Michael Shayne (59)

Wanda Weatherby had made her final pitch half an hour before when she phoned Mike with an urgent plea for help.

He'd been curious about her — who she was and what she wanted from him, and what she meant to the other people who had called him earlier.

Now she'd never be able to tell him or anyone. So Mike had to fill in the details himself and none of them were pretty.

Strange parties, blackmail and murder were just a few of the ugly facts Shayne has to uncover to find out… What Really Happened.

Shayne isn't one to say no to a gorgeous, rich young doll who gets absolutely everything she wants — and what she wants is . But he changes his tune when he finds her cold and lifeless body on his bed. The dead girl's stepfather is a slippery politician who'd be happy to watch Shayne fry — for a crime he didn't commit. Mike Shayne knows it's a frame-up. But what exactly is the game… and who's calling the plays?

She was a full blown brunette in a bandanna halter that just covered the essentials. The non-essentials were very impressive too. This was just the kind of case Shayne could enjoy. Keeping an eye on a dish like this and getting paid for it to boot.

Suddenly there was an electrifying fanfare from the orchestra, and bright blue moonlight flared out from the semi-circle of spots on the floor.

Dorinda leaped from nowhere. The clean, taut lines of her slim, nude body were breathtakingly beautiful. Abandon and wild desire were in every movement of her lovely, supple form.

Just a sweet little college girl from a nice family taking some extra curricular courses in exotic dancing at a joint called La Roma.

No one could dance like Dorinda. Shayne had to admit she was dynamite, but her explosive act was about to be broken up by murder.

A young Miami insurance executive can’t remember whether or not he’s a killer. He remembers a red-headed man who once said, “Murder is my business.” That’s how Mike Shayne gets into the case of amnesia, alibis, and anguish in Miami Beach and the Florida Keys.

A pleasure cruise had become a trip into terror by the time Mike Shayne boarded the Queen Elizabeth II. A brilliant English scientist sat drunk in the bar waiting for death. A beautiful, sexy American girl kept popping up very much alive in other people’s beds. And a shadow crew of killers haunted the corridors, serving the passengers their daily ration of murder. The storm warnings were up, the chips were down — and only Mike Shayne could steer the great liner off a disaster course.

A cryptic note concealed in a DEAD MAN’S DIARY causes Mike Shayne to return to the past, to trace the secret of the dead man’s life — and he finds himself dangerously involved in murder, both past and present.

In A TASTE FOR COGNAC, Mike and a copper-haired girl reporter from New York uncover the crime story of the year — but twenty-four terror-filled hours on a gunmen’s island hideaway create some reasonable doubt whether they will live to tell it.

In DINNER AT DUPRE’S, one of Mike Shayne’s clients gets rubbed out in the French Quarter of New Orleans before he can get to Mike’s office. And the client’s untimely death gets Mike into a deep dish of homicide, blackmail, bigamy, kidnaping, and assorted other skulduggery. The cops are after Mike’s blood and nothing but a game of dodge and run saves his license and his skin.