In this wildly politically-incorrect investigation into the disappearance of Juliet Rugg, Joyce Porter neatly contrasts her bumbling, but ultimately successful, Inspector with his reluctant sidekick, the stunningly handsome Sergeant MacGregor. Dover is the true antithesis of Inspector Purbright in Colin Wilson’s Flaxborough series. Purbright is the very pillar of decency in a corrupt world, whereas Dover is is the lazy and corrupt mirror of a rotten society.

Like Wilson, Porter depends a lot on farce, caricature and stereotype, but can also be slyly subversive. The reader is carried along by the extravagance of the awfulness of Dover, safe in the certainty that a real policeman would not act thus…or, perhaps, not so certain.

Having enjoyed the BBC dramatisations of some of the Dover and MacGregor stories, I was delighted to have my first read of them in their full glory.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrago for the digital review copy.

This book was set in the 60’s. I loved the sarcasm dripping through it.Dover is a sloppy chief Inspector sent to investigate the disappearance of a rather large girl, Julia Rugg.He has to deal with the imbeciles that live around where Miss Rugg lived as he interviews them about the disappearance.The book has slight shades of dark humor.
#netgalley #doverone #joyceporter #doveroneadovermystery1

Bumbling police detective Chief Inspector Dover is investigating his latest case – the disappearance of a rather large young lady, Juliet Rugg.

Dover is lazy, disinterested and often apoplectic, which all makes for an amusing character and a great read.

Originally published in the 1960s, the story is rather politically incorrect, but if you try not to take offence at this, it’s a light, fun and uncomplicated read.

I didn’t enjoy Dover One nearly as much as I’d hoped. Farrago have done an excellent job in finding and reissuing some really good humorous series – notably Colin Watson’s Flaxborough books, the Bandy series by Donald Jack and Miss Seeton; sadly, for me this wasn’t nearly as enjoyable.

Written and set in the mid 60s, the book features the eponymous Chief Inspector Dover who is idle, unscrupulous and offensive in both manner and person. He and his super-keen and squeaky-clean sidekick are called to investigate the disappearance of a young woman in “Creedshire” where we meet, Agatha Christie style, a cast of locals who may all have had a motive for doing away with her, but her (very substantial) body is nowhere to be found.

The mystery is decently plotted and well written but I’m afraid I became pretty tired of it all by about half way and began to skim. I still can’t quite put my finger on why, but it’s partly that the characters are a collection of almost uniformly repellent caricatures which I found rather heavy-handed rather than witty. Things do move pretty slowly, so in the absence of an engaging character or of much to make me smile I got quite bogged down. Also, even allowing for the prevailing attitudes of the time, I found some of it pretty jarring and using the hideous suffering survived by one character in a concentration camp as a humorous (even darkly humorous) plot device really did seem a bit much.

It may just be me; the prose is well written and it’s well plotted, so others may enjoy Dover far more than I did, but personally I can’t really recommend it.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Dover Is Annoying And Lovable At The Same Time

In this first adventure Scotland Yard is called to search for Julia Rugg, a companion to Sir John Counter and mistress of seemingly every man in town. She has been missing for several days but the circumstances of her disappearance are baffling. She arrives home in a gated community at 11:00 PM and simply disappears. At 5’3” and 16 stone (224 pounds) she is, not surprisingly, hard to hide. So where is she?

Chief Inspector Dover is assigned to the case, more to get rid of him than because he is their best. In summary, Dover is a corpulent, lazy, rude, impatient, sloppily dressed Chief Inspector. He’s more comfortable taking naps, whenever and wherever, than he is chasing bad guys (or girls). But he will capture your imagination and worm his way into your heart. He dishes out orders to his partner, the fastidious Sergeant MacGregor, on a whim but never gives him credit for the work. You will find yourself exasperated, annoyed, cringing and then laughing, as Dover muddles his way through the case. And his penchant for stopping at the door and asking one more question, will remind some of you of the old Columbo series of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Thank You, Farrago and Net Galley for offering me a free advance copy of this novel for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrago for an e-galley of this novel.

This is my first experience reading one of the Dover mystery novels by Joyce Porter. I think Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover of New Scotland Yard, as a character, needs to grow on me some before I would classify him as a favorite. I did enjoy reading this first adventure in investigation of the now very politically incorrect series first published in 1964. Dover does pretty much anything he wants in his job without regard to rules or for whose feelings he upsets next. Actually, he pretty much upsets everybody so in that regard he's an equal opportunity boor. Beneath all the nonconformity written into the lead character there is actually quite a good mystery and that is what saves this book for me and makes me interested in reading more in the series.

Dover and Sergeant Charles MacGregor have been sent out of London to investigate a missing person report for Juliet Rugg. The more they investigate Juliet the more they think she's just run off with some man and she will be coming back to the village as soon as she's ready. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are odd, yes, but then so is Juliet and most of the people in this small community. Dover and MacGregor keep picking up tiny scraps of clues that make the situation more and more serious but they can't seem to make any progress. Absolutely everybody has a secret they don't want revealed so this case looks like it may never be solved. Certainly not by Dover.

I'm quite willing to read another book in this series to see if the author continued to have Dover be such an anti-hero type character. Often a softening of an astringent character will take place as a series develops so I would like to know if that happens here. The only way I'll know is to read more.