Mon 13 Mar 2023
A PI Mystery Review: BRETT HALLIDAY – The Corpse Came Calling.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
BRETT HALLIDAY – The Corpse Came Calling. Mike Shayne #7. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1942. Reprinted many times in paperback, including Dell D401, January 1961. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. (See image to the right.)
I’m not sure in which novel PI Michael Shayne first met Phyllis, his wife to be, but it shouldn’t difficult to pin it down. It was not the book immediately preceding this one, Tickets for Death (1941), reviewed here but it may have been Bodies Are Where You Find Them, the one before that. (The question may even have already been asked and answered on this blog. A lot of books, authors and characters have been talked about in the years it’s been going, some very thoroughly, especially in the comments.)
In any case, Mike and Phyllis are quite happily married in this one, and in fact Phyllis is acting as Mike’s secretary as the book opens. The two of them are using the apartment directly under the one where they are living as his office, and one morning, while Phyllis is there alone, a man comes in and immediately dies in the open door, with three bullets in his chest.
Mike is not that far away, however. As this is happening, he is upstairs with a client, decidedly female, who wants Mike to kill her husband, a convict who has just broken out of prison. Are the two cases connected? Only in the books and movies, and the answer is therefore Yes.The dead man is a PI Mike once knew several years ago, and he is also the PI who had advised Mike’s new would-be client that he is the one who could do the job she wants done.
I haven’t yet mentioned the scrap of paper found in the dead man’s hand, and which Mike decides to not tell the police about. Nor have I mentioned that to get that scrap of paper back, some Nazi thugs kidnap Phyllis. Even worse, from my point of view, Mike is forced to slug Tim Rourke, newspaper reporter and his best friend, and tie and gag him up so he won’t interfere with getting Phyllis back.
No wonder so few fictional PI’s have wives to interfere (as victims) in cases their husbands are working on.
But as it so happens, that’s not exactly why Brett Halliday decided Phyllis had to go, dying as she did during childbirth between Blood on the Black Market (#8) and Murder Wears a Mummer’s Mask (#9).
This has been covered on this blog, and once again, here’s the link where you’ll find Brett Halliday being quoted as saying:
“I finally inquired as to the reason from Hollywood [about why they didn’t adapt Halliday’s own stories] and was told it was because Shayne and Phyllis were married and it was against their policy to use a married detective.
“Faced with this fact of life, I decided to kill off Phyllis to leave Shayne a free man for succeeding movies.”
In any case, getting back to the book at hand, I thought the case, which is extremely complicated, was held together by guesswork, duck tape and baling wire. My eyes glazed over shile reading the explanation as to how all the threads in the mystery tied together at the end, which I’m sure the did. But as always, your mileage may vary.
March 14th, 2023 at 7:23 pm
Not one of the best early Shayne’s and probably because Phyllis seemed to restrain him a bit. He seemed to function better once Lucy Hamilton came along and Halliday seemed to feel freer.
Erle Stanley Gardner said he never married Perry Mason and Della because he didn’t want to kill her off as he had Ed Jenkins mate, and I suspect as Halliday had Phyllis.
Even Mickey Spillane kept putting off marrying Hammer and Velda once Mike popped the question.
March 14th, 2023 at 7:53 pm
Over the years there have been lots of married couples who’ve solved crimes together, but in not many of these cases has the husband been a PI.
Readers like their PI’s to be lone wolf types, or so the editors and movie producers seemed to think. All in all, in spite of exceptions, they were probably generally right.
March 14th, 2023 at 8:35 pm
I’ve had similar reactions to some of the Mike Shaynes. Complicated plots, duct tape, and a messy conclusion.
I just finished reading Higgs’ LOVE AND LET DIE, a book about the Beatles and James Bond. Ian Fleming made sure that any woman who got involved with Bond would die.
March 14th, 2023 at 9:01 pm
Thin Man worked with a married couple—but maybe more screwball than hard-boiled. And both members of the couple were equal in their verbal sparring and investigative skill. Maybe that’s the secret: equal sparring partners. Same with crane and wife in Red Gardenias. It’s just when it’s a stay at home wife that the male detective becomes neutered, like marlowe in poodle springs. Even Parker gets a bit domesticated in the three books featuring Claire in a significant role.
March 14th, 2023 at 9:47 pm
Was Parker “neutered” by Claire om those three books? You may have something there.