Tue 21 Jul 2020
Archived PI Mystery Review: DON TRACY – High, Wide and Ransom.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
DON TRACY – High, Wide and Ransom. Giff Speer #7. Pocket 80254, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1976.
Giff Speer, one-time member of a secret Military Police elite, now a run-of-the-mill private investigator, is embarrassed by a skyjacking he can’t lift a finger to stop. A stewardess is killed before his eyes, and it doesn’t go down very well. He also senses that the terrorists responsible are not really on their way to Algeria.
Speer is not the most cerebral agent around, but he soon becomes the center of a lot of action. Run of the mill.
Rating: C
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Bibliographic Notes: Tracy was the author of nine Giff Speer novels. I do not know when he stopped working as an undercover agent for the Military Police and became a PI working on his own, but even though he doesn’t have an entry in Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website, he deserves one.
For more on the author and his writing career (including a long list of Peyton Place sequels as by Roger Fuller in paperback) go here. One thing I did not realize until now is that the Don Tracy who wrote the Giff Speer paperbacks in the 1970s was the same Don Tracy who wrote four hardcover crime novels in the 1930s.
July 22nd, 2020 at 9:59 am
He had a pretty darn good career writing over 60 books and for more than 40 years. Not sure an author that is not a best seller can do that any more.
July 22nd, 2020 at 7:17 pm
Tracy wrote a genuine bestseller — or at least big seller — the mainstream novel THE BRASS RING.
Aside from Speer I think he also had another series either a hotel tec or a department store one, I don’t think I read any of those.
As Roger Fuller he wrote novelizations of movies and the television series THE FUGITIVE (Fear in a Desert Town) and BURKE’S LAW (2).
Was it Tracy who also wrote historical fiction as Peter Bourne? I know Bourne was a mystery writer.
The Speer novels are nothing special but some of those where he is still operating as a military policeman are good enough and he was usually reliable if not great.
There was a film or television adaptation of THE BRASS RING if I remember right.
July 22nd, 2020 at 8:01 pm
I think some of your questions might be answered by checking out that link I provided in the tacked on Update. I’ll take a look at what else I can find on him as soon as I can. (It won’t be tonight. It’s been a long day.)
July 23rd, 2020 at 9:37 pm
Answering some of your questions, David, one at a time:
Giff Speer was Don Tracy’s only series character. There was a character who who head of security for a luxury department store named named Don Cadee in a long series of books by Spencer Dean. That might be the one you’re thinking of.
I haven’t found any movie or TV adaptations of BRASS RING. One book he wrote that was made into a movie was CRISS CROSS, one the famous one form 149, the other called THE UNDERNEATH, from 1995.
Looking further on IMDB, I just found an episode on THRILLER that was based on the novel “The Big Blackout.” That may be what you are thinking of.
What’s strange about this book is that it was published on by the Detective Book Club, but as a single volume, not in one of their 3-in-1 volumes.
Don Tracy was not Peter Bourne, the man behind a slew of Bruce Graeme mysteries, among others.
He was, however, the man behind the Barnaby Ross pen name, as whom he did write historical fiction, three nov els, or so it seems.