Richard Jeperson

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Richard Jeperson is a fictional 1970s psychic investigator created by British horror / fantasy author Kim Newman. He appears in many of Newman's short stories as both a central and background character, and is the focal point of a collection of short stories entitled The Man from the Diogenes Club.

[edit] Character

Jeperson - among the first characters created by Newman in his early efforts at fiction - is a clear homage to many of the telefantasy heroes present on British television during the late sixties and early 1970s, including Jason King (Department S / Jason King), John Steed (The Avengers) and Jon Pertwee's portrayal of the Doctor in Doctor Who. As such, he shares many character traits with them - a flamboyant dress sense, upper-class tastes and sensibilities combined with a youthful appreciation of the 'trendy' aspects of 1970s culture, a chivilrous and patriotic nature, and a healthy disdain for most representations of establishment authority. The stories in which he appears also parody / homage these telefantasy shows, and frequently examine 1970s British culture and society through this lens.

In these stories, the character acts as an investigator for the Diogenes Club (established in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle), a branch of Britain's intelligence and law-enforcement community existing outside of regular channels designed to investigate (and where necessary, put a stop to) psychic, paranormal and unusual phenomenon. The character himself is unusually empathic to an explicitly paranormal level, possessing a keen sensitivity to both these phenomemna and to the thoughts and feelings of others. Jeperson's background in the stories is the subject of much mystery and examination; a war orphan, he possesses no memories prior to 1945, where he was found by his adoptive father, Geoffrey Jeperson, in a Nazi death camp, possibly held as the subject of experiments into his psychic abilities. He was subsequently raised by his father within the Diogenes Club, eventually becoming the club's 'Most Valued Member'.