Thu 8 Feb 2007
Richard Deming, Hit and Run, & media tie-in’s.
Posted by Steve under Authors , TV mysteries[2] Comments
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:
My reply:
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.
February 8th, 2007 at 9:15 am
The Manville Moons aren’t to my mind the best of Richard Deming and I much prefer his one-off paperbacks, such as the one I mentioned. There’s also FALL GIRL from 1959. I think both of these came out from smaller outfits, such as Zenith. Umm, no, HIT AND RUN came from Pocket Books in 1960. Based on my notes it seems I also liked SHE’LL HATE ME TOMORROW (Monarch 1963) and DEATH OF A PUSHER (Pocket Books 1964). The latter has some McBainian qualities. As for the Manny Moons, I seem to have liked TWEAK THE DEVIL’S NOSE (Rinehart 1953) better than WHISTLE PAST THE GRAVEYARD (1954).
I seem to remember someone saying that Deming’s Dragnet novelizations are pretty good. Don’t recall who it was, though. It’s maybe in the St. James reference book. There’s an entry for Deming.
Deming did also non-fiction works later on his career, such as a book on sleeping and dreams.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Do you have any biographical info on Richard Deming?