Murder and the Wanton Bride is a 1958 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser. It is an installment in the long-running series of pulp detective novels about hardboiled PI, Michael Shayne.
A man named Walter Carson eats dinner at an upscale Miami Beach hotel. He is shot and killed!
Cut to Michael Shayne, who gets a call from the man at the desk at his apartment building: a woman wants to see him about a case. Shayne drives over, but doesn't even make it into his apartment, because a cop is waiting in the lobby. The cop has been sent by Peter Painter, chief of detectives in Miami Beach and Shayne's mortal enemy. The cop takes Shayne to the scene where a man (Carson) has been found shot dead in the street. The mystery man has a note indicating he has an appointment the very next morning with Michael Shayne! Shayne says truthfully that he has no idea who the dead man is. Painter calls him a liar, but has no evidence so he lets Shayne go.
Shayne heads back to his apartment and meets the woman with the case: a dowdy housewife, Mrs. Bristow. It seems her husband, Harvey Bristow, is having an affair with one Belle Carson. Belle is married to Walter Carlson, Harvey's boss. Mrs. Bristow gives a description of Walter Carson that matches the dead man. Shayne, pissed off at Peter Painter for calling him a liar, investigates himself, and unearths a tale of kidnapping, blackmail, bigamy, and murder.
This is the last Michael Shayne novel by Davis Dresser, who had been writing them since 1939. He turned the "Brett Halliday" pen name over to ghostwriters, who kept up the Shayne series through 1976.
Tropes:
- Bad Guy Bar: Shayne goes for his rendezvous with Buford at Conway's Grill, which puts up "a respectable front" but is actually a place for gangsters and other criminal types to meet and make plans without attracting attention. Sure enough, nobody bothers to look outside when Shayne and Buford exchange gunfire right in front of the building.
- Blackmail: Walsh, the sleazy private detective that Shayne regards as a stain the profession, was blackmailing Carson after finding out Belle is a bigamist.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: Later, hackier installments in the Mike Shayne series were the Trope Namer. He's never called "burly" in this book but his red hair is referenced over and over and over again, with the narration mentioning his red hair, or calling him a redhead, or other characters addressing Shayne as "Red."
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Belle Carson, who might be an alcoholic mess but is still sexy. Shayne admires her "full-breasted, slim-waisted" body.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: It turns out the whole business with Carson/Watson, the kidnapping, the ransom that Carson/Watson absconded with, and Whitey Buford the escaped convict had nothing to do with the killing at all. Carson sent a letter seeking to secure Michael Shayne's services for help with Buford the escaped convict, but Harvey Bristow, Carson's assistant who wrote the letter, thought that Carson was investigating Belle for adultery, which would have led to him. So he killed Carson, ultimately for no reason at all.
- Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Shayne, trying to find Whitey Buford, looks up a high-dollar lawyer named Morton Melrose who caters to gangsters. When he answers the door, Melrose is smoking a meerschaum pipe, Sherlock Holmes-style.
- Friend in the Press: Tim Rourke, a recurring character in the series, newspaper reporter, and Shayne's buddy. Shayne calls him and asks for information on the Barnett kidnapping five years earlier. Later, he summons Rourke for the confrontation with Buford so he'll have a witness that he was shooting in self defense.
- Functional Addict: Michael Shayne, such a hard drinker that he literally has brandy for breakfast. It doesn't stop him from detecting, though.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Peter Painter tells one of his underlings that Mike Shayne has definitely gone on the lam, and offers to bet $10. Cue Shayne stepping into Painter's office and taking the bet.
- Inspector Javert: Peter Painter, who as usual is longing to put Michael Shayne in prison and gets positively giddy when it looks like he might finally get his chance.
- Lady Drunk: When Shayne visits Belle Carson he finds her drunk, drinking from a pitcher of straight gin. When he comes back he finds her drunker, this time nearly to the point of passing out, swilling from the same pitcher of gin while complaining about her husband and her boring life in Denham, Florida, and throwing herself at Shayne.
- Miss Kitty: Looking for Walter Buford, Shayne goes to a brothel and talks with a middle-aged fat woman named Sadie who runs it.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Shayne takes a bullet through his left bicep. Does it incapacitate him? Does he even need a sling for his arm? No and no. He gets a bandage and keeps on trucking.
- Pretty Little Headshots: Carson is killed by a bullet that hits him "in the exact center of his forehead."
- Sinister Switchblade: Quirk, Sadie's mook, pulls his hand out of his pocket and "there was a clicking sound" before Quirk produces a blade. Shayne winds up breaking his arm.
- Summation Gathering: Shayne, the cops, Bristow, and Walsh are all together when Shayne explains that Bristow is the killer.
- Supermodel Strut: Belle Carson is not at all subtle in her attempts to seduce Shayne, as shown when "her hips swayed with practiced ease" when she walks away from him.
- The Teaser: The first chapter is told from Walter Carson's perspective and ends with his murder. Chapter 2 goes to the usual POV character, Michael Shayne.
- Two Aliases, One Character: Shayne finds out that Belle Carson actually had a husband before, Richard Watson, so she was guilty of bigamy when she married Carson. Except that she wasn't, because Carson and Watson are the same guy. Watson fled and assumed a new identity after receiving the $50,000 kidnapping ransom.
