Persistent Policemen
WAS reminded of two of my favourite sleuths, Inspector French and Inspector Rason (of the Department of Dead Ends) by 1YA’s Sunday afternoon play, H. R. Jeans’s The Black Cap Has to Wait. Unlike the conventional murder story, the interest lay not in who "dunit,’"’ but in following the work of two persistent policemen as step by step they discovered the identity of a 50-years-old skeleton of a murderee and remorsely tracked down the aged culprit, You’d think any murderer could feel pretty safe after half a century, but that’s life (or, rather, radio drama) for you! This was a well-written and imaginative piece, much better than other BBC scripts the NZBS has recorded recently. Given the premise, the various steps in the tracking-down were logical and convincing. Norman Hannah and William Austin made a nicely balanced pair of detectives, and Eric Brian a strong murderer. But the most striking performance came from a player (his name escaped me) who, as the dead man’s former employee, gave the police valuable information in his deathbed. This fictional presentation of police routine showed once again that fiction, if not stranger than truth, is usually a good deal more interesting.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19541029.2.17.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 10
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199Persistent Policemen New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 797, 29 October 1954, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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