El caso del amable pistolero

# Museum Catalog Note

Vic Peterson's "The Case of the Kindly Gunman" (1953; Spanish translation by José Herrera) is a crime novel following Tony Orlando, an alias for mafiosi Charles Renzio, as he pursues a compromising document across Miami, Havana, Paris, and Tangier. After a police shootout in Tampa kills two federal agents, Orlando and his partner Errol Norton obtain a letter identifying the mysterious "Heroine," leader of a drug trafficking ring. When Norton disappears to Paris with the document, Orlando pursues him while evading both police and the criminal organization. Norton is killed in Paris; Orlando locates Norton's daughter—a nightclub singer in Tangier—and recovers the letter. The novel concludes with a plot twist: Orlando is revealed as an imposter, a traveling salesman who assumed Renzio's identity after finding him dying. Now in love with Norton's daughter and reformed, he surrenders the incriminating document to authorities. The narrative emphasizes cosmopolitan settings and Orlando's survival skills, featuring an metafictional moment where the protagonist reads pulp westerns.