Dead to the World

Product Description
Photographer Philip Holt established his reputation as an amateur detective when he proved his brother Rex had been murdered and solved the case. This time his skills are in demand after he meets wealthy American Robert Scranton on the plane returning to England from the United States. When Scranton learns that his son Vance, a student at a new university in the South of England, has been shot dead, he asks Holt to investigate the killing. Things snowball, but in strange directions. Forgery, blackmail, smuggling, and more murder are among the pitfalls that Holt comes up against in this gripping adventure. Exciting and suspenseful, this tightly-plotted story is packed with twists and turns right up to the surprising, shocking denouement.
About the Author
Francis Henry Durbridge was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1912 and was educated at Bradford Grammar School. He was encouraged at an early age to write by his English teacher and went on to read English at Birmingham University. Whilst an undergraduate he started to develop the radio play format for which he first became known. At the age of twenty-one he sold a play to the BBC and continued to write following his graduation whilst working as a stockbroker’s clerk. In 1938, by this time writing full time, he 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. Durbridge’s style was very much in the mode of the earlier ‘Golden Age’ middle class amateur detectives . The first book, ‘Send for Paul Temple’, was written along with John Thewes as the novelisation of a radio serial. Many others followed and they were hugely successful until the last of the series was completed in 1968. In 1969, the Paul Temple series was adapted for television and four of the adventures, prior to this, had been adapted for cinema, albeit with less success than radio and TV. Durbridge also invented another new character, Tim Frazer, an undercover agent who appeared in both novels and as a TV series. Francis Durbridge also wrote for the stage and continued doing so up until 1991, when ‘Sweet Revenge’ was completed. Additionally, he wrote over twenty other well received novels, most of which were on the general subject of crime. The last, ‘Fatal Encounter’, was published after his death in 1998.

Neil Pearson is an English actor who was educated at Woolverstone Hall, a boarding school in Suffolk. He is best known for his work on television, including such shows as “All the Small Things”, “The State Within”, “Trevor s World of Sport”, and others.