Hmmm…sounds like a case for Mike Shayne
Davis Dresser, the original Brett Halliday, actually wrote only fifty (ONLY!) of the Mike Shayne books, with a little help from ghostwriters such as Ryerson Johnson, and twenty-seven more were written by Robert Terrall. And then there were the 300 or so short stories that appeared in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.
- Robert Arthur
- Michael Avallone
- Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet
- Edward Y. Breese
- Hal Charles
- Richard Deming
- Davis Dresser (the original Brett Halliday-fifty novels!)
- Peter Germano
- Ryerson Johnson (allegedly “helped” Dresser with the first fifty Shayne books)
- Frank Belknap Long
- David Mazroff (1 story, possibly others)
- Dennis Lynds (the most prolific, with approximately 80 stories)
- Sam Merwin Jr. (MSMM‘s first editor)
- Bill Pronzini and Jeff Wallman
- James Reasoner
- Robert Terral (27 novels)
- Robert Turner
FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS
- Ghost Writers: Have Pen, Will Travel
Don’t be afraid of no ghosts…
I always liked the Mike Shayne books. I read most of them decades ago before I realized that Brett Halliday was not an actual person. Once I found out, I still liked reading about Shayne and his adventures “Halliday’ was not Chandler or MacDonald and he wasn’t Spillane but I found the novels to be consistently entertaining – not deep perhaps but fun to read.