Blondes Are My Trouble

A blindingly blonde woman walks into private detective Mike Garfin’s downtown Montreal office, complaining that she’s being followed by a man. That evening, at a luxurious Lakeshore home, he witnesses another woman being forced into a car. Garfin gives chase, only to find her dead and disfigured beneath the wheels of a large truck on Highway 20. At first he sees no connection between the two– why should he?– but Garfin’s pursuit of the truth shows they are inextricably linked by basic vice on the highest floors of the swankiest Sherbrooke Street apartments. This Douglas Sanderson thriller follows Hot Freeze as the second Mike Garfin adventure. First published in 1954 under the title The Darker Traffic, a Dodd, Mead Red Detective Mystery, it was reissued the following year as Blondes are My Trouble by Popular Library. This Ricochet Books edition is the first in sixty years.

J.F. Norris writes essays and reviews on crime, supernatural and adventure fiction from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Douglas Sanderson (1920-2002) was a native of Kent, England. Sanderson turned to writing mystery thrillers when his first novel, Dark Passions Subdue, met with disappointing sales. Exit in Green, his first foray into the genre, was followed by twenty-one others, many written under the noms de plume “Martin Brett” and “Malcolm Douglas”.