"GREY FACE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 91, 21 March 1941, Page 13

"GREY FACE"

Jeffery Blackburn Sleuths Again NOTHER Max Afford detective A serial, featuring (as they say) Jeffery Blackburn, the sleuth of "The Mysterious Mr. Lynch," is now under production by the NBS Drama Department, and will be released from National stations later in the year. The success of "Mr. Lynch," which was produced by the NBS a year or so ago, created a demand for another detective thriller series, and "Grey Face" is the answer. Although it is not a sequel to "Mr. Lynch," it is along the same lines, was created by the same author, Max Afford, the Australian writer, and shows the same redoubtable Jeffery Blackburn, and of course his wife Elizabeth, in enough exciting adventures to please the most blasé. Jeffery Blackburn had his beginnings in a ghost story 14. years ago.. "That," says Mr. Afford in the ABC Weekly, "was back in the ear-phone and cat’swhisker days of radio. We had acquired a crystal set. One night I,happened to be listening at home on my own, and I heard the announcer’s request to ‘turn down the lights and listen.’ The ghost story that came through the ear-phones was, in manner of presentation, one of the most novel experiences I had ever had. A magazine commissioned me to write a series of 12 short stories, appearing monthly. The editor insisted that the hero be a ‘gentleman detective.’ And no school could have produced a more perfect example of courtliness than my Rupert Garland. Rupert was for ever quoting Latin phrases, smoking expensive Russian cigarettes, and flicking the ash nonchalantly about him. He was always faultlessly dressed and made all the airy deductions while other people did the dirty work of catching the criminals and hanging them. In short, Rupert Garland was a prig. After 12 episodes, I decided that I had finished with gentlemen detectives for life. Jeffery Blackburn was actually created on the rebound from the obnoxious Rupert. John Long, the London publishers, announced a prize of £100 for the best ‘first detective novel.’ I determined to enter for the competition. I. had a good plot but wanted a char-acter-not a gentleman detective, but a normal human individual who would make mistakes and persevere, and (since there are certain conventions in the detective story) would eventually foil the villain in the last chapter. He had to be as different from Rupert Garland as chalk from cheese. And it is as Jeffery Blackburn that he has appeared in three novels, in four radio serials, in two short plays and a number of short stories. In the novels Jeffery was single. His closest companion was Inspector Read. But when I wrote my first radio serial, " Fly By Night," it was necessary to inject a love interest. And so Elizabeth was born. At the end of that serial I married Jeffery quite happily to Elizabeth, believing that the man would be far too bowed down with domestic cares to worry any more about criminology. It was with genuine regret that I said goodbye to him. I'd got quite to like Jeffery. Thus, wher I was commissioned to write a second Blackburn serial, ""The Mysterious Mr. Lynch," I was in rather a qQuandary. . . . Elizabeth, I realised, was definitely wedded to my hero for the term of her literary life."