Paul Winterton (1908–2001) was an English journalist and crime novelist better known under the pseudonym Andrew Garve. He also published under the name Paul Somers and his first books were attributed to Roger Bax, releasing more than 40 novels between 1938 and 1972. In 1952 he joined the Detection Club. He was one of the founding-members of the Crime Writers’ Association and served with Elizabeth Ferrars as its first joint secretary.
In The Galloway Case (Collins, 1958) investigative journalist Peter Rennie visits the Channel Islands on assignment for his newspaper and lingers a few days longer to pursue an acquaintance with a young lady named Mary Smith. Rennie is completely smitten. She leaves before he can obtain her contact information and Rennie goes to great lengths to find her in London. Rennie is stunned to learn that Mary is the daughter of Francis Smith, better known as John Galloway, the successful thriller writer. Galloway was recently convicted of murdering librarian Robert Shaw, who had accused Galloway of stealing the plot of Shaw’s novel and turning it into a successful thriller and movie.
Mary thinks the idea that Galloway would need to steal anyone’s ideas is ludicrous but she agrees the evidence is overwhelming. She is prepared to forget Rennie, who is not ready to let go of Mary. He reads all of the evidence he can find about the case and believes the jury’s verdict is correct but he sees the only way to keep Mary in his life is to find an alternative solution. He launches into an in-depth review of Shaw and everyone around him, which leads Rennie down completely unexpected paths.
The plot here is ingenious. Every creative artist has to fear the accusation of plagiarism, it can be a career ender. I remember the civil court case brought against George Harrison for “My Sweet Lord”. More recently Ed Sheeran defended himself against the charge in 2023 by demonstrating how common the chords used in his music are. The outrageous use of AI to train language learning models with copyrighted works resulted in Bartz v. Anthropic and the 2026 $1.5 billion award to affected authors.
Rennie is nothing if not persistent. All possibilities of guilt are considered and each is exhaustively researched. Writers and dedicated readers will find the information about publishing, background research, and author conferences particularly interesting. The ending is cleverly constructed and comes as a total surprise.
An anonymous reviewer for Kirkus in its 1 January 1958 issue said:
Peter Rennie, a reporter, falls in love with Mary Smith, loses her, finds her again, only to learn that she is the daughter of John Galloway, a writer serving a sentence for the murder of a man who had accused him of plagiarism. For Mary’s sake, he proceeds, it would seem hopelessly, to disprove the claims of the murdered man and establish some evidence of collusion and extortion which might clear Galloway. Neat and nimble and sure to please that constant readership.