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Bring HIm Back Dead
He was as rare as a three-dollar bill . . . an honest man in the town of French Bayou - that was crowding Phenix City out of corruption’s first place.He was young Deputy Sheriff Andy Latour, with enough stern morality for someone to have set an assassin on his trail.But Latour dodged the bullets, and now it was urgent that his voice be silenced. So - a phone call in the night, a drive out of town, the thud of a blackjack.And when Latour woke to daylight he was ringed around by hard, watchful men, accused of the brutal rape of a gorgeous young redhead - and the murder of her aged husband.And even when Latour crashed jail, the word went out to bring him back dead . . .
- GenresNoir
127 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
3 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Day Keene
163 books33 followersDay Keene, whose real name was Gunnar Hjerstedt, was one of the leading paperback mystery writers of the 1950s. Along with writing over 50 novels, he also wrote for radio, television, movies, and pulp magazines. Often his stories were set in South Florida or swamp towns in Louisiana, and included a man wrongly accused and on the run, determined to clear his name.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 30, 2020
Day Keene is one of those reliable pulp writers who could hook you fast and pull you through a yarn and end it before you have time to think about the potholes in the ride. This one is about an honest cop in a dirty town who is framed for the rape and murder of the lusty young wife of one of the town's sketchy characters. And it just so happens our hero is married to a beautiful yet ice-cold babe he doesn't trust. Or is it that he doesn't trust himself? Who knows? Someone sure doesn't like him. Because for much of the novel someone keeps trying to kill him. Swampy and steamy and just a bit sleazy is just how I like my old pulp stories.
May 17, 2017
Deputy Sheriff Latour patrolled a small town on the bayou, a town named "French Bayou." It was a "wide open" town and he may have been the only honest man left there. There were girls and gambling
and liquor everywhere. Latour had married a Russian girl when he was serving in the Far East. Probably a mistake to bring her back. She latched onto him because she thought he was going to be rich and he
thought he'd be rich, too. Her family had once been of nobility and he promised her the world. His land, however, had no oil. It was the only dry patch around. They could barely stand each other now.
One day, LaTour takes an old drunk and the drunk's pretty 17 year old redheaded wife Rita home. He wakes up surrounded by deputies and Rita positively identifies him as the man who brutally raped her and
shot her husband. Everyone in town thinks he did it and did the same thing to three other girls. Another pulp story about an innocent man on the run.
It's a great story told well. It doesn't matter
if the reader has all the clues before the end. What matters is that you get the sense of the small town in the bayou, the backwoods folk, and how much trouble it is to be decent in this rough and lonely world. I really enjoyed this story.
and liquor everywhere. Latour had married a Russian girl when he was serving in the Far East. Probably a mistake to bring her back. She latched onto him because she thought he was going to be rich and he
thought he'd be rich, too. Her family had once been of nobility and he promised her the world. His land, however, had no oil. It was the only dry patch around. They could barely stand each other now.
One day, LaTour takes an old drunk and the drunk's pretty 17 year old redheaded wife Rita home. He wakes up surrounded by deputies and Rita positively identifies him as the man who brutally raped her and
shot her husband. Everyone in town thinks he did it and did the same thing to three other girls. Another pulp story about an innocent man on the run.
It's a great story told well. It doesn't matter
if the reader has all the clues before the end. What matters is that you get the sense of the small town in the bayou, the backwoods folk, and how much trouble it is to be decent in this rough and lonely world. I really enjoyed this story.
January 7, 2015
If you like 1950s pulp fiction, than this is one you need to read. The perfect balance of excitement, sex, and danger, with better-than-average character development and a "you see it right before it happens" twist. Nicely done Louisiana setting as well. Highly recommended.
December 23, 2018
Công bằng mà nói, với độ dày 127 trang thì 'Bring Him Back Dead' đọc khá cuốn và nhanh, mình đọc tiếng Anh mất mấy tiếng là xong. Truyện có nhiều điểm sáng, như xây dựng được bối cảnh thị trấn ven biển French Bayou mới giàu lên nhờ dầu mỏ. Nhân vật chính là Andy Latour được dành nhiều đất diễn, chủ yếu đi sâu vào cảm giác bế tắc của anh trong mối quan hệ với người vợ và trong vai trò một cảnh sát phó liêm khiết mà nghèo. Các nhân vật cảnh sát khác cũng rất cá tính, bộc trực và trải đời. Nhìn chung, mình có cảm giác như lạc vào một thị trấn miền viễn Tây.
Đáng tiếc là nhân vật phản diện không được chăm chút, cả động cơ và tâm lý đều mờ nhạt, hành động thiếu khôn ngoan, lại bị lộ vai ác từ sớm. Cô vợ Olga chỉ đóng vai trò bình hoa di động, "phần thưởng" cho nhân vật chính, thành ra cô khá một màu và cam chịu. Thiết nghĩ một phụ nữ bị chồng thờ ơ suốt 2 năm sẽ phản ứng dữ dội hơn cơ. Khá ngạc nhiên là tuy truyện có mấy cảnh nóng, nhưng cảnh cưỡng bức dã man ("brutal rape") lại miêu tả khá sơ sài, không gây cảm giác ghê tởm hay phẫn nộ như nó đáng phải thế. Cô gái hồi phục quá nhanh về mặt thể chất lẫn tinh thần so với một nạn nhân bị cưỡng bức và đánh đập bên cạnh xác chồng. Có vẻ tác giả không am hiểu tâm lý phụ nữ lắm.
Điểm yếu lớn nhất của truyện là dung lượng ngắn mà lại cố nhét đủ các thứ vào: một ít tâm lý, một ít tình cảm lãng mạn, một ít suy luận điều tra, một phân đoạn pháp đình, mấy cảnh hồi hộp giật gân. Kết quả là nửa sau cuốn sách, cốt truyện kiểu như đang chạy maraton, mọi thứ diễn ra lớt phớt chứ không sâu. Phần trinh thám cũng yếu khi không có một cuộc điều tra hiện trường hay hình sự ra hồn, ít chi tiết đánh lừa, manh mối được rải dễ dãi, nghi phạm ít, hung thủ và động cơ dễ đoán, plot không có chỗ nào đáng gọi là twist cả.
Tổng kết lại, 'Bring Him Back Dead' là một pulp fiction đọc giải trí, không nên kỳ vọng một chất lượng tương đương với một cuốn tiểu thuyết trinh thám hiện đại khổ 16x24 dày 500 trang. Hi vọng Day Keene sẽ thể hiện tốt hơn trong những tác phẩm dày hơn.
Đáng tiếc là nhân vật phản diện không được chăm chút, cả động cơ và tâm lý đều mờ nhạt, hành động thiếu khôn ngoan, lại bị lộ vai ác từ sớm. Cô vợ Olga chỉ đóng vai trò bình hoa di động, "phần thưởng" cho nhân vật chính, thành ra cô khá một màu và cam chịu. Thiết nghĩ một phụ nữ bị chồng thờ ơ suốt 2 năm sẽ phản ứng dữ dội hơn cơ. Khá ngạc nhiên là tuy truyện có mấy cảnh nóng, nhưng cảnh cưỡng bức dã man ("brutal rape") lại miêu tả khá sơ sài, không gây cảm giác ghê tởm hay phẫn nộ như nó đáng phải thế. Cô gái hồi phục quá nhanh về mặt thể chất lẫn tinh thần so với một nạn nhân bị cưỡng bức và đánh đập bên cạnh xác chồng. Có vẻ tác giả không am hiểu tâm lý phụ nữ lắm.
Điểm yếu lớn nhất của truyện là dung lượng ngắn mà lại cố nhét đủ các thứ vào: một ít tâm lý, một ít tình cảm lãng mạn, một ít suy luận điều tra, một phân đoạn pháp đình, mấy cảnh hồi hộp giật gân. Kết quả là nửa sau cuốn sách, cốt truyện kiểu như đang chạy maraton, mọi thứ diễn ra lớt phớt chứ không sâu. Phần trinh thám cũng yếu khi không có một cuộc điều tra hiện trường hay hình sự ra hồn, ít chi tiết đánh lừa, manh mối được rải dễ dãi, nghi phạm ít, hung thủ và động cơ dễ đoán, plot không có chỗ nào đáng gọi là twist cả.
Tổng kết lại, 'Bring Him Back Dead' là một pulp fiction đọc giải trí, không nên kỳ vọng một chất lượng tương đương với một cuốn tiểu thuyết trinh thám hiện đại khổ 16x24 dày 500 trang. Hi vọng Day Keene sẽ thể hiện tốt hơn trong những tác phẩm dày hơn.
August 19, 2013
A deputy sheriff tries desperately to try to figure who's trying to kill him before he gets sent to the electric chair for a crime he didn't commit.
If Day Keene ever wrote a bad novel, I have yet to read it.
If Day Keene ever wrote a bad novel, I have yet to read it.
October 21, 2025
I really enjoyed this, despite the darkness of some of the themes.
Andy Latour is the one good cop in a corrupt little swamp town. A lot of folks resent him because he just won't be bribed or look the other way. So when someone starts taking pot-shots at him one morning with a rifle, he's not too surprised. That night, Andy goes out to interview an old man about the shootings, but gets knocked on the head. When he wakes up, he's been blamed for murdering the old man and beating and raping the old man's wife. Most of the town is livid and talks of lynching boil about the jail.
Keene just knows how to hook me. He puts decent, but flawed, dudes in trouble up to their noses; pairs them with stalwart women who've stronger mettle than the heroes; and never lets go once the action starts.
Andy Latour is the one good cop in a corrupt little swamp town. A lot of folks resent him because he just won't be bribed or look the other way. So when someone starts taking pot-shots at him one morning with a rifle, he's not too surprised. That night, Andy goes out to interview an old man about the shootings, but gets knocked on the head. When he wakes up, he's been blamed for murdering the old man and beating and raping the old man's wife. Most of the town is livid and talks of lynching boil about the jail.
Keene just knows how to hook me. He puts decent, but flawed, dudes in trouble up to their noses; pairs them with stalwart women who've stronger mettle than the heroes; and never lets go once the action starts.
November 22, 2020
In the opening of Day Keene’s Bring Him Back Dead, sheriff’s deputy Andy Latour seems to be stuck in the wrong job and the wrong marriage. His wife, Olga, a descendant of the faded Russian aristocracy, barely speaks to him. He had promised her a life of wealth and ease as the oil boom struck southern Louisiana and the Delta Oil Company had opened a test well on his land.
But the well didn’t pan out. Latour couldn’t deliver on his grand promises, and had to settle for a $250-a-month deputy job in his once-sleepy hometown of French Bayou. After the discovery of oil in the parish, and in the nearby Gulf, the town is awash in money. The roughnecks working on the offshore rigs like to drink and party when they’re off the clock, and the town’s main street has become a carnival of swindlers, drunks, prostitutes and brawlers. The sheriff and his deputies, unable to control the mayhem, find it’s more profitable to let it all happen. Their generous share of the oil boom money comes from turning a blind eye to whoever pays them off.
Keene writes a brilliant description of how the rush of easy money has corrupted a once-decent town:
The main character, Andy Latour, is a straight arrow, and he’s seemingly the only one the money has passed by. His land was barren of oil, and he won’t take a bribe from anyone, though he gets plenty of offers. Many of the residents resent him for enforcing the law. Even the other deputies resent him because his honesty and integrity make them look all the more crooked by comparison.
Within minutes of being introduced, Latour’s life goes from bad to worse. As soon as he steps out of his house, someone takes a shot him. He gets up from the ground to find a bullet hole through his Stetson. Before the day is out, he’ll survive three more shots.
When Latour mentions the assassination attempt to a fellow deputy, the deputy shrugs it off, reminding Latour that he’s locked up a lot of punks that the other cops would have let off with a bribe. He’s sent some rough men to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison as well. If someone has it out for Latour, it’s his own fault.
After a second attempt on his life later in the day, Latour realizes that whoever is after him is determined, and wants him dead as soon as possible. This isn’t just some punk looking for revenge. This is someone with a bigger motive. But who? And what’s the motive?
Unable to get a clean, witness-free kill, Latour’s assailant seizes an opportunity to frame him for a truly horrendous crime. Latour finds himself alone in the jail’s maximum security unit contemplating a mountain of seemingly incontrovertible evidence that pegs him as both a rapist and murderer. His colleagues doubt him, his wife doubts him, the whole town wants to lynch him, and his tone-deaf lawyer argues his case in a way that only makes everyone hate him more.
How’s he going to get out of this one?
You’ll have to read it to find out. This is good old-fashioned 1950s pulp. The author doesn’t try to get fancy. He just sets up a good story and has the sense to tell it straight.
One aspect of the story, however, does stand out from the general pulp/crime tradition. In the course of figuring out who has it out for him, Latour has to re-evaluate his life and all of his relationships, trying to understand who’s really on his side and who’s not. This results in a startling shift in perspective and a huge leap forward in Latour’s understanding of himself.
The sheriff’s department has to do some soul-searching as well. The brutal crime for which Latour has been framed draws heavy attention from the media, and the reporters expose French Bayou’s lawlessness in a way that would humiliate any cop. The brutal crime of which Latour is accused becomes an existential crisis for the town, forcing everyone to ask themselves which side they’re really on, and what kind of person they truly want to be.
One reason I enjoy mid-century American pulp fiction is because it goes straight past the varnish of society to the animal roots of human behavior. It’s about sex, violence, survival, and death–the fundamental realities of animal existence. All of civilization is a buffer against the rawness of those realities, and in genteel high-brow literature, the buffer is so thick we can’t get to the fundaments underneath. (Henry James, anyone?)
Pulp fiction deals with many of the same themes as Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama, which, in their day, were also popular forms aimed at a mass audience. In fact, if you think pulp fiction is lurid, try re-reading Oedipus Rex or Hamlet.
Keene, like most fifties pulp writers, doesn’t waste words. A good, raw story is best told in plain language. There’s an art to that, an art to the writer getting out of the way of a good story, though readers raised on florid prose and overwrought metaphor can’t or won’t see this. If literary fiction is French cuisine, with all its artful sauces, pulp fiction is Italian cooking, with the chef standing back to let the fresh ingredients speak for themselves.
But the well didn’t pan out. Latour couldn’t deliver on his grand promises, and had to settle for a $250-a-month deputy job in his once-sleepy hometown of French Bayou. After the discovery of oil in the parish, and in the nearby Gulf, the town is awash in money. The roughnecks working on the offshore rigs like to drink and party when they’re off the clock, and the town’s main street has become a carnival of swindlers, drunks, prostitutes and brawlers. The sheriff and his deputies, unable to control the mayhem, find it’s more profitable to let it all happen. Their generous share of the oil boom money comes from turning a blind eye to whoever pays them off.
Keene writes a brilliant description of how the rush of easy money has corrupted a once-decent town:
French Bayou had changed. The discovery of oil in the Gulf had seduced her. She was no longer a genteel Creole lady dozing in the sun. With the oil-company-built jetties forming a pair of splayed white legs and bar-lined Lafitte Street her torso, she looked more like a big-eyed back-country girl lying flat on her back in the reeds, willing and eager to take on all comers, delighted by this endless source of revenue she’d discovered in her own body.
The main character, Andy Latour, is a straight arrow, and he’s seemingly the only one the money has passed by. His land was barren of oil, and he won’t take a bribe from anyone, though he gets plenty of offers. Many of the residents resent him for enforcing the law. Even the other deputies resent him because his honesty and integrity make them look all the more crooked by comparison.
Within minutes of being introduced, Latour’s life goes from bad to worse. As soon as he steps out of his house, someone takes a shot him. He gets up from the ground to find a bullet hole through his Stetson. Before the day is out, he’ll survive three more shots.
When Latour mentions the assassination attempt to a fellow deputy, the deputy shrugs it off, reminding Latour that he’s locked up a lot of punks that the other cops would have let off with a bribe. He’s sent some rough men to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison as well. If someone has it out for Latour, it’s his own fault.
After a second attempt on his life later in the day, Latour realizes that whoever is after him is determined, and wants him dead as soon as possible. This isn’t just some punk looking for revenge. This is someone with a bigger motive. But who? And what’s the motive?
Unable to get a clean, witness-free kill, Latour’s assailant seizes an opportunity to frame him for a truly horrendous crime. Latour finds himself alone in the jail’s maximum security unit contemplating a mountain of seemingly incontrovertible evidence that pegs him as both a rapist and murderer. His colleagues doubt him, his wife doubts him, the whole town wants to lynch him, and his tone-deaf lawyer argues his case in a way that only makes everyone hate him more.
How’s he going to get out of this one?
You’ll have to read it to find out. This is good old-fashioned 1950s pulp. The author doesn’t try to get fancy. He just sets up a good story and has the sense to tell it straight.
One aspect of the story, however, does stand out from the general pulp/crime tradition. In the course of figuring out who has it out for him, Latour has to re-evaluate his life and all of his relationships, trying to understand who’s really on his side and who’s not. This results in a startling shift in perspective and a huge leap forward in Latour’s understanding of himself.
The sheriff’s department has to do some soul-searching as well. The brutal crime for which Latour has been framed draws heavy attention from the media, and the reporters expose French Bayou’s lawlessness in a way that would humiliate any cop. The brutal crime of which Latour is accused becomes an existential crisis for the town, forcing everyone to ask themselves which side they’re really on, and what kind of person they truly want to be.
One reason I enjoy mid-century American pulp fiction is because it goes straight past the varnish of society to the animal roots of human behavior. It’s about sex, violence, survival, and death–the fundamental realities of animal existence. All of civilization is a buffer against the rawness of those realities, and in genteel high-brow literature, the buffer is so thick we can’t get to the fundaments underneath. (Henry James, anyone?)
Pulp fiction deals with many of the same themes as Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama, which, in their day, were also popular forms aimed at a mass audience. In fact, if you think pulp fiction is lurid, try re-reading Oedipus Rex or Hamlet.
Keene, like most fifties pulp writers, doesn’t waste words. A good, raw story is best told in plain language. There’s an art to that, an art to the writer getting out of the way of a good story, though readers raised on florid prose and overwrought metaphor can’t or won’t see this. If literary fiction is French cuisine, with all its artful sauces, pulp fiction is Italian cooking, with the chef standing back to let the fresh ingredients speak for themselves.
September 6, 2025
Take Her Away Alive
Started off good and stayed that way for most of the way through, but has a super-happy ending.
If you read it after Joy House you'll be disappointed.
I should learn to appreciate Happy Endings. After all, after those forty John D MacDonald things, I should appreciate anything - even TV, because reading his books is just a really slow way of watching TV.
Started off good and stayed that way for most of the way through, but has a super-happy ending.
If you read it after Joy House you'll be disappointed.
I should learn to appreciate Happy Endings. After all, after those forty John D MacDonald things, I should appreciate anything - even TV, because reading his books is just a really slow way of watching TV.
December 18, 2025
an honest cop in a crooked Louisiana town is framed for a brutal crime!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews