Customer Reviews

The Dead Seed

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William Campbell Gault is an under-appreciated talent in the pulp private eye jungle and should be a great deal better known than his is .That said however ,this late ( 1985) book does not show him at his considerable best .It seems slightly ennervated and flaccid in the telling .
Brock Callahan -a regular Gault hero-is in retirement from his previous careers as ,firstly a pro footballer and then a private eye .He is not enjoying the experience being bored ,especially as his wife ,Jan ,is busy with an interior decorating business that gets her out of the house and earning money.Then ,they get a new neighbour.The wealthy woman who occupys next dor ,Carol Medford ,gets a new paromour ,none other than Brocks boyhood hero ,the swashbuckler movie star ,Fortney Grange .
Soon after thay move in the vanish for a while -a fact connected to the appearance of a Mrs Lacrosse and her son .The woman is blackmailing Carol and Fortney ;the blackmail leads eventually to the murder of Grange's agent ,the gentlemanly Morgenstern .Grange is at first suspected but all the clues point to one Alvin Whitty ,a cousin of Mrs Lacrosse .Also stirred into the mix is a corrupt cop,with links to a phoney cult.
The plot is pretty routine and so too is the writing and only a middle section set in Arizona really rises above the pedestrian .Try Gault by all means if you like the traditional private eye yarn but go back to the 1950's work where he was at the peak of his performance