The Mike Shayne mystery series eventually grew to 77 novels, all
penned under the name Brett Halliday, originally used by Davis
Dressner as a pseudonym and later as a house name by Robert Terrall,
Ryerson Johnson, and Dennis Lynds. At its best, the Shayne series
featured a tough, no-nonsense, hardboiled, redheaded detective.

Dividend On Death, originally published in 1939, is one of the best the series, as tough as it gets, as hardboiled as it gets. It is everything
that a Michael Shayne novel should be and few of the other novels met
this pinnacle of success.
For the Mike Shayne fan who has read other novels in the series, a lot
of the usual stuff is here, including murders on a Miami Beach estate,
Shayne up to it in his eyeballs, a lushy sexy femme fatale of a nurse,
bodies falling wherever Mike turns, a young, seemingly innocent
heiress, a few half out of their mind people, Chief Peter Painter and
Chief Will Gentry, and people warning Shayne off the case before he
can even put his finger on what is going on. Lucy Hamilton, who later
became his right-hand girl and the best secretary imaginable, doesn't
make an appearance till later in the series, but Phyllis does and, early
in the Shayne legacy, she was quite important.

Dividend on Death is dark, cloudy, and, at the same time, hot as oil
leaping off a griddle. Its sexy, pulpy, and just a plain good read for
anyone who enjoys hardboiled detective yarns from the forties and
fifties. ( )