Debut author sets thriller in his old stomping ground

A RETIRED man who lived in Henley as a boy has written a novel, using the town as the inspiration for the locale.

Peter Warrilow’s crime thriller, The Drysdale Confession, is the first of three books, where the protagonist Robert Vere is drawn into solving a dark, mysterious plot.

He says: “Vere is a thirty-
something solicitor who lives in a small cottage in Shiplake and has got a lovely girl called Yvonne Clarkson, who’s a fashion journalist. He works for Regency Law in Cavendish Square in London.

“Many years ago, some people robbed a bank and they killed a couple of bank clerks. They only caught one of them and he was executed but before he died, he wrote a confession that then
disappeared.

“Then suddenly it re-emerges in front of Vere and Clarkson. It sets off her journalistic antennae and she goes chasing, then they have all sorts of problems, getting into the clutches of a master criminal.”

Peter, 80, has used settings in Henley, Shiplake, Wallingford and Pangbourne for his story.

He travelled down memory lane while writing the book as he grew up in Henley in the Fifties. He lived with his parents, Harry, who was head of the town’s Midland Bank, and Maureen and adopted sister Christine. Peter says: “I loved the area. We lived in Eden Cottage in Cromwell Road, then we moved to Gablehurst, a bit further up on the other side.

“My dad was chief at the Midland Bank and he knew Tom Luker at the Henley Standard. The manager was a chap called Jackson.

“Dad was very active — he was a member of the Henley Players and they did a lot of productions at the Kenton Theatre.

“That was then owned by a chap called David Cazies. I didn’t know him very well but my mum and dad did and he took me down to the theatre many times when they were building sets.”

The president of the Henley Players was actor Kenneth More, who played the lead role of Charles Lightoller in A Night to Remember (1958), which recounted the last hours of the RMS Titanic.

Peter recalls: “When he did that film, he gave two tickets for the premiere at the Empire in Leicester Square to the Henley Players and they had a raffle for them and mum and dad won, so it was a posh frock job.

“They had a great night sitting there with the great and the good and I’ve still got the programme.

“Henley was a marvellous place in those days. In 1953, Mum took in some oarsmen for the regatta, you know, because people give them bed and breakfast and lodgings. We had a couple of Belgian lads with us called Bob Baetens and Mike Knuysen who won the Silver Goblets.

“They’d actually rowed for Belgium at the Helsinki Olympics as a pair and were probably the equivalent of Redgrave and Pinsent in their day.

“We lost touch with them, as you do, but I got involved in rowing and knew Di Ellis, who chaired the Amateur Rowing Association.

“I rang her and said, ‘Could you find a couple of blokes for me?’ She said, ‘Yeah, if they’re good-looking’.

“She dug out these Belgians and in 2000 I took Mum and Dad over on the Eurostar to meet them again. They had a lovely reunion.”

Peter, who now lives in Lincoln with Audrey, his wife of 56 years, had a varied career.

“I’ve always lived an active life, always wondering what to do next,” he says.

“When I left school my first job was working for Cyril Hobbs, who had a successful boat hire business upstream and alongside the Angel pub. Last time I was in Henley the small office building was still there on the riverbank.

“When I came out of the forces, my dad got made up to manager of a small branch of the Midland Bank in a lovely little village called Duffield, just outside Derby, and the family moved up there.

“I needed to work so I started working in a factory, making heavy industrial boilers about the size of railway locomotives. One day I thought, ‘I’m not getting anywhere with this’.

“My dad was doing very well as a bank manager and I thought, ‘That looks like a nice job’, so I wrote to the local Westminster Bank.”

He was recommended to the head office in London and started working as a cashier in the West End.

He then went on to have a successful career in the retail motor trade.

Peter says: “I had this urge to write for many years but there was never any time to do it. I mapped out a lot of things in my mind when I was driving around the country, running my own business.

“When retirement beckoned, I sat down and took it seriously.

“I wanted to write the kind of book that I enjoy reading. I’m just so pleased to have a chance to do what I enjoy doing.

“As Professor Henry Higgins said in Pygmalion, ‘Happy is the man who can make a living from his hobby’.”

• The Drysdale Confession (£10.99) is published by Foreshore Publishing. For more information, visit foreshorepublishing.com