Sat 23 Sep 2023
A 1001 Midnights PI Mystery Review: MALCOLM DOUGLAS – The Deadly Dames.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
by Art Scott
MALCOLM DOUGLAS – The Deadly Dames. Gold Medal #614, paperback, 1956. Reprinted by Stark House Press in a 2-for-1 edition with A Dum-Dum for the President, trade paperback, 2015, as by Douglas Sanderson.
There were innumerable private-eye novels that saw print as paperback originals in the Fifties and Sixties. While many, perhaps most, were routine and forgettable, the intrepid reader will occasionally come across a real sleeper, like this book by the Canadian writer Douglas Sanderson, writing as Malcolm Douglas.
Bill Yates. easygoing Montreal private eye, takes on what looks to be a simple case of spy-on-the-straying-spouse. But before he even starts work, the client’s rich aunt tries to buy him off, and she promptly goes down under the wheels of a streetcar. Not long after that. two emissaries from the local gambling czar stick him up in his office, looking for a missing will. One day and three or four corpses later, Yates is being pursued by the crooks, the cops, several double-crossing dames, and an Amazon Russian housemaid with romantic notions.
The action is furious and headlong, culminating with a naked Yates being chased through the Canadian woods while being eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes. Along the way. Yates sets the world record for the greatest number of people to get the drop on a private eye in the course of a Gold Medal paperback.
Douglas’s style is classic don’t-take-it-seriously private-eye material: wry, observant. and a bit gaudy — and perhaps just on the edge of parody. Radio detective fans will find it reminiscent of the marvelous scripts Richard Breen used to write for tough guy Jack Webb in Pat Novak for Hire. Exceptionally entertaining.
The other Malcolm Douglas Gold Medal originals — Rain of Terror (1956), Pure Sweet Hell (1957), and Murder Comes Calling (1958) — are less successful but still good reading. The best of Sanderson’s novels under his own name is probably Mark It for Murder (1959).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
Bibliographic Update: Technically this was the only book Sanderson wrote about Montreal-based PI Bill Yates, but on his Thrilling Detective website Kevin Burton Smith points out that Sanderson wrote three other novels about Yates as Martin Brett, except that in those books, Yates was called Mike Garfin. Here’s the tally:
The Mike Garfin series —
From https://thrillingdetective.com/2020/10/07/mike-garfin/
Hot Freeze (1954)
The Darker Traffic (1954)
The Deadly Dames (1956; by Malcolm Douglas) Mike is called Bill Yates in this one, for contractual reasons.
A Dum-Dum for the President (1961)
September 23rd, 2023 at 9:43 pm
Many of the Sanderson books are available at decent prices on Kindle. All are fun and well worth reading most in the wry voice discussed in the review.
He is fun to read, which is a good review of any largely paperback original author.
September 23rd, 2023 at 9:59 pm
Art had me as soon as he mentioned PAT NOVAK, maybe the best PI show ever on radio. I have the book, and I even know what box it’s in. The problem is, where’s the box?
September 23rd, 2023 at 10:23 pm
Several of his books have recently been republished, with original cover art, by Véhicule Press in Canada.
September 23rd, 2023 at 11:05 pm
Thanks, David. I found these:
HOT FREEZE http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550654004
BLONDES ARE MY TROUBLE http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550654240
I found only the two, but perhaps more are in the works. The covers are nice.
September 24th, 2023 at 4:02 am
How lovely to revisit something from the Emperor! Thanks for sharing it.