Carmody
Created by Alex Saxon (pseud. of Bill Pronzini)

CARMODY isn't really a private eye; rather, he's a sort of freeelance bodyguard and international dealer in "legal and extralegal services and material." Still, in the course of his adventures, he often must make like a detective. He has contacts all over the world, but Carmody, an American, works out of an isolated hilltop villa outside of Parma on the island of Majorca.

A humourless, rather taciturn man, well-tanned, lean, almost predatory looks and flat green eyes, he's got a reputation for being "hard as flint." And while he's nobody's idea of a party animal, he does enjoy his short, thin black cigars and his 911-T Porsche Targa.

Carmody has had a rather interesting publishing history. He first appeared, under the byline of Bill Pronzini, in a novelette in 1970 in the short-lived, digest-sized Adventure. That story, "The $50,000 Bosom", was later expanded into a full-length novel and published as "A Run in Diamonds" in 1973, under the pseudonym of Alex Saxon. He also appeared in three short stories from 1971 to 1975 in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine under Pronzini's own byline. Finally, in 1992, Pronzini collected the stories and the novel, polished them up, and reprinted them as "Carmody's Run."

Pronzini, of course, is best known as the creator of a certain private eye whose name escapes me at the moment.

SHORT STORIES

• "The $50,000 Bosom" (December 1970, Adventure)
• "The Desparate Ones" (1971, AHMM)
• "The Web" (1972, AHMM; AKA "Death Warrant")
• "Free-Lance Operation" (May 1975, AHMM; AKA "Blood Money")

NOVELS

• A Run in Diamonds (1973; by Alex Saxon)

COLLECTIONS

• Carmody's Run (1992) ..Buy this book
  Contains the Saxon novel and the three AHMM short stories listed)

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Big Al Hubin for helping to get it all sorted out.