Sun 15 Mar 2020
NOTE: This review from the past was first posted on this blog on January 28, 2014. I’ve been prompted to reprint it because (would you believe it) this past week I started reading the hardcover edition of it, and I was a quarter of the way through (and enjoying it) when it said to myself, by golly, I think I’ve read this before. And lo and behold, I had. Here is the review again, complete with previous comments.
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ASA BAKER – The Kissed Corpse. Carlyle House, hardcover, 1939. Arrow Mystery #8, digest-sized paperback, 1944.
The detective in The Kissed Corpse, and the earlier Mum’s the Word for Murder, is Jerry Burke, recently brought in to oversee the El Paso, Texas, police department.
These are the only two books that Burke and Asa Baker (as narrator) appear in. Asa Baker the writer, is in reality Davis Dresser, of course, who is, as you all know (I’m sure), far better known as Brett Halliday, creator of PI Michael Shayne. The latter first appeared in Dividend on Death in 1939, the same year as this book, and either Shayne became instantly popular or else Halliday/Dresser found more possibilities in writing about a Miami-based PI than he did about an El Paso police detective.
The style of writing in this last adventure of Jerry Burke, then, has the strong aroma of the pulps, at least in the beginning, but as the story goes on, and as some of the wilder activity dies down, it begins to resemble more and more the formal detective story A small houseful of suspects, that is to say, with the detective(s) trying to uncover the clue that will finally revela the killer’s identity.
Dead are the two participants in a scheme to gain expropriation fees for Americans after Mexico has taken over their oil lands — one a soldier of fortune violently opposed to the idea, the other the rich American behind the plot. Complicating matters is the tough female reporter that “Baker” finds himself falling in love with, but who may actually be the killer. (It is her lipstick that is found on the first body, as well as a strange symbol of a double-barred cross.)
If I found Jerry Burke and Asa Baker rather bland, it’s no surprise, since I’ve generally found Mike Shayne to be in the same category. The plot and the several twists are interesting, however, and any pulp detective fan who can find this book should read it. I think Laura Yates had possibilities, too, and it’s too bad we’ll never hear about what kind of excitement she got into next. (That she simply settled down and married Asa Baker is a possibility, but it’s one I refuse to dwell upon.)
Editorial Comment: Mike Nevins reviewed Mum’s the Word for Murder in one of his columns for this blog not too long ago. Check it out here.
January 28th, 2014 at 10:09 pm
I enjoyed this one a bit more than you did, but grant all of your points. Although Baker/Halliday’s mix of pulp/slick writing was an acquired taste I was already a Shayne fan thanks to the Lloyd Nolan films before I read the first book, and I enjoyed them for what they were, a pleasant sorbet between main courses.
And Shayne started out in New Orleans before he moved to Miami (granted fairly soon thereafter).
If you recall the story of how Halliday ‘met’ the model of Shayne he was a with a bunch of roughnecks in a cantina just across the border from El Paso. Can’t decide though it this tends to back up the veracity of that story or shoot it down completely.
January 29th, 2014 at 12:18 am
David
I’m pretty sure Dividend on Death takes place in Miami, and this source seems to confirm it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=BwhuwWYptUgC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=mike+shayne+miami+new+orleans&source=bl&ots=-ARxe0ZZ_I&sig=TxMo0x8bwgXHWn0Vx9cK387QdBs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=03XoUrSxJOSMyQGPj4BA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mike%20shayne%20miami%20new%20orleans&f=false
It’s a Google books link, so I hope it works. Shayne started out in Miami, moved to New Orleans, where he met Lucy Hamilton after his wife Phyllis died, then moved back to Miami.
February 6th, 2014 at 6:31 pm
Thanks Steve for the clarification. It would help if I read them in order I suppose. I seem to recall several of the Jeff Chandler Shayne radio series episodes were set in New Orleans.
Halliday and Erle Stanley Gardener seemed to get Shayne and Donald Lam out of town to places in the southwest more often than many in that school during the era. While Vegas and Reno are pretty common locales, I notice that with some writers like John D. MacDonald, Donald Hamilton, and a few others from that era that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and the southwest in general show up fairly often while most writers seemed to focus on NYC, LA, Vegas, Miami, DC, and San Francisco.