A REVIEW BY STEPHEN MERTZ:

CARTER BROWN – The Deadly Kitten.  Signet D3345; paperback original, December 1967. Horwitz #141, Australia, ppbk, July 1968.

CARTER BROWN The Deadly Kitten

   It now seems apparent that the mystery writing career of Australian Alan G. Yates has taken on a unique significance. Although Yates is still active under his real name in the science fiction field, as “Carter Brown” he produced 179 short novels between 1953-76, and it now appears that these books comprise not only one of the longest, but quite possibly the last series of hardboiled mysteries told in the humorous, decidedly tongue-in-cheek vein which was also, once upon a time, the specialty of such practitioners as Robert Leslie Bellem, Jonathan Latimer and Richard S. Prather.

   It’s too bad. There’s definitely a place for happy go-lucky, good-natured mayhem played more for smiles than anything else, and while I’m not forgetting Donald E. Westlake, there’s simply no one like Brown writing in the private eye field these days. And that’s a pity.

   Every Carter Brown novel was “typical.” One of Brown’s many series characters would take on an incredibly complex case populated by any number of sexy ladies and bad-ass men — all of whom generally hated each other’s guts and never missed an opportunity to say so, quite humorously at times — and while ratiocination was never the forte of Brown’s heroes, the case would always be satisfactorily wrapped up no later than page 128.

CARTER BROWN The Deadly Kitten

   The Deadly Kitten stars Hollywood “industrial consultant” Rick Holman — a hard drinking wise-cracker of a private eye of the Dan Turner/Shell Scott school — who takes an assignment from macho movie star Leonard Reid to try and quiet down one of Reid’s ex-live-in male lovers who is going around town making waves about Reid’s sexual habits.

   In most ways this too is a “typical” Brown, but Kitten is distinguished by a singularly colorful cast, some great dialogue and, for a change, the solving of a really twisty puzzle by actual deductive reasoning. And nobody has ever packed more plot twists into 125 pages, and still maintained narrative pace, like Carter Brown. The book is fast, lightweight and engaging.

   Recommended as top drawer “Brown” as well as a fine paperback quickie for those who like to read them at one sitting.

– From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979.