Carter Brown

Carter Brown was the literary pseudonym of Alan Geoffrey Yates (1 August 1923 – 5 May 1985), an English-born Australian writer of detective fiction.[1]

For the former Director of the US National Gallery of Art, see J. Carter Brown.

Alan Geoffrey Yates
Alan Geoffrey Yates visiting Finland in 1964.
Born(1923-08-01)1 August 1923
Ilford England
Died5 May 1985(1985-05-05) (aged 61)
Cremorne, Sydney, Australia
OccupationNovelist
The Blonde by Carter Brown
Cover art by Robert E. McGinnis.

Career

Born in England, Alan Yates married and settled in Australia in 1948. He began his working life as a film technician, a salesman and in public relations for Qantas before taking up writing full-time.

Yates soon became a literary phenomenon. He wrote westerns under the pseudonym Todd Conway, and science fiction under Paul Valdez. He even found the time to write books under various versions of his own name as well as other pseudonyms, Dennis Sinclair and Sinclair MacKellar. But it was his pseudonym Peter Carter Brown then later, Carter Brown ('Peter' was dropped for the US market) who was to become the international best-selling pulp fiction author.

The extraordinary early success of Carter Brown in the 1950s meant that Yates was contracted to produce one short novel and two long novels each month. In reality, Yates was truly prolific with 322 published Carter Brown novels, including multiple series variously featuring protagonists Mike Farrell, Andy Kane, Mavis Seidlitz, Lt. Al Wheeler, Rick Holman, Danny Boyd, Larry Baker, Zelda Roxanne, et al. Yet despite the enormity of his output, a 1963 profile in Pix magazine revealed he approached deadlines 'with the reluctance of a long-distance swimmer shivering on the brink of a cold, grey English Channel. In the manic depressive moments of the third night without sleep – when the deadline is long past and the mental block has set solid as concrete, the writer inevitably descends into self-analysis. He knows, of course, that it will be no more help than the last Dexedrine tablet but still clings to the naïve hope that, somehow, sometime, he will find a way of avoiding the recurrence of his present hopeless situation.’

His books, originally published by Horwitz and Signet, were set in the United States and published throughout the anglophone world. In its obituary for Yates in 1985, The New York Times noted that he had written "some 30 detective novels with American backgrounds before ever having visited the United States ... He said he chose American settings because Australians preferred them."

A rumour spread at the height of his popularity that Yates was one of John F. Kennedy's favourite authors – a rumour which helped propel his sales even further in the North American market.

The novels were also popular in Europe where they were translated into French, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Finnish, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch. In Asia, some of the novels were translated into Thai and Japanese.

Carter Brown's huge international success saw reportedly 120 million books in print, second only to The Bible in terms of the number of languages into which they were translated. The success of the books also spawned a comic book series, the 'Carter Brown Murder Mystery Hour' on radio, three French films, a Japanese TV series, and a French literary award for 'The most whiskies drunk in a single novel'.

In the early 1980s, Yates and Richard O'Brien of The Rocky Horror Show fame wrote a musical of The Stripper, described in classic Carter Brown terminology as 'the girl who says it all from the neck down'.

Yates died of a heart attack in 1985 in Sydney. In 1997, he was posthumously awarded a Ned Kelly, Australia's leading literary award for crime writing, for his lifelong contribution to the art.

C. J. McKenzie

C. J. McKenzie, an editor for Horwitz, was commissioned to write ten of the Carter Brown novels while Yates was overseas in 1958. [2] McKenzie also wrote crime books as Mike Boon and war novels as Michael Owen.

Awards

Series characters

Lt. Al Wheeler series

Homicide investigator in fictional Pine County, LA

- The Wench Is Wicked (1956)
- Blonde Verdict (1956) (US title "The Brazen"). When a lawyer drops dead at Al Wheeler's feet, poisoned with curare, nobody who knew the guy cares, so everyone is a suspect.
- Delilah Was Deadly (1956)
- No Harp For My Angel (1956)
- Booty For A Babe (1956)
- Eve, It's Extortion (1956) (US title "The Victim")
- No Law Against Angels (1957) (US title "The Body")
- The Blonde (1958).
- The Corpse (1958).
- The Lover (1959).
- The Mistress (1959).
- The Dame (1959).

- The Bombshell (1960). A previous shorter version was "Doll for the Big House".
- The Hellcat (1962). Trying to identify a pickled head in a jar lands Al Wheeler between an entitled family and a pair of gangsters, one dubbed "The Creeping Terror".
- The Dumdum Murder (1962).
- Girl in a Shroud (1963).
- The Lady is Available (1963).
- A Corpse for Christmas (1965).
- Until Temptation Do Us Part (1967).
- The Up-Tight Blonde (1969).

- Wheeler, Dealer! (1975).

Rick Holman series

Private detective based in Hollywood

- The Never-Was Girl (1964).
- Blonde on a Broomstick (1966).
- Die Anytime, After Tuesday! (1969).

- The Hang-Up Kid (1970).
- The Coven (1971).
- The Pornbroker (1972).
- Ride the Roller Coaster (1975).

Danny Boyd series

Private eye in New York

The Dream is Deadly (1960).
Catch Me a Phoenix! (1965).
The Black Lace Hangover (1966).
The Mini-Murders (1968).
Death to a Downbeat (1980).

Mavis Seidlitz series

Tough female private eye

Larry Baker series

1 Charlie Sent Me! (November 1963) [rewritten from "Swan Song for a Siren", 1955]
2 No Blonde Is an Island (1965)
3 So What Killed the Vampire? (1966)
4 Had I But Groaned (1968)
5 True Son of the Beast! (1970)
6 The Iron Maiden (1975)

Randy Roberts series

1 Murder in the Family Way (August 1971)
2 The Seven Sirens (1972)
3 The Angry Amazons (1972) w/Danny Boyd
4 Murder on High (1973)
5 Sex Trap (1975)

Paul Donovan series

1 Donavan (February 1974)
2 Donavan's Day (1975)
3 Chinese Donavan (1976)
4 Donavan's Delight (1979)

Andy Kane series

1 The Lady's Alive! (August 1953)
2 The Hong Kong Caper (1962) [rewritten from "Blonde, Bad, and Beautiful", 1957]
3 Bird in a Guilt-Edged Cage (1963), (US and UK title The Guilt-Edged Cage (1962) [rewritten from "That's Piracy, My Pet", 1957]

Mike Farrell series

1 The Lady Is Chased (September 1954) Mike Farrell
2 The Million Dollar Babe (February 1961) [rewritten from "Cutie Cashed His Chips", 1955]
3 The Scarlet Flush (1963) [rewritten from "Ten Grand Tallulah and Temptation", 1957]

Mark Jordan series

1 Model for Murder (October 1953)
2 My Mermaid Murmurs Murder (1954)

Joe Kahn series

1 Honky-Tonk Homicide (January 1954)
2 Perfumed Poison (July 1954)

Ivor MacCullum series

1 Sweetheart You Slay Me (September 1952)
2 Blackmail Beauty (1953)

Max Dumas series

1 Deadly Miss (July 1958)
2 Goddess Gone Bad (September 1958)

Carter Stanton series

- Publisher of "The Sultan", owner of "The Harem" key club - Murder in the Key Club (1962).

Selected bibliography

Novels

Novelette Series

  • The Lady Is Murder (Transport Publishing Co, 1951) By Peter Carter Brown
  • Ssssh! She's a Killer (Transport Publishing Co, 1951) By Peter Carter Brown

Novel Series

  • Venus Unarmed (Transport Publishing Co, 1954)
  • The Lady Is Chased (Transport Publishing Co, 1954)
  • Maid for Murder (Transport Publishing Co, 1955)
  • Shamus, Your Slip Is Showing (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  • The Two Timing Blonde (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  • Curves for a Coroner (Horwitz Publications Inc, August 1955)

Numbered Series

  1. A Bullet for My Baby (Horwitz Publications Inc, September 1955) Mavis Seidlitz
  2. Swan Song for a Siren (Horwitz Publications Inc, September 1955) Joe Dunne Note: Revised in 1963 to Charlie Sent Me with character Larry Baker
  3. Cutie Cashed His Chips (Horwitz Publications Inc, October 1955) Mike Farrel Note: Revised as The Million Dollar Babe in 1961.
  4. Miss Called Murder (Horwitz Publications Inc, October 1955)
  5. The Wench Is Wicked (Horwitz Publications Inc, November 1955)
  6. Kiss and Kill (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  7. Shroud for My Sugar (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  8. Murder Is My Mistress (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  9. Kiss Me Deadly (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1955)
  10. Lead Astray (Horwitz Publications Inc, December 1955)
  11. Death of a Doll (Horwitz Publications Inc, January 1956)
  12. Murder By Miss-Demeanour (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1956)
  13. Blonde Verdict (Horwitz Publications Inc, May 1956) Al Wheeler: Revised in 1960 to "The Brazen"
  14. The Hoodlum Was a Honey (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1956) as Penthouse Passout (1953)
  15. My Darling Is Deadpan (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1956)

Reprint By Demand Series

  1. The Hoodlum Was a Honey (Horwitz Publications Inc, November 1958)
  2. Lead Astray (Horwitz Publications Inc, December 1958)
  3. My Darling Is Deadpan (Horwitz Publications Inc, January 1959)
  4. Hi-Jack For Jill (Horwitz Publications Inc, February 1959)
  5. Blonde, Beautiful, and – Blam! (Horwitz Publications Inc, March 1959)
  6. No Halo For Hedy (Horwitz Publications Inc, 1959)

First Collectors' Series

  • Dead Dolls Don't Cry : Widow Is Willing ; Blackmail for a Brunette (Horwitz Publications)
  • The Scarlet Flush (Horwitz, 1963)
  • The Brazen, and The Stripper (Horwitz, 1981)
  • Chill on Chili, Butterfly Nett, and Honky Tonk Homicide (Horwitz)

Second Collectors' Series

Double Editions

  • Zelda, and The Wind-up Doll (Horwitz Grahame, 1982, c1961)

International Edition Series

  1. The Body (Horwitz Publications Inc, January 1961) Revised from No Law Against Angels

Autobiography
  • Ready when you are, C.B.! : the autobiography of Alan Yates alias Carter Brown (Macmillan, 1983)

Criticism
  • Toni Johnson-Woods, 'The Promiscuous Carter Brown', in JASAL Special Issue, The Colonial Present, 2008, pp. 163–183. Available online [4]

Notes
  1. Richard Waterhouse, "Yates, Alan Geoffrey (1923–1985)", Australian Dictionary of Biography
  2. Maggie Nolan, Carrie Dawson, Who's Who?: Hoaxes, Imposture and Identity Crises in Australian Literature, p. 87, footnote 49. Retrieved 5 May 2016
  3. "Ned Kelly Awards". Australian Crime Fiction Database. Retrieved 15 September 2007.
  4. Johnson-Woods, Toni. "The Promiscuous Carter Brown". JASAL Special Edition The Colonial Present. Association for the study of Australian literature. Archived from the original on 10 September 2009. Retrieved 5 May 2011.
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