Beware of Johnny Washington

Republished for the first time since 1951, Beware of Johnny Washington is Francis Durbridge’s clever reworking of the very first Paul Temple radio serial using his new characters, the amiable Johnny Washington and newspaper columnist Verity Glyn. Includes as a bonus the first Paul Temple short story, ‘A Present for Paul’. When a gang of desperate criminals begins leaving calling cards inscribed ‘With the Compliments of Johnny Washington’, the real Johnny Washington is encouraged by an attractive newspaper columnist to throw in his lot with the police. Johnny, an American ‘gentleman of leisure’ who has settled at a quiet country house in Kent to enjoy the shing, soon finds himself involved with the mysterious Horatio Quince, a retired schoolmaster who is on the trail of the gang’s unscrupulous leader, the elusive ‘Grey Moose’.

Best known for creating Paul Temple for BBC radio in 1938, Francis Durbridge’s prolific output of crime and mystery stories, encompassing plays, radio, television, films and books, made him a household name for more than 50 years. A new radio character, ‘Johnny Washington, Esquire’, hit the airwaves in 1949, leading to the publication of this one-off novel in 1951.

This Detective Club classic is introduced by writer and bibliographer Melvyn Barnes, author of Francis Durbridge: A Centenary Appreciation, who reveals how Johnny Washington’s only literary outing was actually a reworking of Durbridge’s own Send for Paul Temple.

About the Author

Francis Henry Durbridge was born 25th November 1912 in Hull, England. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School, where he was encouraged to write by his English teacher. He continued to do so while studying English at Birmingham University. After graduating in 1933, he worked for a short time as a stockbroker's clerk before selling a radio play, Promotion, to the BBC at the age of 21.In 1938, Durbridge created the character Paul Temple, a crime novelist and detective.

With Steve Trent, a Fleet Street journalist and later his wife, Temple solved numerous crimes in the glamorous world of the leisured middle classes, first on radio, then in films and, from 1969 to 1971, in a television series. In addition to the Paul Temple series, Durbridge wrote other mysteries for radio and television, many of which were also produced for German and Italian television and radio. Durbridge also forged a successful career as a writer for the stage with seven plays, the last of which, Sweet Revenge, was written in 1991.

He also wrote 43 novels, many of which were adapted from his scripts, sometimes with the help of others. Durbridge married Norah Lawley in 1940, they had two sons. He died at his home in Barnes, aged 85 on 11th April 1998.