[2] Joyce Porter lived the last years of her life in a thatched cottage in Longbridge Deverill, a village in Wiltshire.
[2] In DCI Wilfred Dover and his assistant Sergeant MacGregor, she created a template later used successfully, especially by Reginald Hill, in straight 'whodunnits'[citation needed], but Porter's novels, while intricately plotted, were always played for laughs.
However, on the rare occasions he is able to put aside plate, pint-glass and cigarettes long enough to concentrate, Dover usually sees the answer first.
The Honourable Constance Ethel Morrison-Burke is an upper-class spinster who, armed only with pluck, a deep-rooted hatred of men and her family's enormous financial resources, sallies forth to fight crime with the aid of her devoted companion Miss Jones.
(In The Fine Art of Murder, editors Ed Gorman et al. describe Morrison-Burke as "the first clearly lesbian detective in fiction.