Al Colby
Created by David Dodge (1910-74)

David Dodge's second series character, AL COLBY, is a private eye based in Mexico City. Colby is a tough-guy adventurer whose investigations take him throughout Central and South America. He is a norteamericano but was born in Mexico, lived most of his life there, and speaks fluent Spanish. Colby is a loner who, although never lacking for female companionship, is unable to commit himself to a relationship.

In the first Colby novel, The Long Escape, he tracks a runaway husband from Mexico to Santiago, Chile; in Plunder of the Sun, he is hired to recover lost Inca treasure in Peru; and, in The Red Tassel, Colby faces off against saboteurs and witch-doctors at a silver mine in the high altitudes of the Bolivian Andes.

There was even a film made of Plunder of the Sun, and it's actually quite good, with Glenn Ford excellent in the role of Colby. But the script changes the locale from Peru to Mexico and now they're looking for Aztec, not Incan goodies.

Colby's cynicism and expatriate status make him a more hardboiled character than Dodge's previous fictional hero, San Francisco tax accountant James "Whit" Whitney. The Colby adventures are distinguished by their suspense-filled atmospheres and exotic locales. Dodge was an inveterate world-traveler and he drew on his experiences as settings for his novels, as well as for a highly successful series of humorous travel books.

NOVELS

• The Long Escape (1948) ...Buy this book
• Plunder of the Sun (1949)..Buy this book
• The Red Tassel (1950)...Buy this book

FILMS

• PLUNDER OF THE SUN ...Buy this DVD
  (1953, Warner Bros.)
  Based on the novel by David Dodge
  Directed by John Farrow
  Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer
  Starring Glenn Ford as AL COLBY

RELATED LINKS

• The Official David Dodge Web Site
  Randal Brandt, in collaboration with the author's daughter, is the creator/manager of one of the finest single-author sites I've ever seen. Check this one out--you won't regret it..

Respectfully submitted by Randal Brandt (June 1999).