Joyce Porter is an English crime fiction

Crime fiction

Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...

 author.

Porter created the characters of Eddie Brown, Constance Ethel Morrison Burke, and Wilfred Dover.

In DI Wilfred Dover & his assistant Sergeant MacGregor, she created a template later used successfully, especially by Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill

Reginald Charles Hill is an English crime writer, and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.- Biography :...

, in straight 'whodunnits', but Porter's novels, while intricately plotted, were always played for laughs.

Dover was obese, lazy, unhygienic (the only man in the Metropolitan Police Service

Metropolitan Police Service

The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...

with underarm dandruff) & bordering on corrupt. MacGregor was keen, clean & ferociously ambitious. However, on the rare occasions he was able to put aside plate, pint-glass & cigarettes long enough to concentrate, Dover usually saw the answer first.

The Honourable Constance Ethel Morrison Burke is an upper-class spinster who, armed only with pluck, a deep-rooted hatred of men & her family's enormous financial resources, sallies forth to fight crime with the aid of her devoted 'friend'.

The 'Hon Con' books are even less like straight 'who-dunnits' than the 'Dovers' because while Dover is an experienced copper who has, it becomes clear, a good brain, the 'Hon Con' is an amateur bungler of below-average intelligence. Therefore, her solving each case must be achieved entirely by a happy coincidence.

Publications

Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover

• Dover One (1964)
• Dover Two (1965)
• Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All (1967)
• Dover Goes to Pott (1968)
• Dover Three (1968)
• Dover Strikes Again (1970)
• It's Murder with Dover (1973)
• Dover and the Claret Tappers (1976)
• Dead Easy for Dover (1978)
• Dover Beats the Band (1980)
• Dover: The Collected Short Stories (1995)

Eddie Brown, The World's Most Reluctant Spy

• Sour Cream with Everything (1966)
• The Chinks in the Curtain (1967)
• Neither a Candle Nor a Pitchfork (1969)
• Only with a Bargepole (1971)

Constance Ethel Morrison Burke

• Rather a Common Sort of Crime (1970) (aka Constance Ethel Morrison Burke)
• A Meddler and Her Murder (1972)
• The Package Included Murder (1975)
• Who the Heck is Sylvia? (1977)
• The Cart Before the Crime (1979)

External links