The latest Stark House Al Wheeler omnibus features The Wanton (1959), The Dame (1960), and The Desired (1960). They are volumes 16, 17, and 18 in the Wheeler series.
I read these books back in the early 1960s. Rereading them this week showed that these mysteries hold up well after 60 years! The Wanton begins with the discovery of a young girl hung from the limb of a tree and branded with a W on her back. The girl’s wealthy family wants the crime resolved quickly to preserve its social status. Al Wheeler has to use some trickery to solve the murder and capture the killer. GRADE: B+
The Dame opens with a report that a famous actress has been murdered. But when Al Wheeler arrives at the crime scene, he finds a corpse…but not the corpse of the actress. The secretary to the actress has been stabbed to death. Wheeler has to investigate the past in order to determine the motive for the murder and to cut through the wall of lies the suspects build around the crime. GRADE: B
When Al Wheeler is almost hit when a car careens off the road and crashes things get worse. Wheeler finds a body in the trunk of the crashed car. It’s the treasurer of a large labor union…shot in the back of his head. The driver of the crumpled car is Bella Woods, sexy daughter of the President of the labor union, Tom Woods. Woods is scheduled for a hearing before a Government panel and Wheeler suspects that meeting triggered the murder. As Wheeler’s investigation progresses, more bodies pile up. Once again, Wheeler has to use a clever ruse to flush out the killer. GRADE: B+
Brian Greene’s Introduction provides some new insights into Carter Brown and Al Wheeler. This volume includes a comprehensive Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka, “Carter Brown”) Bibliography. The Al Wheeler mystery series is one of the best projects of its kind!
Never read anything by Carter Brown that I recall but remember seeing them in the spinner racks at my local drugstore. Brown and Richard Prather were the two prolific authors I never read. Like the original covers though.
Steve, most of those original covers were done by Robert McGinnis.
Those covers that I saw in the bookstore every morning on my way to university made me curious so I bought a few books.
But I was soon bored…
Later when I went to London to buy SF I also found a few second hand for less than a dollar which I took home.
But I don’t remember them, stuff to read once and forget
Wolf, I was a 12-year-old kid when I stared reading Carter Brown’s work. It entertained me with the blend of humor, sex, and mystery!
They sure didn’t sell these to 12 year old kids where I grew up! I’m amazed your parents let you read them.
I tried one of each of his series and was unimpressed. I preferred Prather and far preferred the Mike Shayne books.
Rick, I remember when I tried to buy a Carter Brown at a Convenience store and the cashier looked at me over the rims of her glasses and said, “You’re too young for books like that!” The next day, I tired again and Luck was with me: the woman hadn’t been scheduled to work that day and her replacement was an older man who said nothing, took my money, and went back to watching the overhead TV. My parents were very liberal in what I could read. Plus, I didn’t flaunt those great McGinnis covers when I brought them home. They went into the bottom draw of my desk where my mother never looked.
I never liked this series, but Stark House is really cranking them out so they must be selling. That’ll give them more money to reprint more stuff that I do like.
Michael, I’ll be reviewing more of the Stark House books you do enjoy in the months ahead!
Always find it interesting when the cover art features a muscular female back. I doubt many women at that time worked on the back muscles but perhaps men (or women) find it attractive.
Patti, the evolution of paperback artwork focused on women has yet to be written definitively. Art Scott’s introductions to Robert McGinnis’s artwork comes closest.
Patti, with full frontal nudity definitely not possible on mass market book covers, Bob McGinnis did a lot of covers featuring dorsal anatomy. Angel is probably the most admired Carter Brown cover in that category.
Oh, as a P.S., you might want to read the Ellery Queen short story, The Adventure of the Bleeding Portrait, an essay on female back sexual fetishism if ever there was one. Likely Manny Lee’s interest, not Fred Dannay’s, but who knows?ar
I first noted, when watching A BEAUTIFUL MIND in a theater, how toned Jennifer Connelly was in nude scenes as Alycia Nash, and it occurred to me at that moment how rare in non-athletes/dancers/laborers among women or men that would be particularly at the turn of the ’60s.
Toning, I think, does tend to catch the eye, even if it isn’t the only means of doing so…
Much of my college life was spent with Al Wheeler, Danny Boyd, Rick Holman, Mavis Seidlitz, and other Carter Brown characters, reading sometimes two or three a day. At least once I read five of ’em in one day — and to heck with studies! Fast-paced, entertaining, with a little weird here and a little funny there, they were the perfect escape.
Evidently Yates wrote all the Carter Brown books, although Robert Silverberg allegedly ghosted four Carter Brown books, but these may never have been published.
At one time it was rumored that Gothic (the girl fleeing at night from a mansion/castle with only one lighted window type of Gothic paperback) novelist “Caroline Farr” was really Yates. “Farr” was actually Richard Wilkes-Hunter, another prolific writer from Australia. The confusion probably came from there being two pseudonymous and prolific writers from Down Under. I mean, there could not have been TWO Australian writers, could there? Of course not.
Jerry, you and I travelled the same reading paths in College reading Carter Brown mysteries! I think it’s marvelous that Start House is reprinting this series that delighted me (and you!) decades ago!
I love those McGinniss covers. I’ve read a few of them. As mentioned last time, I bought as many of the original Aussie digest-sized paperbacks as turned up in England, especially the ones that hadn’t been published in the US at the time.
Jeff, according to Brian Greene’s informative Introduction, Alan Geoffrey Yates visited America, met with his paperback publishers, and “Americanized” some of the books that were already published in Australia.