HENRY KANE – A Halo for Nobody. Peter Chamber #1. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1947. Dell #231, mapback edition, 1948-49? Also published as Martinis and Murder, Avon #745, paperback, 1956; Avon T-460, paperback, revised edition, date?

   So I’ve been working my way thru James Sandoe’s hardboiled checklist, which I’ve found to be pretty reliable. And this one appears on it with the following faint praise from Sandoe: “Peter Chambers’s first case and the only one in which I could discover any pleasure.”

   NYC private detective Peter Chambers gets hired to find out who murdered the slutty wife of a jewelry store owner.

   Chambers is a pretty likable character, hard drinking and the ladies love him. And he them.

   And as Chambers further digs, it looks like the jewelry store might be an abject lesson in vertical efficiency: Steal the jewels, redesign the settings, and sell them as new.

   Fairly standard detective novel, maybe a par, but spruced up with some of the best hardboiled metaphors and turns of phrase this side of Chandler which may flip that par to a birdie:

   â€œHe had a face like a folded hat.”

   A “blonde with verve and eyes and small curves and a pink revealing gown and voltage.”

   â€œ[W]ith forbidden love and fresh ardor as freely distributed amongst them as cockroach paste in an infested pantry.”

   â€œâ€™[T]he dainty Dorothy can furnish an alibi. She was in bed.’ ‘The dainty Dorothy was in bed,’ Archie mimicked. ‘That’s a fine alibi. It’s a fine alibi for a bedbug. How would you know? Were you there?’ ‘Uh-huh.’”

   â€œShe looked at me and blood went to my head and got crowded like Belmont raceway on a sunny Saturday afternoon.”

   â€œ[She] came up with a laughable little .22, a small black instrument with a tiny muzzle, and I didn’t laugh because the trigger was being squeezed with determination and five cute little pellets entered into me, in the region of the stomach, like five baby fingers into porridge.”

   â€œI pulled at the triggers of both pistols and pumped and I saw blood burst from his head and I watched part of his face dissolve into squirming crimson and I saw him go slowly down behind the desk, like a marionette Santa Claus down a chimney, and I kept pulling at triggers long after there was no sound in the room except the futile foolish click-click of hammers on empty shells….”