Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-1979) began his long literary career early, publishing a volume of poetry at age 19. He wrote a number of biographies and screenplays and literary fiction under his name and used the name Leo Bruce for his crime fiction. In addition to freelance writing, he set himself up in the rare book trade around 1926. At the same time he also entered the field of broadcasting, giving a series of radio talks on psychology. He joined the British Army in 1940 and saw service in Africa and India. After his discharge in 1946 he produced several works based on his military experience. He became the book critic for The Sketch in 1947, a position he held until 1953. His work appeared in such literary magazines as New Writing, Adelphi, Chapbook, The New Coterie, and English Review. In the late 1920s several of his pieces were published in the American magazine Poetry. He wrote for television including an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Croft-Cooke was one of the last people to be arrested in Britain for homosexuality and he spent six months in prison where he wrote three novels. He lived in Morocco for 15 years after his release.
He wrote eight books about Sergeant Beef, a beer-drinking, dart-throwing man of the people, from 1936 to 1952. His longer series is about Carolus Deene, a former commando turned English schoolmaster, who figured in 23 novels from 1955 to 1974. His last published work of crime fiction was a collection of short stories released posthumously in 1992.
For more information about Croft-Cooke, see the Golden Age Detection Wiki, http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7930138/Bruce%2C%20Leo, and the Military Wiki, https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Rupert_Croft-Cooke. Jot101 offers some notes on his confinement. https://jot101.com/2018/09/jailed-for-being-gay-the-experience-of-rupert-croft-cooke/
His last crime fiction novel is Death of a Bovver Boy (W. H. Allen, 1974), in which Carolus Deene’s housekeeper Mrs. Stick advises him that her husband and Deene’s gardener has discovered a body in a ditch. Deene of course insists on viewing this corpse and then on calling the police, plunging headlong into another murder investigation to his housekeeper’s disgust. The young man was identified as one of a gang of young tearaways who gathered at an unsavory nightclub, where the owner was suspected of dealing in drugs. His family did not want him and he drifted into a group of equally lost young men with no particular ambitions.
Deene spends a lot of time interviewing the young man’s family, his acquaintances, and members of a rival gang. He was happy to share information with Detective Sergeant Grimsby, the member of the local police force assigned to the case. Deene collects the major players in his drawing room for the classic culprit reveal at the end of the book, which arrives abruptly.
As a mystery this book doesn’t succeed, as the clues that would lead to the culprit were MIA. How Deene reached his conclusions is not clear at all. But as a snapshot of the turbulent 1970s in England, this book is an excellent piece of sociological insight. The competition between the skinheads and the greasers along with the casual violence and the drug usage common to that segment of the population is well portrayed. Readers looking for a solidly plotted mystery will have to refer to some of Croft-Cooke’s earlier books. Fortunately nearly all of the titles in both series are available in ebook form.