The Passenger

Description

David Walker, a toy manufacturer, usually made it a rule not to give lifts to stray young women. And on this occasion, with his business preoccupations and anxieties about his wife, most hitch-hikers would have forgiven him for passing them by. But this one was an extremely pretty girl in her early twenties, wearing a set of fairly new jeans and with a cheeky cap on her head; there was something innocent and appealing about her. Her face fell as she saw that he intended to ignore her signals and as he gathered speed he was left with the impression of an almost despairing disappointment. He relented at once. It was the biggest mistake of his life. When she disappears, David is caught in a sudden storm of intrigue and confusion; the picture may have been blurred, but the frame was set. And somewhere in the picture are blackmail, big money, and murder. Detective Inspector Martin Denson has only the faintest of outlines from which to discover the truth. And he has less time to do it in that he thought.

Francis Henry Durbridge was an English playwright and author born in Hull. In 1938, he created the character Paul Temple for the BBC radio serial Send for Paul Temple. A crime novelist and detective, the gentlemanly Temple solved numerous crimes with the help of Steve Trent, a Fleet Street journalist who later became his wife. The character proved enormously popular and appeared in 16 radio serials and later spawned a 64-part big-budget television series (1969-71) and radio productions, as well as a number of comic strips, four feature films and various foreign radio productions. Francis Durbridge also had a successful career as a writer for the stage and screen. His most successful play, Suddenly at Home, ran in London's West End for over a year.