Created by Mike Brett
(aka Michael Brett)
(1921-2000)
But all bets are off Sam, a schlub not exactly blessed with good looks (he likens himself to “a poor man’s Yul Brynner”), is forced to step up when he spots a woman being assaulted in Scream Street (1959), and ends up in a world of trouble.
The same year, he returned in The Guilty Bystander, where another dame (of course) leads him into trouble. Each was originally published as half of an Ace Double, and each sported a pretty decent cover. I particularly like the former, which featured a great painting by Bernard Barton of a guy stretched out on a couch, just trying to chill (Sam with a healthy head of hair?) and being interrupted by some babe in a dress brandishing a gun…
I hate when that happens.
There was even a bit of mystery about exactly who Mike Brett was. Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV claims it’s a pseudonym of Leslie Frederick Brett, but provided no other information. Rory Brett, however, claims Mike Brett is his father, Michael Brett, better known for ten novels he wrote a few years later about private eye Pete McGrath, which were similarly rather goofy, albeit a lot more hard-boiled. The Sam Dakkers novels were his his first published books.
“My dad wrote the Sam Dakkers books when I was growing up,” Rory recalls, “on an old Underwood electric typewriter that weighed about a ton in our back bedroom, and my mother retyped it on the dining room table on a Smith Corona typewriter… He smoked cigars while he wrote, and the smoke would be billowing out from under the door. I remember the dozen books that he got from the publisher when it was released. I don’t know who Leslie Frederick Brett is, but he definitely wasn’t a relative.”
Rory explains, “”My dad actually started wrting on a bet. Scott Meredith, a friend of my father who was a literary agent recommended a book for him to read. My dad said this is terrible, I could write better than this. Scott said if you do I will try and get it published. So my dad wrote a short story and it was published in a magazine, I think it was called Battle Cry. The rest, as they say, was history.”
NOVELS
- Scream Street (1959) | Buy this book | Kindle it
- The Guilty Bystander (1959) | Buy this book
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. A special thank you to Rory Brett for his patience and understanding.
