The name of Douglas Clark (1919-1993) cropped up in an online classic mystery discussion group recently as an example of a more contemporary author who wrote traditional detective stories in line with Golden Age mystery parameters. I looked him up and learned that Clark published 27 novels about DCI George Masters and DI Bill Green of Scotland Yard between 1969 and 1990. He also wrote under the names James Ditton and Peter Hosier; WorldCat shows four books by Ditton and one by Hosier.
Nobody’s Perfect (Stein and Day, 1969), the first book about Masters and Green, capitalizes on Clark’s work experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Homicide is called to Barugt (pronounced ‘barf”) House, a large successful medication research and manufacturing firm, because CEO Adam Huth was found dead in his office. Time of death was hard to establish and cause of death was perplexing. Huth was widely admired by his employees, although interacted directly with few of them. Between the inability to find anyone who wanted to kill Huth and the difficulty in locating the source of the murder weapon, Masters and Green find themselves running in circles.
The fact that they deeply despise each other does not help. Green thinks that Masters is an apple polisher and was unfairly promoted over detectives with more experience. Masters thinks Green is antediluvian in his methods and should retire. Their mutual antipathy keeps them from collaborating on potential investigative routes and in general unnecessarily complicates the job. I didn’t like either one of them.
They each keep chipping away at their respective tasks and finally find a few people with well-concealed reasons to want Huth dead, then the knot begins to unravel.
I couldn’t help but suspect that Clark took his frustrations with his job and his colleagues out on this book. A company named Barf? A bureaucratic and unethical personnel director? Incompetent managers whose work is done by their secretaries? Sounds like workplace revenge to me.
Later books about Masters and Green are better, according to various reviews, but this one is important as it establishes the series and the main characters, who manage to reach a degree of rapprochement. True to the traditional style, the focus is on the problem to be solved and not the characters’ personal lives. Their running skirmishes distracted from the mystery, which has carefully detailed police procedure with plenty of clues, along with occasional dry wit. The solution feels rushed after the painstaking legwork that led up to it. A couple of surprises, one on the last page, are worked in toward the end. Perhaps not the place to start the series but definitely an author to consider.