cotton, Nick and Charles in The Thin Man, it is a little comparable, but for me, it is more like Mr and Mrs North, with Richard Denning and Barbara Britton. Anyway enough of rambling. Take good care and be safe, and God Bless and Love You All.
P.S. The thing I am sad about on this website or blog, that there is the beginning of reviews and newer films of this year and last year etc, movies in recent time like the past few years, for my point of view, I thought this blog was for classics, maybe I was all wrong about that, it is not me the Boss or the Editor of this blog though, it is only me speaking and comes only from me, I cut the cord with the Present time Hollywood, I do not care about recent movies with vulgar issues and language and the debauchery of Society that Hollywood creates and the Media. I Love You all though, and You are all an Encyclopedia of Books and inside stories and films, it is very appreciated and not taken for granted. Au revoir from Eastern Canada in the Province of New Brunswick in the town of Edmundston.
February 8th, 2022 at 8:20 pm
The Paul Temple franchise is a kind of forgotten in-joke in British media, I have learned. He’s a quintessential example of a certain kind of upright English character in a certain kind of ‘careful’ English media (whether radio serial or film). Temple is manly enough for fisticuffs, or changing a flat tyre in a downpour, yet he’s too mild to even eject a “damn” afterward. “Blast it” is too vehement for Paul Temple.
America’s Clark Kent is hot-tempered in comparison; “Great Scott!” the sign of gross recklessness.
So, yes: “by Timothy!” is Paul Temple when startled or outraged. Sometimes it does suit very well, an interval of storytelling with no slang at all.
February 8th, 2022 at 9:38 pm
I loved the TV series when I was a nipper. Especially Ros Drinkwater! 😉
February 8th, 2022 at 10:43 pm
Peter Coke the longest running of the radio Temples loathed having to say, “By Timothy!,” even in the Fifties, arguing it belonged to the Bertie Wooster school of comedy writing, but it had been Temple’s tag line since the second episode of the first radio serial and he was stuck with it.
I said, three, there were four films, the first with Anthony Hulme, the others all with John Bentley who also played the Toff in two films.
Paul Temple also featured in a long running British comic strip by Alfred Sindall and later others. Samples can be found on Steve Holland’s informative Bear Alley blog.
BBC RADIO Four still plays the Temple serials once in a while whether from nostalgia or demand and they are apparently popular. Multiple downloads from different sources are available on YouTube and Internet Archive and at various times for purchase on CD at the BBC Store.
A handful of the Temple short stories are available in an ebook and you can read a couple of the Temple radio serials in that form as well. They are on Kindle and I assume other providers.
Other than the continuing appeal of the mystery and suspense format, which Durbridge did with some cleverness and inventiveness, part of the appeal of Paul and Steve Temple is that throwback to a simpler style (the times were no simpler, but entertainment didn’t feel quiet as responsible to reflect it as it does today — escapism was not only the sole purpose of such programs it was considered to be noble, even useful, to provide it).
Without being rich or aristocratic the Temple’s were well off, lived glamorously, attractive, madly in love, lived exciting lives, and represented escape first from the end of the Depression and the looming war and then the Blitz and the War itself then the Post War era of shortages and the shock of England’s diminished place in the world to a time when a pair of amateur detectives outwitting master criminals was as serious as the world had to be at least once a week.
The Temple serials were events the whole nation tuned into.
They weren’t alcoholics like the Charles and Steve wasn’t as much of a lateral thinker as Pam North. They were comfortable companions to escape with for a weekly adventure without leaving the side of your radio. Though they were certainly influenced by Nick and Nora, they really don’t resemble them all that much. Brittle cocktail gab isn’t the Temple style, not even the Noel Coward kind.
And Durbridge spun a mean plot. He might be no Agatha Christie in terms of brilliant mystery plots, but he could keep listeners tuning in weekly. The success of the Temples and his other serials all over Europe in multiple languages mean as little as he is known here, he is one of the most successful mystery writers in the world.
Reality didn’t intrude all that much into the Temple’s world, and frankly that was the point.