MIKE FREDMAN – Kisses Leave No Fingerprints. Willie Halliday #2. St. Martin’s Press, US, hardcover, 1980. Originally published in the UK by Paul Elek Publishers, hardcover, 1979. The Black Dahlia Company Limited, UK, softcover, 2013.

   This is a private eye story, but as such, while nothing very much out of the ordinary seems to happen, this definitely not your ordinary private eye sort of story. A great part of his is unquestionably due to the fact that Willie Halliday is a vegetarian, a non-drinker, and a student of Asiatic religions on the side — not exactly your standard sort of private eye.

   Nor does he take on divorce cases as a rule, but he does in this one, and then simply because he finds himself moonstruck in love with the woman who hires him, and thus is easily persuaded. That she cares zip about him is obvious to the reader, but not entirely to Willie, who tells the tale.

   Not many surprises follow, but even so, Fredman nevertheless seems to have neatly captured a haunting, dreamlike essence to the fictional world-wide brotherhood of knight-errants reincarnated in today’s world as private investigatory agents.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC UPDATE :  There was one earlier adventure for Willie Halliday, that being You Can Always Blame the Rain (Elek, 1978; St.Martin’s, 1980). There was never a third.