One Night With Nora is a 1953 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It is another installment in the long-running pulp fiction series about hardboiled Miami private detective, Michael Shayne. In this one, Shayne is at home, in his apartment, asleep in the small hours. He is awakened by a sound in the living room. Shayne gets out of bed, looks through his bedroom door, and is astonished to see a gorgeous woman taking her clothes off. Shayne scuttles back into bed, and the naked lady slips under his covers seconds later, only for her to be very shocked when he speaks up.
It turns out that the woman, whose name is Nora Carrol, is in his apartment by mistake. She had flown to Miami to surprise her husband Ralph—in fact the Carrols are divorcing, and Nora had hoped to sneak into Ralph's bed and effect a passionate reunion. Unfortunately, when she asked for the key downstairs, she was given the key to Shayne's apartment, 116, instead of Ralph's apartment 216 directly above.
After all this gets explained Nora Carrol puts on her clothes and is just about to leave when they are interrupted by a phone call from Shayne's friend Will Gentry of Miami police. It turns out that Ralph is no longer living upstairs, because he is no longer living. Ralph has been stabbed to death.
Tropes:
- As You Know: Shayne eventually figures out that the "Michael Shayne" impostor who was working with Nora was Bill Nash, the temp who worked for Shayne while Lucy was on vacation. Lucy then reminds Shayne and the reader that Shayne fired Bill Nash for Stealing from the Till.
- Book Ends: The first chapter is Nora Carrol coming into Mike Shayne's apartment, Naked on Arrival. The last chapter has Nora coming back to Shayne's apartment, intent on seducing him, only for Shayne to reveal that she is the killer.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: The later Shayne novels written by ghostwriters are the Trope Namer. In this one he is never called "burly" but he is called "the rangy detective" more than once. Also, the text refers over and over and over again to Shayne's red hair, calling him "the redhead" or mentioning his red brows. One paragraph calls him "the rangy detective" and "the redhead."
- But Liquor Is Quicker: Invoked by the intended target in the last chapter, as Nora Carrol comes over to Shayne's apartment for sex but suggests that he needs to feed her some liquor first.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Part of the Michael Shayne formula in which the women were always busty and hot. On the first page Shayne observes the "slender, curvaceous form" of the strange woman stripping nude in his living room. Later, he admires the shape of Ludlow the photographer's busty assistant.
- Continuity Nod: After getting Lucy out of jail, Shayne remembers their Meet Cute in New Orleans when they were arrested together. That was in a previous Shayne novel, Michael Shayne's Long Chance, during his brief relocation from Miami to New Orleans following the death of his wife Phyllis.
- Contrived Coincidence: As events reveal, Nora Carrol was helped to find her husband by an amateur private detective impersonating Mike Shayne. After murdering Ralph, she then blunders into the apartment of the real Michael Shayne.
- Divorce in Reno: Nora admits to Shayne that her husband Ralph is divorcing her, and he's in Miami because Florida's divorce laws are more liberal than those of Delaware where they live.
- Drunken Master: Throughout the series Michael Shayne was portrayed as The Alcoholic but a Functional Addict. On occasion drinking was shown to actually make him a better detective. In this novel he comes home hurting after taking a bullet ricochet off his skull, and pours himself a cognac.The drink relaxed his body and eased the pain, and his mind became more alert.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The formula for Michael Shayne books. Something like 12 hours passes between Nora creeping into Shayne's apartment at 2:20 a.m. and him revealing her to be the murderer that afternoon.
- Friend in the Press: Shayne's newspaper reporter buddy Tim Rourke, a recurring character in the series. In this novel Rourke calls an AP reporter in Delaware to get Shayne some info about Carrol and Bates the lawyer and Musgrave's plastics company.
- Lady Drunk: Ann Margrave, who despite being only twenty years old is already a sad drunk. She is bitter about Ralph Carrol, the man she loved from childhood, marrying Nora instead and then getting murdered. She is drinking in the morning when Shayne first stops by the Margrave house. He stashes her in a bar after she leaves, and when he comes back a few hours later she's been drinking the whole time, and passes out on the table.
- Naked on Arrival: The book opens with a mystery woman in Michael Shayne's living room, taking all her clothes off before getting into his bed.
- Red Herring: All the business about the Vulcan plastics company, the new plastic compound Ralph invented, and the lawsuit. It turns out that Ralph's death had nothing to do with that, except as motive for Nora to try and stop the divorce; Nora stabbed Ralph in a fit of rage after he reacted badly to finding her in his room.
- The Reveal: Nora did go into her husband's room, and she killed him. How did she get into both Ralph's apartment, and Shayne's, with one key? Because she had the key to the back door, to the fire escape stairs, and those locks are identical to every apartment in the building.
- Spit Take: After Mr. Margrave pronounces Nora Carrol to be "loyal to the core", Shayne is distracted by Ann Margrave "coughing and spluttering" on her drink. Mr. Margrave then grudgingly admits that Nora cheated on her husband with Ralph's own cousin, Ted Granger. Soon after Ann tells Shayne that she thinks Nora and Mr. Musgrave were having an affair.
- Switching P.O.V.: Most of the book is told from Shayne's perspective, but it flips to the perspective of his Sexy Secretary Lucy Hamilton for one part, where Lucy worms her way into Nora Carrol's hotel room to look for an important piece of evidence.
- Tap on the Head: Shayne is struck on the head by a bullet, which ricochets off his skull without penetrating but does leave him unconscious for over four hours. After he wakes up he continues detecting, suffering nothing worse than a headache.
- Title Drop: In the last chapter, Shayne sarcastically says that "one night with Nora has been known to change strong men into infatuated weaklings." When an insulted Nora objects, Shayne says he knows that she is the killer.
- Water Wake Up: Shayne tracks down Ludlow the photographer—the one who called him minutes after Ralph Carrol was murdered—and finds Ludlow passed out drunk. He then takes Ludlow and dunks him in a bath of cold water several times, until Ludlow wakes up and can answer questions.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: Lucy getting arrested for burglarizing (not really) Nora Carrol's room draws a front-page newspaper headline, "Mike Shayne's Girl Friday Jailed." Somewhat subverted in that the novels establish that Shayne has become a celebrity in Miami for his detective exploits, but still.
