> "Brett Halliday" is said to be a pseudonym of Bill
Pronzini. This is the
> first time I'd heard
> this. Is this info correct?
> --Duane
Pronzini and Wallman collaborated on only one Shayne story
for MSMM:
"Danger--Michael Shayne at Work" in the April '72 issue. I
pulled that
issue down from the shelf this weekend and read it, since I
never had
before. It's a fairly entertaining story using the old "small
group of
people trapped in a hunting lodge by a hurricane and one of
them is a
murderer" bit. However, the things that I enjoyed so much
about writing
Shayne stories -- the relationships between Shayne and the
supporting cast
and the history of the characters -- are totally missing in
this story.
Shayne is the only series regular who appears, and other than
the fact that
he has red hair, he could be any PI. Pronzini and Wallman
also wrote one
of the Charlie Chan stories from that short-lived magazine as
"Robert Hart
Davis" (I believe it was called "City of Brotherly Death"),
and Pronzini,
also as "Robert Hart Davis", wrote a Man From U.N.C.L.E.
story called "The
Pillars of Salt Affair". In fact, the one time I met Bill in
person, I
think I embarrassed him by going on about how much I enjoyed
that
U.N.C.L.E. story when I was a kid. But it was good, dang it,
and I was a
huge U.N.C.L.E. fan in the Sixties.
By the way, Pronzini also has a story under the Jack Foxx
pseudonym in that
same issue of MSMM.
James Reasoner
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