Sat 22 Sep 2018
An Archived GOLD MEDAL PI Mystery Review: RICHARD FOSTER – Bier for a Chaser.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[6] Comments
RICHARD FOSTER – Bier for a Chaser. Pete Draco #1. Gold Medal #899, paperback original; 1st printing, July 1959.
The only thing I found interesting about this book is its cover. There is little else to it. PI Pete Draco, from Miami Beach, is brash and ballsy but noticeably weaker when it comes to brainpower, and somehow beautiful babe simply flock to his bedroom. I’d be hard pressed to say why.
A syndicate kingpin has dies, and nearly a million dollars in gunrunning money has disappeared. (This was written back in the day when a guy named Castro was a folk hero.) This is boozy male fantasy fiction at either its worst or its finest — it is hard to say which.
Bibliographic Note: Richard Foster was but one of many pen names of Kendell Foster Crossen, best known perhaps under his M. E. Chaber byline for a long series of books about insurance investigator Milo March. Crossen wrote a total of seven mysteries as Foster, but only one was another Pete Draco adventure, that being Too Late for Mourning (Gold Medal, 1960).
September 22nd, 2018 at 8:38 pm
I generally like Crossen who did much better than this sounds in most works under most of his pseudonyms. Didn’t he also use Richard Foster for the Green Lama stories?
September 22nd, 2018 at 8:49 pm
Yes, you are correct about the Green Lama stories. I should have mentioned those, as they were certainly mystery stories. When they appeared in pulp magazine form they were listed as by Foster, but I *think* when Altus Press recently reprinted them, they used Crossen’s real name.
Also of interest, perhaps is that Crossen used the Foster name when he wrote THE REST MUST DIE, a SF novel published by Gold Medal, also in 1959.
September 22nd, 2018 at 8:59 pm
While browsing through the Internet just now, I came across a character created by Crossen names Manning Draco. According to the Thrilling Detective website, he was a “35th century intergalactic insurance investigator.” He appeared in seven short stories in THRILLING WONDER STORIES in the early 50s. Kevin Burton Smith also wonders if he was related in any way to Pete Draco, the PI in the book just reviewed.
September 22nd, 2018 at 8:51 pm
PS. Crossen’s Milo March stories, which I mentioned in my Bibliographic footnote, are generally quite good.
September 23rd, 2018 at 7:56 pm
He also wrote a fairly good spy series about one Kim O’Hara under his own name and a couple of Nero Wolfe pastiche about a Wolfe clone, at least one published as a digest.
Several issues of THRILLING WONDER with Manning Draco stories can be found on the INTERNET ARCHIVE in their Pulp Collection Archive.
September 23rd, 2018 at 9:14 pm
He wrote two of the three Kim Locke (not O’Hara) under his own name, the other as by Clay Richards. I’ve always meant to, but I’ve never read any of them.
I believe the characters in the Wolfe pastiches are Jason Jones and Necessary Smith. As you say, there were two of these, circa 1944-45, both digest paperback originals. Two more books I’ve always meant to read!