The Private Eye is the eighth Adams novel I’ve featured so far in Forgotten Books, and some folks consider it his best. It’s pretty good, I admit, but I suspect some folks prefer it because they don’t care for his number one hero, Rex McBride. Me, I like McBride just fine, so I suffer from no such bias.
Still, as I said, it’s pretty dang good. And truth be told, there’s really very little difference between John J. Shannon, the hero of this one, and aforementioned Rex. Both are hot-tempered, sorely-tried Irishmen with patient but frustrating girlfriends and bitter enemies on the police force. The main difference is that Shannon was, until quite recently, a cop himself. At the urging of his lady love he’s now gone into business for himself, hence the title
The Private Eye.
This book is one of Adams’ several homages to the best detective novel of all time, Hammett’s
Red Harvest. So hey, no wonder it’s a pretty good read. Private Eye Shannon is lured to the tough mining town of Las Cruces, Arizona by a former girlfriend convinced her late husband’s suicide was actually a murder. Shannon soon finds himself caught in a war between two unscrupulous mine operators, with miscellaneous gangsters and corrupt cops thrown in to keep him hopping.
In a move even the Continental Op would have envied, Shannon puts the screws on all concerned by gaining control of both the local branch of the miners union and the town’s only newspaper.
As I’ve come to expect in Adams novels, there’s a semi-evil seductress trying to divert the hero’s attention for her own ends, a flunky he keeps around partly to make himself look smarter and a universe hell-bent on making his life difficult.
Like most of Adams’ novels, I suspect this one was at least partially cannibalized from his pulp stories. Can’t prove it yet, but the quest continues. Shannon appeared in at least two pulp stories, “Jigsaw” from
Detective Fiction Weekly and “Mannequin for a Morgue” from
Double Detective. I’m pretty sure he appeared in more than that, but can’t prove that either. Yet.
This book has the distinction of being in print as late as 1975, well over a decade later than other Adams novels. The reason, I suspect, is the ultra-generic title. But another factor might be (as I may have mentioned) that it's a pretty good book.
More Adams to come. And more Forgotten Books at
pattinase.
