Death Has Three Lives is a 1955 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It is another installment in the long-running series (37 years!) about hard-boiled Miami private detective Michael Shayne. This one opens with Shayne's Sexy Secretary Lucy Hamilton preparing to receive him at her apartment one evening, probably for Friends with Benefits sex. She responds to the knock at her door and is greeted not by Shayne, but by one Jack Bristow, a casual acquaintance of hers from New Orleans. It's an unpleasant surprise, made more unpleasant when Lucy realizes that Bristow is clutching a bullet wound in his abdomen.
A bleeding Bristow tells her that he was shot by "a dead man." He also tells her that she must not call the police, and she can't tell Shayne either, because if she does he'll tell all sorts of lies about Lucy's private life in New Orleans. So when Shayne does show up, Lucy doesn't tell him that she has a man with a bullet wound hiding in her bedroom. When the cops arrive, looking for a man who was seen running away from an apartment building where a prostitute was murdered, Shayne sends them on their way. He is appalled when Lucy finally tells him, and goes into the bedroom, only to find that Bristow is gone, apparently through the open window of Lucy's bedroom. Only Bristow isn't gone; he's under Lucy's bed, and he's dead. From a slashed throat...
Tropes:
- Anguished Declaration of Love: The ransom letter that the killer forces Lucy to write to Shayne has her calling Shayne "dearest" and "my sweet" and saying that "I shall love you even to the very end." Subverted when Shayne figures out that there's a coded message in the letter.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: The later, hackier Mike Shayne novels by ghostwriters were the Trope Namer. This one does not have the narration describe Shayne as "burly", but he is described over and over and over and over again as a redhead, once twice on the same page. Similarly, Shayne's friend and unofficial sidekick, Intrepid Reporter Tim Rourke, is called a "lanky reporter" more than once.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: By the hero! Joe the gullible cabbie drives to a rendezvous with the killer, Mark Switzer. Switzer is approaching the cab when Michael Shayne, who was hiding the whole time behind the seats of Joe's cab, bursts out.
- Drunken Master: Michael Shayne was always The Alcoholic but a Functional Addict. Sometimes he said that drinking actually made him think better. He is puzzling over Lucy's letter, trying to decipher the coded message he finds inside, when he starts downing cognac. When Tim and Will suggest that maybe now is not the time to get drunk, Shayne says "we're all too goddamned sober" to figure it out and that "I can get drunk enough to maybe figure out what Lucy was trying to say." It works, as after chugging cognac he figures out the code. In the last paragraph of the book he apologizes to Lucy for being slow to figure out the code, saying "If I hadn't been so damn sober I might have done better."
- Extremely Short Timespan: As per formula in the Michael Shayne series, where stories almost never lasted more than 24 hours. This is even quicker than most, as three murders, two separate visits to the morgue, a kidnapping, a suspect going down in a hail of bullets, Shayne getting a friend to rig him up a knockout gas bomb, and more, all of that and more happens over a single evening and night.
- Friend on the Force: Chief Will Gentry of the Miami police. Always a friend to and indulgent of Shayne, he really goes beyond the call of duty in this book. It's just an appetizer when Gentry blows it off after Shayne punches a cop in the face. Once Shayne finally confesses all the crimes he's committed over the evening to Gentry—lying to police, obstructing a police investigation, dumping a dead body in the street (Jack Bristow's, so that it isn't found in Lucy's apartment), not telling the cops about "Mrs. Pete Smith" aka Beatrice Allardyce which contributed to Beatrice getting murdered, and planting a bomb in the bad guy's car which caused the bad guy to drive a car off a bridge and into the bay—after all that, Gentry doesn't arrest him. Instead, Gentry gives Shayne a gun to use in his showdown with Mark Switzer.
- Hand Gag: Mark Switzer does this with Lucy as he's kidnapping her from the morgue.
- Killer Cop: Mark Switzer, the Dirty Cop from Baton Rouge who, after finding out about Hugh Allardyce and Jack Bristow's plot to steal $80K, forces his way into the scheme as a partner. He then follows Hugh and Jack to Miami and kills several people in a quest to get all the money for himself.
- Leg Focus: Lucy "crossed her nice legs" (she's wearing a gown that apparently shows a lot of leg) as she desperately tries to stall Shayne and prevent him from finding the man in her bedroom.
- Motor Mouth: Joe Agnew, the cabbie who gave a ride to a gutshot Jack Bristow. Joe, starstruck by Michael Shayne the famous private detective, starts babbling about how "hackies" (cabbies) develop a sixth sense about their fares, about how he's always on call to give someone a ride, how some people are cheap tips but the people he picks up late at night are usually big tippers—Shayne has to repeatedly drag him back to the topic to find out what he needs to know about Jack Bristow. After Shayne and Tim Rourke leave, Rourke says "What a monologuist."
- No Honor Among Thieves: The reason for all this orgy of violence. Mark Switzer the Dirty Cop conspired with Jack Bristow and Hugh Allardyce to steal $80,000. Having done so, he's unwilling to share the money, which is why he kills Jack Bristow, the hooker that Bristow was hiding out with, and Hugh Allardyce's wife Beatrice.
- Public Secret Message: Mark Switzer forces Lucy to write a ransom note to Shayne telling him that Switzer has kidnapped her and wants the whole $80,000. Lucy, writing under pressure, manages to write a clever code to Shayne telling him where she is. It's a sort of reverse acrostic where the last letter in every line spells out the location of the abandoned house where Lucy and Arlene Bristow are being held.
- Punk in the Trunk: When the bad guy's car is fished out of the bay, the cops find the dead body of Beatrice Allardyce in the trunk. Shayne blames himself as it was his bomb that sent the car into the water, and is relieved to learn that Beatrice asphyxiated in the trunk and was dead before the car hit the water.
- Serious Business: Lucy takes firm hold of the Idiot Ball when, after Jack Bristow makes dark threats about ruining Lucy's reputation with Shayne, she does not tell him about Jack hiding in the bedroom. Because apparently Shayne will be done with her forever if he finds out she's not a virgin?
- Sexy Secretary: Lucy Hamilton, who as the book opens is waiting to receive Shayne in her apartment for an intimate evening, wearing a sexy "hostess gown." She answers a knock from the wrong man and all sorts of mayhem ensues.
- Smithical Marriage: Although it isn't played the usual way, with two people checking into a No-Tell Motel for sex. Instead, Shayne checks the woman he finds outside the crime scene into a vacation cabin, which he reserves under the name "Mr. and Mrs. Pete Smith." He's pretty sure that she's related to the mystery he's trying to solve, and he's right.
- Switching P.O.V.: Most of the Michael Shayne novels stick with Shayne, but this one has a few chapters from the POV of Lucy, and also has a chapter from the POV of Joe Agnew, the absurd Motor Mouth cabbie.
