Silent Partners

Fanfiction
Title:	Silent Partners
Author(s):	Phoebe Entwhistle
Date(s):	1987
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):
External Links:
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Silent Partners is a Bodie/Doyle, Macklin/Murphy story by Phoebe Entwhistle.

It was published in Mobile Ghettos #2 and is on the ProsLib CD.

Reactions and Reviews

I first met this story when I was sent a copy of it to type up for Proslib, back when I was new in the fandom. I enjoyed it so much that typing it was pure pleasure. I still enjoy it just as much every time I read it, yet I never see it mentioned in discussions or on recs lists.

It has angsty relationship conflicts with a fairly interesting case story and some original characters that are very nicely depicted despite their brief appearances. Doyle's two elderly, diminutive grasses, Wilf and Ernie, for instance, who consider Brighton crass, delight me--as does Bodie's response to them:

Bodie always kept a certain distance. Let them think what they liked; he wasn't getting fleas, even for Queen and Country. And he always surreptitiously checked Doyle at the first opportunity.

There are great little moments like this lodged throughout this story. I also appreciate Doyle's sarkiness and the way we get reflective periods alternately with Bodie and Doyle that vary the tone and pace. This story never flags for me.

But what most lifts this story from the usual is the two parallel storylines. Bodie and Doyle's relationship is contrasted throughout with a secret Macklin/Murphy one. While one relationship starts in conflict and moves through the story to an affirmation of love and commitment, the other begins in tranquillity and moves to disintegration. I haven't any particular interest in Macklin/Murphy, who never meet in canon, but this is a wonderful use of structural parallelism in which the presence of the other pair enhances the impact of the emotional journey Bodie and Doyle take together.

... was vastly entertaining, but left a couple of holes open in the plot. I did like the Murphy/Macklin exchanges, the sense that CI5 is subject to constant self-examination (something more than one televised episodes makes quite clear), and the further sense that it exists within a tangle of semi-cooperating departments where one's ostensible colleagues may not be trustworthy (something else the show brought up repeatedly.)