Wed 29 Apr 2015
BRETT HALLIDAY – Fit to Kill. Dell D314; paperback reprint, October 1959. Cover art: Robert McGinnis. First published by Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1958. Also published in several other Dell editions.
All in all, this one was a disappointment. I think the problem was this. If you’re going to write a Mike Shayne mystery, make sure he shows up in the story before page 61.
Long, long before. The protagonist in the first sixty pages is Shayne’s good buddy, newspaper reporter Tim Rourke, who is OK as a good buddy, but as the hero of a rip-roaring PI novel, forget it. He is as bland as yesterday’s buttered toast. Even if he’s in some unnamed dictator-run Latin American country and a girl dressed only in négligée and slippers knocks on his door one evening and asks for his help in leaving the country.
Need I say that she is blonde, young, and one of the “nicest-looking girls Rourke had ever seen.” Of course he helps her, and of course complications arise, and of course Mike Shayne has to come to the rescue, but none of this gets any more interesting than when the girl knocks on the door in the first place.
The pieces are eventually all there, but nothing comes together as I remember Mike Shayne novels doing — none were ever special, but they were always solid, workmanlike pieces of PI fiction. This one seemed only half-baked, and now I know why.
This is the first of the ghost-written Mike Shayne novels. All of the earlier ones were written by Davis Dresser under the Brett Halliday pen name, but beginning with this one, Dresser began farming out the books to other writers. This one, for example, was really written by Robert Terrall, who went on to write quite a few of them, but in this, the first one he did, he either had only the essence of the characters or he was trying too hard to make this one different, what with the long delayed entrance of Mike Shayne, the leading character, or he should have been.
April 29th, 2015 at 10:22 am
Someone must have thought the books needed to get out of the Florida setting “rut”. Wrong! I agree this is a weak entry in the series, but I have no complaint about the McGinnis cover on the second one you show.
April 29th, 2015 at 3:39 pm
To me she looks far too thin. In comparing the two covers, it does not matter that such a scene as the second one does not appear in the story. The first girl appeals to me more, but she is not blonde, and the girl in the story most definitely is.
I had a third cover ready to add, but the review was too short to fit it in. It’s an even later Dell, but from a really crappy photo shoot. It must have been cheaper to do that than to hire McGinnis to do another painting.
April 29th, 2015 at 3:40 pm
True, not one of the better titles. I love the Davis Dresser Shayne novels. By this point in the series, Terrall was alternating with other ghosts (Ryerson Johnson, Dennis Lynds). I’ve read where Terrall held Dresser’s work in low regard, which could be another reason FIT TO KILL doesn’t work. Later, though, Terrall wrote all of the Shayne novels, beginning in 1965. I’ve read (and in some cases re-read) and enjoyed all of Terrall’s entries from that period.
April 29th, 2015 at 4:01 pm
Makes me wonder how much input Dresser had into the ghosting; I mean, did he even look it over to see if it seemed right?
April 29th, 2015 at 5:58 pm
I loved Terrall’s own Ben Gates, but this is just not Shayne. A bump in the road though because later both Terrall and Johnson became quite good if never equal to Dresser at his best. In fairness Dresser himself did a few that kept Shayne off stage too long for the books’ own good.
April 29th, 2015 at 6:45 pm
Dan, Comment #4
From the Wikipedia page for Michael Shayne:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shayne
“Some of these Halliday ghost writers have suggested that Dresser still kept his hand in, even after other writers largely took over the writing of the novels, by doing at least a light edit of the Shayne manuscripts contributed by others, and thus making the later books in the series “ghost-collaborated” rather than actually “ghost-written”.
April 29th, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Dresser did indeed keep his hand in on the Shayne ghost jobs published under the Torquil imprint in the early 60s. Ryerson Johnson states in his as yet unpublished memoir that Dresser edited and rewrote portions of the two Shayne novels he ghosted, particularly KILLERS IN THE KEYS.
April 29th, 2015 at 9:20 pm
Steve,
The majority of McGinnis women are on the thin side. For one thing one of his favorite and most frequent models was Suzy Parker. But tall thin long legged girls showing their rib cage was a McGinnis trademark.
I hadn’t seen the McG cover on this one though since I had the first one.
Leslie Charteris kept his hand in with the Saint continuations as well unlike Ellery Queen who only penned one non Ellery novel and that in hardcover not paper. I’ve no doubt that like Charteris Dresser had too much invested in Shayne to abandon him completely.
February 5th, 2016 at 5:27 pm
If my father were alive he would appreciate the nod to Ben Gates, a character who was much closer to Dad’s heart than Shayne. I would also recommend his Harry Horne series, written under the pseudonym John Gonzalez… though I’m obviously a bit partial. Oh, and Charles Ardai told me he loved Dad’s early novel A Killer is Loose Among Us (written under his real name). That one is a favorite of mine, right up there with They Deal in Death.
Thanks for letting me contribute to the discussion.
February 5th, 2016 at 7:03 pm
I wish I could say that I’ve read a lot of your father’s books, Ben, but I can’t. Just enough of the Ben Gates books to remember enjoying them, and none of Harry Horne books. I have to do something about that…!
Thanks for stopping by. It’s always good to hear from the family of an author whose books you’ve read. This is the best part of what the Internet can do for you, in my opinion.
July 11th, 2020 at 3:51 pm
I think Robert Terrall’s first endeavor to write this 1958 Shayne novel was inspired by current events in the Miami political climate. (And therefore to sell books!)
In 1956, the tyrant, dictator of Nicaragua, Somoza, was assassinated. His son Luis, took over (no election of course) 1956-63.
The Cuban Revolution went 5+ years, 1953-59, Fidel Castro’s rise and the exile of “president” Bautista happened in 1959-60.
Tensions in El Salvador led up to a military coup in 1960.
Guatemala was a hot spot too; finally its leader, Armas, fled to Mexico and was assassinated in 1958. HOT current events of the times.
So, Tim Rourke gets in trouble in Bananaland with blondes, booze, bad hombres and bullets.. Shayne enters the plot late, on page 48.