Black Gate

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I have discovered several writers I like, such as Day Keene, Pete Hamill, and Richard Powell, through the Hard Case Crime imprint. Another writer they reissued is David Dodge. Dodge wrote To Catch a Thief, which Alfred Hitchcock masterfully turned into a taut thriller film.

Two years earlier, Dodge’s Plunder of the Sun, an adventure novel starring Al Colby, was filmed with Glenn Ford. That script was written by hardboiled writer Jonathan Latimer. He wrote some fine movies in the genre, including The Glass Key, Nocturne, The Big Clock, and The Night has a Thousand Eyes.

Accountant Whit Whitney was Dodge’s first character. Dodge was a certified public accountant, and he wrote four hardboiled PI-like novels featuring him. He wrote the first when he bet his wife he could write a better mystery novel than the one she was currently reading.

He served in the Navy during the war, and he explored Latin America with his family after getting out. This led to the creation of Al Colby. Plunder of the Sun (you can listen to a radio play of it here) was Colby’s second book (of three). He is an American private eye, living in Mexico City.

The Long Escape – originally a Dell Mapback, and now available as an affordable ebook – is his first, and Colby is about to take a weekend trip when he gets a letter from an LA lawyer named Adams. Robert R. Parker had done a runner on his shrew of a wife; who is Adams’ client. In order for her to sell some property, she needs him to either agree to it, or be definitely dead.

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