The Amateur

The high-class robberies are too clean to be the work of local talent, and Hawkins's eye settles on a car hire firm. It is the sort of business that should be dull, which is exactly what makes it useful. The firm is respectable on the surface, and the episode enjoys the gap between the handshake at the front desk and the work being planned behind it. But the suspicion grows that the thefts are being organised from inside the firm itself, a professional operation wearing a tradesman's overalls.

The breakthrough comes from the underworld rather than from the crime scenes. A piece of information, passed along by someone who wanted to trade it, gives the squad the thread they need to pull, and the ring leader is cornered. The episode is an argument for patience and for informants, the slow virtues that never make the headlines. The case is solved the way real cases are solved: in small rooms with patient questions.

Stratford Johns leads as Barlow, with Norman Bowler's Hawkins driving the investigation, Walter Gotell's Cullen, Brian Hall's Drake and Julie Hallam's Forest in support. John Stratton's Joe Maitland, Alfred Bell's Jimmy Cowan, Stephan Chase's Julian Brent, Norman Claridge's Williams and Clifford Parrish's Sears fill out the world around the firm, respectable on the surface and busy underneath. The organisation is the crime, and the firm is the mask.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Frank Cox directed. The title invites you to wonder who the amateur is, and the hour answers in its own time. The episode has the comfort of a solid deduction puzzle, the kind where the pieces are all visible if you look, and the satisfaction is in watching Hawkins put them together. A sturdy, quietly confident hour. A quiet pleasure, and the series knew how to supply those.