Riley Waddell

Created by Floyd Mahannah
(1911-76)

In The Golden Goose (1951; later retitled The Broken Body), private eye RILEY WADDELL has just about had it. Perpetually broke P.I. who’s thinking of getting out of the shamus racket for good. But on the day he’s planning to pull there plug, this dame walks in, waving a stack of dough around, and hires him to hide her for a couple of weeks. In tried and true pulp fashion, he starts out sure she is a murderer (or murderess if you prefer) and ends up in love.

As one does…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Floyd Mahannah isn’t exactly a household name, even among dedicated fans of the genre. He only cranked out a half dozen or so books and a handful of short stories in the digests in the fifties, but they include a couple of other above-average standalone private eye novels, The Yellow Hearse and The Golden Widow, while the short story, “Prognosis Negative,” is a quick mean blast of nastiness. Unfortunately, according to a post by his daughter (which appeared on Bill Crider’s Blog in 2008), Mahannah never succeeded in publishing anything after his initial flurry of success in the fifties. “I think his writing was consumed by his alcoholism,” she admitted, “He died of liver failure and other complications in 1976 at the age of 64. I’m glad that his work is still being read and enjoyed.”

NOVELS

• The Golden Goose (1951; aka “The Broken Body”) | Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Dale Stoyer.