Brett Halliday Books In Order

Publication Order of Michael Shayne Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Brett Halliday is an American author of fiction. He is a famous writer of works in the mystery and western as well as romantic genre. It is the pen name used by author Davis Dresser. He is most well known for the famous Mike Shayne detective series, which were adapted into pretty much every medium– radio, television, and movie format.

Halliday or Dresser was born on July 31, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois. He spent most of his time growing up in west Texas. There he lost an eye due to barbed wire as a child and as a result wore an eye patch continually after that. He passed away on February 4, 1977. He lived in Santa Barbara, California at the time of his passing.

In addition to writing under the Halliday moniker, he also wrote under a great variety of other pseudonyms. These include Peter Field, Anthony Scott, Anderson Wayne, Don Davis, Kathryn Culver, Hal Debrett, Matthew Blood, and Asa Baker.

Halliday ran away at the age of fourteen and went to Fort Bliss, Texas, where he enlisted in the cavalry regiment there. He worked a year after that on the Rio Grande doing Border Patrol duty. After that, he went back to the state of Texas and finished going to high school. After that, he roamed the Southwest and worked different odd jobs including deck hand, farm hand, mule skinner, oil field laborer, and more.

Davis or Halliday decided to eventually pursue higher education and attended the Tri-State College of Engineering. There he graduated and got his certificate in the field of civil engineering. He put that certificate to good use in Texas working for several years as a surveyor and engineer. Finally, in 1927, he tried writing out.

His first marriage was to Kathleen Rollins. Dresser got married a second time, to Helen McCloy, a mystery author. They were married for fifteen years and had a child together named Chloe. They also joined forces and made a literary agency together that they called Halliday and McCloy.

On his own, Dresser established the Torquil Publishing Company. This company not only published his books but other writers’ novels as well. The company ran twelve years up until 1965. Four years before that, he was married to Mary Savage. She too was an author and they had a son together born in 1965. They named him Halliday.

Even though the Detective Shayne series is now immensely popular, it was rejected numerous times before eventual acceptance from Henry Holt & Co. The 1939 decision kicked off the series, which would go on to do very well– so well that it had multiple edition printings and was translated into a variety of other languages.

Dresser retired from writing the novels under the pen name of Brett Halliday after a while and arrangements were made by Dell Publishers to get other writers to ghost write the series (these include Robert Terrall and Bill Pronzini). He was one of several founders of M.W.A. and received an Edgar Award for his work writing mysteries in 1954.

The Shayne series was adapted into a radio series during the forties. The character was the inspiration for twelve movies as well. The series starred Lloyd Nolan for seven of the 12 movies made, with more starring Hugh Beaumont in the title role.

A television series was released in the sixties that starred Richard Denning in the role of Michael Shayne, detective. It was also featured in a pulp fiction magazine and the 2005 movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was partly inspired by the Halliday book Bodies Are Where You Find Them. The movie The Nice Guys also acknowledged Brett Halliday’s works as inspiration.

The first book in the Mike Shayne series is Dividend on Death. This novel is where readers get to meet this iconic character for the first time.

One day Shayne is just minding his own business when he saves a woman from erratically plunging to her death, as she is attempting to jump out of the window in his apartment. It’s a narrow miss, but he saves her. Only moments earlier she was telling him about how she was crazy. Her doctor and stepfather think she is suffering from an Electra complex and wants to kill her mother.

Unfortunately, Phyllis looks guilty of killing her mother when she turns up with a knife in her back. The detective doesn’t think that she did it, but it doesn’t look good for her regardless. He vows that he will find who did it so that Phyllis is either proved innocent or proved guilty. Read Dividend on Death to find out what happens in the end!

The second book in this series by Brett Halliday is called The Private Practice of Michael Shayne. In this first novel, readers pick up right where they left off. Miami Beach is the exotic setting for this novel, and everyone’s favorite investigator is about to dive head first into a case that involves murder and blackmail alike.

Mike Shayne spent much of his time trying to save a woman from jumping out of his apartment window, and now he’s got to intervene to save her again. He believes that she’s working with Harry Grange, and Shayne thinks that he knows for a fact that Grange is bad news.

This sleazy lawyer is known for representing every base criminal in the area and is what you would call a ‘dirty’ lawyer. Now he is one of the most wanted people in Miami when it comes to work, thanks to his seedy blackmail operation.

When the detective sees Phyllis with him, he knows instinctively he has to get her out of that mess. But can he help extract her before it’s too late? Then everything goes south out of left field when Grange turns up dead. Can he track down the killer and the murder weapon before it’s too late?

It’s all in a day’s work for this capable detective. Read the second novel in the series that sparked movie after movie and endless adaptations in Hollywood, and check out the many other books in the Shayne series by author Brett Halliday to catch all of the action for yourself!

One Response to “Brett Halliday”

1. Bev@My Reader's Block: 4 years ago

   I currently own a copy of Nice Fillies Finish Last–First Dell Printing (#6361) dated February 1966. With “copyright 1965 by Brett Halliday” also printed on that page. So–1973 isn’t the correct 1st published date.

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