Joe Devlin had inherited the Transcontinental Detective Institute, a correspondence school, from an uncle he didn’t get along with upon the man’s death in an automobile accident. He arrives In Chicago to take control of it and finds that it’s really little more than a con job. The course consists of a tin badge, cheap handcuffs, a certificate ascertaining graduation, and a small booklet of lessons. The secretary says all that costs seventeen cents(1942 money) and the buyer pays twelve-fifty. After newspaper advertising costs, the school clears about eight dollars a sucker.
Old uncle had lived well though, a fancy apartment full of expensive suits and shoes, the shoes too small, the suits too big, and was a skirt chaser. The rent on the apartment was past due. The advertisers wanted their money. Because of the uncle’s death, they’d carried a month’s advertising without pay. Now they wanted that and the next month in advance, as Joe wasn’t a known commodity like his uncle.
So when the well dressed gentleman barges into the office and wants to hire Devlin to find a canary yellow camels hair overcoat stolen from him, it sounds screwy, but he’s paying well. The man admits the coat is cheap, but he’s willing to pay four hundred to get it back, “the principal of the thing.” The Institute had been recommended by the police chief of his home town, a graduate.
Joe immediately gets hold of the detective who’d written the booklet and hires him to help. After all, Joe doesn’t know Chicago. The man is unreliable though, being one who can’t pass a saloon without stopping in. Shortly, Joe gets another surprise. The cop friend drops in and wants him to find his best friend, the first client, who’s disappeared, and is offering a nice piece of change for that job.
To easy.
The search led from a swanky hotel to a loop flophouse, from clothing stores to a mining town gambling den. Going to visit the first client, Joe walks into something strange. A man he’d never seen throws something at him and his head explodes. Coming to, he finds himself lying beside a dead body, a chunk of iron ore lying between them. He grabs the rock and runs.
The dead man turns out to be the coat thief.
Things get worse after that. Another body turns up, a man hired by Joe to keep his first detective on the straight and narrow, shot in the back.
It had become obvious that there was more to it than a cheap yellow overcoat. But what? Two lives and the cops are interested in Joe for both, even though there’s not enough evidence to arrest him yet. But they are digging.
A nice little mystery by the pulp and television author.
For more great forgotten books, go to PATTINASE
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
A great choice, Randy. I’ve always enjoyed Gruber’s writing. His mysteries, thrillers and westerns are guaranteed good reads. His non-fiction memoir The Pulp Jungle is essential reading. I haven’t read his biography of Zane Grey, but I’ve heard it’s excellent. (Gruber is also the only pulp writer to create three television series: Tales from Wells Fargo, The Texan, and Shotgun Slade.)
I haven’t bothered to check (and it’s been a few since I read the book), but I think The Yellow Overcoat was originally published under the pen name “Stephen Acre”. Do you know if this is true, or am I confusing it with another book?
I’m not sure on that, Jerry. I got the book off the Fantastic Fiction listing for Gruber and it didn’t mention that name.
In checking, Jerry, I find Stephen Acre listed as a pseudonym and a different title foe The Yellow Overcoat, Fall-guy For A Killer. But the cover they have there has Gruber on it. It may well have been on a hardcover of the book.
Now that I’m (almost) fully recovered from the Thanksgiving coma, I did some checking. The Yellow Overcoat was originally published in hardcover by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1942 under the name “Stephen Acre”. This was the edition I read (mumble-mumble) years ago. The same year, it appeared as a novella in the Short Stories pulp magazine (June 25, 1942) under the Acre name. All of this only goes to show that my mind is not as foggy as my wife sometimes insists.
Hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving, Randy!
Yep, I have the Stephen Acre edition. Guess what? It’s yellow.
Yet to read a Gruber book. Soon.
I’m reading a book now with a Gruber story in it. I find I’ve got a fair number of his books around, though not this one.