Counterfeit Wife is a 1946 detective novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It is an installment of Halliday's long-running series about tough-guy private detective Michael Shayne. Events follow immediately after the conclusion of the previous Michael Shayne book, Blood on Biscayne Bay. He goes to the airport to catch a flight back to New Orleans, only to be approached by a "doughy" and very agitated man named Parson. Parson, who appears frantic and terrified, says that he must be in New Orleans by the next morning and offers to buy Shayne's ticket, because that is a thing you could do in 1946 when flying was like riding the bus. An offer of $200 makes Shayne accept, and Parson gives him two crisp hundred-dollar bills.
Shayne is still wondering what to do with himself when a tall, curvaceous blonde shows up at the ticket counter. She's looking for her husband, a Mr. Dawson—and she gives a description of the sweaty man who bought Shayne's ticket. The woman at the desk is unable to help her, and the blonde leaves. Intrigued, Shayne follows the blonde to a nightclub. They are drinking together when Shayne offers one of Parson/Dawson's hundred-dollar bills as payment for drinks. He is then summoned to the manager's office, where he's held at gunpoint, because the bill was counterfeit. Without even meaning to, Shayne finds himself in the middle of a criminal conspiracy that involves not just counterfeiting, but kidnapping and murder.
Tropes:
- Back-Alley Doctor: Discussed Trope. Fred Gurney the petty crook, it seems, was a go-between for back alley abortionists. He smuggled kidnap victim Kathleen Deland into Gerta Ross's custody by claiming she needed an abortion and she was under sedation. (Gerta runs a "nursing home" that is really a front for various illegal activities.)
- Bluffing the Murderer: Shayne gets Dawson to confess to the Slocum murder by pretending that the blood and hair found in Shayne's apartment has been matched to Dawson, when it hasn't even been compared yet.
- Briefcase Full of Money: After deciding not to take the midnight plane to New Orleans, Shayne got his suitcase back. He is horrified to discover later that he got back the wrong suitcase, one that is packed not with his clothes, but money. Counterfeit money, but still.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Part of the Shayne formula, where the women were always busty and hot. Shayne admires the "full, feminine convolutions" of the tall blonde, later identified as Gerta Ross, who shows up at the ticket counter looking for the doughy man. (In fact, this is part of the reason why he follows her and gets into trouble.) Later, the third-person POV has Shayne more directly admiring her "heavy shoulders and big breasts."
- Counterfeit Cash: The $50K in money that Shayne finds, the ransom payment, is counterfeit. In fact, the entire kidnapping plot was a way to launder the fake money.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who was the mastermind behind the kidnap plot? Arthur Deland, Kathleen's father, who was trying to launder $50,000 in counterfeit money and thought he could stage a kidnapping and get his daughter back unharmed.
- Driven to Suicide: Shayne outs Arthur Deland as the mastermind behind the kidnapping, which resulted in the death of Arthur's daughter after the mooks double-crossed each other and bungled it. Immediately after this, Arthur jumps out of a ninth-story window. Shayne then reveals that he more or less goaded Arthur into doing it, so that his culpability could be hidden and Mrs. Deland could be spared even more grief.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The formula for Shayne novels. The entire plot, starting with Shayne's encounter with Dawson at the airport and ending with the Summation Gathering, lasts less than a day.
- Fat Bastard: Ex-Senator Irwin, the former state senator who was driven from politics for a corruption scandal, but beat the rap at trial and is now a crime boss. The fat man is "pinching the pendulous flesh of his third chin" as he demands Shayne reveal where he got the $100 bill.
- Follow That Car: Shayne decides to follow the blonde, partly because she's hot and partly because he's the only person who knows where the man she was looking for went. So when she leaves the airport, Shayne hops into a cab and tells the cabbie to "Follow that car."
- Friend on the Force: As always, Chief Will Gentry of the Miami PD. Shayne calls him up for advice and information, after Shayne narrowly escapes being murdered by two mooks.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Shayne didn't have much of a choice as the two mooks forced him into a Shameful Strip before locking him up. But still, Shayne is completely naked when he kills one of the mooks with a broken liquor bottle and then jumps into the other one's car and escapes.
- Funetik Aksent: The Italian waiter who serves Shayne at the nightclub says stuff like "Don' get sore me, mister. Thees house order."
- Head-Turning Beauty: "Men got out of her way and turned to look at her" as the curvy blonde barrels her way up to the front of the line at the airport ticket counter.
- Immediate Sequel: The story starts within a matter of hours after the end of previous novel Blood on Biscayne Bay. Shayne, who kept delaying a flight back to New Orleans in that book, makes it to the airport this time, only to postpone again.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: More than once. Shayne, who sometimes comes across as a Functional Addict, swigs from a whiskey bottle when he's imprisoned in a closet by some killers. He specifically asks the night clerk for a bottle of cognac after getting back to his apartment, after he's almost been murdered twice. Then he later drinks "a stiff shot of cognac" after going into his bedroom and finding a dead body.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The first sentence of this novel has Shayne saying a friendly goodbye to husband-and-wife Leslie and Christine Hudson, main characters from previous book Blood on Biscayne Bay. So anyone who reads this book first knows that the Hudsons are neither killer nor victim.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Shayne goes into the bedroom of what used to be his apartment to find the dead body of Slocum, the man who rented it. He realizes that it's his fault, as he lied to Irwin that he got the fishy $100 bills from Slocum in exchange for vacating the apartment.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: The desperation of the man who is trying to buy Shayne's ticket at the airport is underscored by how he "wiped sweat from his pallid brow" as he tries to talk Shayne into helping him out.
- Punk in the Trunk: Shayne's escape from the nightclub with the hot blonde ends when the blonde, who is driving at high speed and also drunk, crashes into a guard rail. Later Shayne calls Chief Gentry and is horrified to learn that the trunk of said car contained the dead body of a kidnapped teenage girl, Kathleen Deland.
- Shameful Strip: Irwin's two mooks make Shayne strip naked before they confine him in a closet, partly to make absolutely sure he has no weapons, and partly to humiliate him. This makes Shayne very angry.
- Smithical Marriage: Fred Gurney registers himself and Gerda Ross at the motel at the vacation cabin as "Mr. and Mrs. Fred Smith." Subverted in that they're really only there to rendezvous with another criminal, not for sex.
- Summation Gathering: Gerda Ross is in jail for kidnapping, but all the other surviving characters are in Dawson's hospital room at the end, as Shayne summarizes the case and identifies the Big Bad behind events.
