Howard Browne (sometimes writing as John Evans, among other pseudonyms) wrote three private eye novels about a Chicago shamus named Paul Pine, all with "halo" in the title. All three books were very good novels. But Browne figured he'd done all he could with the character and dropped it. A few years later he was persuaded to do one more. He considered the result, THE TASTE OF ASHES, to be his best. I agree. It's several steps above the other Pine novels, which were wonderful themselves. This story about Pine's investigation of the death of another private eye is superbly written with a clear yet rich style. It's also got a real sense of human beings as opposed to the mere plot devices characters sometimes end up being in lesser writers' stuff. It's not Chandler or Macdonald, but very, very good stuff. ( )

*Partial spoilers ahead*

Browne hadn't written a Paul Pine detective novel in nearly a decade when The Taste of Ashes was published in 1957. By that time he was a considerably more mature writer, and the fourth (and final) Pine book is a near-classic. He never quite emerged from the shadow of Raymond Chandler, however, and reminds the reader of that fact by sending Pine on Marlowe-esque navel-gazing jags every few pages. (During the first half of the book, Pine seems inordinately distracted by air conditioning, which I suppose was something of a novelty in the late '50s. This happens so often that it's almost like Browne was trying to offer some subtle commentary on affluence. Did he mean to say that air conditioning is a ridiculous first-world luxury? I don't know. Maybe there was no conscious intent.)

Here, Pine is called out of Chicago to the little town of Olympic Heights, where a blackmail case gets serious as bodies begin to pile up. One of those bodies is a colleague Pine knew only vaguely, but liked. The local cops are tough (behind a veneer of chilly politeness), other men's wives are attractive, and the hoods who carry saps aren't afraid to use them. The elements of Browne's plot are familiar, but he breathes life into them with solid and occasionally inspired writing. This book has been compared to Ross Macdonald, but it's not in that class; Macdonald found his own voice, but Browne always relied to one extent or another on Chandler's. If you haven't read Macdonald's work (or Chandler's masterpiece The Long Goodbye), you might mistake The Taste of Ashes for a great hard-boiled detective novel. It isn't, but it's a very good one that deserves to be in print again. ( )