Now Available: The Hellcat/The Lady is Transparent/The Dumdum Murder - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

THE HELLCAT:
In which Lieutenant Al Wheeler is expected to
—solve the mystery of the decapitated head
—investigate the Sumner family without ruffling any entitled feathers
—keep the two mob killers from wiping out the Sumners

THE LADY IS TRANSPARENT:
In which Lieutenant Al Wheeler is sent out on a stormy night to an old dark house
—where a ghost has just murdered someone behind a locked door
—where the whole family believes in a century-old curse
—where a tape machine holds the only evidence of death by avenging spirit

THE DUMDUM MURDER:
In which Lieutenant Al Wheeler responds to a call about a bloody murder
—in a house of old Vaudevillians and entertainers
—involving the shooting death of a former associate of an ex-bootlegger
—that sends him into the arms of an intimidating Amazon.

(I did the introduction for this new triple volume of Al Wheeler mystery novels, and I think it's one of the best intros I've written. I sure had fun revisiting my early days as a fan of the Carter Brown books, which I still love all these decades later. This new book from Stark House is available in e-book and trade paperback editions, and I give it a high recommendation!)

Review: No Harp for My Angel - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL is the fourth novel in the long-running Al Wheeler mystery series by Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates). It’s one that was never published in the United States after its original appearance in Australia in 1956 until a few years ago when Stark House included it in the second volume of its Al Wheeler series. As a long-time Carter Brown fan, it’s great that Stark House is making it possible for us to read, or in some cases reread, these very entertaining novels.

Al Wheeler is a homicide detective in Pine City, California, but in this novel, he’s on the other side of the country, taking a well-deserved vacation in Ocean Beach, Florida. Naturally, things can’t go smoothly while he’s there, and before you know it, he’s doing a favor for a local cop and going undercover to investigate the disappearances of several beautiful female tourists. In order to do this, he has to pretend to be a gangster from Chicago, and of course, things go from bad to worse when some real gangsters show up.

Al’s first-person, wisecracking narration is fast and funny, as usual. There’s a murder in this one, but it’s not a typical whodunit as the tone of this novel is much more that of a thriller. Between getting hit on the head and taken for a ride and bantering with luscious babes, Al doesn’t have much time for actual detection. It’s all a lot of breathless fun, and NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL is also historically important because this is the book where Al acquires his Austin-Healy sports car that he’ll drive for the rest of the series. I’m a little surprised that Signet didn’t reprint this one during the Fifties and Sixties when the Carter Brown books were so popular. Maybe they didn’t because it’s not as much of a traditional mystery as some of the others.

It's certainly worth reading, though. If you’re a Carter Brown/Al Wheeler fan, you’ll enjoy it, I don’t doubt that at all. The Stark House reprint, which includes two more Al Wheeler novels, by the way, is available on Amazon in print and e-book editions. Recommended.

Delilah Was Deadly - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

It’s been too long since I read a Carter Brown novel, so I decided to pick up where I left off in Stark House’s reprinting of the original versions of the Al Wheeler novels published in Australia. DELILAH WAS DEADLY is the third book in the series and was never reprinted in the United States until this collection from several years ago.

In this one, Al is still developing into the character known so well to those of us who grew up reading the Signet paperback versions of the novels in the Sixties and Seventies. He still works for the police department of the unnamed city where the story takes place, and he reports to Commissioner (not Sheriff) Lavers. We have Sergeant Podeski giving him a hand instead of Sergeant Polnick. And Al is actually in charge of the Homicide Bureau in this one, having been promoted since the previous book.

Those differences are fairly minor. The case is the same sort that Al has tackled before and will again, many times. The body of a man who works as the social editor for a fashion magazine is found stuffed in a safe in the magazine’s office. He’s been strangled with a girdle. (If you’re wondering why a fashion magazine has a safe on the premises, it’s so that top-secret dress designs can be locked up.) Al decides to investigate the killing himself when one of the detectives assigned to the case is also murdered when he goes to search the victim’s apartment. More killings follow, as Al navigates a complicated plot involving a nightclub owner, a department store tycoon, an eccentric artist, and, of course, numerous beautiful young women, some of whom succumb to Al’s attempts at seduction.

Then, fairly late in the book, author Carter Brown, who was really Alan G. Yates, springs a pretty effective plot twist. The Carter Brown books were nearly always well-plotted, especially considering their length (around 40,000 words, I’m guessing). This one isn’t quite as complex as some but works well. Everything rockets along with lots of snappy banter, plenty of sexy hijinks, and enough action to keep things interesting. The title isn’t really justified until very late in the book and comes off as a bit of an afterthought by the author, but that’s it’s biggest weakness and it’s nothing to quibble about.

I had a fine time reading DELILAH WAS DEADLY and getting reacquainted with Al Wheeler. Luckily, I have plenty more of those Stark House triple volumes on hand, so I plan to get back to the series without much delay this time. These days, short, entertaining books are just what I’m looking for most of the time. If you want to give these a try, they’re available in e-book and trade paperback editions.

Forgotten Books: Blonde Verdict - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

The original edition

BLONDE VERDICT (the title of the original Australian edition) is the second book in the Lt. Al Wheeler series by Carter Brown, who, as you all know, was really English ex-pat Alan G. Yates. A revised version was published in the U.S. by Signet under the title THE BRAZEN, but the real deal is available in Stark House’s great series of omnibus reprints of the Al Wheeler series, from the start in chronological order.

This is still not quite the Al Wheeler those of us who grew up reading the Signet editions know and love, but he’s pretty darned close. Or rather, Al is the same guy, but his supporting cast is slightly different. He works for Captain Parker, and the police commissioner is named Lavers. In the Signet editions, Al is a sheriff’s department investigator working for Sheriff Lavers. There’s a Sergeant Mcnamara mentioned, but no Sergeant Polnick.

A later, retitled Australian edition

Doesn’t matter. Al is still the same wise-cracking hotshot with an eye for beautiful babes, of whom there are plenty in this book, starting with the blonde Al is with in a nightclub when one of the other patrons drops dead at his feet. Turns out the guy is a lawyer with a beautiful wife who hates him, a beautiful mistress who’s really in love with somebody else, and a partner with a good reason to want him dead. Oh, and there’s the gangster who was being represented by the dead man in a murder trial, and the even bigger gangster that guy works for, and . . . But you get the idea. Lots of suspects for Al to interrogate and cheerfully insult, and plenty of babes to come back to his bachelor pad and listen to his hi-fi with him, as well as giving him an alibi when he’s accused of one of the many murders that take place.

An early Signet edition

It’s hard to believe any book could race by faster than this one. It’s like an early Sixties Warner Brothers private eye TV show several years before there even was such a thing. Great pace, funny lines, a very likable protagonist, and a workable plot. I’ve been reading Carter Brown books for more than fifty years now and still really enjoy them. Thanks to Stark House for reprinting these original editions, and I hope there are many more to come. (A second collection is already out, and a third one is coming soon.)

Later Signet edition with Robert McGinnis cover

Coming Soon From Stark House: Carter Brown, Volume 3

Al Wheeler was Carter Brown's most popular mystery series, and these are his seventh, eighth, and ninth adventures, reprinted from the original Australian editions. The first two were revised for their U.S. Signet editions as THE BODY and THE BOMBSHELL, but CHORINE MAKES A KILLING has never been published in the U.S. before.

NO LAW AGAINST ANGELS
In which Lt. Al Wheeler investigates the murder of two young ladies--
both of whom worked at the Haven of Rest Mortuary--
both of whom had a tattoo on their upper shoulder in the shape of a dollar sign that turns into a snake--
and both of whom worked at part-time call-girls for the mysterious fellow known as Snake Lannigan, a man no one has ever seen.

DOLL FOR THE BIG HOUSE
In which Lt. Al Wheeler is reassigned to the Eighth Precinct under Captain Bligh in order to--
find Lili Hertz, whose sister has reported her missing--
track her to the big house of Absolem Kirch, despotic owner of a newspaper empire and the man behind a lot of dirty politics--
and crack the kidnapping ring that provides Kirch with the young girls he keeps in his mansion against their will.

CHORINE MAKES A KILLING
In which Lt. Al Wheeler turns in his badge to become a private investigator for a lawyer's firm in order to--
investigate an open-and-shut murder case involving Walter Byrne, friend of the lawyer and now married to the lawyer's ex-wife--
determine just who really did kill the chorus girl, who was also Byrne's mistress--
and figure out who is trying to kill Byrne's wife Myra, while fending off the advances of the man's sexy daughter.

(I'm really glad Stark House is reprinting these original Australian editions. They're fast, funny, well-plotted, and great fun to read. This collection will be out in March and is available for pre-order now.)

Coming From Stark House: The Second Carter Brown Collection

NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL

While in Florida on vacation, Lt. Al Wheeler tangles with a redhead with green eyes who is "Nobody's girl but my own!"... Her club-owning gangster boyfriend, who is involved in some very shady business... and his gorilla henchman, who is seven feet of muscle and bone, just waiting for the chance to crush him to a pulp when Al becomes the decoy sent in to bring their racket down.

BOOTY FOR A BABE

When Lt. Al Wheeler tries to solve a murder at a science fiction convention he discovers a professor who wants to stop time by tricking the elusive Delfs... meets an intellectual gangster who wants to get his hands on the professor's latest invention... is frustrated by the generously proportioned convention organizer, who somehow manages to keep one step ahead of Al's wolfish designs.

EVE, IT'S EXTORTION

Which finds Lt. Al Wheeler trying to solve a hit-and-run murder involving the victim's wife, who is all too glad to have lost her lush of a husband... the beautiful skip-tracer who tracked down the victim right before he met his untimely end... and her dubious boyfriend who may not be as innocent as he professes, but is certainly up to no good.

Forgotten Books: The Wench is Wicked - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

I started reading Carter Brown books when I was in high school, and I hate to think of how many decades ago that was. I’m still reading them all these years later, and thankfully, I’m not the only one. There are enough Carter Brown fans out there for Stark House to reprint the first three novels featuring Lieutenant Al Wheeler in a very handsome trade paperback collection. It just so happens that Al Wheeler was the narrator/protagonist of the very first Carter Brown novel I read, ’way back when (I think it was THE UNORTHODOX CORPSE, but I’m not 100% sure of that), so I was very happy to have the chance to read THE WENCH IS WICKED, the book that introduced the character.

This novel was first published in 1955 by Horwitz Publications in Australia and has never been reprinted in the United States until now. Al Wheeler isn’t quite the same character in this one that we know and love from the Signet editions that would appear on every paperback spinner rack in America a few years later, usually with great covers by Robert McGinnis. For one thing, Al doesn’t work for Sheriff Lavers, although there is a character named Lavers in this book who’s a politician. Maybe he gets elected sheriff at some point in the series. Instead Al is a detective lieutenant on the police force of an unnamed California city not far from Los Angeles. In later books this locale is known as Pine City. Nor does he drive an Austin Healy sports car, but he does rent an MG for part of the book. There’s no sign of his dimwitted sidekick Sergeant Polnick.

But the wisecracking, the chasing of beautiful dames, the hardboiled attitude, and the deceptively keen mind that can solve multiple murders, those are all in place in this first adventure, which involves a murdered playwright whose body is found at the bottom of a gravel pit. The playwright is involved with a movie crew from Hollywood that’s shooting a Western in the area, so the suspects include a couple of gorgeous actresses, a leading man who’s prone to violence, an unsavory character actor, a director who may or may not be a drug addict, and a cameraman rumored to have an unhealthy interest in underage girls. So Al has plenty to sort through, including two more murders, before a suspenseful showdown with the killer in that same gravel pit.

Alan G. Yates, the author behind the Carter Brown pseudonym, was an Englishman who lived in Australia, and his early books, although set in America, contain the occasional bit of description or dialogue that doesn’t ring true. As a result, when Signet began reprinting the books, they hired an American mystery writer to go over the manuscripts and revise them slightly. This practice lasted for only a few books, however, as Yates got to be very good at sounding American. Since THE WENCH IS WICKED was never reprinted over here, there are a few examples of things that aren’t quite right, such as Al’s car having a bonnet rather than a hood. Things like that don’t bother me at all; in fact, they kind of add to the book’s charm.

Many of the Carter Brown books have pretty intricate plots, while others are fairly thin. This one is in the middle, complex enough to maintain the reader’s interest all the way through but not terribly difficult to figure out. The main appeal of these books for me has always been the fast-paced, breezy style and the likable protagonists. THE WENCH IS WICKED delivers quite well on those scores. It’s just great fun to read, and I give it and the Stark House collection that includes it a very high recommendation.

Forgotten Books: The Deep Cold Green - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

I've seen Robert Barnard's books around for many years but never read any of them. So with this being Robert Barnard Week on Forgotten Books, I gave one a try...then another, and another. I didn't like or finish any of them, so sadly I have to say that Barnard just isn't an author for me. However, I thought that I still ought to read a mystery novel by a British author, and Alan G. Yates was born in England, right?

So that brings us to THE DEEP COLD GREEN, another entry in the long-running series written by Yates (and possibly a few ghosts) under the name Carter Brown. The Carter Brown books feature several different characters, and this one stars the one who's probably my favorite, police lieutenant Al Wheeler. As a bonus, it has a nice McGinnis cover, as most of the Carter Brown books from that era do.

As the book opens, Al is in Reno, Nevada, on his way back to his hometown of Pine City from a vacation. A beautiful redhead named Tracy barges into his room looking for a ride back to Pine City, but hot on her heels are a couple of bruisers who have come to take her back to her husband, professional gambler and casino owner Dane Tenison. They back off when they find out Al is a cop. Al and Tracy leave Reno together, but Tracy promptly disappears after they spend one night together. According to the motel clerk, she left on her own in a rental car, so Al doesn't think there's anything suspicious about her departure.

Back in Pine City, though, a body washes up on the beach a week later, and wouldn't you know it? The dead woman is Tracy Tenison. Or is she? Al quickly discovers that Tracy has a lookalike sister named Louise. It appears that Louise was only pretending to be Tracy back in Reno, because in actuality she was carrying on an affair with her sister's husband.

After that, things start to get a little complicated.

The Carter Brown books don't have much of a reputation anymore, but they usually featured complex plots that provided a genuine challenge for whichever detective was in that book to figure out. Most of the time, they even made sense. This tale involving several beautiful women, a murder frame-up, and the world of professional high-stakes gambling races right along in Yates' smart-alecky prose to an action-packed finale at sea. He even tries to put in a few poetic touches here and there and for the most part succeeds. Al Wheeler is a likable narrator/hero, and I always enjoy his adventures.

THE DEEP COLD GREEN was published in 1968, and it's a little more graphic sexually than the earlier Carter Brown books but not as pornographic as the ones from the Seventies. The whole Swinging Sixties atmosphere makes it read a little like a historical novel now. It's hard to believe more than forty years have passed since then. One thing hasn't changed, though: I read and enjoyed Carter Brown books back in those days, and from time to time I still do. This one's worth checking out if you're a fan and haven't read it yet.

Forgotten Books: The Dance of Death - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

The Carter Brown books aren't held in very high esteem, but it occurred to me the other day that I've been reading and enjoying them for close to fifty years now. That has to say something about either them or me, take your pick.

THE DANCE OF DEATH was published in 1964 and features Lt. Al Wheeler, a sheriff's department investigator in California who was the most popular series character for Alan G. Yates, the author who created the Carter Brown pseudonym and wrote most of the books under that name, if not all. (Rumors have floated around for years that some of the books were ghosted, one possibly by Robert Silverberg, but I don't know if that's ever been confirmed.) Like all of Yates's first-person narrators, Wheeler is prone to wisecracks and has a very healthy libido.

In this case, he's summoned to a rich man's isolated mountain hideaway where a suicide has taken place, but it doesn't take Wheeler long to determine that the alleged suicide is really murder. On hand are several members of a ballet company rehearsing for a new show, and the victim is one of the male dancers. There's also a mysterious prowler lurking around, and that, along with the isolated location, allows Yates to work some spooky stuff into the plot. He liked to throw some apparently supernatural elements into his books, although everything had a reasonable explanation in the end, of course, once whichever detective was in that book had solved the case.

The plot twists in this one seem painfully obvious, but Yates manages to work in some nice reverses in the late going. As always, the writing is fast-paced and breezy, Wheeler is a likable character, and there are several beautiful babes on hand. Everything wraps up in a dandy shootout and a few last wisecracks. THE DANCE OF DEATH is hardly a classic of mystery fiction, but I found it an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours.

Forgotten Books: A Corpse for Christmas - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

Since Friday falls on Christmas Eve this week, I thought it would be a good idea to read a Christmas-themed mystery as my Forgotten Book. Or in this case, re-read one.


When I was growing up in the Sixties, Carter Brown books were everywhere. You couldn’t find a paperback rack without at least a couple of Carter Brown titles in it, and the used bookstores had shelves after shelves of them. And I was a fan. What teenage boy wouldn’t be? The books had fast-paced plots, racy dialogue, and McGinnis covers. I gobbled ’em up.


One of them I remember reading was A CORPSE FOR CHRISTMAS, but that’s all I recalled about it. So I scrounged up a copy (ordered it off ABE, to be precise) and read it again. The results were sort of mixed. This is one of the books featuring Lt. Al Wheeler, probably the best-known of Brown’s detective characters. I’ve always liked Al, and he’s his usual abrasive but charming self here. The action takes place during the last few days before Christmas, and at one point the murderer wears a Santa Claus suit, but overall there’s not much Christmas atmosphere in this one, despite the title. The fact that the fictional Pine City, where Al works as a detective for the sheriff’s department, is in Southern California probably has something to do with that. And Brown’s writing was never really very strong on any sort of atmosphere to start with, being concerned mostly with plot and dialogue.


Add to that an unimpressive cover and a fairly bland plot about the murder of a guy who owns a public relations company, and you have a book that’s something of a disappointment. However, it does pick up steam late, with more murders and a flurry of plot twists (the Carter Brown novels tend to be fairly complex and usually well-plotted), so I wound up enjoying it enough to consider the couple of hours it took to read it not wasted time. And it’s put me in the mood to read more Carter Brown books, although who knows when or if I’ll actually get around to it.


Now, as a bonus since the book I picked didn’t work out quite as well as I’d hoped it would, here’s a rerun of a post I wrote back in 2005, before the Forgotten Books series began and I suspect before many of you were reading this blog:


I'm a nostalgic kind of guy, and let's face it, I never really grew up to start with. I still read comics and pulps and old paperbacks. But some of my interests have faded away over the years. During my junior high and high school years, I read lots of British mysteries (along with all other sorts of mysteries). Many of them were by Agatha Christie. I haven't read anything by her in years, though.

Until recently, when on a whim and a desire to revisit that part of my earlier years, I picked up a copy of her novel MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS. This is a Hercule Poirot novel that I never read back in the Sixties, and he was always my favorite among her characters. I'm afraid I never cared much for Miss Marple. Anyway, I've now read about a third of MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, and I'm enjoying it very much. True, at this late date the plot seems almost like a parody of itself: a dysfunctional British family, plus a couple of mysterious outsiders, gathers at the family's country estate for Christmas, and the obnoxious patriarch of the family winds up being murdered. Naturally, Hercule Poirot happens to be visiting one of the local police officials, so he's drawn into the investigation.


Sure, it's a hokey set-up, and characters tend to have conversations with each other about things they already know, simply as a means of filling in the readers on the backstory, but I'm willing to forgive that. The characters themselves are pretty interesting and Christie does a good job of sketching them in without going overboard on the background. The prose is fast-paced and quite readable, and I haven't figured out who the killer is yet. (Unlike a novel I read recently by a current big-name thriller writer, where I saw every single plot twist for the entire book in the first fifty pages or so.)


So, while I doubt that I'll ever gobble down Agatha Christie mysteries like I did in the old days, I'm having a lot of fun with this one and will probably read a few more now and then.

Two Blogs of Note

Dr. Toni Johnson-Woods has a couple of blogs that will probably be of great interest to many of you:  A World of Australian Pulp Fiction and The Carter Brown Mystery Series.  Lots of great covers and information on both of these blogs (although purists will note that the books covered aren't actually pulps).  Thanks to Juri Nummelin for pointing these out on his blog.  I know I'm going to be spending some time going through both of them.

Readin' and Writin'

Those of you who are fiction junkies like me will probably understand when I say that even under dire circumstances, the urge to read is still there. So it won’t come as any surprise to hear that I’ve been scrounging books off my in-laws’ shelves while we’re staying here. My attention span isn’t what it once was, but I’ve managed to read two books since we’ve been here.

A MURDERER AMONG US is one of Carter Brown’s novels about Hollywood troubleshooter Rick Holman (who might just be, one speculates, the illegitimate son of Dan Turner). In this case, however, even though Holman is working for a Hollywood producer, he’s off to the East Coast to find out who’s been trying to murder a movie star who wants to improve her image by appearing in a Broadway play. The book is full of eccentric characters, the style is as fast and breezy as always in a book by Carter Brown (really Alan G. Yates), and the plot has a twist or two more than usual. None of these books are more than light entertainment, but A MURDERER AMONG US functions pretty well in that role.

Archie Joscelyn, who also wrote as Al Cody and Lynn Westland, had a long, prolific career as a Western author. He was capable of turning out some good novels, like DOOMROCK and THE THUNDERING HILLS, but he was also very inconsistent, turning out a lot of bad books, especially late in his career. THE GUNHAND, published under the Al Cody name, is from 1966 and falls somewhere in the middle, although it tends toward the mediocre side. The story concerns a couple of down-on-their-luck cousins, one stalwart and good, the other somewhat shady. They find a gun that belonged to a famous outlaw, and its evil influence (Joscelyn was big on sinister, vaguely mystical objects) turns the more disreputable cousin all bad. There’s a stagecoach line owned by an old-timer who has a beautiful daughter (of course), a gang of desperadoes, assorted shoot-outs and double-crosses, and a plot with enough coincidences and contrivances for a dozen B-Western movies. Still, there’s a great scene at the end with a runaway stagecoach that almost redeems all the ludicrous plotting and bad writing. Almost. Don’t run out looking for this one. But despite that, I was still glad to have it on hand to read.

Today was the first day since the fire that I was able to sit down and spend most of the day writing. I was a little worried about how it would go. I’ve been able to do a couple of pages here and there but nothing really significant. I didn’t know if I still had it in me. I’m heaving a big sigh of relief now, because today’s output would have been a very good day even in our old place. I also made some notes about the part of the book that I lost, so maybe I can recreate it without forgetting too much of what I had done. Of course, it won’t be exactly the same – I’ve already changed a few things deliberately – but that doesn’t really matter. And best of all, it was still fun. Maybe I can do this after all.