Miker,
Re your question below:
> Can
> you recommend a few good [novels by Brett
Halliday]?
Others have noted that Hallidays' Mike Shayne character seems
to shine most brightly when taken out of his usual stomping
grounds (Miami, FL) and investigates in "foreign"
settings.
My favorite Shayne novel, A TASTE FOR VIOLENCE, fits right
into that formua. It's a town-taming novel, set in a Kentucky
mining community, very much in the vein of RED HARVEST.
It's been said that all the Shayne novels written after 1956
or thereabouts were ghost-written. It's a fact that virtually
all the short stories about Shayne in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY
MAGAZINE were ghost-written. In fact, our own James Reasoner
was one of Halliday's ghosts on a couple of Shayne
shorts.
However, I've also heard, from people in the know, that the
novels were not so much ghost-written as they were
ghost-collaborated. Whether or not this is true, and if so,
to what degree Halliday actually participated in the writing,
I can't say. However, the novels (which were assumed to be
actually by Halliday until the names of some of his "ghosts"
were revelaled) stopped appearing shortly after Halliday's
death in 1977, while the MSMM short stories (which everyone
knew were ghosted) continued for several years. That's not
conclusive evidence, but it is indicative.
JIM DOHERTY
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