RARA-AVIS: Re: Question and Comment

From: James Reasoner ( jamesreasoner@flash.net)
Date: 22 Feb 2008


> I thought "Brett Halliday" was a pseudonym, no? Wasn't the original
> Brett actually David Dresdner or something like that?

Davis Dresser, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Matthew Blood (two novels co-authored with Ryerson Johnson), Hal Debrett, Asa Baker, the house-name Peter Field, his own name, and probably others. Colorful guy, and I've always enjoyed his writing in both mystery and Western genres.
 
> Are there any Halliday/Shayne fans here? Any perspectives on the
> series?

I've read most of the novels. The later ones, like FOURTH DOWN TO DEATH, are by Robert Terrall, and while they're certainly competent, I never liked them as much as the earlier ones by Dresser and occasional ghosts. To me Mike Shayne is really a character who belongs in the Forties, Fifties, and early Sixties. Once the stories get past that point, he seems sort of out of place to me, which is why I made my Shayne stories in MSMM sort of vague as to their time period. I was really writing Forties and Fifties Shayne stories as much as I could, even though it was the Seventies and Eighties.

James Reasoner



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