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Call Me Killer!
A Pulp Noir Classic of Violence, Sex and Revenge, Back-in-Print For The First Time in Over 70 Years
In 1946, playwright Ed Dirke strangled a woman to death in a drunken rage. He was sentenced to prison for seven years for second-degree murder. Now he's out, back in New York, and determined to kill again. Only this time, it won't be an accident and the victim will be his older brother Carl, a traitor working with Chinese Communist spies, who was responsible for Ed's endless nightmare.
Max Carter was a pseudonym for Morton Cooper Feinberg (1925-2004), a prolific novelist, ghostwriter, and journalist who wrote over 50 novels under his own name and others, including Mike Crane, Mark Clements, and Mavis Cromwell.
In 1946, playwright Ed Dirke strangled a woman to death in a drunken rage. He was sentenced to prison for seven years for second-degree murder. Now he's out, back in New York, and determined to kill again. Only this time, it won't be an accident and the victim will be his older brother Carl, a traitor working with Chinese Communist spies, who was responsible for Ed's endless nightmare.
Max Carter was a pseudonym for Morton Cooper Feinberg (1925-2004), a prolific novelist, ghostwriter, and journalist who wrote over 50 novels under his own name and others, including Mike Crane, Mark Clements, and Mavis Cromwell.
168 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 21, 2024
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January 14, 2026
Morton Cooper, who wrote some 56 dime pulps under a variety of pseudonyms all with the same initials, offers this Cain and Abel postwar fable. Starting with Edward Dirke being released after a seven year stretch for strangling his girlfriend Eileen, Cooper slowly sets the scene.
First, Edward tells about how he is going to have the best whiskey and “I’m going to find myself in a spacious, colorful apartment, and I’m going to lounge in a huge bathtub for a few hours. And while I’m lying there I’m going to sip a triple Scotch. Then I’m going to get out, dry myself with an enormous bath towel and get into a foulard robe. Then there’s going to be a woman waiting for me in the bedroom.” He says he is going to continue to “take her” for three weeks straight. These are things a convict fantasizes about.
Then, Edward tells us what’s really on his mind: “Soon I would be face to face with my brother Carl. I would raise a gun to him and shoot a bullet between his eyes.” In Edward’s eyes, Carl is to blame for the argument that led to Edward strangling Eileen. The argument was over Carl using Edward’s apartment for Commie meetings. Thus, Carl is to blame. Carl and the blonde Nazi fraulein he picked up as a souvenir during the war. “Nothing mattered except the slow and delicious rising of my red-hot hatred and determination for revenge.”
When Edward meets a young lady on the cross-country train, they quickly fall into passionate lovemaking until Edward decides he can’t trust her and strangles her (like with Eileen) and throws her corpse out the window. She, it appears, had been a tool of Carl and his Communist cabal. What follows is a cat and mouse game until the trail leads to Carl on his way to Cuba and the final showdown.
But the real question for the reader is how much of the tale is true and how much of it is all out madness, particularly with Edward slipping in and out of consciousness and turning red with rage. Cooper manages to fit in every manner of Communist spy, Nazi sympathizer, and topless dancer he can muster.
First, Edward tells about how he is going to have the best whiskey and “I’m going to find myself in a spacious, colorful apartment, and I’m going to lounge in a huge bathtub for a few hours. And while I’m lying there I’m going to sip a triple Scotch. Then I’m going to get out, dry myself with an enormous bath towel and get into a foulard robe. Then there’s going to be a woman waiting for me in the bedroom.” He says he is going to continue to “take her” for three weeks straight. These are things a convict fantasizes about.
Then, Edward tells us what’s really on his mind: “Soon I would be face to face with my brother Carl. I would raise a gun to him and shoot a bullet between his eyes.” In Edward’s eyes, Carl is to blame for the argument that led to Edward strangling Eileen. The argument was over Carl using Edward’s apartment for Commie meetings. Thus, Carl is to blame. Carl and the blonde Nazi fraulein he picked up as a souvenir during the war. “Nothing mattered except the slow and delicious rising of my red-hot hatred and determination for revenge.”
When Edward meets a young lady on the cross-country train, they quickly fall into passionate lovemaking until Edward decides he can’t trust her and strangles her (like with Eileen) and throws her corpse out the window. She, it appears, had been a tool of Carl and his Communist cabal. What follows is a cat and mouse game until the trail leads to Carl on his way to Cuba and the final showdown.
But the real question for the reader is how much of the tale is true and how much of it is all out madness, particularly with Edward slipping in and out of consciousness and turning red with rage. Cooper manages to fit in every manner of Communist spy, Nazi sympathizer, and topless dancer he can muster.
Displaying 1 of 1 review