The Wench Is Wicked by Carter Brown

Lieutenant Al Wheeler's debut

Bernard Blackburn Cover

Al Wheeler is just a cop. A plain simple cop even if Captain Parker figures Al is the most unorthodox Lieutenant who stepped beyond the line of duty to take a blonde home. The patrolman finds a corpse in a gravel pit. Al finds Deidre Damour in her room at the hotel. That is a story in itself! But there is more... A cop gets permanently retired with a bullet in the head. Al gets suspended for some trivial reason, they think he let the murderer escape and he mislaid a cop car someplace. So that leaves Al a lot of time on his hands, time to fill and the only way he can think of filling it is to look up some people he knows. Goldie, the thrush at the "Eldorado". The blonde receptionist at the Valley Hotel who can't be as dumb as she looks. Deidre, the answer to a million guy's prayers when they are not saying them out loud. But like some guy said, "If it isn't women, it's work". And Al has some bright ideas about who might have done the murdering and that's not really good because that gives the murderer some bright ideas about Al. He would not mind taking that step, except it's around a hundred feet down to the next one. He wouldn't take it but for the gun in his back!

Printing History

Horwitz Publications Inc

Numbered Series #6 (#5) (1955)

Trivia

The numbering is either misprinted on the cover or this title was #6 in the UK and #5 in Australia.