Halo in Blood

Paul Pine #1

by John Evans (Pseudonym), Howard Browne

Book by EVANS, JOHN [BROWNE, HOWARD]

Genres: Fiction, Crime

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

Reviews

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

From 1946
An entertaining mystery. Pretty typical in all regards. This is the first of the series with detective Paul Pine, set in Chicago.
Not reprinted since the 1980s, so these books are hard to get.

[Ben Boulden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like HALO IN BLOOD more than I did. The writing was top-notch, but Paul Cain -- the protagonist -- was flat and unsympathetic. The dame in the story, Leona, was the most interesting character, but Cain (especially in the first half of the book) treated her with a cruel disregard. The whodunit element in the climactic scene came from thin air, which was disappointing. Although, the strength of Browne's terse prose made HALO IN BLOOD readable and took me to the last page, but I'm not sure I'll try another of Browne's Paul Cain novels.

[Ace McGee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you like Raymond Chandler? Do you like Sam Spade? Do you think the unnamed Continental Operative in Dashiell Hammett's series should man up and lay his 45 upside someone's head? Do you keep a bottle of bourbon and a dirty glass in the bottom drawer at your office? Then you're gonna love Paul Pine. This is the first new highball drinking, chain smoking, punch taking, Hardnose detective that I've found in 35 years.

To begin with, the story is great. There are two or three different threads but by the end of the story they all come together and they're all worked out in the final solution. There are no moments when you read something, often in the last 10 pages, and Say to yourself, "hey, what do you mean, that doesn't make sense."

Second, the writing, while not the greatest, certainly nothing like Raymond Chandler's sober years' prose, has some fabulous turn of phrases and similes. Por examplo:

"Her two pieced suit was dark gabardine that fitted her slender lines as if it appreciated the opportunity."

Or

"My head still ached, but dully now, like a last summer's love affair."

Or my favorite, which Pine uses to describe a drink of expensive whiskey he is given at a rich man's home;

"mine tasted like something you could bribe angels with"

Third, Pine is the classic 1940's private detective loner, straddling that fine line between the law and his client’s privacy, keeping tight lipped and stolidly taking the many beatings dished out by both sides of the law not to mention dodging the occasional slug...All for thirty dollars a day, including expenses, (he doesn't like filling out expense reports).

I read right through this book over one weekend. It's fast moving and enjoyable. Pour yourself a highball, sit down in your favorite comfy chair, and enjoy yourself!

[Rob Kitchin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Halo in Blood was published in 1946 and written by Howard Browne using the pen name John Evans. He published five novels, wrote over 125 scripts for such TV shows such as Maverick, Mission Impossible, The Fugitive, and Columbo, and also wrote screenplays for several films, including Capone, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Portrait of a Mobster. Halo in Blood was his first novel, though he’d spent the previous five years editing a pulp magazine and writing short stories. When Howard met Raymond Chandler he is reputed to have told him that he’d been making a living off of him for several years (and John Evans is a PI character in a Chandler short story). And there is no doubt that Halo in Blood, and Paul Pine (like a sizable chunk of PI stories), is derivative of Chandler and Philip Marlowe. In Browne’s case it works and Halo in Blood is an engagingly written, tightly plotted, entertaining slice of hardboiled crime fiction. The story does become overly complex, with a few too many twists, and the characters do feel a bit stock-like, but nonetheless it is a decent read.

[Abram · Rating 5 out of 5]

The atmosphere in this late 40s hardboiled novel is so dense you could barely cut it with a chainsaw! The detective, Paul Pine, isn't much of a white knight; he gets so obsessed with the case that he'll put himself and everybody around him in danger just for another lead, and pity isn't something he's got much of. He's also sarcastic to a degree that is almost psychotic. That's not to say he's a badly etched pulp caricature -- on the contrary, his sweaty monomania is pretty well-realized. He's just an abrasive, wild-eyed wackjob, and that's the way he is.

There are two kinds of hardboiled classics: those that are lean and mean, and the ones where you can tell the author agonized over every atmospheric, gritty passage. This is one of the latter, and man, is Browne one heck of a stylist. I remember the plotting being pretty sharp, but it's so twisty that it escapes me after a few months.

This book kind of got me into hardboiled dicks. It's sort of a forgotten classic, so pick it up, won't you?

[Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An oldie but a goodie. Enjoy a hard boiled Dick of the forties to the sixties style.

[Andy Oerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank goodness for the Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction. I bought it to read the Robert Leslie Bellem story, but without it I might never have given the novels of Frederic Brown and W.T. Ballard and William Campbell Gault a chance.

Nor a writer named Howard Browne, whose contribution, So Dark For April, told of a PI named Paul Pine. It was a short, obviously derivative story, but was well-written in the weary, cynical, wise-acre way I look for, so I began to seek out more of Browne's books.

There aren't many. Halo in Blood is his first, followed by Halo for Satan, Halo in Brass and A Taste of Ashes. The first three are Chandler clones, each as good as the other. The fourth is probably his best, and still Chandlerian, but skews more into Ross Macdonald territory.

When he first met Chandler, Browne told him that he had been making a living off of him for years. So Browne did not even bother to hide the fact that his creation is a Marlowe wannabe, moved to Chicago. There are a few other small differences, but Pine is basically Marlowe. Chandler treated Browne with some scorn, as was his custom with competitors, but probably moreso because he did not appreciate the attempted cloning.

Chandler needn't have worried; his writings were better. Browne's characters are not as well-defined, his descriptions of place aren't as atmospheric, and occasionally things seem forced. But it is readers like me who win in their pseudo-rivalry, because Chandler did not write very many novels, and four nicely-turned knockoffs sound like a good (if not quite *as* good) thing to me.

About Halo in Blood: It begins with Pine being late for a meeting with a rich client because he breaks up a funeral procession and gets caught at a burial in which a John Doe is buried with twelve priests officiating. His rich client has a beautiful, wild stepdaughter who is seeing a gambler. The client wants Pine to break up the little affair. Then the gambler gets bumped. A mobster, cops, assorted thugs, family scandals, a 25-year old crime in San Diego, false identities, lots of lying and sapping and several more murders ensue before Pine unravels all the threads and ties them all back together again, including the opening scene of the funeral.

I won't really comment further on the plot. It is good enough; but plots are the *least* interesting things to me in hard-boiled mysteries. I suppose it plays fair with the clues. I suppose a better mystery solver could have guessed the solution if they paid rapt attention to every word in the book's twisty pages. There were rather too many characters and identity switches and even too many deaths for me to keep logical track of, but that's not why I read these kinds of things anyway: I read them for the arch simile-and-wisecrack-laden dialogue, and Browne handles that aspect quite well.

Case closed.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hardboiled mystery with brilliant monologues, bad dialogues, bitter protagonists and noirish characters all around.
Good for a single read.

[Dipankar Bhadra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rich man named Michael asked private investigator Paul Pine to help break up his daughter Jessica's relationship with a bad guy. Turns out, the guy was connected to the mafia and was using Jessica to gamble away her money.

But before Pine could act, the bad guy was killed. Now Pine was in danger, with both the mob and the police after him. Jessica was also at risk.

As Pine dug deeper, he uncovered a dangerous game of deceit and danger. With time running out, Pine had to race against the clock to protect Jessica and solve the case.

Halo in Blood, the debut novel by Paul Pine, clearly pays homage to the hardboiled detective genre popularized by Raymond Chandler and his iconic character Philip Marlowe. While some may argue that Pine's work is derivative, there is no denying that he has crafted a compelling, tightly plotted story that keeps readers engaged from start to finish. While the plot may become a bit convoluted at times and the characters somewhat stereotypical, Halo in Blood is still a highly entertaining read that will satisfy fans of classic crime fiction.

[J McEvoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly routine thick-ear with more than a passing resemblance to The Maltese Falcon in its characters. Some good lines go some distance towards salvaging the narrative, but ultimately the plot is too derivative to be of great interest. Also, the very cynical denouement leaves a bad taste.

[Jim Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This struck me as a not as good copy of Raymond Chandler's style. Chandler could describe a scene down to the color socks somebody wore and make it work but Browne just doesn't quite have the knack. He also copied the high level of complexity that you often found in a Marlowe story but again it didn't seem to be as cohesive. In general it was very derivative of Chandler and not a very good copy.