Too Friendly, Too Dead

Mike Shayne #45

by Brett Halliday

When Linda Fitzgilpin is woken by the sound of the ringing telephone, she finds her husband is missing. For years now, Jerome has always slept in his bed across the room, but last night he didn't come home. When the phone rings, Linda knows why. A body matching his description has been found at the scene of an accident – Jerome is dead. Uncertain of what to do, Linda asks her downstairs neighbor Lucy Hamilton for help. And Lucy calls her boss, the toughest private detective in Miami: Mike Shayne.

Responding quickly, Shayne takes the newly minted widow to identify the body, and is on hand when the routine procedure turns into an ordeal. Although Linda's husband's body was found dead beside a wrecked car, it wasn't the crash that killed him. It was poison – and Shayne has only thirty-six hours to find the killer before the trail turns as cold as the body on the slab.

Genres: Mystery

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 1964

About the author

AKA David Dresser
Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Brett Halliday (July 31, 1904 - February 4, 1977), primary pen name of Davis Dresser, was an American mystery writer, best known for the long-lived series of Mike Shayne novels he wrote, and later commissioned others to write. Dresser wrote non-series mysteries, westerns and romances under the names

Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne.

Reviews

[Sarah B · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I had finished this yesterday and I must say it was a very relaxing and well written story. The plot and characters were interesting. Sometimes with these old books you don't know which way they will go: will they be horridly boring or will they grab your interest? Well this one told a very excellent story with a shocking ending!

This one follows a detective as he works on a case. Apparently the author was very prolific and wrote a ton of books about private eye Mike Shane but this is the first one I have come across. So he gets woken up by a phone call from his secretary. The woman's husband who lives in the apartment under her has been found dead. And she needs help. So Shane jumps onto the case right away. And he starts snooping and following any clues he finds.

The story itself is very tight. No excess bits. And it never founders off on tangents. I do think that is one reason why I had enjoyed this so much. It's descriptive where it needs to be but its well edited (unlike some books today - you know what I mean)...

There are lies, crooked characters galore, twists and even a trip on a plane. The setting is Miami Florida. And yes, the character who died didn't have an enemy in the world - yet he had died because he had been too friendly and helpful! It's quite the twist don't you think?

I will definitely look for more books by this author as this was a pleasure to read.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Widows, Whiskey, & Murder

Too Friendly, Too Dead is the forty-fifth Mike Shayne novel and was published years after Davis Dresser stopped writing Mike Shayne mysteries. However, it appears to have been a collaborative effort by Dennis Lynds (who is most well known for his Dan Fortune series) and Dresser. It was Originally written as a novella for the Mike Shayne mystery magazine by Lynds, who says that Dresser expanded it into a full-length novel. It is a well-written mystery and really hard to put down. It is basically a who-done-it mystery with Shayne trying to figure out what happened to the friendliest guy in town who went out for a beer and never came home. The widow, of course, is young and vivacious. In many Mike Shayne mysteries, Shayne is suspected of murder, beaten, kidnapped, jailed, busy moving corpses, pocketing evidence, and racing against time to solve the crime before the noose is lowered around his neck. Not so here. Shayne never really is in trouble here or suspected of foul play. That does lower the tension a bit here. Nevertheless, it was a real good read.