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Redhead songbird in evening dress against a background featuring a jazz band and knife

Pulp Fiction

Write off the Redhead

WH 'Bill' Williams writing as Marc Brody

1958


'A Crime Reporter's Inside Story' titles feature the first-person adventures of crime reporter 'Marc Brody'.

Published by Sydney-based Horwitz Publications between 1955 and 1960, the slightly risqué stories were written by WH 'Bill' Williams, an Australian journalist and editor for The Truth newspaper, who also wrote war novels under his real name.

Williams wrote over 80 hard-hitting tales with formulaic plots and salacious dialogue during the golden age of Australian pulp fiction, with reprints continuing into the 1960s.

As this excerpt from the back cover blurb reads:

'Kurt Kesner, top banking executive, was blown to pieces in his car and half a million dollars was embezzled from the Lexington National Bank. Then Ivan Clinton, another Lexington Bank operator, disappears with ten grand - and Brody starts asking questions.

'Questions like why a guy would want to walk out on a gorgeous redhead thrush Vicki Sherrill - why anyone would risk conning ten grand from night club owner Mugsy Malone. I figure Ivan Clinton will supply all the answers, so I manage to locate him in Brazil where he's mighty interested in the Lexington's oil explorations.

'The search takes Vicki and me into jungle country - but I'm not complaining about cruising up a river with Vicki . . . not until those poisoned arrows start shooting towards us and someone has us staked out as a meal for the tiger fish . . .'