Sat 27 Jul 2024
Diary PI Mystery Review: BRETT HALLIDAY – The Violent World of Michael Shayne.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews[4] Comments
BRETT HALLIDAY – The Violent World of Michael Shayne. Mike Shayne #51. Dell 9334; paperback original; 1st printing, November 1965. Ghost written by Robert Terrall. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. At least one reprint edition.
Mike Shayne is hired by a senator’s daughter to come to Washington and frighten away a widow intent on blackmail. Senator Hitchcock is chairman of a subcommittee which is investigating the awarding of a big airplane contract, and certain lobbyists could be capable of arranging compromising situations.
The widow’s background is not entirely clean, enabling Shayne to finish that part of the job easily enough. But he carries his investigations a bit further, murder results, and all his preconceptions are proven wrong.
Bribery and blackmail in Washington may be real enough, but this book couldn’t convince anyone of it. The characters are standard: unsavory investigators, crooked lobbyists, industrialists willing to look the other way, and one dishonest senator. Shayne works the whole case suffering from lack of sleep, an easy excuse for messing around for as long as he does. If he was confused, pity the reader.
Rating: **½
July 27th, 2024 at 9:55 pm
I’m not a big fan of the Terrall Shaynes, too often it is hard to believe he ever read one of the Hallidays, his Shayne behaves so little like the original. He did much better on his own as Robert Kyle with Ben Gates.
The later the series ran the less they were worth reading for fans of Michael Shayne and not just generic private eye which is what many of the Terrall’s read like.
July 28th, 2024 at 10:34 am
I agree with David’s assessment of the Terrall Shaynes. I only own THE VIOLENT WORLD OF MICHAEL SHAYNE because of the Robert McGinnis cover artwork!
July 28th, 2024 at 11:18 am
(I posted some of this yesterday in response to another Terrall/Shayne review on Facebook. Seems appropriate to re-post here.)
I’ve been a Mike Shanye fan since junior high. For me, the best Dave Dresser Shayne novel is BODIES ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM with MURDER WEARS A MUMMER’S MASK a close second. All of the early novels in the series have their moments with Mike assisted by an engaging cast of regulars. Over time Dresser’s weak point proved to be plotting, with the hardboiled aspects too often marred by overly contrived, hokey plots, WHEN DORINDA DANCES being a perfect example. Being a Shayne fanboy, I’ve read nearly all of the series ghost writers. My two favorites are James Reasoner and Robert Terrall. I love Terrall’s run of Shayne Dell paperbacks from MERMAID ON THE ROCKS (1967) through BLUE MURDER (1973). I bought ‘em new as they first came out and have read a few of them more than once. I can see why one would take issue with Terrall’s approach. The Reasoner approach was to stay with the original Dresser style with great stories like “Murder in the Magic City.” Terrall eschewed all of the series supporting cast except but IMHO he did stay with Dresser’s original conception of the character. His Shayne novels that I’ve read use BODIES ARE WHERE YOU FIND THEM (1941) as their template: complicated plots driven almost exclusively by physical movement and the redhead’s tough, rule-breaking determination to get to the truth, often in less than 24 hours. GUILTY AS HELL, VIOLENCE IS GOLDEN and LADY, BE BAD are prime example of Terrall’s approach. The defense rests.
August 1st, 2024 at 9:44 pm
I don’t know if I knew Terrall wrote this one or not when I wrote this old review, way back in 1968. I added his name when I posted it just now, as well as that of cover artist Robert McGinnis. I *think* I did, but am I positive? No, not by a long shot.