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Mike Shayne #62
Count Backwards to Zero
- GenresMystery
Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
27 people want to read
About the author
Brett Halliday
508 books62 followersAKA 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 25, 2024
Count Backwards to Zero (1971) is among the last batch of Mike Shayne novels to be published and long after Halliday had become a house name rather than just Dresser’s pseudonym. Red-headed private eye Shayne had always been a crowd favorite with books, short stories, radio series, and film and television.
Unlike most of the novels in the series, this one is not set in Miami where Shayne is based, but on the Queen Elizabeth which Shayne picked up in Nassau, the Bahamas, for a leisurely ride back to the States. But, of course, nothing is that leisurely as Shayne can’t even play a poker game without being interrupted by an insistent young lady, Anne Blagden, accompanying a peculiar nuclear scientist on the run allegedly with a briefcase size nuclear device hidden in a fake portion of his Bentley’s gas tank.
In this respect, this novel is closer to an espionage novel such as Fleming’s Bond stories than a private eye novel right down to the high stakes card games and the pivotal high stakes international developments. Not everything here is fully plausible, but dear reader, play along as Bond, er Shayne alternately fights and works with international agents bent on acquiring the loose nuclear device and tries to keep it under wraps while getting cooperation from law enforcement.
Unlike most of the novels in the series, this one is not set in Miami where Shayne is based, but on the Queen Elizabeth which Shayne picked up in Nassau, the Bahamas, for a leisurely ride back to the States. But, of course, nothing is that leisurely as Shayne can’t even play a poker game without being interrupted by an insistent young lady, Anne Blagden, accompanying a peculiar nuclear scientist on the run allegedly with a briefcase size nuclear device hidden in a fake portion of his Bentley’s gas tank.
In this respect, this novel is closer to an espionage novel such as Fleming’s Bond stories than a private eye novel right down to the high stakes card games and the pivotal high stakes international developments. Not everything here is fully plausible, but dear reader, play along as Bond, er Shayne alternately fights and works with international agents bent on acquiring the loose nuclear device and tries to keep it under wraps while getting cooperation from law enforcement.
Displaying 1 of 1 review