Most of my students would have no idea what a “key club” was but those of us of a certain age remember the Playboy Clubs and the various key club offshoots. Published in 1962, Murder in the Key Club (aka, Murder in the Harlem Club) features one of carter brown’s series characters, Hollywood private eye Rick Holman. “carter brown” was the pseudonym of Alan Geoffrey Yates (1923-1985) who lived in Australia. From 1953 to 1981, over 100 “carter brown” novels were published. This 126-page paperback features plenty of action and, given the time period, a lot of “suggested” sex. It also sports a nice Robert McGinnis cover.
Great cover. I think you could safely say that none of your students would know what a key club was. I miss the old days.
Bill, MURDER IN THE KEY CLUB is the first book of 23 books in the Rick Holman series.
So did Yates write all 100 novels? That is some output.
I don’t think any book with a McGinnis cover can ever truly be “forgotten”. 🙂
Carl, good point! A lot of collectors buy paperbacks for the covers and McGinnis cover makes a book very attractive.
I own several McGinnis covered books (which I haven’t read…yet) simply because it is his art on the cover. They are hard to resist.
I’ve always liked that cover, too, and Rick Holman is my favorite of the Carter Brown characters. There have been rumors that some of the books were ghosted, but I think Yates wrote most of them.
James, I’ve heard those “ghosted” rumors, too. Some of the later carter brown books (published in the late 1970s) don’t read like the early carter browns. But that could just be the aging process. I’ve always been a Mavis fan.
Weren’t there more than 100 books? I’m pretty sure it is over 150. It’s been some time since I read one. I think the last was an Al Wheeler title. I used to pick up Aussie digests of early Carter Brown (or “Peter” Carter Brown, as some of them said) titles in England in the summer. They were always a fast read.
Jeff, Yates wrote westerns and romances under pseudonyms, too. Altogether, Yates wrote over 200 books.
Honestly, I liked the covers better than the writing. The books weren’t as interesting.
Rick, you’re right: the McGinnis covers were better than the carter brown mysteries.
I read this one many years ago. My father read loads of the Carter Brown novels. Outside of the Mavis Seidlitz series, which I enjoyed tremendously, I only read a few of the others. The covers were usually delicious.
Barry, I was a big Mavis Seidlitz fan and enjoyed writing an article about her. Yes, those Robert McGinnis covers were delicious!
Love the cover – at one point the ‘brown’ books seemed ubiquitous in the second hand shops I frequented in London as a student, but it’s been a while since I saw any – will look again though – thanks.
Sergio, I started buying the carter brown books because of the covers back in the Sixties. They’re tough to find today.
You never know what you’re going to get with a Carter Brown book. Some of them are surprisingly well plotted, and some are just dumb.
I seem to recall that Robert Silverberg said he wrote a couple of Carter Brown books but didn’t know if they were ever published.
James, you are so right about the uneven quality of the carter brown books. I found many of the Al Wheeler mysteries seriously dumb.
Later on in the series the sex was more than suggested. I didn’t care for those as much as the earlier ones, such as this Key Club one. I don’t know if Yates did those, or if that is when the ghostwriters took over (assuming that they did). I’ve heard the same story as James that Robert Silverberg wrote a couple, but also that they were never published.
Steve, you’re right about the sex becoming more graphic in the later carter brown books. And they were a lot less fun to run. And they didn’t have those great McGinnis covers, either.
George, I first heard and read about Carter Brown mysteries after I started blogging in 2009 and since then I have come across only two mutilated paperbacks that we’d have fallen apart had I tried to read them. I’m still looking for some better editions.
Prashant, it used to be easy to find carter brown paperbacks. But now they’re scarce, especially the ones with McGinnis covers.
Just found this – I also read Carter Brown as a young student before switching to Mickey Spillane in detective novels. You could get many of those books even in Germany tin the early 60s.
Of course I always preferred SF – but when none was available …
Btw the German wiki has more info on the author, especially his life than the English version!
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Brown
Wolf, thanks for the link! I’m sure the Carter Brown fans will appreciate the German wiki as much as I do!
Yates wrote close to 300 Carter Brown books of some form, 144 of which were published in the USA and Canada.
Scott, about a 100 of those Carter Brown paperbacks reside at SUNY at Buffalo. They used to be easy to find in used bookstores, but now they’ve disappeared.