Eve, It's Extortion By Carter Brown

Eve, It's Extortion
By Carter Brown
Horwitz, 1957

Al Wheeler investigates an accident with a suspiciously high insurance payout. I appreciate how Wheeler isn't a particularly smart detective, he just waits for the bad guys to try and kill him, or waits until he runs out of characters for suspects. At least in this era of Brown, each story has a woman Wheeler recruits and/or sleeps with, putting her in danger.

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The Stripper - Man of Steel

 I read that Richard O'Brien wrote a musical based on the detective stories of Carter Brown in 1982. I worried that this was one of those things that I would never experience in life. Until I listened to a couple songs.  I think I'll be ok.

And the Undead Sing by Carter Brown

And the Undead Sing
by Carter Brown
1974 Signet

I have a weakness for Aussies and Brits doing hard-boiled American detective fiction, something about how they overdo the slang.  I've read one Carter Brown before and enjoyed it - it was a light, funny, fast moving detective story.

This one, not so much.  This was the last of the Mavis Seidlitz stories.  Mavis is the ditsy secretary of a private eye who stumbles her way to accidentally solving cases, while getting kidnapped, beat up, and sexually menaced along the way.  This kind of thing doesn't age well, and even by 1974 I'm sure it was wearing thin.

Here, Mavis is pretending to be a reclusive singer to lure out the mob figures who want to force her to sign a recording contract.  Most of the plot involves her panties being pulled down to see if she has or doesn't have a tattoo.

Doesn't work as a mystery, not particularly funny, and didn't even have the charm of leaning into the "pop-speak" of those way-out rockers.

Paperback from Amazon