Created by Franklin Bandy
Pseudonym of Eugene Franklin Bandy
Pseudonyms include Eugene Franklin
(1914-1987)
KEVIN MacINNES isn’t a psychologist, but a retired US Army officer who, assigned to intelligence and criminal investigation duties, specialized in giving lie detector tests. After his retirement, he opens MacInnes Security (so he “is” a P.I). MacInnes Securit,y providing a whole range of security and investigative services.
MacInnes himself is “the world’s most expert operator of the Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE).” The PSE is a voice stress indicator, different from the more bulky Polygraph Machine, in that the subject doesn’t even have to be present to be tested, just a good recording of his voice, whereas the traditional Polygraph requires that the person be present, be strapped into a chair, and plugged into three different devices that read the level of inhalatin, the rate of heartbeat, and the level of perspiration. The PSE is more convenient, and, as it was a fairly new device when the Edgar-winning (for Best Paperback Original) Deceit and Deadly Lies was published in 1978, just the kind of gimmick on which to hinge a new P.I. series. In a way, Bandy’s use of then brand-new technology anticipates the “techno-thrillers” of writers like Tom Clancy.
Author Eugene Franklin Bandy also writes about the private eye team Berkeley Barnes and Larry Howe, a sort of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin knockoff.
EDITOR’S NOTE
- You might also want to check out the 2008-11 TV show Lie to Me, featuring Cal Lightman, a sort of human lie detector, who also runs his own private security firm.
UNDER OATH
- “Bandy’sd hero makes one think of James Bond as he might have been conceived by Lawrence Sanders. Exciting reading from page one to the explosive climax.”
–Thomas Chastain - “Bandy’s story-telling style consists of interspersing intelligent commentary on world conditions with tough “masculine” writing: flat declarative sentences and cliff-hanger chapter endings. I think he feels obliged to include all the sex and violence that he does as doing what ‘modern’ readers want, but there’s such a nervous edge to it, that it seems to me at least that he’s slightly embarrassed by it.”
— Steve Lewis (1980, The MYSTERY FANcier)
NOVELS
- Deceit and Deadly Eyes (1978) | Buy this book
- The Blackstock Affair (1980) | Buy this book
