Sand on the Gumshoe

CARTER BROWN

Carter Brown, the pseudonym of British-born Alan Geoffrey Yates, must easily be Australia ’s most prolific author. At the time of his death in May 1985, a Sydney newspaper estimated he had written 270 books, selling more than 70 million copies in 14 different languages. A more recent estimate by his widow, Mrs Denise Yates, is 325 novels.

Yates was a genuine pulp writer and he established himself on the market when pulp was king. Before the crime thrillers that established the Carter Brown name, Yates churned out numerous westerns, science fiction and horror stories under various pen-names including Paul Valdez, Tom Conway and Tex Conrad. However he will always be better known as Carter Brown.

Literary recognition remained elusive. Not that it seemed to matter too much. The Carter Brown thrillers, all paperback originals published by Horwitz, sold extremely well in Australia, the United States and numerous foreign markets. Yet the critics ignored him. An exception was Anthony Boucher, who reviewed crime fiction for the New York Times Book Review and was himself a pulp writer of considerable talent. In the 850-odd columns he wrote for the Times, he found time to champion Carter Brown. Paradoxically, Boucher disliked the Raymond Chandler stories.

Yate’s adventures were largely set in the United States yet he didn’t visit the country until many years into his career. That didn’t particularly matter as the background he used was a purely idealised view of how big cities should be, especially the mean streets where heroes created order out of chaos.

Alan Yates was born in England in 1923 and settled in Sydney following World War II. He began writing soon afterwards and, following a period with the public relations department of Qantas, became a full-time author. The release of his work in the United States through New American Library unleashed his skills on a new market.

Several of his novels were banned in Queensland, two were made into films in France, one became a play, while others served as fodder for a Japanese television series and the Carter Brown Mystery Theatre that ran on Australian radio in the late 1950s. Richard O’Brien, creator of The Rocky Horror Show, transformed The Stripper (published in 1961) into a musical in 1982.

‘Poison Ivy’ is one of the master’s shorter works and it is a fine indication of what Carter Brown could do with a well-worn premise.