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File on a Missing Redhead
Gold Medal book #R2013
160 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1968
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April 17, 2025
Lou Cameron wrote a ton of novels from 1960 to 2006, primarily Westerns, adult Westerns, men’s adventure, and war stories. He wrote primarily under his own name, but later wrote at least 52 of the Longarm series, an adult Western series, under the name Tabor Evans and also used the names Ramsay Thorne for the Stringer series as well as John Wesley Howad. Among Cameron’s crime fiction novels is his very first novel, Angel’s Flight (1960) and “File on a Missing Redhead” (1969).
File on a Missing Redhead, first published under the legendary Fawcett Gold Medal imprint, is on its surface a just-the-facts-ma’am police procedural about the discovery of what was left of a redheaded woman in the trunk of a Volkswagen Beetle about to go under the wrecking ball. Set just north of Las Vegas, State Police Officer Frank Talbot handles cases outside of the Las Vegas city limits which are outside the city’s jurisdiction, but many of his cases still revolve around the casinos and the gamblers and such who frequent them.
Talbot narrates: “The dead woman was naked except for a pair of nylons that had burst open like the skins of overcooked sausages as her thighs had swollen to blotchy purple monstrosities. Her legs were doubled up until the knees pressed against her breasts, and her wrists were tied to her ankles with cheap brown twine so that the mottled, bloated arms were hugging her thighs. You could only see part of her face. It was jammed in one corner of the trunk compartment and cradled on a mat of obscenely beautiful red hair. The hair was a break. The face was so badly decomposed her own mother wouldn’t have been able to identify her. But the hair narrowed the field a bit. A redheaded woman attracts a certain amount of attention, even around Las Vegas.” People would remember she’d had red hair when and if they reported her missing. Now, if only she’d had some dental work done locally…”
The woman’s dentures though were missing as were her fingers. No clothes, no fingerprints, and no dental records, an no idea how long she had been dead. The only thin clue is the car and the guy who reported it stolen was a motel owner who claimed a tenant had left it as security when he could not pay the rent. Duncan MacDonald was one of those guys who waltzed into town, had a system, dropped a bundle on the Strip, and skipped town, owing two weeks rent.
This corpse with the red hair with little in the way of leads makes for a great police procedural, but Cameron also injects some noir into this tale in the person of Miss Hazel Collier, who has some information for Talbot. It had been two years, but he was still burned about her. “She was still as beautiful as she’d been the night I’d asked her to marry me,” he tells us. “But her eyes were cold as the muzzles of a brace of .357 Magnums as she glanced up to see me standing there with a sick, stupid grin on my face.” Hazel had left Talbot after he asked for her hand in marriage, only to take up with Stretch Voss, a hoodlum, who Talbot had personally collared and ushered into state prison. She had said something about never speaking to Talbot again when he collared the punk.
It turns out that Hazel thinks the redhead was one of the gals who worked with her in the skip-tracing business, where they manned the phones day in and day out, impersonating whoever it felt right to, in order to get the goods on folks who were skipping out on paying. There was a lot of that kind of action in Las Vegas and Hazel it turns out was good at impersonating people. Cameron, thus, offers up what at first appears to be a straight police procedural step-by-step investigation, but gums it up rather nicely with some personal touches that makes things awful awkward for Lieutenant Talbot.
The novel is action-packed and has the feeling of a hunt for MacDonald throughout, a hunt which is quite deadly in its play, including bombings, shoot-outs, and chases through the Nevada desert. Talbot would certainly have made a great series character, but unfortunately Cameron, who had a real talent for writing, went on to other things in his writing career.
File on a Missing Redhead, first published under the legendary Fawcett Gold Medal imprint, is on its surface a just-the-facts-ma’am police procedural about the discovery of what was left of a redheaded woman in the trunk of a Volkswagen Beetle about to go under the wrecking ball. Set just north of Las Vegas, State Police Officer Frank Talbot handles cases outside of the Las Vegas city limits which are outside the city’s jurisdiction, but many of his cases still revolve around the casinos and the gamblers and such who frequent them.
Talbot narrates: “The dead woman was naked except for a pair of nylons that had burst open like the skins of overcooked sausages as her thighs had swollen to blotchy purple monstrosities. Her legs were doubled up until the knees pressed against her breasts, and her wrists were tied to her ankles with cheap brown twine so that the mottled, bloated arms were hugging her thighs. You could only see part of her face. It was jammed in one corner of the trunk compartment and cradled on a mat of obscenely beautiful red hair. The hair was a break. The face was so badly decomposed her own mother wouldn’t have been able to identify her. But the hair narrowed the field a bit. A redheaded woman attracts a certain amount of attention, even around Las Vegas.” People would remember she’d had red hair when and if they reported her missing. Now, if only she’d had some dental work done locally…”
The woman’s dentures though were missing as were her fingers. No clothes, no fingerprints, and no dental records, an no idea how long she had been dead. The only thin clue is the car and the guy who reported it stolen was a motel owner who claimed a tenant had left it as security when he could not pay the rent. Duncan MacDonald was one of those guys who waltzed into town, had a system, dropped a bundle on the Strip, and skipped town, owing two weeks rent.
This corpse with the red hair with little in the way of leads makes for a great police procedural, but Cameron also injects some noir into this tale in the person of Miss Hazel Collier, who has some information for Talbot. It had been two years, but he was still burned about her. “She was still as beautiful as she’d been the night I’d asked her to marry me,” he tells us. “But her eyes were cold as the muzzles of a brace of .357 Magnums as she glanced up to see me standing there with a sick, stupid grin on my face.” Hazel had left Talbot after he asked for her hand in marriage, only to take up with Stretch Voss, a hoodlum, who Talbot had personally collared and ushered into state prison. She had said something about never speaking to Talbot again when he collared the punk.
It turns out that Hazel thinks the redhead was one of the gals who worked with her in the skip-tracing business, where they manned the phones day in and day out, impersonating whoever it felt right to, in order to get the goods on folks who were skipping out on paying. There was a lot of that kind of action in Las Vegas and Hazel it turns out was good at impersonating people. Cameron, thus, offers up what at first appears to be a straight police procedural step-by-step investigation, but gums it up rather nicely with some personal touches that makes things awful awkward for Lieutenant Talbot.
The novel is action-packed and has the feeling of a hunt for MacDonald throughout, a hunt which is quite deadly in its play, including bombings, shoot-outs, and chases through the Nevada desert. Talbot would certainly have made a great series character, but unfortunately Cameron, who had a real talent for writing, went on to other things in his writing career.
December 29, 2021
I am in almost total agreement with Tom Simon's review posted on Goodreads. File on a Missing Redhead is in some ways a typical police procedural story of the time it first appeared in the 1960s. The chief difference from other such books is simply that this is better - smart, well-written, consistently exciting.
This is the third novel that I have read by Lou Cameron. I gave a five-star rating to each of the others and an enthusiastic four stars to this one. Cameron wrote literally hundreds of books and three is not really a significant sample, I guess, but I have been very impressed. I will almost certainly read more of his books.
This is the third novel that I have read by Lou Cameron. I gave a five-star rating to each of the others and an enthusiastic four stars to this one. Cameron wrote literally hundreds of books and three is not really a significant sample, I guess, but I have been very impressed. I will almost certainly read more of his books.
July 16, 2018
File on a Missing Redhead by Lou Cameron
During his career, Lou Cameron wrote all sorts of men’s adventure fiction, but his 1968 paperback, “File on a Missing Redhead” was a pretty straightforward - and excellent - whodunnit police procedural mystery. Because it’s a Cameron paperback, you know in advance it’s going to be well-written, tightly-plotted, and entertaining as hell.
Our narrator is Lt. Frank Talbot, a Detective with the Nevada Highway Patrol. Talbot is called to a Las Vegas auto wrecking yard where the corpse of a young woman is found stuffed into the forward trunk of an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle. The first order of business is identifying the victim - no small task because of her decomposition and the fact that her fingers and teeth had been removed and her face smashed to bits. The best lead is that her beautiful head of red hair was still in tact.
Things quickly get personal for Talbot when his ex-girlfriend surfaces claiming that a female skip-tracer she knows with fiery red hair has recently come up missing. This investigative path brings Talbot inside the world of professional skip-tracers and the insider’s view into that industry was fascinating to the uninitiated reader. But is this missing skip-tracer the same person as the redhead in the trunk?
The reader never really gets to know Talbot much as a person. He’s a reliable narrator and a fantastic police detective, but he is not given much of a personality outside of his ultra-competent investigative skills. As Talbot follows clues in a pretty straightforward homicide investigation, it becomes clear that he’s on the trail of an honest-to-goodness psychopath working in the seamy underbelly of Las Vegas casino life. The plot twists and turns making for a wild ride, and Cameron’s take on hardboiled detective narration is top-notch throughout the paperback.
I suspect that Cameron may have wanted to bring Lt. Talbot more for additional novels, but “File on a Missing Redhead” likely wasn’t a gangbusters hit, relegating it to just another late-period Fawcett Gold Medal stand-alone paperback original. That’s a shame because it’s a fantastic police procedural packed with many interesting factoids - a rare mystery where you’ll walk away having learned a thing or two - right up to the mystery’s twisty resolution.
More unfortunately, this superb novel has not been reprinted or digitized since it’s 1968 release, so you’ll have to play detective yourself to track down a used copy. It’s worth the hunt as this one’s a total winner. Highly recommended.
During his career, Lou Cameron wrote all sorts of men’s adventure fiction, but his 1968 paperback, “File on a Missing Redhead” was a pretty straightforward - and excellent - whodunnit police procedural mystery. Because it’s a Cameron paperback, you know in advance it’s going to be well-written, tightly-plotted, and entertaining as hell.
Our narrator is Lt. Frank Talbot, a Detective with the Nevada Highway Patrol. Talbot is called to a Las Vegas auto wrecking yard where the corpse of a young woman is found stuffed into the forward trunk of an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle. The first order of business is identifying the victim - no small task because of her decomposition and the fact that her fingers and teeth had been removed and her face smashed to bits. The best lead is that her beautiful head of red hair was still in tact.
Things quickly get personal for Talbot when his ex-girlfriend surfaces claiming that a female skip-tracer she knows with fiery red hair has recently come up missing. This investigative path brings Talbot inside the world of professional skip-tracers and the insider’s view into that industry was fascinating to the uninitiated reader. But is this missing skip-tracer the same person as the redhead in the trunk?
The reader never really gets to know Talbot much as a person. He’s a reliable narrator and a fantastic police detective, but he is not given much of a personality outside of his ultra-competent investigative skills. As Talbot follows clues in a pretty straightforward homicide investigation, it becomes clear that he’s on the trail of an honest-to-goodness psychopath working in the seamy underbelly of Las Vegas casino life. The plot twists and turns making for a wild ride, and Cameron’s take on hardboiled detective narration is top-notch throughout the paperback.
I suspect that Cameron may have wanted to bring Lt. Talbot more for additional novels, but “File on a Missing Redhead” likely wasn’t a gangbusters hit, relegating it to just another late-period Fawcett Gold Medal stand-alone paperback original. That’s a shame because it’s a fantastic police procedural packed with many interesting factoids - a rare mystery where you’ll walk away having learned a thing or two - right up to the mystery’s twisty resolution.
More unfortunately, this superb novel has not been reprinted or digitized since it’s 1968 release, so you’ll have to play detective yourself to track down a used copy. It’s worth the hunt as this one’s a total winner. Highly recommended.
June 20, 2023
A fast-moving, clever police procedural novel that I liked better the first time that I read it than I did on my recent rereading.
The book is narrated by Nevada police lieutenant Frank Talbot. A body is found in a car which was about to be crushed in a junkyard when someone spotted the dead woman inside. The corpse has been badly mutilated - fingertips cut off, teeth removed, face smashed in - so that simply identifying the dead woman will be difficult. The only immediate source of identification is the dead woman's red hair. Then a woman arrives at the police station, looking for a missing co-worker - a red-haired woman who might be the body in the car. The person seeking the missing girl presents a problem of a different kind; she is Lieutenant Talbot's former girlfriend, who had dumped him for another man - a crook, whom Talbot had subsequently sent to prison.
The former girlfriend, Hazel Collier, and the missing woman have both been working for a firm of skip tracers. These are not bill collectors; they are the folks who track down the missing debtors and give that information to the collection agencies. Collier mentions a distinctive bracelet belonging to the missing woman; the bracelet is found with the body. It seems that the dead woman must be the missing skip tracer.
Talbot goes to the skip tracer agency and meets the smart, tough woman who runs it. The possibility is raised that the missing woman might have been seduced by a man she had traced. The owner of the agency has thoughts about who that man might be. Now they have a suspect to look for. But things change.
Material about skip tracing, gambling, and casino operations is all fascinating. The details of tracking down a fugitive are well presented. Action sequences are all fine. This is, as I had stated in my earlier review, a pretty good book.
But there are flaws that bother me more now than they previously did.
I still think that much of this book is good - just not as good as I once did.
The book is narrated by Nevada police lieutenant Frank Talbot. A body is found in a car which was about to be crushed in a junkyard when someone spotted the dead woman inside. The corpse has been badly mutilated - fingertips cut off, teeth removed, face smashed in - so that simply identifying the dead woman will be difficult. The only immediate source of identification is the dead woman's red hair. Then a woman arrives at the police station, looking for a missing co-worker - a red-haired woman who might be the body in the car. The person seeking the missing girl presents a problem of a different kind; she is Lieutenant Talbot's former girlfriend, who had dumped him for another man - a crook, whom Talbot had subsequently sent to prison.
The former girlfriend, Hazel Collier, and the missing woman have both been working for a firm of skip tracers. These are not bill collectors; they are the folks who track down the missing debtors and give that information to the collection agencies. Collier mentions a distinctive bracelet belonging to the missing woman; the bracelet is found with the body. It seems that the dead woman must be the missing skip tracer.
Talbot goes to the skip tracer agency and meets the smart, tough woman who runs it. The possibility is raised that the missing woman might have been seduced by a man she had traced. The owner of the agency has thoughts about who that man might be. Now they have a suspect to look for. But things change.
Material about skip tracing, gambling, and casino operations is all fascinating. The details of tracking down a fugitive are well presented. Action sequences are all fine. This is, as I had stated in my earlier review, a pretty good book.
But there are flaws that bother me more now than they previously did.
I still think that much of this book is good - just not as good as I once did.
June 13, 2025
File On A Missing Redhead by Lou Cameron (1968) is a Police Procedural that starts off great...A red head is found dead in the trunk of a VW in an auto salvage yard. Nevada State Patrol Officer/Detective Frank Talbot investigates which leads to a skip-tracing (collection) service where his ex Hazel works. From this strong plot-line on I must say not all goes well...there's a lot of the story that just doesn't make sense. The characters were not well defined, rather thin, as well. None of this book has stuck with me and as soon as I finished I started my next book...can't recommend...2.0 outta 5.0...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews