Created by Paul Whelton
“You dig me up a good yarn, brother, and I’ll kiss you.”
— Dean chats up a source in Call the Lady Indiscreet.
GARRY DEAN is the hard-nosed big city newshawk for Belle City’s Press-Bulletin who’ll do anything for a story, in these delightful slices of American cheese.
And I do mean cheese. Garry spouts a steady stream of real he-man patter typical of forties and fifties hard-boiled dicks, most of it offensive to someone or another, and gets mixed up with all the usuals: the underworld thugs, troublesome broads, scam artists, the dopesters, and the like, with enough scotch and sex tossed in to keep things moving. Kirkus at the time referred to one of the books as “reasonably slick,” while another one has a blurb right there on the back cover that says, “Paul Whelton supplies a dizzy plenty of action.”
Yes, a “dizzy plenty of action.”
Who am I to argue with a recommendation like that?
I’m not quite sure where “Belle City” is–it seems to be an amalgation of several northeastern American cities, including quite a bit a bit of New York City, and maybe a little Boston.
Which makes sense–Whelton was born in Boston, and worked as a rewrite man on several large city newspapers himself. He wrote six books featuring Dean, including several for Graphic Books, one of the more notorious publishers of what Bill Pronzini has dubbed “alternative classics.”
UNDER OATH
- “Not pretty, but moves right along.”
— Kirkus Reviews on Call the Lady Indiscreet
NOVELS
- Death and the Devil (1944; aka “Flash-Hold for Murder”) | Buy this book
- Call the Lady Indiscreet (1946) | Buy this book
- Angels Are Painted Fair (1947; aka “Lures of Death”) | Buy this book
- Women Are Skin Deep (1948; aka “Uninvited Corpse”) | Buy this book
- Pardon My Blood (1950) | Buy this book
- In Comes Death (1951) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Stop the Presses!
Newsroom Eyes and Others Newshawks
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
