Mark,
Re your question below:
> How many Shaft novels were there? I have three:
Shaft, Shaft
Amongst
> the Jews and Shaft's Big Score. All three are
credited to Tidyman,
> though only the first two are copyrighted by him.
The third is
> copyrighted by the studio that made the film of that
title. I'm
> guessing that means it was a novelization, perhaps
(probably?) not
by
> Tidyman.
There were seven Shaft novels credited to Tidyman. They
were:
SHAFT (1970) SHAFT AMONG THE JEWS (1972) SHAFT'S BIG
SCORE(1972) SHAFT HAS A BALL (1973) GOODBYE, MR. SHAFT (1973)
SAHFT'S CARNIVAL OF KILLERS (1974) THE LAST SHAFT
(1975)
Generally, series that have employed ghost
writers/collaborators tend to have had a lot more entries and
and to have appeared over a longer period of time. There were
something like 60 Mike Shayne books over nearly 40 years, for
example, and almost as many Saint books over nearly 50.
SHAFT'S BIG SCORE was, as you surmise, a novelization of an
original screenplay. However, if memory serves, Tidyman might
have been one of the screenwriters, along with John D.F.
Black, so he might have gone ahead and written the
novelization himself. Max Allan Collins wrote the
novelization for ROAD TO PERDITION, Murphy and Sapir for REMO
WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS, and David Morrell for at
least one of the "Rambo" movies, so it's not unheard of for
an original writer to write the novelization of a dramatic
script featuring the character he created.
On the other hand, three of the Shaft novels, SHAFT, SHAFT
AMONG THE JEWS, and GOODBYE, MR. SHAFT were first published
in hardcover. SHAFT'S BIG SCORE, SHAFT HAS A BALL, and
SHAFT'S CARNIVAL OF KILLERS were PBO's. Maybe Tidyman
arranged for someone else to write the paperbacks to keep the
pot boiling, while he concentrated on the books destined to
be preserved between boards.
I'm not sure whether or not the appropriately named THE LAST
SHAFT was ever published in the US. It definitely was in the
UK, but I've never seen a copy on this side of the
pond.
SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
Reportedly, Shaft has a rendevous with
Reichenbach Falls, but, unlike Holmes's, it's on stage and
irreversible. So apparently Tidyman wasn't kidding when he
called it THE LAST SHAFT.
END SPOILER ALERT END SPOILER ALERT END SPOILER ALERT
Anyway, that doesn't definitely answer your question about
whether or not Tidyman used ghosts, but maybe it's food for
thought.
BTW, Dennis Lynds once told me that, while Halliday had
nothing really to do with the Shayne short stories that
appeared in MSMM, he at least made some contribution on the
novels. The "collaboration" might not have amounted to much,
but he put something of his into the books.
This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that the novels
stopped appearing immediately after Halliday's death in 1977,
but the short stories continued to appear for as long as MSMM
lasted.
As for Leslie Charteris, he was always up-front about his
ghosts. Usually, though it was his name on the cover, he'd
make a point of mentioning the names of the people who did
the actual writing in introductions he wrote for the ghosted
material.
JIM DOHERTY
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