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Dale Shand (Triphammer)Created by Douglas Enfer (pseudonyms include Dale Bogard & Paul Denver, as well as the house pseudonym of John Powers; 1906-87)"Shand is all man as well as private investigator - perhaps the greatest fiction detective to emerge since Philip Marlowe. We the publishers, guarantee that you will sit up late with him." --Well, his publisher had high hopes, anyway.
By all accounts, Shand was pretty much your run-of-rthe-mill private dick, fond of whisky and dames, and able to not just give a punch, but take one as well. He was an early creation of prolific (one paperback billed him "The fastest thriller writer on Earth!") Britsh pulpster Douglas Enefer, who started out writing American-style hard-boiled crime fiction, but eventually became known for his film and television tie-ins and novelisations (The Phil Silvers Show, The Avengers, Cannon, etc.) and TV scripts (most notably The Saint and Coronation Street). In fact, his tie-ins for Cannon are probably better regarded than his own fiction. In an effort to ship a few more units, the Shand series got a facelift in 1964, with the third book in the series, The Dark Kiss, relaunched as the first in the Triphammer series. The hard-boiled art work of the earlier book covers in the series, so deliberately evocative of 1940s and 50s pulp tropes, was swapped for new, more "modern" designs suggestive of the growing influence of the spy craze. And near the end of his long career, Shand left his New York home base more frequently, venturing as far as California, Vancouver, Majorca and the Mediterranean. But it was all par for the course. Over a long career, Enefer used a variety of pen names which were -- just to add to the confusion -- often interchangeable with his series characters. Plots, titles and characters were recycled endlessly. As Douglas Enfer, Dale Bogard. Paul Denver and John Powers, he wrote novels featuring private eyes such as Shand, Mike Power and Dale Bogard and Liverpool copper Sam Bawtry. NOVELS
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. | Home | Detectives A-L M-Z | Film | Radio | Television | Web Comics | Comics | FAQs |
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