Burns Bannion

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Created by Earl Norman
Pseudonym of Norman Thomson)
(1915-2000)

Is he turning Japanese?

I really think so…

BURNS BANNION is an American GI who went native, remaining in occupied Tokyo to study Karate and chase after large-breasted Asian women after World War II.

He became a private op entirely by accident in the series debut, Kill Me in Tokyo (1958), when he was mistaken by a drunken American (in a strip joint, no less) for a real private investigator from California. He went on to work the “private eye bit” in a string of popular paperback originals written by Earl Norman in the late fifties and early sixties.

In Burns’ case, one or two cover blurbs are worth a thousand words. They tout the ex-pat as a “blood brother to Shell Scott and Mike Hammer” (though more Hammer than Scott) who “keeps running into his two favorite pastimes — gorgeous girls and deadly killers.” Racial stereotypes abound, and I’m sure even back then more than a few readers might have cringed at such phrases as “slant-eyed babes” or the way almost all Asians speak in stilted, pronoun-free pidgin English.

Still, if you can get past the political-incorrectness of it all, these are enjoyably fast-paced and action-packed, albeit definitely veering into the so-bad-it’s-good school of detective writing. No wonder Bill Pronzini had so much fun taking a couple pot potshot at him in Son of Gun in Cheek.

Say “Cheese!” and leave your brains at the door.

I really think so…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Earl Norman was actually Norman Thomson, a radio, stage and film actor who worked as an entertainment supervisor for U.S. military bases in the Far East after the second World War, and ended up living there for thirty years in Tokyo. A late addition to the Burns Bannion series, Kill Me in Hong Kong, supposedly was published in 1976, but I’ve never found any trace of it.

UNDER OATH

  • “What I have always found interesting was that Mr. Norman was the first novelist, in my reading and to my research, to use Kara-te as a plot device. Since I started my study of the art in November of 1958, I was acutely aware of the significance when I saw the first one show up on the rack at my local bookshop.”
    —  Geoffrey Krauss

NOVELS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Al and Dale for putting me straight on this one. And Geoffrey wants to let it be known that he wouldn’t mind getting in touch with other Bannionites. The pictured cover is by Robert A. Maguire, who did most of the covers for the Burns Bannion series.

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