Here’s something that caught my eye a few days ago. A book just out from mystery writer Allison Brennan is entitled Fear No Evil. As it turns out, it’s part of a one-two-three punch in a series of crime novels connected by title and characters:

      Speak No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Jan 30 2007) Homicide detective Carina Kincaid.

      See No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Feb 27 2007) Private eye Connor Kincaid.

      Fear No Evil (Ballantine, pbo, Mar 27, 2007) Forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid.

   What caught my eye was none of above, however. Not the titles, not the characters, not the quick time frame in which the books were published.

   It was this:

   A book by Alice Brennan with the same title as the third in Allison Brennan’s series of books, Fear No Evil, was published by Lancer in 1970. As I’m sure you can tell from the cover, Alice Brennan’s book is a gothic romance. Allison Brennan’s book, to put it in a category, might be called a psychological thriller — but then again, perhaps that’s what those old gothics have somewhat evolved into — books that are called either romantic suspense or psychological thrillers.

   Here’s Allison Brennan’s reaction when I emailed her about my find:

   Looking up Alice Brennan in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, here’s her complete entry. It’s easy to tell that most of her books, if not all of them, fall in the “gothic” category:

BRENNAN, ALICE (1913-1973) Born in St. Louis; has been dancer, hat-check girl, secretary; living in Avoca, Michigan, in 1960s.

   And here’s something else you can do with CFIV. You can look up titles:

      # Fear No Evil • Leigh Brackett • (n.) (Corgi, 1960, pb) See: The Tiger Among Us (Doubleday 1957).

      # Fear No Evil • Alice Brennan • (n.) (Lancer, 1967, pb)

      # Fear No Evil • John Gordon Davis • (n.) (Collins, 1982, hc)

   I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been able to come up with a cover for Leigh Brackett’s book, not even of the original US title. Here’s a short synopsis, however: “The Tiger Among Us (1957) was a story of a citizen-turned-vigilante, who seeks to revenge himself on a gang of juvenile delinquents; it was filmed as 13 West Street starring Alan Ladd.”

   A quick summary of the Davis book: “This is an epic story of the most dramatic theft of our time, of two extraordinary men, Davey and Charlie, circus hands, who try to return their animals to freedom.”

   And just for completeness, a description of Alice Brennan’s book, taken from the back cover: “When Margaret Blyeth came back to the lake country of her childhood seeking proof that she was not responsible for the death of a man who had claimed to love her, she quickly came under the spell of Mom Pet .. and just as quickly found herself enmeshed in a web of terror!”

   From Allison Brennan’s website: “In cyperspace, no one can hear you scream… Five years ago FBI agent Kate Donovan took on a sadistic killer and lost. Now running from her own government in order to prove her innocence in another girl’s gruesome murder, Kate teams with forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid to find the killer’s chamber of horrors before Dillon’s sister Lucy is slaughtered live on the Internet.”

   Four books, one title, four totally different stories.

FOOTNOTE. The date stated for this book in CFIV, 1967, has been discovered to be an error. Another error exists in Graham Holroyd’s Paperback Prices and Checklist, which incorrectly lists Lancer number 74660 as Litany of Evil, which came earlier [74-580].