Bulldog Drummond
After an unsuccessful one-off appearance as a policeman in The Strand Magazine, the character was reworked by McNeile into a gentleman adventurer for his 1920 novel Bulldog Drummond.
He publishes an advertisement looking for adventure, and soon finds himself embroiled in a series of exploits, many of which involve Carl Peterson—who becomes his nemesis—and Peterson's mistress, the femme fatale Irma.
[2] Drummond is a wealthy gentleman, formerly an officer in the fictional "Royal Loamshire Regiment", who, after the First World War, spends his new-found leisure time looking for adventure.
[7] Drummond was also proficient in jujutsu and boxing, was a crack shot,[8] played cricket for the Free Foresters, and was an excellent poker player.
[10] Drummond is characterised as large, very strong, physically unattractive and an "apparently brainless hunk of a man",[11] He is six feet tall, weighs around 14 stone,[12] and has a "cheerful type of ugliness which inspires immediate confidence in its owner".
(Denny appeared as Drummond's sidekick in the radio series, a version of the character named Tenny appeared in the films)[16] Drummond is a gentleman with a private income;[7] he is also construed as "a brutalized ex-officer whose thirst for excitement is also an attempt to reenact [sic] the war",[17] although the character was later described by Cecil Day-Lewis, author of gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways, as an "unspeakable public school bully".
[19] Phyllis becomes integral to the plot of some of the novels: she is kidnapped by Irma Peterson in several stories,[20] including The Black Gang[21] and The Female of the Species.
[16] Although Drummond's actions are intended to maintain the conservative status quo of Britain,[2] academic Hans Bertens considers that instead, he comes across as "a murderous exponent of a fierce competitive individualism".
[22] Irma is described by Jonathon Green as "the slinky epitome of a twenties 'vamp'",[32] and by Lawrence Treadwell as dark, sexy and from an oriental background, "a true femme fatale".
[33] After Carl Peterson's death in The Final Count, Irma swears revenge on Drummond and kidnaps his wife—whom he had met in Bulldog Drummond—with the intent of killing him in the ensuing chase.
McNeile and Gerald du Maurier adapted the first novel, for the stage; Bulldog Drummond was shown at Wyndham's Theatre during the 1921–22 season.
[107] A 1973 BBC documentary Omnibus, "The British Hero", featured Christopher Cazenove playing Drummond, as well as a number of other such heroic characters, including Richard Hannay, Beau Geste and James Bond.
[117] In the British market, The Times Literary Supplement also characterised McNeile as a mass-market thriller writer, which contrasted with its consideration of his earlier works.
[118] Throughout the Drummond stories, much of the language used by McNeile's characters relating to ethnic minorities or Jews is considered by the academic Joan DelFattore to be "intensely conservative by modern standards";[2] Green observes that while the characters of other contemporary writers, such as Agatha Christie, "exhibit the inevitable xenophobia and anti-semitism of the period, McNeile's go far beyond the 'polite' norms".
Bourn considers his language to be "rather distasteful",[119] while the academic Michael Denning observed that "Drummond is a bundle of chauvinisms, hating Jews, Germans, and most other foreigners".
[120] The author and publisher Ion Trewin comments that for the readers of the 1920s and '30s, McNeile was seen at the time as "simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen".
