Based on the Chester Gould newspaper strip, Dick Tracy by William Johnston was published in June, 1970 by Tempo Books. I don’t know a lot about Johnston, except that he seemed to be the tie-in king of the era. He had several originals, but most of his work was based on TV series and movie novelizations.
Dick Tracy and his partner. Sam Catchem, were following up the investigation of a missing scientist who’d disappeared, then showed up twenty-four hours later insisting that he wasn’t missing and that it wasn’t a day later. He’d left work to drive home and believed only thirty minutes had passed. As he worked on some top secret projects, the government was worried that maybe he had used the time to sell those secrets.
While in the middle of that investigation, a college historian turned up missing. He’d left for a speech he was to deliver and his car was outside the venue, but he was nowhere in evidence. Deducing that the two were connected, Tracy puts a detective watching the car to see if the historian reappears.
Exactly twenty-four hours later, they find the man sitting in his car with the detective shot to death beside the car. As before, when the historian regains his senses he doesn’t think it’s the next day. As he saw it, he had driven up for his speech and a crowd of cops suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He has a vague remembrance of a man with an eye patch.
What do a top scientist and a famous historian have in common? Who would benefit from their disappearance and how was it done with them having no knowledge?
Computer analysis says the next type this might happen to should be an administrator. Tracy puts cops watching all the famous businessmen in town, taking one himself. As usual in these stories, his man is seen leaving work with an individual wearing an eye patch!
Following them alone, he trails them to an old building, he starts to look around after they go inside. At a door, it suddenly opens and there is “Eye Patch”, who slugs Tracy, knocking him down, then slamming the door.
Tracy rushes back to his car to call for back-up, only to find it missing. Hurrying to a phone booth to call, he learns something startling. HE’s been missing for twenty-four hours! Catchem and other cops come, search the building, and find it empty!
Tracy is matched up against a fantastic new villain known only as I. B. M. Computer, a human computer that remembers everything he sees or hears and is able to call it up instantly, analyzing all sorts of data. He has a plan to control and change the world as he sees fit and before it’s finished, Tracy has to try a dangerous experiment to foil Mr. Computer.
I’m by no means a Tracy expert, so I’m not sure whether this is an original story or one adapted from a newspaper strip. The cover says based on the cartoon strip by Chester Gould. Whether that means the strip in general or a particular storyline, I don’t know.
I enjoyed it and recommend it if one comes across a copy.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
thank you for getting this up early. I don’t have to scramble for your at 7 am.
Not only forgotten. I never knew this one existed.
I’d never heard of this either. I’ve been reading Vol. 1 of IDW’s Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, and this looks like a good companion book.
Nothing much is known about Johnston, who could be described Thomas Pynchon of the paperbacks. He’s presumably still alive. Does the historian of the book talk about American revolution? Johnston has said that he’d like to write a book about the American revolution and in one of his Maxwell Smart books there are very knowledgeable references to it.
This guy also wrote a Roadrunner novel! And a series of novels based on Happy Days!
He also logged in a trilogy on Sally Field’s The Flying Nun as well. Not to mention Welcome Back, Kotter.