A Murderer Among Us

Rick Holman

by Carter Brown

Cover art by Robert McGinnis.

126 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

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

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

Allan Yates, writing as Carter Brown, published some 35 books in his Rick Holman Hollywood-fixer series from 1961 through 1980. A Murderer Among Us is one of the earliest in the series, having come out in 1962. Here, Rick is tasked with undoing a brewing scandal involving a couple of starlets and their multi-millionaire hangers-on. His disdain for these self-absorbed people and their ridiculous ways is obvious from the start. You get the idea that maybe Rick would prefer some more serious work, but of course you can't argue with the kind of pay that the Hollywood stars foist on you so he's hooked of course. If you are looking for serious mystery work, you may not find it here. Rather, you get a decidedly non-serious work that tries its best to be groovy and there. If you start reading this, you will find that there is some pretty decent writing mixed in with stuff that goes nowhere.

[I.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollywood fixer Rick investigates murder attempts on a starlet only to get mixed up in feuds, grudges, and women.
It’s super short, breezy, and not so mysterious but for a formula detective novel it was fine. There’s a lot of double entendres and overuse of “baby” but it moves quickly and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.