Fri 29 May 2020
Stories I’m Reading: MAX VAN DERVEER “Sam, the Secret Weapon.â€
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[15] Comments
MAX VAN DERVEER “Sam, the Secret Weapon.†Novelette. Desiree Fleming #2. First published in The Girl from UNCLE Magazine, October 1967. Reprinted in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual #3, 1973, as “The Secret Weapon.â€
I don’t know much about the author, Max Van Derveer. He never wrote a novel, but during the 1960s and 70s he wrote well over a hundred shot stories and novelettes for Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Shayne, including several of the lead stories about Shayne in the latter magazine.
Of a handful of those stories which featured recurring characters, three of them were about a female spy named Desiree Fleming. She’s still relatively new on the job in “Sam, the Secret Weapon,†or so it’s implied. She’s been given the assignment of protecting a nerd scientist, or so she believes, but by the end of the case, she’s learned in most definite fashion how wrong she was.
The story, while far from exceptional, is a deftly concocted mix of action and introspection. It’s a tale that can easily creep on you as you keep reading. At least it did me.
The fellow who runs the Spy Guys and Gals website has a profile on the entire series, even though there are only three, and at best all three are only novelettes. I don’t know much about Max Van Derveer. Any assistance would be most welcome.
The Desiree Fleming series –
“Why Not Bomb Las Vegas?†Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, April 1967.
“Sam, the Secret Weapon.†The Girl from UNCLE Magazine, October 1967
“The Courier.†The Girl from UNCLE Magazine, December 1967
May 30th, 2020 at 7:02 am
In a review of THE THIRD SEDUCTION by “Jack Lynn” (Rough Edges blog, November 22, 2013), James Reasoner writes:
“For a long time the identity of the author, Jack Lynn, wasn’t known, but Steve Mertz has done sleuthing and turned up strong evidence the Lyn was really Max van derVeer, an author who published several stories in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the Sixties. I seem to remember that he may have ghosted some of the Shayne stories in MSMM, too, but I could be wrong about that. I know he was living in Corpus Christie, Texas when he passed away in 1979. There’s no telling what other books he may have written under pseudonyms.”
May 30th, 2020 at 7:30 am
Here’s a list of the Tokey Wedge novels by “Jack Lynn” that I found on-line:
Broad Bait. Novel, 1960

Double Seduction. Novel, 1959

Forced Females. Novel, 1961

Loverboy! Novel, 1960

Mad for Kicks. Novel, 1960

Nympho Lodge. Novel, 1959
The Passion Pit. Novel, 1960

Tall and Torrid. Novel, 1961
Torrid Twins. Novel, 1960

Wholesale Seduction. Novel, 1961
White Hot Woman 1961
Wild Women. Novel, 1961

Women on the Loose. Novel, 1961
Ten Shockingest (sic) Seductions 1962
Three Passionate Sisters 1962
Desire in Duplicate 1963
They Were Too Much 1963
Four Insatiable Nymphs 1963
Night Nurse 1964
Three Kinds of Love 1964
Kandy 1965
I suspect that van derVeer wrote all of them, but I don’t know that for sure.
May 30th, 2020 at 10:18 am
Thanks, guys. I had no idea that van derVeer wrote these, nor after looking around the Web, has anyone else seem to have picked up on this, including Al Hubin or Kevin Burton Smith on his Thrilling Detective website. I’ll be sure to let them know.
May 30th, 2020 at 7:35 am
I vaguely remember reading the Desiree Fleming stories that were published in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine but didn’t know about the one in MSMM, which didn’t get very good distribution around here when I was a kid. I don’t think I ever saw an issue until sometime in the early Seventies.
May 30th, 2020 at 10:24 am
The issue of GIRL FROM UNCLE in which the third Desiree Fleming appeared was also the last one for the magazine. When it went defunct so ended her career. It’s too bad. van derVeer’s story was a whole lot better than that issue’s lead novel that April Dancer was in.
May 30th, 2020 at 11:27 pm
Somehow TGFU seemed a lot looser and more fun than the TMFU from the same publisher. I recall these stories fondly.
May 31st, 2020 at 12:41 am
You mean the magazine stories? It’s been a long time since I read one the MAN stories in them, but this issue just now was the first I’ve ever tried a GIRL story. I didn’t think it was very good. I was planning to review it, but I didn’t finish it.
May 31st, 2020 at 1:30 am
The over all feel was more playful for the GIRL book, though the central stories about April Dancer weren’t as well written as the ones about Solo and Kuryakin.
Was the Robert Hart Davis byline used for the Man From UNCLE stories as it was Charlie Chan?
May 31st, 2020 at 8:21 am
Here are the titles and authors of the GFU digest stories. Robert Hart Davis was the house name on all of them.
V1#1 December 1966 The Sheik of Araby Affair by Richard Deming
V1#2 February 1967 The Velvet Voice Affair by Richard Deming
V1#3 April 1967 The Burning Air Affair by I.G. Edmonds
V1#4 June 1967 The Deadly Drug Affair by Richard Deming
V1#5 August 1967 The Mesmering Mist Drug Affair by Charles Ventura
V1#6 October 1967 The Stolen Spaceman Affair by I.G. Edmonds
V2#1 December 1967 The Sinister Satellite Affair by I.G. Edmonds
May 31st, 2020 at 8:29 am
Here’s some more information about the mysterious I.G. Edmonds. I think “Charles Ventura” may have been an Edmonds pseudonym, but I don’t know that for sure. I’m not sure why anyone would use a pseudonym for a story that’s already going to appear under a house-name, but stranger things have happened.
May 31st, 2020 at 8:30 am
And of course I forgot to include the link:
https://pulpetti.blogspot.com/2008/01/ivy-gordon-edmonds.html
May 31st, 2020 at 9:33 am
Thanks, James. I wish the Girl story I read, or tried to, had been written by Richard Deming, rather than Edmunds (full name Ivy Gordon Edmonds). Dull and not very interesting is the best I could say for it.
I have to admit that it took me by surprise just now, James, to learn that he was a he, given his first name was Ivy. Crime fiction wise, he seems to have done the Tadasuke Ooka mysteries discussed on Juri’s blog, the 3 Girl’s and 2 Man’s, a couple of stories for SHELL SCOTT MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and again surprisingly, a few stories for the western pulps in the 1950s.
May 31st, 2020 at 9:09 pm
Late to the party (as usual!) but with a couple comments. I initially connected “Jack Lynn” (author of the Tokey Wedge novels)with der Veer because one of the novels James lists (Broad Bait) is not a Tokey novel but about agent Kevin Kar. Lo & behold there are are few Kevin Kar stories in MSMM that appeared under der Veer’s own name. I bought all of the Tokey novels new as they came out & most have moved on from my hands, but I do recall that about the last half dozen were in fact earlier ones. retitled. Frankly the series wasn’t such a much. Nowhere in the clsass of, say, Ennis Willie. Kind of a 3rd rate knockoff of Shell Scott & Carter Brown.
June 2nd, 2020 at 1:26 am
Thanks for the lead, Steve. I’m on it. I must have heard of Tokey at some point, because she’s on my list, but I’ll be damned if I can recall anything about the circumstances.
December 30th, 2020 at 4:56 pm
[…] come up before on this blog, almost entirely in the comments to another post, which you will find here. His real name was Max van derVeer, and there were about 20 in the […]