This entry began life as a comment by Juri Nummelin to the obituary I did last weekend for Tige Andrews of “Mod Squad” fame, followed by a reply of my own. The combination grew lengthy enough that I decided both comment and reply deserved a post of their own. Juri goes first:

   Wonder how the [Mod Squad] books by Richard Deming compare to his earlier. I’ve liked several of his late fifties crime paperbacks, especially HIT AND RUN (1960).

Deming

   My reply:

   That’s a good question, Juri, but it’s been way too long since I’ve read anything by Richard Deming to be able to say. I remember enjoying his early 50s PI novels with Manville Moon, and I did read one of the Mod Squad paperbacks when it came out, but you have to realize how long ago this was.

   I also remember even writing a review one of the Charlie’s Angels paperbacks he wrote as Max Franklin (and the late Ellen Nehr asking me why I was wasting my time reading crap like that).

   If you were to try to pin me down, what I recall of the Mod Squad book was that it followed the story line and the characters very well. Don’t know if I did any kind of comparison with anything else Deming had written, even at the time. I rather doubt it.

   In general, though, I think that when already established writers do media tie-in’s like these, their basic styles usually work their way through, even with the groovy language and the glitter and glamor of Angels’ hair they have to work with.

   It’s probably why Deming was hired so often to do them. (He did a couple of Dragnet adaptations, too.) He was able to capture the characters and the essence of the shows, but he also made sure there was a backbone of a story in whatever he wrote as well.