DEAD MAN'S BAY
By P. M. Hubbard
Home Service,
26 Feb 1966
With Hector Ross, Cecile Chevreau, Nigel Graham, Noel Howlett; directed by Martyn C. Webster.
192K and 128K - You decide which you like best.
I cannot find a synopsis of this play by PM Hubbard but I did find some very interesting facts about the writer and his writing style that will give you a little insight into what you are about to hear.
The Gothic novel is much older than the detective story, although there has always been an amount of mystery in the genre. P.M. Hubbard did not have a series detective -- in fact he rarely had a detective in the true sense at all, although his protagonists often made deductions -- but his books can be classified as mystery novels with a large admixture of the 'Gothic', always involving greed, passion, and homicide as well as grotesque horror, a tried and true amalgamation that has always been a sub-genre of mystery fiction. His greatest skill was in startling the reader by throwing in a sudden shock in the midst of some clean, straightforward prose (much like LeFanu and Richard Hughes, for example):
"Levinson sat at his desk in the middle of the room, looking at me with his usual small, curiously sweet smile. A thin coil of smoke wound upwards from the cigar resting on the edge of the ash-tray at his right hand. The whole room smelt of it. His hands were on his lap.
I said, 'Good evening,' and then saw that something was not quite right. I had moved, but his eyes had not. He was warm, composed and friendly, but quite dead.
I cannot stand dead and broken things...." [A Hive of Glass]
Hubbard himself had an interesting life: winner of the Newdigate poetry prize at Oxford, member of the Indian Civil Service for many years before independence, contributor to the magazine 'Punch', among other things. Definitely one of the best of the mystery writers of the 20th Century.
If anyone has a text description for this play please post it.
Replies
A rather dull play about a man who's been supplementing his income running contraband on his boat around the English Channel... He made the mistake of asuming it was just cigarettes and booze he'd been carrying. Turns out to have included dope... So the guy he's working for won't let him quit. There's another plot thread that helps tie it all up in a predictable package.
Hubbard has done (far) better and so has the Beeb.
Hi Bob,
No wonder it is the only one of his works I could find no synopsis. I guessed rather early before the book told me he was running dope. Thanks for putting it together without telling the end. I sat here for quite awhile writing it and finally said no I won't do it. Thanks again Bob. An author I will never be because i would tell the finale on the first page.
Oh, you have a PM from me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rick
Make that 2 PMs