The Mistress

Al Wheeler #10

by Carter Brown

It was a plush Vegas gambling joint with dice tables at the rear and a well-stacked stripper out front. The stripper's name was Gabrielle and she played taps--for three corpses.

When Al Wheeler came on the scene he figured he'd hit it lucky. Because there was nothing he enjoyed more than a murder case that gave him a chance to get down to facts--bare facts. Free-wheeling Al Wheeler, the unorthodox cop, matches wits with a stripper and the syndicate in this racy thriller. And the stakes are high as he bets his life that he can beat a killer--at the game of murder.

Genres: Pulp, Mystery

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Carter Brown was the pseudonym of Alan Geoffrey Yates (1923-1985), who was born in London and educated in Essex.

He married Denise Mackellar and worked as a sound engineer for Gaumont-British films before moving to Australia and taking up work in public relations.

In 1953 he became a full-time writer and produced nearly 200 novels between then and his retirement in 1981.

He also wrote as Tex Conrad and Caroline Farr.

His series heroes were Larry Baker, Danny Boyd, Paul Donavan, Rick Holman, Andy Kane, Randy Roberts, Mavis Siedlitz and Al Wheeler.

Reviews

[Edwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Al Wheeler novel finds the amorous police lieutenant in typical form, he’s irresistible to women, has conflicts with his superiors, and offers an endless barrage of wise cracks. Even though Wheeler is a cop, this is not a police procedural, but rather falls squarely into the “whodunit” mystery genre. Here Wheeler’s police captain finds a dead woman on his porch at home after being threatened by a Las Vegas casino owner that wants to move his operation to Pine City. Turns out that the dead woman is the captain’s niece, the irascible captain assumes a vendetta, and puts the screws on Wheeler to bring in the suspect. Under pressure, Wheeler finds an ally in a stacked stripper named Gabrielle to track down the killer as the bodies pile up. Nicely plotted, snappy dialog, and a quick and easy read like every Carter Brown book I’ve ever read. Three stars.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Mistress” (1958 Australia) (1959 USA) (reprinted recently in a three-pack by Stark House Press) is set as are most of the books in this series in Carter’s fictional Southern California Pine City, although some of the action here takes place in Las Vegas. In this novel, the bucolic splendor of Pine City is shattered by criminal elements moving in from Sin City Las Vegas. That is, criminal elements who have been nudged out of Las Vegas by the mob and now want to set up a gambling mecca in Pine City. Sheriff Lavers flat out turned them down Howard Fletcher and now finds his niece on his doorstep murdered, his niece who had recently returned to Pine City and somehow had money for an expensive apartment without seeming to work. Lieutenant Wheeler notes when he sees the corpse that they are girls until they suddenly become grandmothers. Lavers had not seen her in twenty years until she suddenly arrived in Pine City a month ago. He thinks Fletcher paid for the apartment and so on as if Linda Scott was his mistress.

Wheeler is ordered over and over by Lavers to arrest Fletcher and then investigate, something Wheeler is not willing to do as he is not convinced Fletcher would be that dumb as to kill Linda. Fletcher is holed up in an apartment with Johnny Torch, a twenty-year old kid with reptilian eyes who guarded access to Fletcher and offered up Fletcher’s alibi. Torch provides some comic relief as Wheeler tells him that he is a young punk, will be a punk all his life, and if he goes on talking that way, he would never even get to be middle-aged.

Wheeler soon finds that Fletcher left Las Vegas in a hurry with whispered rumors that he, Torch, and two young women who acted as stick girls in the casino, Linda Scott and Nina Booth, took the mob for $70,000. Nina was a tall redhead with big blue eyes “that looked like they were beyond being surprised anymore.” “She had a figure that Nature had sculptured in generous proportions – with every portion in proportion.” She lets out maybe Linda was not Fletcher’s mistress, maybe he goes for a very different type, a type like Gabrielle the stripper at the Snake Eyes casino in Las Vegas.

Of course, this necessitates a trip to Las Vegas for Wheeler to meet the apple of Fletcher’s eye. In Las Vegas, though, Wheeler has to tangle with the mob elements who now control the Snake Eyes casino. Gabrielle, though, takes to Wheeler and follows him to Pine City where she makes herself at home in his apartment.

Throughout the novel, Wheeler fences with Sheriff Lavers constantly, who blames Fletcher for the murder and Wheeler puts his career at risk, going to bat for Fletcher and even using Gabrielle to set up a fake alibi to buy time.

The Mistress is a fine example of murder mystery fiction, fast-moving, filled with excitement, and featuring a solo operator on his own even though he is technically with the Sheriff’s Department.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another one out of the Hammett / Chandler school, but more of a cruder estimate of the style. "Protagonist" Al Wheeler fills the role of the sleuth with all the smart-alecky lines, and one spends the book waiting for someone to finally shove those lines back down his throat for him.

Extremely fast moving, and Wheeler operates at such high speed and with little accumulation of hard facts that one wonders if his feet actually touch ground.