Thu 8 Jan 2026
GEORGE BAGBY – Dirty Pool. Inspector Schmidt #34. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1966. Curtis, paperback, date?
The transit strike New York City recently suffered through brings forth a mystery, initially so tense that it isn’t even noticed that the victim has no name!
Trapped in in the rain in the midst of ignoring traffic, a girl is placed in a commandeered automobile by a sympathetic policeman. To say it was against the wishes of the driver is an understatement – a fourth man in the car has just been fatally stabbed, and now the killers have both a corpse and a witness to worry about.
Her escape brings her in contact with bumbling Bagby, and nothing can convince her that he is not one of the gang. Even Inspector Schmidt loses her confidence with his friendship with Bagby, adding to her problems.
The tale as told is a bit contradictory with respect to the girl’s cool behavior in the car and her later hysterical fears – but can it be justified as being “just like a woman”? Accept the basic premise, and you will have a lot lively reading ahead of you.
Rating: ****½
January 9th, 2026 at 1:41 am
I am the only person I know who likes the books Aaron Marc Stein (George Bagby’s real name) wrote over the years as much as I do, or did while he was still writing them. He could take one small clue found in a bedroom, say, and fill two pages of the book talking about it. He was a natural born writer. He may not have had the same deft hand with his plots, but I always found the stories clever and interesting.
But I haven’t read anything by him in a long time. I still have quite a few of his books. I’m going to check him out and see if I still feel the same way.
January 9th, 2026 at 12:08 pm
I read a bunch of the Bagby books when I was in high school and loved them. I didn’t enjoy his Matt Erridge novels as much, but they were okay. The only thing I’ve read by him in recent years is the first book in the series he did as Hampton Stone, and again, it was okay. I really ought to read one of the Bagby books again. It was so long ago they’d all be new to me now.
January 9th, 2026 at 1:33 pm
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who remembers reading Stein/Bagby/Stone, even if you rated some of them as only OK. His books were a big seller for me back in the mid-70s when I was a small-time mail-order paperback entrepreneur. I couldn’t keep them in stock. They always sold immediately.
January 9th, 2026 at 1:44 pm
I still haven’t come up with a cover image of either the hardcover or paperback edition of this book. One I can use, I mean. I’ve found images of each, but I had problems copying either one. I’ll have to try again. Maybe I was just having a bad night.