MONDAY MINUTIAE - POLICE INSPECTOR GERARD & THE ROOSTER

"As Police Inspector Gerard always says, 

'First you have to know why.'" 

Mildred

'McMillan & Wife'
"Two Dollars On Trouble To Win"

According to the McMillans' housekeeper Mildred, her favorite reading material had been all the mystery novels about Inspector Gerard.

The way Sally McMillan spoke about the books, it sounds like there were several novels in the series.  We know a few of those titles:

• The Rooster Crowed Murder
• The Rooster Cried Wolf (the sequel to that first book)
• Paris Bloodbath

The episode was broadcast on April 1, 1973, so those three novels had to have been published at least a few years before.  If the author was prolific, then it could be he (or she) wrote a book a year.  

I'm thinking "Inspector Gerard" may have been inspired by Lt. Philip Gerard, the dogged police lieutenant who hunted for Dr. Richard Kimble who had escaped on the way to prison for execution in the murder of his wife.

But that inspiration may have been in name only.  The title "Paris Bloodbath" suggests that Gerard, a French name, may have been a police inspector in the Surete or for Interpol.

As for "The Rooster": even though Inspector Gerard was in both novels, The Rooster could have been another character among the author's recurring characters and in those two novels listed above, the author served up a crossover between The Rooster and Inspector Gerard.  (I don't see Inspector Gerard having such a nickname.)

"The Rooster" suggests an alias, a nickname, in the same vein as "The Saint", "The Falcon", and "The Puppy".  And it also makes me think that The Rooster could have been an anti-hero similar to AJ Raffles, the gentleman thief and Edward Hoch's Nick Velvet, the thief who never stole anything of value.  I like the idea that even though Inspector Gerard might have wanted to bring The Rooster to justice, for those two books they had to team up to work together to stop greater threats.

As for who the author is of the stories about Inspector Gerard and The Rooster, there weren't any clues in the small mention of the books in the episode.  Mystery writers are quite a popular subset of TV occupations.  Here are just a few of them:

• Ellery Queen ('The Adventures of Ellery Queen')
• Jessica B. Fletcher ('Murder, She Wrote')
• Glynis Granville ('Glynis')
• Maxwell Beckett ('Over My Dead Body')
• Ernestine Mugford ('Ironside')
• Eudora McVeigh Shipton ('Murder, She Wrote')
• Sibella Stone ('Murder, She Wrote')
• Hugo Dore ('Jonathan Creek')
• Warren Barrow ('The Alfred Hitchcock Hour')
• Ken Franklin and Jim Ferris ('Columbo')
• Robin Daniels ('Aurora Teagarden')

&

• Abigail Mitchell ('Columbo' - My favorite!)

From that list, we can eliminate a few of the writers.  Ellery Queen would have had plenty of time to write the novels from the 1940s onward.  However, I think - as is the case in the real world - the main character in Queen's novels was Ellery Queen himself.  JB Fletcher, Max Bennett, and especially Robin Daniels did not start writing mysteries until after the Inspector Gerard novels were established. 

The writing team of Franklin & Ferris focused on their main character of Mrs. Melville.  The same reason is why I'm disqualifying Hugo Dore, whose seuth was Ellison Starberth.  And it's always been a favored theory of mine that Abigail Mitchell wrote the stories about Inspector Lucerne which became the basis of a TV series starring Ward Fowler.

Right now I'm leaning toward Glynis Granville, a woman of English descent married to an American lawyer as being the author of the Inspector Gerard stories.  He would have the continental flair which I think she would be familiar with and she may have patterne either Gerard or (more likely) The Rooster after her husband Keith Granville,

But if not her, I'd champion Ernestine Mugford, if only because she was so much fun in a two-part story on 'Ironside'.

'Glynis' is a show I someday hope to be able to see.  For alls I know, the mysteries she wrote were already described within the series.....

BCnU!