If you are the kind of guy who likes the
high-end "literary" hardboiled types, then you probably had
best stick with Dashiell Hammet, Chandler, and Ross McDonald.
Ditto if you dig all sorts of Wlleford style atmosphere and
tension. You don't get a whole lot of this stuff in Mike
Shayne.
On the other hand, if you thought that _The
Wings Of A Dove_ might be okay if only it featured a tough
PI, a sexy secretary, and a corpse then a Mike Shayne story
might be right up your alley.
A couple of months ago I read _Tickets For Death_
which I thought was a charming story with a tight plot and
lots of good action and Florida color. It was pretty early in
the series....number four according to our Rara-Avis approved
bibliography. This time I read _One Night With Nora_, which
was supposedly one of the last ones that Dresser wrote. The
years had not improved things and one has to suspect that it
was just as well that Dresser decided to bag it. The book is
utterly perfunctory and the puzzle cheats a little bit,
though you have guessed the murderer well ahead of schedule
anyway. In the course of the book Mike gets framed for
murder, meets the usual assortment of women and, of course,
gets leaned on by the police. Does this sound like a
description of almost every PI book you have ever read? The
ghosted books in the series can hardly yield more perfect
examples of pure anonymous product than does this entry. My
recommendation is to stay with the early books in the series
or try the ghost books.
James Reasoner noted Shayne's culinary
habits. I don't think the poor guy even manages to grab a
cheeseburger in _One Night With Nora_, but he does drrink a
fair amount - cognac mostly. Cognac? What kind of a tough guy
drinks cognac? Marlowe was never the same after he started
drinking those gimlets, either.
James
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