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Shell Scott #3
Everybody Had a Gun
Shell Scott. He's a guy with a pistol in his pocket and murder on his mind. The crime world's public enemy number one, this Casanova is a sucker for a damsel in distress. When a pair of lovely legs saunters into his office, he can't help but to take the job, even when the case is a killer.
152 pages, ebook
First published May 1, 1951
11 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Richard S. Prather
93 books43 followersRichard Scott Prather was an American mystery novelist, best known for creating the "Shell Scott" series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms David Knight and Douglas Ring.
Prather was born in Santa Ana, California. He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. In 1945 year he married Tina Hager and began working as a civilian chief clerk of surplus property at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. He left that job to become a full-time writer in 1949. The first Shell Scott mystery, 'Case of the Vanishing Beauty' was published in 1950. It would be the start of a long series that numbered more than three dozen titles featuring the Shell Scott character.
Prather had a disagreement with his publisher in the 1970s and sued them in 1975. He gave up writing for several years and grew avocados. However in 1986 he returned with 'The Amber Effect'. Prather's final book, 'Shellshock', was published in hardcover in 1987 by Tor Books.
At the time of his death in 2007, he had completed his final Shell Scott Mystery novel, 'The Death Gods'. It was published October 2011 by Pendleton Artists.
Prather served twice on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America. Additionally Prather received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1986.
Prather was born in Santa Ana, California. He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. In 1945 year he married Tina Hager and began working as a civilian chief clerk of surplus property at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. He left that job to become a full-time writer in 1949. The first Shell Scott mystery, 'Case of the Vanishing Beauty' was published in 1950. It would be the start of a long series that numbered more than three dozen titles featuring the Shell Scott character.
Prather had a disagreement with his publisher in the 1970s and sued them in 1975. He gave up writing for several years and grew avocados. However in 1986 he returned with 'The Amber Effect'. Prather's final book, 'Shellshock', was published in hardcover in 1987 by Tor Books.
At the time of his death in 2007, he had completed his final Shell Scott Mystery novel, 'The Death Gods'. It was published October 2011 by Pendleton Artists.
Prather served twice on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America. Additionally Prather received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievment award) in 1986.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 19, 2023
I Have No Gun!
Shell Scott is a great private detective who is always in trouble with the malevolent members of the community.
In this episode, a woman asks him for help, but is kidnapped before he can do anything for her.
Shell hunts her down and rescues her from the criminals who have her.
There’s a lot of kidnapping going on in this novel and in this town. I’m not sure that Shell Scott will be able to find everyone.
He is going to have to find a place to hide from the criminals when they all come looking for him. He faces death again.
Will he survive this fate or what?
I must give him five stars. 💫💫💫💫💫
Shell Scott is a great private detective who is always in trouble with the malevolent members of the community.
In this episode, a woman asks him for help, but is kidnapped before he can do anything for her.
Shell hunts her down and rescues her from the criminals who have her.
There’s a lot of kidnapping going on in this novel and in this town. I’m not sure that Shell Scott will be able to find everyone.
He is going to have to find a place to hide from the criminals when they all come looking for him. He faces death again.
Will he survive this fate or what?
I must give him five stars. 💫💫💫💫💫
April 15, 2014
I'm a sucker for these books from the 50's and 60's. Prather does his best to be a poor mans Chandler. The wise cracking PI the, gorgeous dames, the predictable bad guys. But you just gotta love it. This book was published in 1951 ... that's 64 years ago, grab the Luckies and let's go light up. Reading for fun !
June 22, 2023
Everybody Had a Gun is the third of approximately forty books in Richard Prather’s Shell Scott detective series, once upon a time in the 1950’s one of the most popular as measured by book sales detective series of all time. Scott has his office in the Hamilton Building on Broadway and Fourth Street in Los Angeles where Scott kept a ten-gallon fish tank filled with guppies. He is an ex-Marine who bent his nose and lost part of his ear in battle during his four years of duty. He has short blonde- nearly white-cropped hair and eyebrows and stands tall and imposing. He drives a 1941 bright yellow Cadillac Convertible- you can see him coming from quite a distance away. But, where some detectives drive the mean streets of Los Angeles and are always dour and never chipper, Prather’s Scott leaves in a bright semi-tropical world where every woman is a budding Hollywood star and there are no end to the parties he is invited to. Most of all, in contrast to other detectives in that era, his world is blossoming in technicolor, not sepia or black and white.
This one opens with a wild Western shoot-out on Los Angeles’ Broadway with Scott ducking and weaving gunshots and no one else on the street aware that the shooting is taking place, just that a crazy guy with a .38 is running around the street waving his gun. Scott doesn’t know why he is being shot at except he has a suspicion that it has something to do with one Lobo Le Beau, whose corpse is not yet dry, but who Scott had a run-in with when working a case for Marty Sader, who had wanted to know the weekly take on a Slauson Avenue horse parlor. Le Beau, though, worked for Collier Breed, a big man among LA gangsters, meaning big around the middle as well as big in the underworld and also big in that he has his fingers in many pies. Collier’s hoods have names like Joe-Joe, Flick, and Lonely.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Shell Scott story without a woman in it and the one who walks into Scott’s life was wearing a fuzzy, light blue sweater with her tummy bare in the breeze, she had brilliant red hair, and a woman’s hips in boyish slacks. She walks quickly out of Scott’s world with a”click-click back down the hall” and “the delightful sway of her hips. [Scott’s] eyes must have looked like the crosses they put in cartoons.” She disappears into the day as Scott is busy with violent men, leaving her purse behind, which no woman does. But, that gives him the clue to her name: Iris Gordon is on her paycheck written out to her by one Martin Sader. And, just like that, everything is connected.
Sader’s nightclub is hidden below the street and only accessed by a slow elevator sort of like the secret lairs of Bond’s villains. But, when Scott arrives, he is the midst of a battle between Sader and Breed, who thinks Sader is trying to move in on his territory. Scott shouldn’t be involved in this battle at all by rights, but sweet little Iris with the brilliant red hair threw him under the bus and got him involved. “It was a nice night for corpses,” Scott narrates, “if any night ever is, for it was the kind that sends imaginary shadows sweeping across your mind and flickering in front of your eyes.”
There is a lot of back and forth here as Iris keeps disappearing and then reappearing as damsel in distress and there is quite an amusing scene as Scott, reluctantly, introduces Kitty Green, Sader’s mistress, to Sader’s gun-toting wife, Vivian Sader.
This, the third book in the series, is another solid read, offering the reader everything you could want in an action-packed detective yarn.
This one opens with a wild Western shoot-out on Los Angeles’ Broadway with Scott ducking and weaving gunshots and no one else on the street aware that the shooting is taking place, just that a crazy guy with a .38 is running around the street waving his gun. Scott doesn’t know why he is being shot at except he has a suspicion that it has something to do with one Lobo Le Beau, whose corpse is not yet dry, but who Scott had a run-in with when working a case for Marty Sader, who had wanted to know the weekly take on a Slauson Avenue horse parlor. Le Beau, though, worked for Collier Breed, a big man among LA gangsters, meaning big around the middle as well as big in the underworld and also big in that he has his fingers in many pies. Collier’s hoods have names like Joe-Joe, Flick, and Lonely.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Shell Scott story without a woman in it and the one who walks into Scott’s life was wearing a fuzzy, light blue sweater with her tummy bare in the breeze, she had brilliant red hair, and a woman’s hips in boyish slacks. She walks quickly out of Scott’s world with a”click-click back down the hall” and “the delightful sway of her hips. [Scott’s] eyes must have looked like the crosses they put in cartoons.” She disappears into the day as Scott is busy with violent men, leaving her purse behind, which no woman does. But, that gives him the clue to her name: Iris Gordon is on her paycheck written out to her by one Martin Sader. And, just like that, everything is connected.
Sader’s nightclub is hidden below the street and only accessed by a slow elevator sort of like the secret lairs of Bond’s villains. But, when Scott arrives, he is the midst of a battle between Sader and Breed, who thinks Sader is trying to move in on his territory. Scott shouldn’t be involved in this battle at all by rights, but sweet little Iris with the brilliant red hair threw him under the bus and got him involved. “It was a nice night for corpses,” Scott narrates, “if any night ever is, for it was the kind that sends imaginary shadows sweeping across your mind and flickering in front of your eyes.”
There is a lot of back and forth here as Iris keeps disappearing and then reappearing as damsel in distress and there is quite an amusing scene as Scott, reluctantly, introduces Kitty Green, Sader’s mistress, to Sader’s gun-toting wife, Vivian Sader.
This, the third book in the series, is another solid read, offering the reader everything you could want in an action-packed detective yarn.
November 15, 2016
I've enjoyed the seven or so Shell Scott books I've read and this is one of the better tales. There are a lot of layers to this tale and Scott is written in to straighten out more than what appears. I especially liked the plotting of the story and how each piece is presented and then solved.
The characters are all very well written. Backdrop and settings are very good. Many younger readers will be very confused about a dumb waiter, not even called that, used.
This book, in particular, has an astonishingly good story concisely filled into 159 pages. As usual, i wonder why books can't be written like this today?
Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 out of ten points.
The characters are all very well written. Backdrop and settings are very good. Many younger readers will be very confused about a dumb waiter, not even called that, used.
This book, in particular, has an astonishingly good story concisely filled into 159 pages. As usual, i wonder why books can't be written like this today?
Bottom line: I recommend this book. 8 out of ten points.
February 7, 2017
Shell Scott gets dragged into several impossible situations and he's not even on a case.
November 28, 2024
Yeah, that's the cover of my paperback copy of this early, early, Shell Scott caper. Obviously, publishing has changed a lot in the 70 years since this was on drugstore turnstiles. I had an opportunity to buy a bunch of Shell Scott novels from a used bookstore in California that was closing down and this was one of them. Scott is an L.A. private eye who's full of wit, piss and vinegar. He's got the orbs for tomatoes, dames, dishes, frails, babes...well, you get the idea. The later books in the series get more outlandish as Shell Scott frequently gets himself into zany situations that often involve the loss of clothes. In this one, from 1951, Shell Scott is caught in the middle of a turf war between mobsters. Everybody's got a gat, just like the title says. Bullets and fists fly as cheap as gas and Shell gets to rescue a sexy redhead from the melee.
December 1, 2023
An enjoyable book in the series. Shell Scott wasn't on a case but one found him. Someone started shooting at him than a guy tries to kidnap him by gunpoint in his office. Plus some female is kidnapped after seeing him, what a way to start a morning. He finds out that he is mixed up in a gang war and he doesn't even know why. He is just trying to stay alive.
Highly recommended, Shell is a great character and this is a solid novel with plenty of action.
Highly recommended, Shell is a great character and this is a solid novel with plenty of action.
October 15, 2018
Αστυνομικού τύπου μυθιστόρημα με πολύ κυνηγητό, γκάνγκστερς και "λεβέντες". (Αν είχα 1 ευρώ για κάθε φορά που αυτή η λέξη εμφανίζεται στο βιβλίο..) Η πλοκή ήταν αρκετά ενδιαφέρουσα ώστε να με κρατήσει μέχρι το τέλος.
February 7, 2014
Fawcett Gold Medal books began publisihing paperback originals in 1950. Mostly great hardboiled detective Novels, spy novels, and westerns in the pulp tradition. When I was a kid in the sixties, I read my share of them and I'm catching up now in my old age. The books were usually under 200 pages and were written by such greats as Donald Hamilton (Matt Helm Spy novels and westerns), Louis L'Amour, John D MacDonald (Travis McGee), Richard Matheson, and Richard S Prather who wrote about the white haired detective, Shell Scott.
This story is typical of the genre which to me means it's pretty good. Shell is not quite Mike Hammer but he's still plenty tough and he shows it in this story as he takes a beating to save the damsel in distress.
The story begins with someone taking part shots at Shell in the middle of the day on a busy street just outside his office. Eventually this leads to a beautiful girl (all of the stories have beautiful girls)reaching out to him for help. She witnessed a gangland murder and in order to stay alive at least a bit longer, she tells her gangster boss that she told Shell what she saw. Her boss decides to keep her alive until he can verify her story and to make sure that no one else knows. This puts Shell and the girl in the middle of two gangsters struggling for the local drug territory and they want both of them dead.
The first person narrative has plenty of humor and sarcasm as is fitting the genre. Often when I've finished these books I wonder that the story was so simple but a good writer in this genre knows how to reveal a little at a time to keep you riveted until the last page. This isn't a classic in the way I would rate Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" or Dashiell Hammet's "Maltese Falcon" but it's a great quick read. Kind of like watching a good television show.
This story is typical of the genre which to me means it's pretty good. Shell is not quite Mike Hammer but he's still plenty tough and he shows it in this story as he takes a beating to save the damsel in distress.
The story begins with someone taking part shots at Shell in the middle of the day on a busy street just outside his office. Eventually this leads to a beautiful girl (all of the stories have beautiful girls)reaching out to him for help. She witnessed a gangland murder and in order to stay alive at least a bit longer, she tells her gangster boss that she told Shell what she saw. Her boss decides to keep her alive until he can verify her story and to make sure that no one else knows. This puts Shell and the girl in the middle of two gangsters struggling for the local drug territory and they want both of them dead.
The first person narrative has plenty of humor and sarcasm as is fitting the genre. Often when I've finished these books I wonder that the story was so simple but a good writer in this genre knows how to reveal a little at a time to keep you riveted until the last page. This isn't a classic in the way I would rate Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" or Dashiell Hammet's "Maltese Falcon" but it's a great quick read. Kind of like watching a good television show.
November 10, 2008
more fun from Prather, love the shell scott books. this one is non stop.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews