Barry Ergang proposed a Prather Friday Books, and as one of the best-selling crime-fiction writers we've had so far...in the same league with Christie and MacDonald and however you want to account James Patterson, that seemed to Patti Abbott not the worst idea.And it's not. Prather wrote most of his work, or certainly that published under his name, about Shell (Sheldon) Scott, a tall ex-Marine Hollywood/LA-based private detective, who seemed to have a lot of money to throw around despite not (in the fiction I've read) managing to worry too much about getting paid for his work, falling into bed with at least a woman or three in any given story (one gathers never for too long, as there's no steady carrying over), and, as Bill Crider notes in his review of this collection today, getting bashed in the head (and shot, but only nicks and flesh wounds) at least as often as Mike Shayne, Mannix, Blimmix or anyone else you'd like to cite in the history of crime fiction.
I've yet to read a Prather or Scott novel...I'd come across the short stories in anthologies, but never had gotten around to reading a book of Prather's, either, so as someone who's bought a bunch of Barry Ergang's books over the years (at The Title Page, a fine secondhand store in Bryn Mawr or arguably more in Villanova, PA), and who almost never throws in on the theme weeks, I meant to check into one or another of his many uncollected stories, figuring someone (like Bill) would've snapped up his collections (I was vaguely aware of two...turns out there are four, as The Thrilling Detective informs us:
- Three's a Shroud (1957; three novellas)
- Have Gat, Will Travel (1957)
- Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters (1961) ...Buy this book
- The Shell Scott Sampler (1969)
--but I can't find the box where I tucked my several handfuls of issues of Manhunt, typically the most common market for bestselling hardboiled CF writers of the 1950s to drop their shorter works, at least if they were clients of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, which controlled the magazine. Not a few of my 1960s Mike Shayne Mystery Magazines and any copies I might have (two?) of Shell Scott Mystery Magazine are probably in the same box. So, having dawdled as I often do, I ended up "borrowing" this anthology from the Internet Archive...and am slightly surprised that it doesn't seem to have gone into as many editions as nearly all of Prather's other books, even given the bias toward novels too many readers regrettably share.
I've always thought of Prather as the next-gen version of Robert Leslie Bellem, best remembered for his Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, famously written up by S. J. Perelman in The New Yorker in the essay "Somewhere a Roscoe...".
Like Bellem, only perhaps a bit less consistently humorously, Prather is well-known (where he still is) for fast patter and sometimes rococo slang, rather improbable incidents, more sexuality than many of his contemporaries (in Prather's case, even given the relatively leeway the post-Spillane generation were able to engage in), and nonetheless a sense of genuine love and respect for the art of the detective story (if Prather actually titled the anthology, I have to wonder if he, or whoever, did so with a nod to Paul Cain's Seven Slayers). Along with that, Scott and the other male characters have a tendency to be utterly gosh-wow floored by sudden female nudity that seems to be more reader-service than anything resembling actual behavior of any such bed-hoppers, but can also be seen, I think, as somewhat endearing, given his superhuman ability to recover from head trauma, his otherwise larger-than-life behavior, and his occasionally nasty irritability with the women characters...who are remarkably likely to be either very pretty to jaw-droppingly so, or rather painfully plain, and guess which class tends to be, if not always, the helpful and virtuous set.
With citations from the Crime Fiction Index:
- * The Best Motive [Shell Scott], (ss) Manhunt Jan 1953; also as “Death’s Head”.
is a good start for the book, with much of the color of the story coming from a gimmicky nightclub, the Haunt, with essentially a Hallowe'en year-'round theme (hence the alternate title, from somewhere)...Prather refers to one of the effects affected by the club being achieved with fluorescent lights, by which he means black/UV lights...though Scott has a rather less common term for them in today's parlance ("gook lights" is presumably not meant to be any more an ethnic slur than referring to a spy as as "spook" is...). (I will disagree with Bill here slightly, as the story offers three Best Motives, jealousy being only one, and the final one settled on being rather arguably the best, indeed.)
- * Crime of Passion [Shell Scott], (ss) Manhunt Dec 25 1954; also as “The Barbecued Body”.
is damned near plotless, in the thin and aggressively ridiculous nature of the plot such as it is (as Bill suggests as well), but mostly pleasantly enough evocative of the kind of fun, and "fun" trouble, Scott finds himself in even when trying to relax. The alternate title is rather On the Nose, or at least in the pit. Tiki culture fans will enjoy the setting here.
Even if the women in the Scott stories can be snapped at by our hero for trifles, at times, and Scott isn't afraid, as in this story, to rough up a woman who's involved in trying to hurt him (while, you know, at least half-willing to still sleep with her), Prather takes great care to make his male villains mean furniture, and the various medium-level mobsters in this story do give him some reasonable trouble before the rather Over The Top ending...one which wouldn't be out of place in a present-day explosion movie and which would almost ensure a multi-directional bloodbath (moreso than it does) if played out in today's reality...or, I suspect, in that of the 1950s.
- * Butcher [Shell Scott], (ss) Manhunt Jun 1954
Bill fears this one might be, at least in resolution, too un-PC for most readers, and I suspect that's not quite as true as he thinks, albeit what Prather probably thought was a solid clue to the eventual revelations is a lot less likely to make today's reader stop and assume as it might've been in the mid 1950s. It is the most brutal and least lighthearted of the stories by some distance, very much in keeping with the nihilism that tended to pervade Manhunt at its height. As frequently, a fair amount of broad assumptions about humanity are tossed around here, some of which are a lot less likely to be taken for granted or blandly agreed with by today's readers...but the story sticks, particularly as Scott is somewhat less improbably unstoppable in this one.
- * Babes, Bodies and Bullets [Shell Scott], (na) Cavalier Apr 1958
is a short novella that I didn't have a chance to finish, though it certainly starts well enough, with Scott dismissing even the reasonably attractive...but Fifty Years Old!...client who has engaged him. One wonders how old Scott is supposed to be...perhaps as dewey as his mid 30s?
- * The Double Take [Shell Scott], (nv) Manhunt Jul 1953
is perhaps the best story as story in the book, despite having a plot that is, in part, even more ridiculous than most, reaching toward Michael Avallone (or his earlier correspondent, Harry Stephen Keeler) territory...while in description of the confidence tricksters Scott goes up against, Prather is unsparing through his protagonist in not sharing any sense of appreciation for the clever scamps they are, even when actually clever and charming, and paints a rather good picture of the kinds of folks whom they can most easily con. The bit of the budding romance in the story is some of Prather's best writing here.
- * Film Strip [Shell Scott], (nv) Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #1 1960
So...these are smoothly written, and fun for the most part even when mildly annoying (or amusing) in their attitudinal antiquity and offhanded improbability (the latter, of course, at least probably intended). Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard and Joe Lansdale, among others, might've improved on the model set here, in varying degrees at various times, but they had a fine model to draw from.
Please see Patti Abbott's blog for this week's list of books.
