Come Die With Me

Brock 'The Rock' Callahan #4

by William Campbell Gault

Former L.A. Rams guard Brock "the Rock" Callahan, now a private eye, is hired by a statuesque beauty to see if her jockey husband is cheating on her, but Callahan instead ends up investigating the jockey's murder

Genres: Mystery

188 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

William Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like Paris Nights, Scarlet Adventures, and the infamous Black Mask. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime.

When the success of his pulps began to fade in the 1950s, Gault turned to longer fiction, winning an Edgar Award for his first mystery, Don’t Cry for Me (1952), which he wrote in twenty-eight days. He created private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, and also wrote juvenile sports books like Cut-Rate Quarterback (1977) and Wild Willie, Wide Receiver (1974). His final novel was Dead Pigeon (1992), a Brock Callahan mystery.


Series:
* Brock 'The Rock' Callahan
* Joe Puma

Reviews

[John Marr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent 50s style PI novel whose superior writing is hobbled by detective Brock Callahan's priggishness. And his bitchy girlfriend doesn't help matters either, although he isn't undeserving in this department.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gault wrote a total of 14 Brock Callahan novels, a private eye designed to appeal to the reading masses. Indeed, when writing this series, Gault put in a little something for everybody. For the male readers, Brock "the Rock" Callahan was a Rams football star permanently on hiatus due to a bad knee. For the ladies, Gault set the series in posh Beverly Hills and had Callahan date high-class interior designer Jan. The result is an enjoyable private eye series although not as tough, violent, or cynical as other such series.

Gault published the first half of the series between 1955 and 1963 (Murder in the Raw, Day of the Ram, Convertible Hearse, Come Die With Me, Vein of Violence, County Kill, & Dead Hero) and the rest two decades later from 1982 onward (Bad Samaritan, Cano Diversion, Death in Donegal Bay, Dead Seed, Chicano War, Cat and Mouse, & Dead Pigeon).

Come Die With Me involves millionaire heiresses, Hollywood wanna-be starlets, nightclub singers, a mean jockey who women just swooned over, Mafia bosses, hoods, Malibu houses, and murder. It is an easy quick read and has Callahan essentially running all over town to try to figure out what is going on.

[Otto Penzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, this is part of the outstanding Brock “the Rock” Callahan series featuring the Los Angeles Rams guard-turned-private-eye. After a game-changing knee injury, Callahan quit and opened his own private detective agency. In Come Die With Me, Brock is hired by a beautiful woman to find out if her husband is cheating on her. Just as he begins to work on the case, the jockey in question is found dead, stabbed by a kitchen knife. The search for the perpetrator uncovers too many suspects. Was it the jealous wife? The jockey’s mob girlfriend? The wife’s rich daddy? The Edgar-winning William Campbell Gault loved sports (he wrote dozens of books on various sports subjects, both fiction and non-fiction) and mystery fiction, helping to produce this much-loved PI series.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brock Callahan is Gault's hard boiled detective of the 50's. His writing style is pulpy and antiquated without being interesting or profound or funny, just obvious with a penchant for telling rather than showing motivations and feelings.

You could see the story as perhaps some late night 60's movie, but it holds thin water today.