Tue 7 Oct 2025
Archived PI Mystery Review: WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – County Kill.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – County Kill. PI Brock (the Rock) Callahan #6. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1962. Charter, paperback, 1988.
PI Brock (the Rock) Callahan’s client in this case is a small boy whose father has disappeared and (unknown to him) is suspected of murdering his partner in crime. What the crime is, nobody is saying, and the San Valdesto city police seem to be overly involved.
Note the title. San Valdesto is a town split between millionaires on one side, and poverty row on the other. Everyone is very money conscious, and it interferes with the investigation. Callahan has the right instincts, however, and eventually they pay off.
— Reprinted from Mystery.File.4, March 1988.
October 8th, 2025 at 4:48 pm
I was a big fan of William Campbell Gault. I started early by reading some of his Young Adult novels–DIRT TRAIL SUMMER and THUNDER ROAD–and eventually graduating to Brock Callahan and Joe Puma.
October 8th, 2025 at 6:44 pm
Gault was reasonably popular back when he was writing, but I think he’s pretty much forgotten now. It happens. I enjoyed his PI books, but they never were as hardboiled as those by quite a few other writers. Not that it matters, of course, but that’s how I remember them.
October 12th, 2025 at 2:43 am
His pulp works is fairly easy to find since it came fairly late in the game and many of the pulps he wrote for can be found online. Both Callahan and Puma are available in easy to find eBook editions.
Tough as the Puma stories are (I was reading a Puma novella in MANHUNT just yesterday coincidentally) Callahan is more moderate than hard-boiled.
Ken Clark played BROCK CALLAHAN in a half hour pilot available on YouTube.