The big grouse

Masters and Green #25

by Douglas Clark

Chief Superintendent George Master's famous detective team receives a severe shock when Detective Sergeant Reed is selected for promotion. Masters is told that a replacement must be found: someone who, the Yard hopes, can rise to the challenge of Master's demanding standards of meticulous and brilliantly logical analysis of evidence. Their choice is a woman, Detective Sergeant Tippen.

Her first case with Masters is characteristic in that, as so often happens, he is called upon to make bricks without straw. As far as the Yard knows, there isn't even a dead body. But the Assistant Commissioner's wife is worried about a missing relative. The man is a sales rep. he has a large territory and he might be anywhere. He might have lost his memory; he might have run off with someone else's wife. But slowly, with the skill and perseverance of a jigsaw master, the Yard team uncovers a murder, a motive, a method, and a murderer. And Seargeant Tippen learns a great deal in the process.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

303 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Douglas Malcolm Jackson Clark was a British author.

He was also known by the pseudonyms James Ditton and Peter Hosier.

Reviews

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Big Grouse (1986) comes late in the Masters & Green police procedural series by Douglas Clark. Masters's specialized detective team has long been together and gotten used to one another. But that's all going to change. Detective Sergeant Reed is given a promotion that has been due for quite a while and Masters is preparing to select a replacement when he is told by the Assistant Commissioner that a replacement has already been selected for him. Masters is a bit surprised--he's always had a pretty free hand with his team till now. But it seems that when the AC arranged for Bill Green to stay on after retirement age as a special member of the team, he agreed that the next time an opening came up he'd arrange for a qualified female officer to be appointed. And so Detective Sergeant Tippen joins the team.

There are adjustments to be made on all sides. This is the first time Masters has taken on a Detective Sergeant that hasn't been vetted by either himself or Green and it may take a while for Sergeant Tippen to get used to Master's demanding standards of meticulous memorization and brilliant, logical analysis of evidence. She doesn't have a great deal of time to settle in, though. The Assistant Commissioner drops a typically puzzling matter into Masters's lap. The AC's wife is worried about a missing relative and won't stop pestering her husband until he shows her that an attempt has been made to investigate. He intends for Masters to do a bit of simple spadework--just enough to convince the wife they given it the ol' college try.

Masters thinks it's a perfect assignment for the new team member. Do a bit of digging, type up a meticulous report, and they can dust their hands and be done with it. Except...Sergeant Tippen does her job a bit too well and the team is pushed into a full-blown investigation. Masters becomes convinced that the relative, a lead salesman who did quite a bit of traveling, has come to a sticky end. But it's a bit hard to prove when there's no body in evidence. Sergeant Tippen gets thrown into a full-scale Masters-style investigation in which the team is expected to come up with the straw to make the bricks of a murder conviction. It isn't long before they discover that the missing man may not have been the paragon of a husband his family believes and that a motive for murder may lie in his past. Motive leads to where the murder might have taken place which eventually leads to the discovery of the body and the capture of the killer.

This late entry in the series is a fair to middlin' example of the Masters and Green police procedural. The usual ingredients are all present--Masters and company expected to produce rabbits out of hats without any rabbits in the vicinity. The team gather for frequent brain-storming sessions, Tippen gets the hang of total recall reporting, and Masters draws upon an esoteric clue that helps point the way. A generally entertaining story with a small drawback--coming in the mid-1980s, it shows us some less-than-favorable views of women detectives in the workforce and Bill Green comes across as a little patronizing with his insistence on calling the new team member "Petal." Knowing the characters as well as I do after reading so many of the books, I don't think Clark intends Bill Green to sound quite as patronizing and chauvinistic as he does--but that doesn't change the tone. I definitely don't recommend this one as a starting point. ★★ and 3/4 --I couldn't justify a full three for this particular outing. [but will round up here]

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scotland Yard investigates a missing traveling salesman and discovers a possible connection to a hit and run death several years earlier for which an innocent man served three years in prison. It's 1986, and the team has a new detective. It will take some time to get used to her, because she's not male. In fact, she's female. You might think the book was set many decades earlier, based on the amount of discussion revolving around her gender. Clearly all of these men are only familiar with women in positions related to pouring tea. And poor Irene Tippen, who goes by Tip, is in fact conscripted into tea pouring duty for this pack of dicks, when she's not chauffeuring them around.

Surely it was intended to be comical, but Tip was referred to as a "woman" only three times; more commonly she was called:

love (18)
petal (16)
girl (14)
lass (12)
sugar (6)
girlie (4)
honeybun (3)
young lady (3)
little lady (2)
young woman (2)
youngster (1)
lady (1)
little lass (1)
darling (1)
lassie (1)
sweetie (1)
flower (1)

and my favorite, capurtle (1), which is apparently 1950s slang for a woman seen as a sex object. Or maybe the author made it up, because when I google there are only 37 results and he seems to be the only reference for it.

Clark's writing is straightforward and competent, but the book ended hastily. We found out who the killers were, but no one was arrested.

[Cynthia Grove · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. A bit dated especially in the interactions between the team members but credible.
An unusual case in that we never get to meet the probable quilty party, it's all conjecture. The real story is how Masters, Green, and Berger adapt to the female member of the team and how she adapts to them.

[John Sargent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A distant relation of Superintendent Amderson disappeared the previous year. Masters and his team with their withs new recruit DS Irene Tippen investigate.
An enjoyable modern mystery
Originally published in 1986

[Barry Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Another case for Chief Superintendent George Masters and his team from the wife of the Assistant Commissioner Beryl Anderson. Beryl's second cousin is married to a travelling salesman and he has been missing for seven months and having committed no crime he is only classed as a missing person. On top of that the team have also lost Sergeant Reed to promotion and are forced to take a female Sergeant onboard. The team have nothing to go on except the company car he was using and the area he was supposedly working.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this series several decades ago, and they survive a rereading handily. They are quite short compared to some of my other favorite British detective series such as Peter Robinson and Elizabeth George. However, in spite of the length, the characters are well-developed, and the eternal dry British humor serves to make these classics.