The Book You Have to Read: “The Hotel Dick,” by Axel Brand

(Editor’s note: This is the 188th installment in The Rap Sheet’s continuing series about great but forgotten books. Its author is Stephen Eoannou of Buffalo, New York. In addition to holding an MFA degree from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, and an MA from Ohio’s Miami University, Eoannou says he’s “worked as The French Fry Boy at the Buffalo Zoo, a college English instructor, and a traveling salesman hustling software to Fortune 500 companies.” His first three books were the short-story collection Muscle Cars [2015], and historical novels titled Rook [2022] and Yesteryear [2023]. Eoannou explains that although “I’ve never been a hotel dick, … I write about one in my forthcoming novel After Pearl,” due for release on May 1 from the Santa Fe Writer's Project.)

It’s 1948. Hitler’s dead. Europe’s rebuilding. And an eyewitness swears Hollywood legend Spencer Tracy murdered house detective J. Adam Bark. So begins Axel Brand’s The Hotel Dick (2008), the opening entry in the Joe Sonntag series. Richard S. Wheeler, the orthonym behind the pseudonym Axel Brand, was known primarily as a prolific writer of western and historical fiction before publishing The Hotel Dick. He authored more than 70 novels and numerous short stories. Wheeler chose to set his first noir mystery not in his usual milieu of the American West, but in gritty, blue-collar Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his hometown.

Wheeler’s protagonist is Lieutenant Joe Sonntag (or “Joe Sunday” in German), a low-key, no-nonsense cop inspired by Dragnet’s iconic crime stopper, Joe Friday. As the tale begins, Sonntag is summoned to Milwaukee’s Lakeshore Towers, described as a flossy hotel with a flossy barbershop. Except on this morning, the Towers’ flossy hotel dick was shot twice while getting his morning shave. The barber is an eyewitness and swears that actor Tracy, who actually grew up in Milwaukee, pulled the trigger. Sonntag, of course, doubts that the two-time Academy Award winner is the killer but becomes less certain when Tracy’s Hollywood studio reports the performer’s whereabouts as unknown.

Being a peeper in an upscale hotel has its perks, and one of them is that you get to live on the premises rent free. When Sonntag searches Bark’s suite, he discovers the walls plastered with autographed movie-star photos: Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth, Frank Sinatra, and hundreds more. Spencer Tracy’s studio portrait hangs above the couch. Photoplay magazines are stacked on end tables. Sonntag realizes the Tinseltown connection to Milwaukee is real when two women are found shot soon after Bark’s death. Neither victim is your ordinary girl-next-door. One looks like actress Greer Garson and survives her shooting. The other is a dead ringer for Veronica Lake and isn’t as lucky. Sonntag fears there’s a serial slayer in town doing away with celebrity look-alikes, and he sets out to stop them.


(Above) Postcard of downtown Milwaukee, mailed in 1948.

As Sonntag investigates Bark’s premature demise and the Doppelganger shootings, he realizes that Bark is a mystery, too. While his suite is filled with Hollywood glamour shots, it contains nothing personal or revealing about the house sleuth. Wheeler describes Bark’s living quarters as “devoid of idiosyncrasy, colors and styles.” Even the curtains are an “anonymous tan.” More perplexing, Bark’s backstory and references are fictitious. His colleagues claim he never spoke about himself or his past. Nothing about Bark or his life is clear … except his propensity for blackmail. Sonntag discovers that the detective was using his hotel passkey and Speed Graphic camera for the purpose of extorting adulterers, fornicators, and prostitutes. Did he try his swindle on Spencer Tracy? Or did some other blackmailed sap pump bullets into his heart and mouth? And what was Bark’s connection to the two silver-screen look-alikes? Sonntag knows the answers are to be found somewhere out on Brew City’s mean streets.

The atmosphere of Wheeler’s 1948 Milwaukee is among this novel’s many strengths. While readers may be more familiar with Philip Marlowe’s Los Angeles or Sam Spade’s San Francisco, industrial Milwaukee is a perfect contrast to Hollywood’s glamour and sunshine. Even the film-star knockoffs who were shot are not as attractive or alluring as the real Greer Garson and Veronica Lake. The gritty urban setting allows Wheeler to incorporate noir elements—darkness, shadows, muted light—throughout the narrative. He knows his home turf well and draws upon childhood memories of a town where English was often a second language and there were as many corner bars as there were churches. References to the Dorsey Brothers, Packard automobiles, and, of course, golden-era actors and actresses, plant the reader back in a time when men carried automatics and got straight-razor shaves, followed by a slap of Bay Rum.

Another strength of The Hotel Dick, and an earmark of noir, is Wheeler’s Tommy-gun-like dialogue. Much of the clipped conversation in these pages is presented without attribution, interior reflection, or physical gestures. The result is a rapid exchange of words. The staccato discourse and interrogations add to this book’s driving pace. The spare prose also propels the plot forward as Sonntag gumshoes his way to solving the homicides. Readers will be guessing until the end about Bark’s secret life and, of course, whodunit.

Wheeler went on to write four more novels in the Joe Sonntag series: The Dead Genius (2008), Night Medicine (2010), The Saboteur (2012), and The Homicidal Saint (2015). He passed away in 2019 from complications resulting from leukemia. Surprisingly, none of the Sonntag books have been adapted for television or the big screen. But with the recent success of AMC-TV’s Monsieur Spade (set in 1963) and HBO’s Perry Mason origin story (set in 1932), the timing seems perfect to reintroduce these nostalgic works of noir, especially The Hotel Dick, to the American public. Dogged investigator Joe Sonntag, one of Milwaukee’s finest, deserves nothing less.