Thu 8 Sep 2016
Archived PI Review: BRETT HALLIDAY – Michael Shayne’s Long Chance.
Posted by Steve under Covers , Reviews[9] Comments
BRETT HALLIDAY – Michael Shayne’s Long Chance. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1944. Reprinted in paperback many times, including Dell #325, mapback edition. 1949; Dell #866, 1956; Dell D416, 1961, McGinnis cover. (All three shown.)
When the death of Mike Shayne’s wife Phyllis has him packing up shop in Miami, and ready to call it quits with his career as a private detective, his old buddy, reporter Tim Rourke, with a nose for news and an eye for a friend in trouble, starts him back on the right track with a job that takes him back to the old stomping grounds he was once run out of, New Orleans.
And there, besides a nice girl or two to help chase away the blues, he finds himself hip-deep in a case of murder, complicated by police corruption and the dope-peddling racket in a city where life can be loose and easy and more.
Shayne leads more with his head than he should, but he survives a long night of beatings, doped drinks and a rigged picture frame to pull off a decent bit of surprise trickery to nab the killer. The early Shayne novels were not far removed from the the glory pages of Black Mask magazine, and this tale, no exception, goes down as smoothly as a bottle of Monet cognac.
Rating: B
September 9th, 2016 at 7:34 am
I read the DELL edition with the McGinnis cover way back in the 1960s. I read a dozen of these Mike Ssaynes in a binge around 1965. Fun reading!
September 9th, 2016 at 10:52 am
Those McGinnis covers sold a lot of Mike Shayne paperbacks back then in the 60s. I know, because I was there too!
September 9th, 2016 at 12:05 pm
I liked this one a lot, maybe more than you did, Steve. But then I was reading them out of order, if that has anything to do with it.
September 9th, 2016 at 12:25 pm
For the most part the Shayne books could be read in any order, with only a small adjustment needed to adapt to the year any one book was written.
This one, though, what with the death of Shayne’s wife Phyllis, involved more continuity than usual. But as I recall, and I may be wrong about this, her death occurred between books, not at the end of the previous one.
Can anyone say more? I’ll also see what I can find out on my own.
September 9th, 2016 at 12:31 pm
Apparently it was the previous book in the series, BLOOD ON THE BLACK MARKET (1943), in which Shayne really has to come to grips with Phyllis’s death.
September 10th, 2016 at 10:47 pm
This or the book folowing it was also the source for Dell’s fist Shayne comic book since it opens with Phyllis death.
My impression is that she died between books as well, at least I never found the story or novel she died in.
July 10th, 2020 at 12:59 pm
Hello Steve and David Vineyard, above.
“Blood on the Black Market” 1943, book #8 in the series suddenly mentions wife, Phyllis Shayne, on page one, ‘where he had lived with Phyllis before her death.’
In 1956, nine years later, Davis Dresser issued a revised edition of the 1943 book, “Heads You Lose” differing only by a 13-page Author’s Foreword” which explained Phyllis’s death in childbirth. Page one is very, very sad to read.
AND THEN it included a plot summary of his first 26 Shayne novels. (However, Davis omits one book,1950, and juxtaposes the order of “When Dorinda” and “What Really”; too much cognac Davis?
Lucy Hamilton is introduced in, “Long Chance” and she is Shayne’s love interest until book #50, “50th Case” ghost written now, by Terrall.
August 29th, 2020 at 11:23 am
I’m Sorry.. “Long Chance” is book #9 and introduces Lucile Hamilton, pg 93. “Lucy”, is used from novel #10 on…
August 29th, 2020 at 1:07 pm
Thanks for the corrections, Trevor. I don’t know of anyone who’s read the Shayne books and kept more track of such details than you.