Counterfeit Wife

Mike Shayne #14

by Brett Halliday

A chance encounter at the airport leads Mike Shayne into a ring of counterfeiters

Mike Shayne has been trying to leave Miami for weeks, but something keeps stopping him from returning to New Orleans. He’s about to board the midnight flight to Louisiana when his secretary calls and tells him not to bother. His stalling has cost them another client, and she’s fed up. She quits, and Shayne realizes that she was the only thing tying him to New Orleans. A man approaches Shayne to beg for his ticket, paying for it with two hundred dollar bills that seem too good to be true. Mike Shayne is staying in Miami—but how long will he stay alive?

The man’s wife appears at the airport, a jaw-dropping blonde too lovely to be married to such a weasel. Shayne follows her, embarking on a night out on the town that quickly turns deadly. The money may be fake, but the bullets are all too real.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

AKA David Dresser
Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Brett Halliday (July 31, 1904 - February 4, 1977), primary pen name of Davis Dresser, was an American mystery writer, best known for the long-lived series of Mike Shayne novels he wrote, and later commissioned others to write. Dresser wrote non-series mysteries, westerns and romances under the names

Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Kathryn Culver, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Anthony Scott, Peter Field, and Anderson Wayne.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kidnapping and counterfeit money--a pretty usual Mike Shayne.

[Patrick Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic mystery with Mike Shayne taking something easily and then paying the price.

Mike is on his way back to Miami, when someone offers to buy his ticket for the sold out flight. The offer of a considerable sum of money makes the offer to good to pass up, so money and tickets are exchanged. A gorgeous woman then comes into the airport looking for the man who bought the ticket, but Mike keeps his mouth shut and decides to follow her out of curiosity.

Mike is really put through the wringer on this one, getting involved in his kidnapping, a dramatic naked escape, several deaths, and the police out to get him.

I continue to love the exploits from Brett Halliday and cannot wait to read the next.

[terry stallings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some Good Deed

Mike Shayne gives his airline ticket to a desperate man. As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. Mike is suddenly involved in a kidnapping, counterfeiting, and murder. Can he clear his name? Can he avoid the mobsters who want him dead? Can he solve the case? Read it, and find out. You'll be glad you did!

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

192 pages of crime fiction from the '40's, like watching an old B&W movie.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Counterfeit Wife is the fourteenth Mike Shayne novel, first published in 1947 by Davis Dresser, the original Brett Halliday, a house name later used by a number of different writers. This PI novels begins with Shayne relocating his office to New Orleans and his secretary Lucy Hamilton quitting on him, but neither fact has much to do with this story, surprisingly enough. By wild coincidences, Shayne stumbles on a number of different schemes and, as the bodies keep appearing, one stabbed, one suffocated, one bludgeoned, one with his face ripped apart and burned to a crisp, he becomes a prime suspect. Between following an Amazonian blonde to being imprisoned by a gang of hoods and walking away from a car wreck, Shayne's adventures never cease in this book. This is a crisp, well -written PI story that is a fun quick read, just what Mike Shayne novels were supposed to be. What I liked about it was that the storyline kept me interested and it was true to its 1940s PI genre. It didn't matter that Shayne never had a client or that the the New Orleans business was nothing more than a red herring.

[Harding Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a used bookshop in Kingston -- according to the receipt that remains tucked inside the front cover -- in 2006. I remember the bookseller marveling at the fact that I knew Brett Halliday and so selling me the book for the cover price of $0.35. The book sat on my shelf for seven years before I picked it up this weekend and blew through it. Halliday's Mike Shayne is a great character with all the grit and wit of others of his ilk -- Mike Hammer, Travis McGee, Marlowe and Spade. But, he has red hair and holds his liquour better. The Counterfeit Wife is well paced and lot of fun. It does fall into some of the dangers that the genre tends to hold -- as the plot tangles and weaves, the heroes try to figure it out and then spend chapters explaining to us how it all went down. I'd rather stay with Shayne, driving naked through a strange town desperate for a drink.

[Meera Srikant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a page turner with enough twists. A kidnapping gone wrong.