Tickets for Death is a 1941 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It is the fourth novel in the Michael Shayne series of detective novels. In this installment, hardboiled private detective Michael Shayne is drinking in a bar when he gets a message. It seems one Mayme Martin has some vital information to give him. Shayne, who has no idea what she wants or what the information is, goes anyway. He meets Martin, a blowzy alcoholic, who demands $1000 in return for her information. Shayne, who has no idea what she's talking about, leaves.
Shayne comes home to his wife Phyllis, who informs him that she has accepted on his behalf a job in the (fictional) Miami suburb of Cocopalm—which is where Mayme Martin is from. Phyllis tells him that a man named Albert Payson has hired Shayne. Payson owns a dog racing track, someone has been counterfeiting the tickets at the dog racing track, and Payson wants something done about it. Phyllis has made an appointment with Shayne at 7 pm to meet John Hardeman, the manager of the dog track. Shayne and Phyllis drive to Cocopalm, Shayne goes to Hardeman's hotel room, and he is immediately assaulted and nearly killed by two goons...and further murderous mayhem goes down over the course of the evening, involving blackmail, prostitution, and escaped convicts using fake identities.
Tropes:
- Cacophony Cover Up: Shayne has to fire off another bullet from John Hardeman's gun to make his murder look like a suicide. He waits until the roar of noise from the start of another dog race to pull the trigger.
- Call-Back: Shayne observes Hardeman using a rubber covering on his fingertip, when typing. Later, he sees that covering again after Hardeman has been murdered, and has to remove it in order to make Hardeman's death look like a suicide.
- Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: There's the counterfeit ticket scheme, two escaped convicts living in Cocopalm under assumed names, and a crime boss who runs an illegal brothel/casino. None of them have much to do with each other, except that the counterfeiter plans to pin the blame on the escaped convict, and the gambler thinks Shayne is there to investigate him.
- Comedic Spanking: Phyllis makes a big scene of being jealous and heartbroken about the compromising photo showing Shayne in another woman's arms, before collapsing in laughter and revealing that she's kidding. He promptly throws her over his knee and spanks her, in a scene that's played for laughs (Phyllis is specifically said to be laughing).
- Counterfeit Cash: Not cash, but tickets. Someone is counterfeiting tickets for a dogracing track, and cashing them in. The track is facing impending closure if Shayne can't catch the counterfeiter.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The formula of the Michael Shayne series. As usual, Shayne wraps up a case in barely a day after getting the first mysterious message from Mayme Martin.
- Fat Bastard: Max Samuelson, a shady lawyer whom Shayne strongly dislikes who apparently specializes in scamming people out of patents. He is "greasily fat" with "many chins" and his belly shakes when he breathes.
- I Know You Know I Know: Chief Gentry remarks on how odd it is that the bullet that killed Hardeman was fired from a .38 but did not exit his skull, that such will sometimes happen with a .32 caliber but not a .38. Shayne remarks casually that there's always a first time. Then "they shook hands with a hard grip that said more than either would put into words." Gentry plainly knows that Shayne faked the suicide scene and switched out guns (Matrix used a .32).
- Inspector Lestrade: Chief Will Gentry of the Miami police, who as usual is following Shayne around and meekly doing favors for him, while occasionally blustering about how Shayne should tell him what's going on.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Mayme the alcoholic. She tells Shayne that she is not a hooker, that there are "younger and prettier girls" out on the make. Then she follows that with "Though there was a time....I'm telling you there was a time—" before Shanye interrupts and tells her to get to the point.
- Lady Drunk: Mayme Martin, a forty-ish woman who is lonely and bitter and has a terrible drinking problem. She is so drunk when Shayne goes to see her that she is wobbling on her feet. Later dialogue reveals that she has a habit of going around to bars and cadging drinks.
- Let Off by the Detective: Not only does Shayne not turn in Gil Matrix for the murder of Hardeman, he takes active measures to help Matrix, staging the scene so it would look like a suicide. He does this because Hardeman was a blackmailer and murderer who himself killed two people and basically had it coming. Chief Gentry for his part figures all of this out but doesn't press the matter.
- Lingerie Scene: Phyllis greets Shayne in the hotel room wearing a "hostess gown" of "blue silk taffeta".
- Miss Kitty: The Red Rose Apartments where Mayme Martin is staying is actually a brothel in disguise. He meets an older woman with gray hair who guides him to Mayme Martin's apartment. (It turns out that Mayme didn't know the nature of the place when she checked in.)
- Narrative Profanity Filter: A thug named Melvin "said three words which brought Shayne out of the car with his gray eyes blazing and his big fists doubled." The Michael Shayne books never used profanity.
- Never Suicide:
- Mayme Martin looks like she slit her own throat, and Ben Edwards looks like he stepped in front of a moving car. Shayne is not fooled and both cases were murder (Edwards was bashed on the head and thrown in front of the moving car).
- Inverted when Shayne himself, on his own initiative, fakes the scene at John Hardeman's murder and makes it look like a suicide, to let Gil Matrix off the hook.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Payson has "a rosy, perspiring bald head." He's nervous about the impending collapse of his racetrack.
- The Summation: After Hardeman's death, Shayne explains to everyone else what happened, taking care to make Hardeman's death sound like a suicide instead of the murder that it actually was.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: A little racist humor from "Foots", a black bouncer at a casino, who says stuff like "You-all's moughty early tonight, Mistah Shayne. Ain't hahdly got the tables unkivered."
