Geek Meets Geekette: Result Murder, Mirth, and Mayhem!
Out of print for 50 years! First time ever in paperback or ebook.
Bashful Geek Reads Success Manual Conquers Gangsters, Amusement Park, and Crooked Politicians — with the Unnoticed Aid of his Geek Gal Secretary.
"High amusement content." Evansville (Indiana) Press
"The story moves along fast. It's light, fantastic entertainment." NY Times
Hadrian Pink, a shy, timid college tutor, reads "Are You A MAN or A MOUSE?" in a phony how-to success book.
He sees a picture of a young man, standing proudly, chin up, eyes glinting fire, a whole roomful of people cowering before him. And read the words: "John Smith had been a weakling. Women and men laughed at him. But then came a sudden EMERGENCY. John Smith, the mouse, suddenly displayed himself as a man of power and iron will. No longer a mouse but a HERO. If a weakling like him John can become a Dominant Male, so can you. SEND TODAY! One dollar brings you our booklet containing the secret."
Then, with a sudden resolution foreign to his nature, Mr. Pink walks to his desk, writes a letter requesting a copy of their booklet, Mouse or Man and enclosing a dollar bill. Geek like he believes everything he reads, and sails forth with supreme confidence unaware that most people go along with him because they are astonished by his newly acquired forcefulness.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away Claribel Higg, "of the Seventh St. Higgs" sits at her family's shooting gallery on the pier at Dreamland. She is wondering if the boardwalk amusement park, which is losing money, will ever open again. Then Claribel meets Pink. She realizes his forcefulness is not the real Pink at all, and glimpses the timid academic underneath his dynamic exterior. Claribel also realizes she is who Pink, a man with a giant intellect and without a single shred of commonsense, needs to steer him through life. Since she grew up in the Carnies, and knows everything about how to run them, Claribel begins to feed Pink what he needs to know to make good.
A visit from the local mob boss looking to chisel in on the profits, Pink's infatuation for a beautiful model he idealizes plants him squarely in a frame for murder, and plots to drive the public away from the park, all lead to a dizzying pace that doesn't let up till the past page.
Thus begins this cheerful, friends to lovers romantic suspense tale.
"Good entertainment. The story of a shy tutor who bucks the racketeers and makes a white elephant of an amusement. In the process he falls in love with a photograph, meets the model through getting involved in a murder, and finds she isn't the right girl after all." Kirkus Revews
"Hadrian Pink,a painfully shy youth, who has spent all of his adult years at college, studying and tutoring, is unexpectedly shunted into the job of manager at Dreamland Park. By studying the manual of Character Builder, Pink changes himself from mouse into man. The reader has the fun of seeing an inconsequential fellow suddenly turn into a two-fisted, domineering chap who crashes his way through to commanding success. Any one who has ever had a qualm of misgiving will heartily enjoy the new character Hadrian Pink the Great builds for himself." New York Times.
"In which Hadrian Pink and Claribel Higg plot together to make a success of a failed amusement pier, tangle with the mob, murder, and a sultry woman with a come hither look for Hadrian. Another riotous Kelland romp, from the king of 1930s romcom."Atlantic-City Press