Mr. Dixon has but one title to his credit in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. His entry, as it presently stands, is as follows:

   DIXON, J. EARLE
       Killers in the Sun (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1960, hc) [Spain] Abelard-Schuman (New York), 1961.

   The book was published as part of Abelard-Schuman’s largely unknown and vastly under-rated “Raven Book” line of mysteries. You should be able to pick out the logo on the lower right portion of the front cover — that of a raven standing (and pecking) on a human skull.

Killers in the Sun


   Story synopsis, from inside the front cover:

    “Spain is a country of slums, green groves, blue skies, castanets, nightingales, cats and the most beautiful women you will find anywhere. You can have your big-eyed, blue-eyed blonde. Give me the black-eyed, swarthy Spanish maid. For preference in the middle-twenties. When she has perfected her poise and sun hasn’t begun to ravage her skin. To see a lady of Spain ride in the evening, with a rose in her hair and heaven in her eyes, is something a lover of nature shouldn’t miss.

    “But then I was only in their midst a little while.

    “This Larrabee case which brought me to Spain kept me there a matter of thirty days. That isn’t much time in which to study a nation. But I didn’t go there as a student; my job was to save First National (Australia) being gypped for three hundred thousand pounds. Which in my currency, is twenty-five per cent over sterling and is more than I earn in a month …”

    But thirty days were long enough for insurance man Dixon to involve himself in the world of the bull ring, of the glamour of the peerless bull-fighter Senorita Rosita Romero, of failed matador Martelli and the more deadly world of the luscious Faith Larrabee, of the mysterious painter Ramsey, worlds which overlapped and which provided the answer to the riddle of Clive Larrabee’s suicide in this tough, fast-moving story.

   If you couldn’t quite tell, or if you really weren’t sure, telling the story is Earle Dixon himself, a brash young insurance investigator from Sydney, which in essence qualifies him as a Private Eye in almost anyone’s book. That the author and the main character are one and the same makes one wonder about the author — a pen name?

   Author information, from inside the back cover:

    The author of Killers in the Sun is an Australian who made up his mind at an early age to see the rest of the world first. He has travelled since he was fifteen; has been twice round the world and, since he was twenty, has each year visited at least one “foreign” country. J.E.D. lives on the Blue Mountain ridge, near Katoomba, where exists, he says, one of the most exciting views in New South Wales.

    J. Earle Dixon writes of insurance because he knows it; he began his working career with a South African insurance concern in his youth. He has been married three times but isn’t working at it now; he claims women are unpredictable and unreliable.

    He has two paramount desires — to direct films and write for the Saturday Evening Post.

   Unfortunately, so far as I’ve been able to discover, he hasn’t, neither one, or at least not under that name. As usual, more information, if you have it, would be welcome.