Samuel Todd

Created by Lawrence Sanders
(1920-98)

“The upper echelons of scientific research are as snaky a pit. The competition for private and federal funding is ruthless. Research scientists rush to publication, sometimes on the strength of palsied evidence. There’s no substitute for being first. Either you’re a discoverer, and your name goes into textbooks, or you’re a plodding replicator, and the Nobel Committee couldn’t care less.”
— cynical, much?

Smartass SAMUEL TODD is one of several field investigators for the New York-based Bingham Foundation. It’s his job to discover if potential recipients of the foundation’s sizable financial generosity, mostly for scientific research, are worthy of it.

Todd appears in The Sixth Commandment (1979), the first of Sanders’ “Commandment” series, all which feature New York investigators who work for large and powerful companies, looking into the various cracks in the facades of the rich and famous.

In this case, Todd is sent to Coburn, a  small town just north of New York City on the Hudson River, to look into the application for a grant made by a Nobel laureate who claims to be on the verge of a breakthrough. His field of research is the aging process, but something seems off, Todd decides. And so he digs deeper, while doing an awful lot of pondering, cigarette smoking, Scotch drinking and an occasional carnal interlude.

By most accounts, the weakest of the Commandment books, but if you like Todd, Definitely check out Mary Lou “Dunk” Bateson (The Eighth Commandment), Dora Conti (The Seventh Commandment) or Joshua Bigg (The Tenth Commandment). Sanders’s other NYC detectives include  Timothy Cone and Wolf Lannihan, but if you’re getting tired of the  Big Apple, try out the lighter-hearted adventures of the Sunshine State’s Archy McNally.

‘CAUSE THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO…

• “Thou shall not kill.”
  — Exodus 20:13

UNDER OATH

• “The erratic Mr. Sanders is at his tackiest here… Although Sanders pads like crazy—with Sam repeating his suspicions over and over, as well as with some divertingly vulgar sideshows—it’s always apparent that this is a moderately lively genre pulp (far less fully developed than the author’s Deadly Sin crime stories) masquerading as a best-seller. If not for the Sanders by-line, it wouldn’t have a prayer.”
  — Kirkus Reviews
• “There is too much two‐bit philosophy and moralizing in “The Sixth Commandment,” and the book could be cut by a third. Otherwise it is a competent job, smoothly written, observing all of the amenities. If only Mr. Sanders did not try so hard with his archetypes.”
  — Publishers Weekly

NOVELS

• The Sixth Commandment (1979) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Start Spreading the News…
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Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.