Novels and Short Stories
Shayne debuted in the novel Dividend on Death first published in 1939, written by Halliday, a pseudonym of Davis Dresser. Dresser wrote fifty Shayne novels, with the help of Ryerson Johnson. Twenty seven more were written by Robert Terrall for a total of 77; 300 short stories, a dozen films, radio and television shows, and a few comic book appearances have included the character.
The books were typically very well plotted, with Shayne always gathering the suspects at the end and explaining the crime and naming the murderer. Shayne was initially married in the novels, his wife being Phyllis Shayne, who was a somewhat limited character, and was often out of town. Dresser "killed her off" when he sold the movie rights to the series. In the book Blood on the Black Market, the comedy aspect of the earlier novels disappears, and Shayne is forced to deal with his wife's death.
Halliday stopped writing the Shayne novels after Murder and the Wanton Bride in 1958. The character continued in novels written by Ryserson Johnson, Robert Terrell and Dennis Lynds.
Some of these Halliday ghost writers have suggested that Dresser still kept his hand in, even after other writers largely took over the writing of the novels, by doing at least a light edit of the Shayne manuscripts contributed by others, and thus making the later books in the series "ghost-collaborated" rather than actually "ghost-written".
Read more about this topic: Michael Shayne
Famous quotes containing the words novels, short and/or stories:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)