Kill Him Twice

Shell Scott #30

by Richard S. Prather

A plot designed by the United States' top-secret agency, CURE, to dispose of a certain corrupt politician, is revealed in what unravels into a national scandal. The agency must be dismantled before greater suspicions arise and one of the top leaders, The Destroyer, is finally destroyed himself. But Master Chiun's days of work haven't ended, and he's not waiting around for his sidekick Remo to be out of a job either. The two are determined to do whatever possible to keep each other in business and continue to bring justice to society.

Genres: Mystery

Paperback

First published May 1, 1965

About the author

Richard 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.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kill Him Twice is set back in Los Angeles and, because Los Angeles is a Tinseltown, the opening scene is on a movie set where a science fiction monster flick is being filmed. “She raced past the carnivorous seaweed, leaped over a clump of man-eating yummym, and skirted the boiling-lava beds. She was wearing what appeared to be a negligee the color and thickness of thin fog, which slid up her thighs as she ran, bare legs flashing white in the sunlight. She was moving very speedily, but the giant oysters were still gaining on her. Clack-clack, went the oysters. Her name was Cherry Dayne, spelled hoo-boy, and she was the kind of gal the people in my dreams dream about — five feet, five inches tall, a hundred and twenty pounds arranged 36-22-36 above those fabulous legs, and a face flaunting incandescent lips and acetylene-blue eyes, topped by beige-blonde hair the approximate shade of boiling honey. Yeah, it sure looked as if those oysters were going to get her. She’d run past the boiling-lava beds and stopped at the cliff’s edge. Below the cliff was the horrible Lake of Fire. She was trapped.”

Scott is only there to chat with one of the actresses – Natasha Antoinette, but he has to wait until she films her final scene, falling off a cliff into a burning lake. Meanwhile, he has to cool his heels starry-eyed with Cherry Dayne and the improbably named Vivian Virgin.

Go back a few hours and the reader learns that Scott was in the middle of a date where he was going to try barbecuing steaks in the middle of his living room when the phone rang. The editor of a Hollywood gossip rag needs his help right now. That guy -Waverly – disappears before Scott can get to his office and then turns up at the scene of a murder, seemingly guilty. The cops are already there. Scott doesn’t know why Waverly wanted to hire him, but it couldn’t have involved a murder that has yet to be committed.

Amid commentary about the falsity and fakeness of Hollywood, we get a solid private eye story. Indeed, We are told: “Weird things happen in Hollywood. Errant twitches gather in high-powered noodles and on occasion erupt into mania. We natives live in the midst of controlled madness, on the thin edge of convulsion. It could hardly be otherwise. People who sell dreams have to expect to buy a few nightmares.”

But, of course, it’s not all unicorns and roses, because all these Hollywood people act out inappropriately, perhaps forgetting that they are not always playing a part on stage. Thus, they are subject to blackmail.

There are hoodlums involved right from the start, beginning with Al Grant, the boss, and his hoodlum followers such as Mooneyes and JB Kester. Other characters included columnist Finley Pike, director Jeremy Slade, and actor Ed Howell. Scott gets answers by using a crazy gimmick late in the story. It’s a bold setup that, if this has been a movie, would have played for laughs.

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shell Scott teeters on the edge. He is somewhere between "sort of witty" and "downright annoying", depending on the time of day, the plot in progress, and how Prather was feeling at the moment. I can't see consuming this stuff in high doses.

And part of that not-seeing is the way that this reads like satire. It hovers for most of it around a not-so-subtle dig at the Hollywood B-movie production engine before digging into an intriguing blackmailing syndicate and wrapping it up with a completely over-the-top courtroom scene that was at a complete divorce from reality.

[Jiří Pavlovský · Rating 3 out of 5]

Začíná se z toho stávat posedlost… ale co, už mi zbývá jen takových dvacet knih a budu mít Prathera přečteného komplet.

Shell Scott opět vyráží do akce, tentokrát bude řešit vraždu, která ho zavede mezi režiséry béčkových filmů a bulvární novináře. A samozřejmě, mezi bouchače a krásné ženy. Je to přímočarý, akční, zábavný a Shell Scott je postavou, se kterou je fajn trávit čas… i když má občas brilantní nápady jako uspořádat grilovačku u sebe v obýváku. A i když se mu při pohledu na vnadné ženy přesouvají mozkové buňky z lebky do penisu. Důležité je, že je to jeden z mála soukromých detektivů, který si svou práci neskutečně užívá.

„Hollywood je snový svět s vymyšlenými pravidly, s nápady o nápadech, s neviditelným oblakem myšlenek – starých i nových, zářivých i mdlých. Je to město „obyčejných lidí“ a všech ostatních, od rozených géniů až po parchanty vlastním přičiněním. Je to místo, kde musíte seškrábat make-up, abyste se dostali k tomu skutečnému make-upu.“

Tyhle knížky jsou nelepší v okamžicích, kdy se Prather utrhne ze řetězu, kdy dostane nápad a začne ho dovádět do důsledků. Tady je to okamžik, kdy se snaží jednoho gaunera donutit k přiznání tím, že zinscenuje soudní proces. Obsadí všechny své známé herce a statisty, ovšem naráží na problém, že všichni znají soudní procesy především z filmů a divadelních her… a ne vždycky zrovna těch nejaktuálnějších. Ale naštěstí, jak tam píše autor, ve chvíli, kdy se člověk ocitne uprostřed soudního systému, tak určitá šílenost k tom prostě patří.

Tohle už je jedna z autorových pozdějších prací, ale pořád dobrý.