Paul Temple and Steve by Francis Durbridge

Also, instead of the much-loved serials of the radio show, the series featured standalone episodes for the most part. There were other changes as well - for the first time, Francis Durbridge relinquished control and didn’t write the stories. And in the late sixties, a television show made it on to the air, in colour even (all the films had been in black and white). There were four films in the forties, and in the fifties, a daily comic strip ran in the U.K. A few of the books were even credited to “Paul Temple,” actually a pseudonym of Durbridge and fellow writer Douglas Rutherford. The books were merely quickie novelizations of the radio scripts at first, but as the character’s popularity increased, wholly original adventures were soon being printed. Durbridge has kept tight control over his creation over the years, being involved in almost all subsequent projects. According to 20th Century Crime and Mystery Writers, Francis Durbridge, Temple’s creator, is “a master of the cliff-hanger, albeit verbal rather than unpleasantly physical. They’re invariably set in the genteel world of the upper classes, even if Temple himself is closer to say, Sherlock Holmes as opposed to Miss Marple. The stories themselves are often quite suspenseful, and the radio serials were full of cliff-hanger endings, but nobody’s going to mistake Temple for a member of the hard-boiled school. Aiding him in his investigations are his faithful wife, Steve, and Sir Graham Forbes of Scotland Yard. Temple is a crime writer turned private eye, who is frequently “sent for” by Scotland Yard to help out. And on the radio itself for a whopping thirty-year run. One of the most popular private detectives of all time, once upon a time, PAUL TEMPLE was a popular British private detective who made his first appearance in a BBC radio serial in 1938 and went on to appear in novels, film, television and even a daily comic strip.

Paul Temple and Steve by Francis Durbridge