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Mike Shayne #49
Shoot to Kill
Mike Shayne investigates the connection between a flirtatious wife, a husband blinded by jealousy, and a murdered boss
Just 3 years ago, Ralph Larson and his wife were newlyweds, the happiest young couple in Miami. But since Larson went to work for Wesley Ames, his life has been hell. He’s convinced his wife has fallen in love with his boss, and the jealousy is driving him mad. Hoping to avoid a murder, private detective Mike Shayne tells Larson’s wife to knock off the flirting before her husband’s envy leads to tragedy. But it’s too Death is at the door.
When Shayne learns that Larson is headed to Ames’s apartment, pistol in hand, he races there hoping to prevent bloodshed. He finds Larson standing over his boss’s corpse, ready to confess to murder. But there’s more here than meets the eye—and more to this murder than a resentful husband holding a smoking gun.
Shoot to Kill is the 49th book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Just 3 years ago, Ralph Larson and his wife were newlyweds, the happiest young couple in Miami. But since Larson went to work for Wesley Ames, his life has been hell. He’s convinced his wife has fallen in love with his boss, and the jealousy is driving him mad. Hoping to avoid a murder, private detective Mike Shayne tells Larson’s wife to knock off the flirting before her husband’s envy leads to tragedy. But it’s too Death is at the door.
When Shayne learns that Larson is headed to Ames’s apartment, pistol in hand, he races there hoping to prevent bloodshed. He finds Larson standing over his boss’s corpse, ready to confess to murder. But there’s more here than meets the eye—and more to this murder than a resentful husband holding a smoking gun.
Shoot to Kill is the 49th book in the Mike Shayne Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Paperback
First published May 1, 1965
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About the author
Brett Halliday
510 books63 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 23, 2025
Great individual scenes but overall very inconsistent.
May 21, 2017
Murder Most Foul
Shoot To Kill is the forty-ninth Mike Shayne book and was published in 1964 six years after Davis Dresser, the original Brett Halliday, gave up writing Mike Shayne novels. As such, it's a solid readable mystery, but lacks the hardboiled flavor of the original books in the series. It's also set up a little differently than other Mike Shayne books. Shayne, who once swore he never took divorce cases, gets involved with one. And, Shayne does not really have a client for most of the story and it's not even clear what the mystery is until you get deep into the book. The story involves infidelity and murder and deductive reasoning.
Shoot To Kill is the forty-ninth Mike Shayne book and was published in 1964 six years after Davis Dresser, the original Brett Halliday, gave up writing Mike Shayne novels. As such, it's a solid readable mystery, but lacks the hardboiled flavor of the original books in the series. It's also set up a little differently than other Mike Shayne books. Shayne, who once swore he never took divorce cases, gets involved with one. And, Shayne does not really have a client for most of the story and it's not even clear what the mystery is until you get deep into the book. The story involves infidelity and murder and deductive reasoning.
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July 29, 2023On the back cover of my garish 1980s paperback of "Shoot to Kill," an unsourced blurb reads: "BEFORE MIKE HAMMER STARTED POUNDING HOODS... BEFORE SPENSER WAS FOR HIRE... THERE WAS MIKE SHANYE[.]" While Brett Halliday's PI did appear before Spillane's Hammer, that is akin to saying the horse-and-buggy came before the locomotive engine. Shayne is a flat, one-dimensional, "tough" detective whose attempts at hardedge masculinity appears in the occasional PG flirtation (with a drunk no less) and drinking, um, cognac. He has none of Hammer's vitality, psychotic drive, machismo brutality, all summarized in the gleefully obscene acronym of BDE. Shayne's characterization begins and all but stops at his red-hair (the third-person narration hinders any access to the investigator's desires, a far cry from Spillane's tell-all approach). Aside from that frequently noticed mane, Shayne is a non-entity, detective free of personality, pure signification. His place could be changed and filled perfectly without a single deviation to there plot by, oh, Miss Marple or maybe even friggin' Cadfael. To compare this bland concoction of prototypical detective attributes to Mike Hammer is a damn-near-deceitful marketing trick.
Yes, this entry in the long-running Shayne series came years after the original Brett Halliday's retirement (and outsourcing of the pseudonym to ghost writers), but I suspect if the original author had written a character with an ounce of depth (or even the potential for it) then my critique would not be aswarranted.
Yes, this entry in the long-running Shayne series came years after the original Brett Halliday's retirement (and outsourcing of the pseudonym to ghost writers), but I suspect if the original author had written a character with an ounce of depth (or even the potential for it) then my critique would not be aswarranted.
June 6, 2022
A hardboiled detective is involved in a locked room mystery.
Mike Shayne is the detective.
The murder is of a sketchy columnist who has clandestine meetings with sources via an outside door.
The accused murderer is the reporter who does the footwork for the columnist, since the reporter believes his new wife is having an affair with that columnist. The reporter even goes as far to shoot the columnist.
Yet it seems the reporter may not have actually slain his quarry, since you can't shoot to death an already stabbed to death corpse.
It's up to Shayne to use his wits to make sense of it all. He is backed up by his faithful brunette secretary Lucy, and of course his fists.
This book has one twist I sort of saw coming, and another I did not.
While the locked room aspect is not played up in the plotting, it was amusing to think of a hardened PI set up in an Agatha Christie tea cozy.
An entertaining read if you like a slightly kinder yet still mega-tough PI along the lines of Mike Hammer.
For those who now suspect that Mike Shayne is a knock off of Mike Hammer, I will note that Shayne predates Hammer by at least a decade.
Mike Shayne is the detective.
The murder is of a sketchy columnist who has clandestine meetings with sources via an outside door.
The accused murderer is the reporter who does the footwork for the columnist, since the reporter believes his new wife is having an affair with that columnist. The reporter even goes as far to shoot the columnist.
Yet it seems the reporter may not have actually slain his quarry, since you can't shoot to death an already stabbed to death corpse.
It's up to Shayne to use his wits to make sense of it all. He is backed up by his faithful brunette secretary Lucy, and of course his fists.
This book has one twist I sort of saw coming, and another I did not.
While the locked room aspect is not played up in the plotting, it was amusing to think of a hardened PI set up in an Agatha Christie tea cozy.
An entertaining read if you like a slightly kinder yet still mega-tough PI along the lines of Mike Hammer.
For those who now suspect that Mike Shayne is a knock off of Mike Hammer, I will note that Shayne predates Hammer by at least a decade.
January 17, 2019
Mike Shayne novels are always good.
December 24, 2021
I have found a book in the bookstore in Tehran after 57 years of it's first publication and I can't stop reading it. The book's captivating!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews