Death of a Pusher

by Richard Deming

extremely rare,very good condition

Genres: Crime

183 pages, paperback

First published June 1, 1964

About the author

Richard Deming (1915-1983) was a solid and reliable pro whose crime-writing career extended from late 1940s pulps to early 1980s digests. He also wrote several volumes of popular non-fiction late in his life.

He is most likely to be remembered as one of the most prolific contributors to Manhunt and the early days of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and as a paperback original writer, sometimes of novels based on TV shows (Dragnet, The Mod Squad, and under the pseudonym Max Franklin, Starsky and Hutch). He was also a frequent ghost for the Ellery Queen team on paperback originals and for Brett Halliday on lead novelettes for Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death of a Pusher (1964) is the final of three books in Deming’s Matt Rudd police procedural series. The story is set in the fictional factory town of St. Cecilia, a smoggy mid-western city run by machine politics and graft. Matt Rudd (Mateusz Rudowski in the original Polish version of his name) and his partner Carl Lincoln are members of St. Cecilia’s Vice, Gambling, and Narcotics Division.

In this one, Rudd and Lincoln are tasked with doing an undercover narcotics buy in an alley. It goes off practically without a hitch and they arrest and take the dealer to the jail where they convince him to take a deal. Only complication is that he morphs into a corpse the next day and all goes to hell.

Rudd, who in the previous novel in the series, appeared to be above-board in all respects, becomes a bit of a ladies’ man in this novel, seducing (or being seduced by) an eyewitness and the chorus girl girlfriend of the deceased pusher. In fact, Rudd, much to his own surprise, manages to seduce both women in the same night.

Ultimately, as is true throughout this series, the underlying issue is not the individual pusher who those who acted like his pals, but the nebulous atmosphere of corruption in St.Cecilia, corruption that seems to permeate everything.

[Kenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fast paced police procedural featuring a tough cop hunting criminals and working with some less than competent cops. The plot keeps things moving. A quick read.

[Brett Bayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my 12th Deming novel. It's the final book in the "Matt Rudd" trilogy that started with Vice Cop (1960) and Anything But Saintly (1963), both of which I also recently read. I got hooked on Deming with his 1962 novel The Careful Man, and it's been a roller coaster ride. I've enjoyed all of them, but these hardboiled vice-squad books have been among the best. It would not be incorrect to say that these books are all very formulaic, but that's also part of their charm. (John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books were also pretty formulaic.) Like its predecessors, Death of a Pusher begins with a drug-related arrest, but then detective Matt Rudd gets roped in to a murder investigation outside of his official purview. It's lively, fun, occasionally suspenseful and even very funny in some scenes. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I'm so disappointed that there are no more in the series. (UPDATE: Years after I wrote this review, I came into possession of a fourth, unpublished Matt Rudd novel entitled Die Naked. I'm looking forward to reading it!—BB) Oh, well, there are still plenty of other Deming books to read, including several in the Dragnet and Mod Squad series, as well as several mysteries he wrote under the Ellery Queen pseudonym.