FORGOTTEN BOOKS #587: THE UNORTHODOX CORPSE/DEATH ON THE DOWNBEAT/THE BLONDE (Al Wheeler Mysteries #10-12)

Way back in the early 1960s, I started reading Carter Brown’s Al Wheeler series. I enjoyed the wacky plots and Wheeler’s skirt-chasing tendencies.

Stark House is reprinting the novels in Al Wheeler series. The latest omnibus volume includes The Unorthodox Corpse, Death on the Downbeat, and The Blonde, the 10th, 11th,  and 12th Al Wheeler mysteries.  The Unorthodox Corpse was first published in Australia by Horwitz Publications of Australia in 1957 and then revised for the U.S. market and published by Signet Books in 1961. Death on the Downbeat was published by Horwitz in 1958, then revised for the U.S. as The Corpse. Signet published The Corpse in 1958.  The Blonde was published by both Horwitz and Signet in 1958. Stark House reprints the original Australian versions in this omnibus edition.

The Unorthodox Corpse was one of the first Al Wheelers I read as a teenager back in the early 1960s. Wheeler gives a speech at an exclusive finishing school with a student body of 50 gorgeous girls. After Wheeler delivers his speech, a magician, The Great Mephisto, steps up to entertain the audience. The lights go out..and when the lights come on, one of the young girls is found with a knife in her back. I liken The Unorthodox Corpse to a screw-ball comedy. Wheeler play fast and loose to nail the killer.

Death on the Downbeat opens with Wheeler on a date at a jazz club with Annabelle Jackson, the constant object of his desire. But, a member of the audience takes the stage…and catches a bullet. The date turns into a murder investigation.

The Blonde features the most convoluted of these three mysteries. Wheeler is sent to protect two women who are getting death threats. And, of course, one of them is blown up with a bomb! Wheeler deals with TV people, mobsters, and constant deception before he finally reveal the cunning plot.

If you’re looking for humor, action, and wackiness you’ll find it in abundance in this wonderful Stark House omnibus! GRADE: A

You can read my reviews of the other Al Wheeler volumes here, here, and here.

34 thoughts on “FORGOTTEN BOOKS #587: THE UNORTHODOX CORPSE/DEATH ON THE DOWNBEAT/THE BLONDE (Al Wheeler Mysteries #10-12)

  1. wolf

    I don’t remember the stories – but those covers which I saw on my way from the railway station to the university in Tübingen in the early 60s. Those paperbacks weren’t cheap, but I couldn’t resist and bought a few – but soon switched to SF.
    Carter Brown’s stories were as marvelous and different from what I read in German as Mickey Spillane’s, the other author that I came to be fascinated with.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Wolf, the main difference between Spillane and Carter Brown is the wacky humor in all of Carter Brown’s works. And the level of violence in Spillane’s work.

      Reply
  2. Steve Oerkfitz

    I don’t remember reading any Carter Brown but as a teenager I do remember seeing the books. Carter Brown, Donald Hamilton, John MacDonald and Richard Prather seemed to be everywhere. I don’t know why I never read any. Can’t read everything I guess.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Steve, Carter Brown is closer to Richard Prather than to Donald Hamilton or John D. MacDonald. There’s plenty of silliness in Brown and Prather.

      Reply
  3. Michael Padgett

    Private eye novels and, to a lesser extent, spy novels, hit me in a big way in the sixties, and they seemed to be everywhere. It was during this period when I became a huge fan of Spillane, Ross MacDonald, John D. MacDonald, Donald Hamilton, John le Carre, and Len Deighton. My memory is fuzzy on Brown and Prather. I think I read a couple of books by those two but they never appealed to me the way the others did.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Michael, like you I started reading many of the writers you mention especially Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm series. I was a big fan of those early novels. But later, I became disenchanted with Matt Helm’s attitudes towards women…and everything.

      Reply
      1. Steve Oerkfitz

        I bought the first couple Matt Helms when they were reissued a couple of years ago. I enjoyed them as a teenager back in the 60’s. Unfortunately his attitude towards women turned me off. I hadn’t noticed it when I was 14. More than once Helm/Hamilton expressed his displeasure with women with short hair or women in pants. He apparently felt all women should have long hair and wear dresses and high heels.

      2. george Post author

        Steve, same here. Matt Helm’s attitudes toward women turned me off after I read about a dozen books in the series. Bill Crider kept reading them and warned me Helm’s attitudes just got worse with each successive book.

  4. Jeff Meyerson

    I see you mentioned it. I read more more of the Shell Scott series by Richard S. Prather than Carter Brown back then, as well as Earl Norman’s series featuring Burns Bannion, a martial arts using Shell Scott clone. I remember discovering them in summer camp when I was 12 or 13 and raced though titles like KILL ME IN YOKOHAMA and KILL ME IN SHIMBUKU.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, I have some Burns Bannon paperbacks around here somewhere. I was 12 or 13 when I got into Carter Brown Big Time! Perfect books for a horny teenager!

      Reply
  5. maggie mason

    I never read the series, clearly I was not the target audience. I do remember seeing them, mostly on spinner racks in mom and pop grocery stores.

    Jeff I do remember being asked for the Burns Bannion series by an officer in the reserves I did active duty training with. I found some but not all of them.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Maggie, you’re right about Carter Brown titles dominating the spinner racks. Al Wheeler battled for space with Poirot and Miss Marple in those days!

      Reply
  6. Michael Padgett

    Anyone who thinks Hamilton was sexist is absolutely right, but surely you’re not letting Brown and Prather off the hook for the same offense.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Michael, sadly the attitudes reflected in the Prather and Brown books were standard for that era. Today, we’re appalled at the objectivation of women.

      Reply
  7. wolf

    I just looked at the German wiki for Carter Brown because I had never seen translations into German, but it seems many exist.
    Funny!
    The German wiki has much more details on his private life, his early jobs etc than the English wiki which just concentrates on his 200 or 300 novels.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Wolf, the Stark House omnibus editions provide Introductions which detail much of Carter Brown’s life in addition to his publishing activities.

      Reply
  8. Beth Fedyn

    I’ve never read Carter Brown. I’m scum.
    I DO enjoy Richard Prather so this might be a good time to expand my horizons.
    I used The Deep Blue Good-Bye for a bookstore book group and the ladies couldn’t get past how sexist it was. Too bad. They’re missing a great series.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Beth, I know what you mean. Social customs have changed and behavior that was “normal” in the Sixties is abhorrent today.

      Reply
  9. Jerry House

    Carter Brown was a boon in my college days. I consumed them like potato chips, once reading five in one day. Beat studying!

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jerry, I used to read a couple Al Wheelers at O’Hare Airport while I was waiting for my flight. I was traveling a lot in the 1970s.

      Reply
  10. Rick Robinson

    As I’ve said before, more than once, I won’t go near anything described using the word “wacky”.

    I tried a couple of Brown’s books and didn’t like them.

    It’s too bad people can’t accept that things were that way 50 years ago instead of applying their current oh-so-superior current moral standards. Such people shouldn’t read anything written and published before 2015.

    I wish I could sleep.

    Reply
  11. Jeff Smith

    I never even tried to read a Carter Brown book. I was too busy reading Ted Mark’s Man from O.R.G.Y. ones. I had a complete collection of those.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, I’d completely forgotten Ted Mark’s MAN FROM O.R.G.Y. books! I’ll have to dig one out and read it. I don’t have the whole set, but I had a number of them.

      Reply
      1. george Post author

        Jeff, I donated most of my MAN FROM O.R.G.Y. to SUNY at Buffalo but I still have a few in my basement. I think there was also a LADY FROM O.R.G.Y. series, too.

  12. maggie mason

    The book store I used to work at after I retired was owned by a guy who specialized in surf books. There was a 60’s series with a protag that was a surfer. I don’t remember the name of the series or the character. I made a bunch of $$ finding and selling them to him

    Reply
    1. maggie mason

      George, I might have looked for the surf series when you took beth and I to that great book store (where I found my 3rd copy of Earl Emerson’s first book, Fill the World with Phantoms

      Reply
      1. george Post author

        Maggie, that great used bookstore is still around. It’s the Book Corner and I can’t wait for the “Shelter-in-Place” order to be lifted so I can go there and buy a bunch of books!

      2. wolf

        The one in Niagara Falls?
        We missed that because we spent the little time we had on the Canadian side …
        Is it larger than the Strand and Forbidden Planet in NYC were once in the good old times?
        How I miss those days!

      3. george Post author

        Wolf, yes, the Book Corner is two storeys of thousands of books. It’s located on Third Street. I usually visit the Book Corner every month, but of course it’s closed now because of the coronavirus. The owner is selling books online, though.

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