Created by G.G. Fickling
Pseudonym of Gloria and Forest Fickling
ERIK MARCHÂ is a high-priced (he charges a very hefty $1,000 a day) personal consultant/private investigator for large corporations in and around the Hollywood/Los Angeles area. He attributes his success to “the opposite sex, Ovaltine, and money.”
He is a 35-year-old, 6-foot tall, 180 lb., red-headed Irishman with moss green eyes. He grew up in a crummy orphanage in New York, was wounded at Bastogne during WWII, and made it to the 1948 Olympic boxing finals as an amateur light-heavyweight. He drives a sea green Chrysler “300” convertible with a white top, packs a Webley .38-calibre revolver, and has an swanky office suite in Hollywood across the street from NBC. His secretary is a pretty, petite French gal named Tiny Glory Picard. His contact on the police force is the older and grimmer Lt. Joe Steel, thin as a rail but a handsome fellow and an okay guy, most of the time.
The Erik March mysteries are similar in their smirky, nudge-nudge tone and quality to the Shell Scott books. No small wonder, since Shell’s creator, Richard Prather, was a good friend of the Ficklings and is supposed to have supplied the inspiration that lead them to the creation of their more famous private eye, Honey West.
In fact, Erik made his debut in a bit part the first Honey novel, This Girl For Hire (1957), before appearing in three of his own “red hot” paperback originals’s in the early sixties, and was resurrected in 1971 to co-star with Honey in Stiff As a Broad.
NOVELS
- Naughty But Dead (1962)Â |Â Buy this book
- The Case of the Radioactive Redhead (1963)Â |Â Buy this book
- The Crazy Mixed-up Nude (1964)Â |Â Buy this book
- Stiff As a Broad (1971; Honey West costars)Â |Â Buy this book
