Created by Peter Graaf
Pseudonym of Samuel Youd
Other pseudonyms John Christopher, Hilary Ford, Peter Nichols, Stanley Winchester, William Godfrey, William Vine, and Anthony Rye
(1922-2012)
Tagged on the back cover as the “private eye with a public past,” straight outta Brooklyn JOE DUST has somehow landed in London, England, where he’s manning a one-man detective agency. Thanks to an accent her can’t quite shake, he becomes the go-to guy for visiting Americans who find themselves in a bit of a jam.
Like former GI Louie Oswicz, who seems to have misplaced his wife Shirley years ago, and wants Joe to find his son, in the series debut Dust and the Curious Boy (1957), written by British sci-fi scribe Samuel Youd under the pseudonym of Peter Graaf.
Yep, it’s yet another “tough guy thriller” penned in the U.K., by an author trying to “talk American.” According to a 1958 review in a sci-fi fanzine, “Dust runs around like a ham-fisted scalded hen trying to trace an ex- G.I.’s long lost son. It was notable for its fast pace, its hard-boiled dialogue and complete lack of logical progression in plotting,” but then insists “It was worth reading, however, if only to see what a science fiction author could manage in the detective field… Before you get the idea fixed in your noodle that (the author) is out of his depth writing about murders and beatings up and murders and beatings up, let me hasten to add that both these books are extremely readable. They are definitely of the type which demand an effort on part of the reader to put them down. The action is fast and the dialogue is never dull, to say the least.”
To say the least…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Primarily known as a writer of science fiction under his pen name of John Christopher, Sam Youd‘s novels in that genre include The Death of Grass, The Possessors, and the much-loved young-adult novel series The Tripods. He won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize in 1971 and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1976. But he also wrote a ton of other novels in a variety of genre under such pen names as Stanley Winchester, Hilary Ford, William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Nichols, and Anthony Rye. As Peter Graaf he wrote the Joe Dust trilogy, as well as a standalone crime novel The Gull’s Kiss.
UNDER OATH
- “I can’t help feeling that even those among you who normally don’t like detective stories will go overboard for this.”
— Penelope Fandergaste in The Old Mill Stream (1958) - “There were three Joe Dust P.I. Novels. Give the Devil His Due was the first and I liked it from 1957. An American living and working in London.”
— The OK Tire Guy
NOVELS
- Dust and the Curious Boy (1957; aka “Give the Devil His Due”) | Buy this book
- Daughter Fair (1958) | Buy this book
- The Sapphire Conference (1959) | Buy this book
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
