Call Yourself a Flatfoot

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 427, 29 August 1947, Page 8

Call Yourself a Flatfoot

HAVE decided that when I read whodunit I do so not to find out did it (only the author really cares} but what everybody, including the des tective, does about it. To me the least interesting parts of the story are those when, with due regard for her feelin the master mind interrogates the feli

while the humble village constable is left without an audience in his more interesting task of investigating the relics. The trouble with 2YA’s Calf Yourself a Detective is that it’s almost all talk and no action. The method adopted is briefly this — the comper@ gives an account of a fictional crime in which clues to the murderer and his methods protrude like beckoning finger Whereupon the four guest artists their shots and it is left to a bright boy from the outer audience to play Darcy to Ernest Dudley’s Will Hay. Seriously this is the type of BBC programme cala culated to drive listeners straight intd the arms of Lemmy Caution. Mr. Dud ley is far too genteel, too considerate of the feelings of others, there is no hint of steel in that soft palm beneath the woollen glove. Yet if ever guest artista needed a bit of third-degreeing thesa@ do, if only as punishment for wasting) so much of the audience’s time in fatu4 ous burblings. Jan Struther (Mrs. Mina iver’s creator) thought it might be the squire’s wife because she "felt there something about her" and didn’t like/ the sergeant either, in fact she didnt like any of them. An ex-Chief Constable of Scotland Yard thought he might be able to express an opinion after he’d had five minutes alone with each sus-~ pect. Meanwhile the radio audience shuffled its feet and squitmed, but the compere and his artists were well in« sulated in a sound-proof studio. However, future sessions sound a little more

promising. (next week John Dickson Carr and Peter Cheyney are among the guest artists).