Crime Fiction Alphabet 2013: The Letter U

The Crime Fiction Alphabet keeps rolling along in the home stretch. We are currently in week 21 with the letter U. Kerrie over at her blog Mysteries in Paradise is kind enough to host this community meme. The rules a quite simple. By Friday of each week participants write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week. The post must be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction. This time around I will be featuring a Carter Brown title for each letter of the alphabet.

Carter Brown: U is for The Unorthodox Corpse

 

Grant Roberts Cover

Police Lieutenant Al Wheeler and a school of sexy coeds play 
hide and seek with a corpse who just won't stay dead

The corpse made his social debut in the finishing schools gym astride a horse. A knife protruded from his back. Then he departs only to reappear later stretched out flat in a padded leather box. When Police Lieutenant Al Wheeler is assigned to cover a ceremony at a local stylist girls school, he walks into the strangest caper of his offbeat career. First a hired magician turns into a corpse before he even can whisk a hat out of a rabbit and then a blonde coed is murdered in front of sixty witnesses. 

Printing History
Written by Alan G Yates (1923-1985)

Horwitz Publications, Inc

Numbered Series #54 December 1957

International Edition Series #11 December 1961

International Edition Series #11 (Reprint) March 1965

New American Library

Signet Books

S1950 July 1961

P4197 1970

Other Covers

Australia

Horwitz Publications, Inc

1957, 1965

Russia

n/d, 2001

Netherlands

Middernacht 

1962

 

Japan

Hayakawa Pocket Mystery Series  

1962

 

France

Gallimard

 1957, 1970, 1973

Germany

Ullstein Bucher  

1976

Finland

Valpar-Mainos
1967

Sweden
Wennerberg
1974

United States
New American Library
1970

Robert McGinnis Cover

   Note

This title was published in a slightly different form on  December 22, 2010.

The Unorthodox Corpse

Trivia

The first Russian title looks like Leslie Nielson (1926-2010) on the cover.