Pete Sawyer

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Created by Marvin H. Albert
Pseudonyms include Mike Barone, J.D. Christilain, Al Conroy, Albert Conroy, Ian MacAlister, Nick Quarry, Anthony Rome
(1924-96)

PIERRE-ANGE “PETE” SAWYER, is an American ex-pat living and working on the French Riviera as a hard-boiled private eye. He first appeared in the 1978 hardcover The Dark Goddess, working as a well-connected and coldly efficient corporate investigator specializing in industrial espionage on the French, Riviera who gets tangled up in a messy battle between the CIA and KGB. It’s a spirited romp, full of Cold War hijinks, but I don’t think the phrase “Stone Angel” — the nickname later bestowed upon Sawyer and the subsequent series — ever appears in the book.

But it certainly appeared eight years later, when Albert resurrected Sawyer in the 1986 paperback Stone Angel, this time as a partner in a Paris-based detective agency with Fritz Donhoff. The book served as the more formal kick-off for a subsequent series of pulpy paperbacks which make ample use of the French setting, and where he’s endlessly billed on Amazon as “a private eye of a different kind.”

We also get more background on Sawyer. We learn he’s the son of James Sawyer, a WWII tail gunner from Chicago, who died before Pete was born, and Babette “a brave French resistance fighter” (of course), and that he grew up on both sides of the Atlantic. He went to school and worked for a while as a cop in Chicago and served in Vietnam before relocating to France. He has a small apartment in Paris, but spends most of his time in his villa on the Riviera, close to Monaco, where he enjoys a good wine (very French, la), a good cappuccino, and a good gun (tres American). And, when he’s lucky, a little fun with his long-time on-and-off girlfriend. Arlette Alfani, a sexy (naturalment) high profile attorney.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A prolific writer (also, alas, admittedly also something of a hack at times), Albert has written as J. D. Christilian, Anthony Rome and Nick Quarry). Probably his best known character is Tony Rome, which later became a film vehicle for Frank Sinatra, but he has also created other eyes, including Harp and Jake Barrow, which many regard as his best work. And he’s been known to write quite a few quite decent Westerns (several of which came very close to hard-boiled/noir territory) as well.

Albert served in World War II in the United States Merchant Marine as a radio operator, and upon his return stateside, he directed a Philadelphia children’s theater troupe. He moved to New York in 1950 and began writing and editing for Quick and Look magazines, and began writing full time, spurred on by the success of his 1956 Western novel The Law and Jake Wade. Thus began a long and successful writing career as a paperback writer, working in a variety of genres under a variety of pseudonyms. In the early 1980’s, Albert moved to France, where he was widely admired, and lived there until his death in 1996. After his death, a collection of short stories by French writers was published, as a literary “hommage” to Albert.

NOVELS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

THE DICK OF THJE DAY

  • October 20, 2026
    THE BOTTOM LINE: Ooh-la-la. The son of an American tail gunner in WWII and a French resistance fighter, this tough guy ex-pat is a partner in a Paris-based detective agency, but prefers to spend his time at his villa on the French Riviera, in the “Stone Angel” series of hard-boiled, pulpy paperbacks from the eighties. Like, who wouldn’t?
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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