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Andrew Garve (1908-2001) - pseudonym for Paul Winterton, also wrote as Roger Bax and Paul Somers |
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Prolific English short story and mystery writer, who published over 40 thrillers. Often Winterton's heroes are ordinary persons, who are thrown into dangerous situations and during the story they prove to be extraordinary courageous and persistent. Winterton used three pseudonyms, Roger Bax, Paul Sommers, and Andrew Garve, which he adopted in 1950. Winterton's best known books include Murder in Moscow (1951) and A Hero for Leanda (1959). "Burns had cultivated over the years an air of philosophic calm where his job was concerned. There were so many sudden developments in police work, so many sensations and crises and alarms, thaat a certain phlegm was necessary for health and sanity. Even murder—even the murder of a well-known figure—had to be taken coolly." (from The Case of Robert Quarry by Andrew Garve, Collins, 1972) Andrew
Garve was born Paul Winterton in Leicester, the son of Ethel Clarke and
George Ernest Winterton. His father was a journalist, and for a time
the Labour Member of
Parliament for Loughborough. He did not renew his seat. Paul Winterton was educated at the London School of Economics
and at
the London University, receiving his B.Sc. in 1928. After graduation,
he went to Russia on the Dyke Acland Travelling Scholarship, worth
£200. "In the main I
was prepared for anything, and my bias of ingrained suspicion was
perhaps no bad prelude to the kind of adventure I had undertaken,"
Winterton said in the account of his journey, A Student in Russia
(1931). It was published by the Cooperative Union, his sponsor. "People that I knew
well and respected had expressed fears as to my safety and some, I am
certain, shook hands with me before I left in the firm conviction that
thet would never see me again." (Andrew Garve and Soviet Russia: Paul
Winterton's Early
Writings about Russia and the Soviet Union, edited and with an
introduction by John Higgins, 2015, p. 3) A part of the time Winterton spent in Ukraine, where he learned to speak Russian with reasonable fluently. In 1929, Winterton
became a staff member of The
Economist. He stood for parliament in 1931 but was unsuccessful. From 1933 to 1946, he worked as a reporter, lead writer,
and foreign correspondent for the London News Chronicle. During World War II (1942-45), Winterton's post was in Moscow - the experience gave him much material for his novels and articles on the Soviet Union. His secretary-interpreter was Tania Sofiano, who also helped the American war correspondent Quentin Reynolds. Because the BBC did not have a regular broadcaster stationed in the city, it relied on such journalists as Winterton, the Australian John Fisher, and the Russian-born British war correspondent and writer Alexander Werth, who worked for the Sunday Times. With other foreign correspondents Winterton protested many times to the Press Department, that their telegrams were censored. Moreover, the Soviet authorities rarely allowed reporters to visit areas near the front line. The Russian journalist and novelist Ilya Ehrenburg, whom Winterton met, christallized the Soviet stand saying bluntly, that in wartime, every objective reporter should be shot. In spite of the censorship, Winterton was one of those correspondents, who reported on Nazi atrocities at an early stage. He had accompanied the Red Army into the deserted Majdanek Nazi Extermination Camp near Lubin in Poland. "Here is the most horrible story I shall ever have to tell you," Winterton said in his broadcast. A shortened version of the shocking and detailed report was transmitted in August 1944, but only on the BBC's North American service. BBC thought Winterton was recirculating Societ propaganda. (International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice by Tim Crook, 1998, pp. 200-201). In the same month, News Chronicle published Winterton's article 'Biggest Murder Case in History.' Winterton was one of the first reporters, who prompted a call for a special war crimes commission. After visiting Tallin, Estonia, retaken by the Red Army,
Winterton wrote: "I discovered that the bulk of the people of Tallin
were extremely hostile to the Soviet Union, had no desire to be part of
it, feared that the Russians would deport large number of them into the
interior of Russia as was done in 1940, and had been if anything rather
relieved by the German occupation. I tried to write a part of this, but
of course the censor stopped it all – even though I put the whole thing
in an objective setting and emphasised the strategic importance of the
Baltic States to Russia's security." (Stalin's Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance
Politics, 1941-1945 by Steven Merritt Miner, 2003, p. 290) Inquest on an Ally
(1948), about post-war Soviet policy, made it clear to the readers,
that the Soviets are unreliable and untrustworthy. "There are no
experts in the Soviet Union," he once stated, "there are only varying
degrees of ignorance." (The Manassas Journal, November 17,
1949) Since the late 1940s, Winterton focused only on fiction. His first crime novel, Death Beneath Jerusalem (1938), set in Palestine, was published by Nelson under the pseudonym Roger Bax. Noteworthy, the story featured a hero called Philip Garve. It was followed by five other Bax books. Red Escapade (1940) dealt with the Stalinist purges; from Disposing of Henry (1946) the publisher was Hutchinson. In Blueprint for Murder (1948) and A Grave Case of Murder (1951) the protagonist is Inspector James. Winterton's stories often revolve around crimes. They are not always detective novels but thrillers or adventure stories. No Tears for Hilda
(1950), about
the death of an obnoxious wife, and No
Mask for Murder
(1950), in which the hero was an expert on
lepsosy, were Winterton's first novels written as Andrew Garve. The did
not differ much from the previous crime stories. Nevertheless, he
switched from Hutchinson to Collins. After 1951,
most of Winterton's fiction came out under this pen name,
though he wrote several novels as Paul Somers. Winterton died on
January 8, 2001, in a nursing home in the county of Surrey, at the age
of 92. His last novel, Counterstroke
(1978), told a story of kidnapping, terrorists, and an unemployed actor
named Bob Farran, who impersonates the jailed leader of the terrorists.
By the time of his death, Winterton's books were out
of print. He was married twice, first to Margaret Colegrave, and then
to Audrey K. Hopkin. Winterton used often his own experiences to give authenticity
for
his works. He traveled widely, which is seen in the diversity of the
settings: English villages, the Scilly Isles, Ireland, France,
Australia (the scene of Boomerang,
1969), Russia, and the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, Africa
and the Indian Ocean. His works were translated into several
languages and adapted for radio and television in Britain and the
United States. In a series of four novels -
Beginner's Luck (1958),
filmed as The Desperatew Man (1959), Operation Piracy (1958), The Shivering Mountain (1959), and The Broken Jigsaw (1961) - Winterton depicted the exploits of a young reporter who competes with a more
experienced woman journalist on a rival paper. His knowledge of the Soviet reality is seen in the stories Murder
in Moscow, The Ashes of Loda
(1965), The Late Bill Smith
(1971). Basically he had nothing good to say about Communism. The
Ascent of D-13
(1969) was an account of mountain climbing on the Turkish-Russian
border, where two groups fight against hazards of blizzard and avalanche in their goal find a NATO plane and its top-secret camera. In
order to survive, an English man and a Russian woman must work
together. At the end the Russian mountain climber escapes to the West. The Russian-based thriller, Came
the Dawn (1949), was filmed with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney
under the title Never Let Me Go (1953).
Delmer Daves, the director, was a specialist of dramas and
action films. In this romantic melodrama, an American correspondent
(Gable) marries after WW II a Russian ballerina Marya Lamarkina
(Tierney), but is
forced to leave her behind in Moscow, when he becomes persona non grata
with the Soviet authorities. When a special performance of Swan Lake is
arranged in Tallin, Gable seizes the opportunity to smuggle Tierney out
of Russia. The dancer and choreographer stated that had Hollywood's
Gene Tierney not chosen a film career she might have been an
outstanding ballerina. (Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body,
and Narrative Cinema by Adrienne L. McLean, 2008, p. 290) The Megstone Plot
(1956) served as the basis for the film A Touch of Larceny
(1960),
directed by Guy Hamilton, starring James Mason and Vera Miles.
The light
comedy was about a naval commander, who disappears in the hope that he
will be branded a traitor and can sue for libel, thus making some quick
money. In the complicated
scheme to defraud a newspaper, depicted more detailed in the novel,
Winterton used again his own experiences as a journalist. "Romance,
with a suspicion of chuckles, seems to have been the motive behind the
script fashioned by Roger MacDougall," said the writer and critic A.H.
Weiler. (The New York
Times, March 17, 1960)
Perhaps the best scene is when Mason has shipwrecked himself on an
uninhabitated island, sees a passing vesses, and murmurs, "Help, help!"
while sipping champagne. Winterton's short stories appeared in such periodicals as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Bestseller Mystery Magazine, and The Saint, and in several anthologies (A Choice of Murders, 1958; Best Detective Stories of the Year, edited by Anthony Boucher, 1963; John Creasey's Mystery Bedide Book, 1969 and 1972, edited by Herbert Harris, 1968; Ellery Queen's Mystery Parade, 1969; and Winter's Crimes 7, edited by George Hardinge, 1975). Several of Winterton's heroes are familiar with the sailing on the coastal waters, inland waterways, or at the sea, as in the novels The Narrow Search (1957), in which a kidnapper is chased through of the canal system, A Hero For Leanda (1959), set in the Indian ocean, and The File on Lester (1974) ("He added with a grin that when you had a girl in every port you really didn't need a woman at home.") They all were written as Andrew Garve. The pseudonym's surname came from a small village in Scotland, at the eastern end of Loch Garve. "He turned away, unable to bear the sight any longer. Tara had been more to him than a fine ship. For years she had been his only home; for weeks at a time, his sole companion. He would miss her like hell." (from A Hero for Leanda, Collins, 1959) In this novel,
the protagonist is a former engineer, Mike Conway, who has left his
regular work and bough a sailing boat. After losing it, he is
penniless. He takes a dangerous work, sails to an isolated island on
the Indian Ocean, and helps Alexander Kastellan, a leader of a freedom
movement, to escape from it. Kastellan turns out to be a bad person. Conway overcomes all odds and wins the heart of
the heroine, Leanda, by means of his navigational skills. Most of the
story takes place aboard the small yacht. Winterton
was one of the founders of the
Crime Writers's Association in 1953, and served its first joint
secretary with Elizabeth Ferrars. The main force behing the founding of
CWA, considered Great Britain's counterpart to the Mystery Writers of
America, was the prolific writer John Creasey.
He chaired the association until 1956. Winterton's later novels include Home
to Roost (1976), a psychological thriller, told by Walter
Haines, a successful mystery writer. He has married the beautiful
Laura, but after happy years the famous tv-star Max Ryland enters their
life, and Laura leaves him. Ryland is stabbed to death. Walter
confesses the murder, although he was at the time of the death in
Portugal and another deceived husband appears with his confession. The Case of Robert Quarry
(1972) is a crime story in which Detective Chief Superintendent Joseph
Burns plans to retire, visits Lascaux and explores Provence, but then
makes a start on the case of Robert Quarry, an industrialist has has
been murdered. He works with a young, vigorous detective-sergeant
Ryder. The novel was published by Collins Crime Club. Series characters: Inspector James in Roger Bax stories, and Hugh Curtis in Paul Somers books. - For further reading:'Winterton, Paul', in World Authors 1950-1970, edited by John Wakeman (1975); 'Garve, Andrew,' in Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, edited by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976); 'Garve, Andrew' by Mary Helen Becker, in Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, edited by John M. Reilly (1985); 'Garve, Andrew,' in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997); 'Garve, Andrew,' in The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery by Bruce F. Murphy (1999); 'Introduction' by John Higgins, in Andrew Garve and Soviet Russia: Paul Winterton's Early Writings about Russia and the Soviet Union, edited and with an introduction by John Higgins (2015) - See also: Hammond Innes, who depicted in his novels the sea and seamanship. Selected works:
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