Thu 21 Aug 2008
Review: BRETT HALLIDAY – Shoot the Works.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Reviews[7] Comments
BRETT HALLIDAY – Shoot the Works.
Dell 7844; paperback reprint, December 1965; cover: Robert McGinnis. Earlier paperback edition: Dell 988, September 1958; cover: Robert Stanley. Hardcover edition: Torquil / Dodd Mead, 1957.
According to the blurb on the hardcover edition, this was the 30th Mike Shayne novel that Brett Halliday wrote, which is to say Davis Dresser, who was still actively writing them in 1957. It takes place in Miami, with all of the usual players in place: Lucy Hamilton, Shayne’s secretary and close lady friend; Chief Will Gentry, of Homicide; and Timothy Rourke, ace reporter of the Daily News.
I may be wrong, but while I can’t tell you in which book the four of them all appeared in together for the first time, I think they were in all of them from at least this point on – the point of time being this book, Shoot the Works, of course.
It’s Lucy who gets Mike involved in this one. The mother of one of her closest friends comes home early from a trip to New York City only to find her husband shot to death in their apartment. Worse, he has a bag packed on the bed – and two airplane tickets to South America in his pocket.
Against his better judgment, at the urging of the dead man’s wife, who wishes to avoid a scandal and the notoriety that might end her daughter’s precarious pregnancy, Mike takes the tickets and withholds the evidence from Gentry.
This has two serious repercussions. Gentry knows Shayne is holding something back, but he doesn’t know what; and secondly, Shayne finds himself in a serious bind: when his client is suspected, there’s no way he can get on Gentry’s good side, as the tickets will make the case against her even stronger.
This is a murder case (and investigation) from beginning to end, with very little room left for anything that passes for more than surface characterizations. Shayne seriously flirts with a couple of ladies who seem completely willing to let him have their way with them – his relationship with Lucy seems to allow him the possibility, as far as he’s concerned, that is.
There are a couple of finely devised twists and turns of the plot, mostly based on statements and actions misinterpreted and misunderstood – nicely done – and one piece of evidence that Shayne obtains under unusual conditions, and I caught the significance of that, even though it isn’t brought up again until much later.
The only drawback to this detective puzzle of a novel – other than the incessant smoking and sipping down cognacs – if that’s a drawback, that is – is the paucity of murder suspects involved. One might simply guess at the killer’s identity, and by the laws of probability one might actually be right.
Without the pleasure of putting the facts together as they should be put. Otherwise where’s the satisfaction?
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 am
This post just made me realize I’ve have both of those paperback covers. I really need to bring lists of books I already own when I go shopping.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 am
Right. I’m with you there. No need to have two copies of the same cover!
— Steve
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Boy, I haven’t read a Mike Shayne novel in years. It’s been too long. There was something there in those novels and I never quite found out what it was — I’ll probably never will, but sometimes they are like a magnet — maybe because there are so many out there… I liked them.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
August
My suggestion is to try one of the earlier ones, from the 1940s, before the series began to get too formulaic. This one isn’t quite there, but after 30 adventures, it’s close.
Either that, or one of the later ones that were ghosted by other writers. I think Robert Terrall brought in some fresh ideas and settings when he started writing them, even with the same familiar faces.
— Steve
PS. Here’s my review of Tickets for Death (1941): https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=539
and Last Seen Hitchhiking (1974, by Terrall): https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=540
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Killers from the Keys (Ryerson Johnson, I understand) is also a lively read with some colorful characters.
Keith
August 23rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I’ve not read Killers from the Keys (1961), Keith, but you’re certainly correct about Ryerson Johnson writing it. It was the second of two Mike Shayne novels he did, the first being Dolls Are Deadly (1960).
Sometime soon I’ll have to finish up the chapter in Johnson’s autobiography about Davis Dresser. Every week I think I’ll be able to get back to it, and every week something else comes along.
— Steve
July 25th, 2020 at 10:03 am
Commenting after 12 years. Am I too late? In answer to your question in the review, Lucy first appeared in Michael Shayne’s Long Chance, 1944. All four major characters first appear together in Marked for Murder 1945. Peter Painter as well.
After Shoot the Works, 1957 one of the four characters is occasionally omitted in some of the books.
In 1960, Police Chief Gentry has no role in, Murder Takes No Holiday, and Lucy and Tim Rourke only say goodbye at the airport in chapter one.