In 1972, they offered him a £50 "non-returnable" advance for a crime novel. He also tried his hand at pure comedy, writing a radio series for Kenneth Williams (obituary, April 16 1988) in the role of a secret agent.īut it was Rodney's reputation as a craftsman of mystery stories featuring small-time criminals and multiple plot lines that brought him to the attention of publishers Macmillan. After three well-received broadcasts, Rodney gave up the office job and for two decades provided BBC radio with a steady stream of 45 or 60-minute dramas, noted for clever plot twists and surprise endings. In 1968, BBC Radio Drama bought his 45-minute play Compensating Error, and swiftly commissioned two more. After junior office jobs with a furniture company and in the Port of London docks, he became a clerk in the sales offices of the Fina oil company, while devoting his spare time to writing short, one or two-act plays. I was left holding the damn things while he sank to the bottom again."Īfter the pilot programme, Rodney claimed never to have watched another of the more than three dozen episodes that have been aired, and declined to appear on ITV's 2006 Super Sleuths, a retrospective appreciation of television detectives.īorn in Hackney, Rodney attended the Coopers Company school in the East End and was, along with the entire school, evacuated to Frome in Somerset during the second world war. I grabbed his arms to pull him out and his bloody arms came off. He'd been dead a bloody long time but had only just popped up to the surface. While primetime television could accommodate exchanges such as this, with a doctor - "I'd guess from the obstruction in his throat that he probably choked on his own vomit"/ "Better than choking on someone else's vomit, I suppose" - the author regretted the loss of the tougher style of the books, as in this, addressed to a queasy young copper in A Touch of Frost: "Reminds me of the time when I was a bobby on the beat and I had to pull this stiff out of the canal. Rodney was less than enthusiastic about the television adaptation of his work, though he always insisted: "I have nothing against David Jason as Frost at all, he just isn't my Frost." He liked Jason as a comedy actor in such vehicles as Only Fools and Horses, but felt that along with the choice of actor had gone a softening of the dark humour essential as a safety valve for policemen investigating horrendous cases.
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