Thu 25 Sep 2014
MAX CARTER – Call Me Killer! Avon A542, paperback original, 1953.
The damnedest thing I’ve read in a long time (is the title an homage to Melville or Merman?) not least because I can’t find any references to “Max Carter” and I can’t say whether he wrote anything else, used another pen name or just appeared, dropped this bombshell and stole softly into the pulp-paper night.
The story starts with the narrator, Ed Dirke, a one-time successful playwright being released from prison after a seven-year stretch for murdering his girlfriend. In a quick flashback, Dirke tells us how his brother Carl manipulated him into the killing, and lets us know he’s out to settle things Old-Testament-style with a life for a life.
Turns out Dirk’s brother won’t play Abel to his Cain all that easily though; Carl is a big-time buyer-and-seller of anything profitable, and he’s surrounded himself with a lot of big and well-armed disciples, as well as a few well-cantilevered dames with moves that would make a Bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window, as the man says.
Come to think of it, there’s only one woman in the whole book who keeps her clothes on for more than a couple pages, and like a hero out of Spillane, Dirke is what they call “sexually active” these days whenever he’s not being beaten up, bound, shot-at or merely propositioned.
Pretty standard stuff so far, but Dirke isn’t your average paperback tough-guy. He’s more writer than fighter, and his relationship with his brother borders on the unnatural. He’s also subject to blackouts, and his actions take a turn very early on that changes the reader’s whole outlook on the tale as we realize that our hero may be hallucinating as much as he’s narrating.
I won’t give any more away, except to say that the action is routine paperback riot, no better or worse than a dozen other hard-boiled histories, but Carter puts a subversive enough edge to it that I wish I knew who-the-hell he was.
September 26th, 2014 at 8:24 am
Al Hubin has no information as to who “Max Carter” might be. The book was reprinted in Australia in paperback in 1955 by Phantom Books under the title KILL CRAZY. There is a book by Max Carter published in Swedish as “Räkning att betala : detektivroman” with a date of 1968, which may be this one. Google suggests that the title translates to “Bill to Pay.”
The book was copyright under the author’s name with a given date of 13 Nov 1953. My guess is that Mac Carter is a pen name, but if he is someone known to us otherwise, I have no idea.
September 26th, 2014 at 8:38 am
I note that B. V. Lawson has included CALL ME KILLER! in this week’s list of Friday’s Forgotten Books, and this book certainly qualifies. Other than Dan, I wonder how people have actually read it in the past 60 years?
Of course, as soon as I find my copy, I’ll read it right away. But of course, come to think of it, it might be quicker to buy a buy another one.
The complete list:
http://inreferencetomurder.typepad.com/my_weblog/2014/09/ffb-she-shall-have-murder-and-all-the-other-links.html
September 26th, 2014 at 2:53 pm
This almost sounds as if it was intended as a satire on Spillane if not a commentary. I’ll add it to my list of the more obvious Spillane imitators and followers.
Max Carter might well have been a more mainstream writer or non genre related writer ‘slumming’ to either cash in or send up the Spillane style. Then too it might have been a one off by one of Avon’s regulars who didn’t want to be associated with it.
September 26th, 2014 at 5:38 pm
“Max Carter” may have been a “name” author slumming, but the book is not one that any of Avon’s regular authors would have been ashamed of.
September 26th, 2014 at 6:03 pm
I’m guessing Dennis Lynds. He was just starting out in the early ’50s and later wrote under the names of MAXwell Grant and Nick CARTER. Well, it’s possible….
November 21st, 2024 at 10:01 pm
“Max Carter” was author Morton Cooper. All is pseudonym shared his same initials. He was also including Mike Crane, Mark Clements, and Mavis Cromwell.
November 21st, 2024 at 11:43 pm
Aha! Finally. Now we know. Thanks, Lee!