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by Nicholas Rhea If you live in the UK it is almost impossible not to know that Heartbeat is one of ITV’s longest running drama series ever. The man whose books inspired this neverending story is Nicholas Rhea, aka Peter N Walker, whose long career as a rural bobby is catalogued in the pages of his equally long running Constable series of books. This thirty-second entry chronicles PC Walker’s stint in the seaside resort of Strensford at the height of the tourist season, as he swells the ranks of the local police. He encounters conmen, suicides, a lifeboat launch and hoaxers, and witnesses strange things like a message for help inside a washed up bottle or children riding on donkeys backwards and he stands in for a local magician at a tea party. If you are thinking that none of this sounds very exciting you are right, but that is not why millions of people read these books or tune in to the TV show. Here is a look at life taken at a gentler pace, and it is fascinating to read about how things were just less than half a century ago. This perhaps makes it sounds idyllic, and at its cosiest it does sound attractive, but there is more in here than a gaze through rose-tinted glasses. Not all the stories are happy, and some of them recall aspects of life in the 1960s and before that which sound grim. Taken as a whole however, this book is akin to a long leisurely bath and I found it easy to get hooked on the series - both of them! |
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Constable On The Coast