Peter Darington-Seaman Detective (Thames Publishing Co)

The hero of this book, Peter Darington, fulfils the two roles defined in the above title in a highly satisfactory way. More than that, Douglas Duff’s creation in this early collection of 8 short stories is clearly the forerunner to his later series heroes - Bill Berenger and Adam MacAdam. From the very start of his adventures Peter is given all the qualities that any young reader could still admire today. He is brave, intelligent, compassionate, understanding and just vulnerable enough to make his success not too predictable. The author’s cosmopolitan outlook is also refreshing and reflects his wide experience of the world and the people in it. It is not often that you open a book about a young British hero and read a line which says,“Peter knew Arabic and both understood and loved Arabs…”Other ethnic groups are also usually treated with a respect and an even-handedness that allows Duff to create “goodies” and “baddies” in all the nations that are visited without there being a suggestion of a racial slur. It is behaviour that matters - not the colour of a man’s skin.

A tramp steamer with a limited number of passengers on board is, of course, the ideal setting for a murder mystery. Two of the stories make use of the confinement that is achieved by a long voyage where no one can have committed the crime but the passengers or the crew. Falling under suspicion himself, Peter remembers the training given to him by his father, senior officer in the Palestine Police. He makes a numbered list of all the clues and weighs up the pros and cons about each suspect. There may be painstaking method but there is also satisfying mayhem as each case is normally resolved not just by deduction but also by fisticuffs. Peter knows how to disarm a desperate gunman and then knock him out with “a magnificent uppercut”.

Inevitably Peter Darington’s success as a detective brings him to the notice of his superiors, with mixed results. Becoming the “pet” of the Captain does not make him popular with the Chief Officer of the Roundstone Minster and it also leads to some “ragging” from his fellow apprentices. His youthfulness counts strongly in his favour, however, when he investigates the case of “The Kidnapped Heiress”, for who would suspect one of such tender years to possess such tenacity and courage.

Indeed, the heiress in question is one Janet Summerthly, the daughter of the millionaire owner of the Red Circle Shipping Line. Soon Peter is moving in exalted circles and begins to harbour thoughts he hadn’t expected to trouble him.
“He had never bothered very much about girls, but she was so different from all the rest.”
As he pursues the criminals in “Terror by Night” he begins to think about Janet more seriously. She has already proved her courage by seizing an unexploded bomb and rushing outside to throw it into a lake. As he drives along, “Not for the first time, Peter realised that she was also an extremely pretty girl.”

Here we can see quite clearly where Douglas Duff differs from Percy F. Westerman, that other prolific writer of sea stories whose career overlapped Douglas Duff’s for at least thirty years. Duff is not afraid to introduce the female element into his stories and, though the girls concerned play minor roles, they are always strong self-reliant types, whose independent character wins the respect of the hero and forces him to greater efforts to win theirs in return. Janet Summerthly is no swooning maiden. She totes a gun and is prepared to use it. In Westerman stories the lads concerned are lucky if they have mothers, never mind “lady friends”.

Mere courage and resourcefulness will not be enough for Peter to win Janet. Interestingly he has to overcome his own prejudices and the assumptions of the world he lives in. He forces himself to stop thinking of her – “he was an apprentice in her father’s employ and she was the owner’s only daughter. Things such as he had begun to imagine didn’t happen. At least, decent fellows didn’t let them happen, and that was all there was to it.”

In the next short story in the book, “Dangerous Mission”, Peter leaves England and Janet behind and the Roundstone Minster encounters a troubling political situation in the South American Republic of San Isidore. This again, like the Palestine and Arab connections already mentioned, is a constantly recurring theme in Douglas Duff’s stories. The Republic of Yraguay in the Adam MacAdam stories, for instance, brings out the close connection between the United Kingdom and the many Latin American states where Britons have traded, settled and intermarried. The resolution of the mystery in this story concerns a smuggling technique referred to in one of another collection of Duff short stories entitled “Heroes of the Sea”. The breadth of the author’s sea-going experience is never in doubt.

For his success in this story Peter and one of his shipmates are awarded the M.B.E., but what we really want to know is whether the author will reward his hero with the lovely and lively Janet. In “Midnight Mystery”, depending on your point of view, the signs are not good. Peter is now so sensitive on the subject of the millionaire’s daughter that he can be provoked into instant anger by his fellow apprentices’ callous disregard for his feelings. Their constant jokes about his future prospects expose a raw nerve that threatens to make him lose his normal level-headed approach to each problem that crops up. The mystery in this story is one of the author’s weakest and the Duff wraps it all up rather tamely without a dramatic climax.

However, the fiery Janet and the touchy Peter cause so many sparks of interest by their disagreement that the reader is more interested in the progress in their “impossible” relationship. And how does it end ? Of course, you have to read the book yourself to find out.
One of the most attractive features of this oversized book from “The Headway Library” is the beautiful display made by the seven coloured plates by Nat Long. In particular the picture of Janet racing through the French windows makes you understand just why Peter finds her both so brave and so desirable

Douglas Duff wrote many better books later in his career but this mixture of detective story and action thriller gives indications of what would be possible when he moved from the miniature of the short story and painted with these colours on a broader canvas.