Carter Brown


Carter Brown was the literary pseudonym of Alan Geoffrey Yates, an English-born Australian writer of detective fiction.

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 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.
McKenzie also wrote crime books as Mike Boon and war novels as Michael Owen.

Awards

Lt. Al Wheeler series

Homicide investigator in fictional Pine County, LA
- The Wench Is Wicked
- Blonde Verdict . 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
- No Harp For My Angel
- Booty For A Babe
- Eve, It's Extortion
- No Law Against Angels
- The Blonde.
- The Corpse.
- The Lover.
- The Mistress.
- The Dame.
- The Bombshell. A previous shorter version was "Doll for the Big House".
- The Hellcat. 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.
- Girl in a Shroud.
- The Lady is Available.
- A Corpse for Christmas.
- Until Temptation Do Us Part.
- The Up-Tight Blonde.
- Wheeler, Dealer!.

Rick Holman series

Private detective based in Hollywood
- The Never-Was Girl.
- Blonde on a Broomstick.
- Die Anytime, After Tuesday!.
- The Hang-Up Kid.
- The Coven.
- The Pornbroker.
- Ride the Roller Coaster.

Danny Boyd series

Private eye in New York
The Dream is Deadly.

Catch Me a Phoenix!.

The Black Lace Hangover.

The Mini-Murders.

Death to a Downbeat.

Mavis Seidlitz series

Tough female private eye

Larry Baker series

1 Charlie Sent Me!
2 No Blonde Is an Island
3 So What Killed the Vampire?
4 Had I But Groaned
5 True Son of the Beast!
6 The Iron Maiden

Randy Roberts series

1 Murder in the Family Way
2 The Seven Sirens
3 The Angry Amazons w/Danny Boyd
4 Murder on High
5 Sex Trap

Paul Donovan series

1 Donavan
2 Donavan's Day
3 Chinese Donavan
4 Donavan's Delight

Andy Kane series

1 The Lady's Alive!
2 The Hong Kong Caper
3 Bird in a Guilt-Edged Cage,

Mike Farrell series

1 The Lady Is Chased Mike Farrell
2 The Million Dollar Babe
3 The Scarlet Flush

Mark Jordan series

1 Model for Murder
2 My Mermaid Murmurs Murder

Joe Kahn series

1 Honky-Tonk Homicide
2 Perfumed Poison

Ivor MacCullum series

1 Sweetheart You Slay Me
2 Blackmail Beauty

Max Dumas series

1 Deadly Miss
2 Goddess Gone Bad

Carter Stanton series

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

Selected bibliography

Novels

Novelette Series
Novel Series
Numbered Series
  1. A Bullet for My Baby Mavis Seidlitz
  2. Swan Song for a Siren Joe Dunne Note: Revised in 1963 to Charlie Sent Me with character Larry Baker
  3. Cutie Cashed His Chips Mike Farrel Note: Revised as The Million Dollar Babe in 1961.
  4. Miss Called Murder
  5. The Wench Is Wicked
  6. Kiss and Kill
  7. Shroud for My Sugar
  8. Murder Is My Mistress
  9. Kiss Me Deadly
  10. Lead Astray
  11. Death of a Doll
  12. Murder By Miss-Demeanour
  13. Blonde Verdict Al Wheeler: Revised in 1960 to "The Brazen"
  14. The Hoodlum Was a Honey as Penthouse Passout
  15. My Darling Is Deadpan
Reprint By Demand Series
  1. The Hoodlum Was a Honey
  2. Lead Astray
  3. My Darling Is Deadpan
  4. Hi-Jack For Jill
  5. Blonde, Beautiful, and – Blam!
  6. No Halo For Hedy
First Collectors' Series
Second Collectors' Series
Double Editions
International Edition Series
  1. The Body Revised from No Law Against Angels

    Autobiography