Le Diable incarné

Larry Baker

by Carter Brown, Jacques Hall (Translator)

«Quand on est le roi de l'aluminium, on peut tout se permettre : par exemple de se faire bâtir en plein Pacifique une réplique exacte du Château d'If, avec oubliettes, fantômes, masques de fer, esprits frappeurs, fous, faux fous et quelques fofolles en sus. Mais Eugène Westcott, le roi en question, est-il bien le frère de son frère fou, ou son propre frère, Carl, qui se fait passer pour Eugène tandis que Carl se prend pour Eugène...?
Un vrai casse-tête, je vous jure, au propre comme au figuré !»

Genres: Pulp

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

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

[Drew]

Started at 3 stars, down to 2 then back up to 3. A fun, fast read.

[Steven]

Larry Baker, the narrator of this murder mystery is a TV sit-com writer circa 1965, and that along with the plot set-up - a group of people stuck on an island retreat for seven days who are systematically being murdered - gave me high expectations. Huge disappointment. Baker is a dolt of a narrator, not at all what I would have expected from a TV sit-com writer with nearly 200 shows under his belt. The events are pretty ridiculous, too. Larry Baker was another of Carter Brown's series narrators, fortunately he only wrote six in this series, and I'm not rushing out to read another.

[Dylan Michael]

Amusing outing for Larry Baker - who, like most of Brown's 'heroes', isn't particularly easy to warm to - with a couple of funny scenes and neat plot twists. I flew through this in the space of a few commutes and it was time well spent.

[Jake Mabe]

Started off awful, but grew on me. Product of its time. Too many adverbs.

[Artemis Green]

A little reductions in both plot and characters which would make for a good comedy, but it was too far-fetched for my taste.