Monday, August 01, 2005

The a.k.a. website: Author Pseudonyms

In my latest stack of books to de-label, wipe clean, and find the market price for (I sell used books for a living), I came across one called The Venus Probe by David St. John. When I went to research the title on the Internet at my usual sources, some of them also listed it as being by E. Howard Hunt. Yes, that E. Howard Hunt. Hmmm.

It seems he wrote spy novels under several names. One of the reasons I know that now is because of the title-linked website, which lists his known pseudonyms as John Baxter, Gordon Davis, Robert Dietrich, and David St. John.

2 comments:

Tony Casson said...

I read most of the David St. John spy novels off of my father's bookshelf growing up. My dad made sure that I knew who St. John really was. They were completely ludicrous but I remember them fondly. They all featured a James Bond-esque hero named Peter Ward. As I recall, the last few books started to take up Satanism, hard drugs and witchcraft - a bit out of place, but maybe not considering the growing delusion of the Nixon administration.

Kathryn Judson said...

Trock, Thanks for writing. About all I had to go on with this particular book was the cover copy (which was rather James Bond-esque, to borrow your phrase) and it's good to hear from someone who has read in the series.