The first novel in the series was *Guilty Bystander* in which
Thursday, a drunken bum eaking out a living as a security
officer in a fleabag hotel, sobers up overnight when his
ex-wife informs him that their son has been kidnapped. Mickey
Spillane would use this same
"sobers-up-to-save-a-loved-one" theme in his Mike Hammer
comeback novel,
*The Girl Hunters*.
*Guilty Bystander* became a surprisingly good movie,
considering that it has a budget of about twenty-five cents,
with Zachary Scott as Thursday. The setting was changed to
NYC from San Diego.
Bob Wade, the surviving half of "Wade Miller" once told me
that he and his partner used to write for radio shows like
*Johnny Dollar*. He didn't come right out and say that they
contributed scripts to any of Jack Webb's pre-*Dragnet* PI
shows like *Pat Novak*, *Johnny Modero*, or *Jeff Regan*, but
he did hint that Webb might have gotten the idea for naming
his famous cop character Joe Friday from Wade Miller's name
for their PI character.
JIM DOHERTY
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