Murder Is My Business is a 1944 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It's an installment in the long-running pulp fiction series about tough-guy private detective, Michael Shayne. In this one Shayne is in New Orleans, where he has temporarily relocated from his usual stomping grounds of Miami, after the death of his wife Phyllis (although that is not mentioned in this book). One day an old lady, a Mrs. Delray, comes to his office, worried about her son Jimmie. Jimmie, who has been working in a mine in Mexico for three years, wrote his mom an odd letter. Having discovered that he is obliged to register for the draft (World War II is on!), Jimmie is heading off to El Paso to enlist. However, he was approached by a man who convinced him to enlist under a fake name, as "James Brown", because the man told him that they need his help busting a spy ring. Jimmie, who apparently isn't very bright, agreed. Then, Mrs. Delray read a terrible story in the newspaper: a GI named James Brown was struck and killed in a car accident. The driver was an El Paso businessman named Jefferson Towne who is running for mayor.
Shayne is sympathetic to Mrs. Delray, and as.it happens, he knows Jefferson Towne. Ten years ago, he was hired by Towne to prevent Towne's daughter, Carmela, from marrying a man Towne disapproved of. Shayne flies to El Paso and gets the authorities to perform an autopsy on the dead soldier. It turns out that "James Brown" wasn't killed in the car accident, but was struck and killed by a blunt object!
Tropes:
- Blackmail Backfire: Towne kills both Jack Barton and Neil Cochrane because they figured out his scam of smuggling Mexican silver into the United States.
- Chalk Outline: There is still a chalk outline marking the spot where the body of "James Brown" was found in the street.
- Contrived Coincidence: Michael Shayne, a New Orleans private detective, is asked to go all the way to El Paso, Texas, to investigate a traffic fatality—one which involves a man he already knows from a job ten years ago.
- Crime After Crime: Jefferson Towne was smuggling Mexican silver into the United States. He decided to kill Jack Barton after Barton tried to blackmail him. That required the whole scheme of getting Jimmie Delray to enlist, and killing him, just to get his uniform and dog tags in order to disguise Barton's identity. Then he had to kill Neil Cochrane because Cochrane also figured out the smuggling plot.
- Dead Man Writing: It turns out that before Jack Barton went to collect his blackmail payoff from Jefferson Towne, he wrote an "in the event of my death" letter to his parents telling him what he was up to. This gets Towne arrested for murder, but he's released when it turns out that 1) Barton was actually seen leaving town alive and 2) the dead body found in the river isn't him.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Shayne has this when Dyer, the police chief, mentions that American silver is twice as valuable as Mexican silver thanks to a government subsidy. Jefferson Towne has been smuggling his Mexican silver over the border into the United States and passing it off as American silver, and he killed two men who separately figured it out.
- Fat Bastard: Manny Holden, smuggler, gangster, El Paso crime boss who is in cahoots with Towne's opponent in the mayoral election. He's a fat man with "a fat, moist hand" that he extends to Shayne for a handshake.
- Fishing for Sole: The dead body in the river is discovered by a boy who was fishing for catfish in the Rio Grande, and caught a corpse.
- Funetik Aksent: Some mild 1940s bigotry with the character of Marquita Morales, a young temptress who may or may not be a prostitute. She says stuff like "You weel mak' them let me go, no?", and "Boot ze mans arrest me."
- Lady Drunk: Carmela Towne, who never recovered emotionally from her father stopping her marriage to Lance Bayliss ten years ago. Now she's haggard, wearing too much makeup, and bitter about how her life has turned out. She's drunk when she first meets Shayne. Later, when she tries to seduce him, she drinks so much liquor that she passes out.She was the embodiment of a woman who for a long time had made a habit of drinking too much, and sleeping and eating too little.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: An autopsy proves that "James Brown" wasn't killed in a car accident, he was murdered, and his body was dumped on the road for Towne to run over, so everyone would think it was a traffic accident.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: "Lance Bayliss uttered an angry exclamation" when Shayne says that Jefferson Towne would make a good mayor. The Michael Shayne books never used profanity.
- Nature Abhors a Virgin: Part of the reason why Carmela Towne is a bitter Lady Drunk. She has saved herself for ten years in hopes that Lance would return, and now that he has returned, he's no longer interested in her. (Or so she thinks.)"I've dried up inside."
- Never One Murder: Shayne is still investigating the murder of the GI with the fake name when a man's body is found in the river, also murdered. Then towards the end Neil Cochrane the sleazy reporter is also murdered.
- Opium Den: Shayne, chasing Marquita and the two GIs that she was with at the scene of Neil's murder, goes barreling into a sleazy drug den where "The odor of opium swept out strongly." The place is filled with addicts.
- Stocking Filler: Marquita may be a hooker, but she's definitely a good-time girl who takes American soldiers to bars in Ciudad Juarez. Shayne watches her dance passionately with a GI in a club, noting "the rolled tops of her stockings and an expanse of tanned thighs."
- Title Drop: Carmela hates her father, and she wishes that Shayne would go home and stop interfering because she wants Jefferson Towne to go to jail. Shayne says he can't do that, that he must investigate because "Murder is my business."
- Worst News Judgment Ever: The story only plays out because an old lady in New Orleans read a newspaper article about a soldier who was killed in a traffic accident, hundreds of miles away in El Paso. Why is this national news?
