Temper of detective following lead in Mayo river (6)

I believe the answer is:

modify

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'temper' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)

'of detective following lead in mayo river' is the wordplay.
'of' becomes 'o''.
'detective' becomes 'di' (Detective Inspector abbreviation).
'following' says to put letters next to each other.
'lead in' indicates taking the first letters.
'river' becomes 'fy' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The initial letter of 'mayo' is 'm'.
'o'+'di'='odi'
'odi' after 'm' is 'modi'.
'modi'+'fy'='MODIFY'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for modify that I've seen before include "Partially change" , "Alter slightly" , "Make small changes to" , "temper" , "Reshape" .)

I've seen this clue in the Irish Times (Crosaire) and The Irish Times.

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