Brass Halo

Sammy Golden/Father Shanley Mysteries #5

by Jack Webb

Out of the night, she came. She walked into Augie's place and she sang. Lord, how she sang. She wrapped her voice around a song and the customers loved it.Then, suddenly she disappeared. She walked out of the club, into the night. There was nothing left behind to show she'd been there... nothing but the body of the man who lay dead on her dressing room floor.Cover by Robert Maguire.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Brass Halo” (1957) is the jazz-inspired novel of Webb’s Golden and Shanley series. Set in and around a nightclub in El Porto (the Intimate Club), a corner of Manhattan Beach off Rosecrans Avenue, Webb gets sort of poetic here, talking about the notes coming “out of the clarinet as softly sighing as death is, and she wrapped her voice around it and gave it away. A cascade of notes, a floating sadness, and the bass behind her went thump-thump-thump as though it were a Salvation Army drum a long way down the alley. Only the trumpet, muted with all of its brassiness taken away, whined and complained. The piano talked softly in the background, off the main mike, like an interpreter at some United Nations of hearts.” Domino is the singer in the club and “she was lonely, and there was that in her soft voice which was eternally blue as the cool, deep waters, as the wide open eyes of a child fresh-born, as the sky above the mountains an as the hurt which is inside of all of us. . . .”

But with jazz and pain comes reality and reality for Domino (whose real name was Fancina Capulet) was a man, later identified as a private detective (Martin Payne), found dead in her dressing room and Domino’s face going to pieces as she runs outside.

Golden and Adams were assigned to the case of the murdered private eye with Dan Adams now being the heir apparent to Captain Cantrell, forever altering Golden’s relationship with him. Their investigation goes awry though right after they discover a file with Father Shanley’s photograph in which he is officiating at a wedding. Golden and Adams, moreover, are surprised and held up, knocked out, and the place set on fire with their unconscious bodies inside, barely making it out alive. Adams has a rougher time of it than Golden, but Golden is also looked after by his latest romance, Liz Songer, a woman from one of the earlier novels in this series.

As luck would have it, Golden lives practically around the corner from many of the persons involved in this novel and, when Domino takes refuge with an artist obsessed with drawing her portrait and hi neighbor Marilyn, we actually get a scene where Golden is introduced to Domino, the missing singer, but barely recognizable after a pretty good dye job.

Perhaps not as smoothly plotted as some of the earlier novels in this series, but Webb makes up for that with his smoky jazz atmosphere.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine continuation to the series, smaller in scale than most of the others, but more intimate for it.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: a beautiful woman entered the club, sang wonderfully, and disappeared. She left a body in her dressing room.