Thu 8 Oct 2015
BRETT HALLIDAY – Marked for Murder. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1945. Paperback reprints include: Dell 222, mapback; Dell 503, mapback; Dell D291, June 1959; Dell 5386, Jan 1963 (cover art: McGinnis); Dell 5386, new printing, June 1968.
The copy I just read is the one from January 1963 with the cover art done by Robert McGinnis, seen here to the right. He may have done covers for the other printings, but if so my records do not currently show it.
As for the book itself, it’s a good one, and I will tell you this much up front and right away. When you read this book, you won’t be able to tell the blondes apart without a scorecard. Marked for Murder takes place in Miami — private eye Mike Shayne comes in from New Orleans where he has been living and working after the death of his wife Phyllis, but once he hears that his good friend Tim Rourke, beat reporter for the Miami Courier, has been shot, almost fatally, you can’t keep him away.
But to get back to the point I was making, Miami has to have a higher quota of blondes than any other part of the country, if this book is to be believed. Rourke was writing an expose about the blonde woman who has been seen hanging out with winners at gambling joints around town, said winners later showing up dead, their winnings not to be found.
The wife of the current editor of the Courier is also a blonde. Rourke doesn’t get along with the editor, but he has been making time with the wife. He is also visited by a couple of blondes (one the editor’s wife) just after a pair of thugs working for the guy that owns the aforementioned casinos take Rourke for a ride.
Even though this is a PI novel, it is also a good old-fashioned detective puzzler. Halliday’s writing (or that is to say, Davis Dresser’s) reminded me this time around of Erle Stanley Gardner’s, of all people, with enough clues and suspects to keep Shayne scratching his red-haired head all the way through the book.
There is no final courtroom scene, à la Perry Mason, but à la the latter, Shayne does play loose and easy with the evidence and all of the possible suspects he encounters along the way. This one was fun to read, in a timeless sort of fashion, and I am embarrassed to say that I did not figure out who done it long before Shayne did, and I should have.
October 8th, 2015 at 2:38 pm
I recall this as being a really good Shayne novel. The edition I read years ago was probably the second mapback version, with a different cover from the one in the post. I wonder how many different covers some of those Shayne novels had over the years, just in the Dell editions. On some of them, there have to be at least half a dozen variations.
October 8th, 2015 at 3:22 pm
When I was looking for covers to use, James, I saw at least two others, including that second mapback edition. That’s almost your half a dozen right there.
October 8th, 2015 at 3:40 pm
There’s probably an edition from the Seventies with a photo cover as well. I hated most of those covers but read the books anyway.
October 8th, 2015 at 4:16 pm
This was also the first of three Shayne novels adapted by Dell Comics in their three issue Shayne comic book series by the artist who did the MIKE HAMMER comic strip.
The ties to Gardner and Perry Mason are not that strange. Halliday (at least when Dresser was penning them) was out of the Hammett school as were the early Perry Mason novels where the hero played fast and loose with law and expected to be paid for his efforts by as many people as possible (Mason was more altruistic on this point eventually, Shayne never was).
The Shayne novels Dresser wrote tend to be more or less fair play detective stories less in the Chandler mode and more along lines of Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON. I find them still fresh, timeless as noted above, and easy to read and enjoy.
Shayne even tops Spade and Mason though when it comes to evidence. He obscures it, hides it, destroys it, and tap dances all over the law to protect his clients even when they are lying to him. It would cost you and arm and a leg since his fee is $10, 000 dollars, but Shayne is the one eye you would likely hire if you were up to your neck in a murder you did not commit. He draws the line at murder (in fact seldom carries a gun unless he has to) but not much else.
Shayne is strictly a means suits the ends type, his idea of ethics has a dollar sign on it and neither he nor Halliday make any bones about it. He is not the boor that Cleve Adams Rex McBride is or quite as potentially dubious as Sam Spade since more than pride at being a detective seems to motivate him, but he and Kurt Steel’s Hank Heyer are both mercenary in the extreme, something more realistic than the do anything for $25 a day Marlowe or $50 a day Archer.
And I’m currently married to a former Miami blonde, and yes there are a lot of them.
October 8th, 2015 at 8:48 pm
Incidentally the third edition shown is the one I read first, well, after the MICHAEL SHAYNE PRIVATE DETECTIVE Dell comic book.
Actually it worked well in that format too.
October 8th, 2015 at 10:53 pm
I believe at one time I had a complete set of the MIKE SHAYNE comic books, but they’re gone now. I don’t even remember reading them, but I must have. Mike Shayne has always been one of my favorite PI’s, and this one reminded me why. The Shayne’s I’ve read more recently have all been by those other guys. The books were OK, but I enjoyed this one a lot more.
October 9th, 2015 at 2:08 pm
I have that same edition you show at top. I’ve been reading these in order, pretty much, and the last one I read was the one right after he got married. So this may be next or two away for me. Thus I didn’t read much of this review, so as not to spoil the book for me, though you’re good at avoiding them
October 10th, 2015 at 2:49 pm
Insightful look at a PI I haven’t read for so long I’ve no doubt I could read the ones I did read again without recognizing them. (I suspect I was more idealistic back when I read them, and undoubtedly put off by the mercenary pragmatism you describe here)
July 10th, 2020 at 12:32 pm
To all commenters who wondered about the different paperback editions and covers of “Marked For Murder”; (I am a collector)
1948 mapback #222
1951 mapback #503 25 cents
1959 ……..D291 35c McGinnis art cover
1963 ……..5386 40c McGinnis art #2
1968 +’69….5386 50c McGinnis art #3
1970 ……..5386 60c McGinnis art #3 again
sorry, no edition with a photo cover.
I would include photos of all, but not possible here as a comment. All covers (front and back) of ALL DELL editions can be seen at bookscans.com