Career
Porter created the characters of Eddie Brown,, and Wilfred Dover. In DI Wilfred Dover and his assistant Sergeant MacGregor, she created a template later used successfully, especially by Reginald Hill, in straight "whodunnits", but Porter"s novels, while intricately plotted, were always played for laughs. Dover was obese, lazy, unhygienic (the only man in the Metropolitan Police Service with underarm dandruff) and bordering on corrupt.
MacGregor was keen, clean and ferociously ambitious.
However, on the rare occasions he was able to put aside plate, pint-glass and cigarettes long enough to concentrate, Dover usually saw the answer first. The "Honorary Con" books are even less like straight "who-dunnits" than the "Dovers" because while Dover is an experienced copper who has, it becomes clear, a good brain, the "Honorary Con" is an amateur bungler of below-average intelligence.
A number of the Inspector Dover books have been adapted for British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 by Paul Mendelson and star Kenneth Cranham as Dover. Dover Goes to Pott Dover and the Claret Tappers Dover Beats the Band Dover and The Sleeping Beauty (16 January 2010) Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All And a new story by Paul Mendelson based on the characters Dover and the Smoking Gun (1 October 2001).