‘Deben Holt’ was used as the pseudonym for two adult novels published in the late fifties: Circle of Shadows (John Gifford: 1957) and Sinner Takes All (John Gifford: 1958) and, twenty years later, for The Secrets Man (Alpine/Everest: 1977), as part of the Roger Moore and the Crimefighters children’s series. The blurb on the dust wrapper of Sinner Takes All reveals that the pseudonym cloaked ‘…the identity of two well-known authors. “Even our friends”, they say, “aren’t onto us yet!”’
In issue 74 (2017) of ‘Crime and Detective Stories’ magazine CADS, Liz Gilbey asked the question ‘who was – or were – the two authors who got together to create Deben Holt?’ Liz suggested that ‘…the Holt part of the team may have lived in Holt (in North Norfolk) or attended Gresham’s public school…’ and that the latter, Deben, may have been a ‘former famous resident of the Deben area of Suffolk’. But, regarding the latter, her ‘assiduous scouring of textbooks and the internet’ were to no avail. I would like to offer (Ralph) Hammond Innes as the prime suspect for Deben.
Innes was a British journalist and novelist who wrote over 30 novels, travel books and stories for children. His very early novels were published during World War II, when he served in the Royal Artillery. After the war he became an extremely popular full-time thriller writer. He moved with his wife, the actress Dorothy Mary Lang, to Ayres End, an extensive black and white Tudor property in the village of Kersey in Suffolk. Dorothy died in 1989 but Innes stayed on in Kersey until his death in 1998.
Evidence that Innes was probably the Deben of Deben Holt comes from the early novels. In Circle of Shadows, the protagonist, private eye Ricky Britton, decides to travel to the fictitious village of Denby in Suffolk to investigate a suspicious couple called Murray, whom he had recently met in France, where a murder had taken place. From a large-scale map of East Anglia, he discovers that Denby ‘was just above the Stour estuary and about 8 miles from Ipswich’. Kersey is located just north of the River Stour and not much further away from Ipswich.
The Murrays lived in Beech Tree Cottage, an old building which had been modernised inside. Ricky comments that cottage was a misnomer for ‘the long low, white-walled building’. As with Ayres End it had a ‘broad drive’ and ‘was at the end of the village street, rather hidden behind trees’. According to Rosie, who cleaned at the cottage, the Murrays ‘were often away… . Sometimes they went to France. Perhaps they stayed with some of their foreign friends who came to visit them for long weekends’. Ricky also learned that, apart from visitors, the Murrays kept themselves very much to themselves. They were quiet and she [Rosie] liked them’. This account accords with how Dorothy and Ralph, as he was known in the village, were described by locals who knew them in Kersey over the years.
The second Deben Holt novel, Sinner Takes All, also has Ricky Britton as the protagonist, investigating murders in France, involving a glamorous blonde, the daughter of Morland Winter, a wealthy businessman. A significant part of the novel has Britton staying in Winter’s Suffolk home, to which Britton is driven by Winter’s chauffeur. The narrator describes them escaping ‘the tentacles of London’ and passing ‘through a small village, the name of which escaped Ricky’s notice. They were somewhere near the Essex border.’ It’s worth noting that the River Stour forms much of the boundary between Essex and Suffolk. The chauffeur ‘stops at a large house in extensive grounds and turns into a broad drive through wrought-iron gates’. The house, ‘long flat-fronted’ had a ‘recent extension of more modern design’, called ‘the bungalow’, in which Ricky stayed. Ayres End still has long extensions, mostly brick built, one of which Innes used as a writing studio.
If Hammond Innes was Deben, and I think the evidence suggests that this could well be the case, why does the Hammond Innes literary estate, contacted by a reputable third party, have no knowledge of Deben Holt? Is it because the authors were very good at keeping a secret that might have muddied some commercial literary waters, had it come out?
So, what about Holt? Using the dust wrapper blurb on Circle of Shadows we know that Holt was a friend of Deben, and a well-known author. There are several suspects who could fit the bill, including Eric Ambler (1909-1998), Victor Canning (1911-1986), Alistair Maclean (1922-1987), Dennis Wheatley (1987-1977) and Andrew Garve, a pseudonym used by Paul Winterton (1908-2001). My favourite is Victor Canning but, as the fictional detectives often say, it’s just a hunch.
Liz Gilbey finished her article by writing, ‘So not only does the mystery remain, but it seems insoluble’. I would like to think I may have solved half of it, but Holt is clearly another matter. The Hammond Innes Estate have suggested a line of enquiry – the 44 archive boxes relating to Hammond Innes’ life and writing career that are housed in the University of Cambridge Library. A bit of literary archaeology might be on the cards one day.
This is an abridged version of an article published in CADS 92 (July 2024).
Jeff Taylor
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