Blood on Biscayne Bay is a 1946 mystery novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name of Davis Dresser.
It is part of his long-running series about tough guy Miami detective Michael Shayne. Shayne is back in Miami for a visit, having left for New Orleans after the tragic death of his young wife Phyllis. He is mere hours from catching a flight back to New Orleans when he is approached in his "apartment hotel" by a comely young woman, Christine Hudson. She introduces herself as a friend of Phyllis's and asks Shayne for a favor. It seems that Christine got careless at a casino and ran up a $10,000 gambling debt. She is a newlywed, married for only a month to wealthy financier Leslie Hudson, and she is desperate to stop her husband from finding out about her debt. She gives Shayne a very expensive pearl necklace and asks him to hock it and pay the debt, which is due that very night.
Shayne does even better than that. He goes to the casino and with little more than alpha-male intimidation gets casino owner Arnold Barbizon to give up the IOU. The next morning he goes to the Hudson mansion and proudly gives Christine both the IOU and the necklace—but she is strangely upset. Then just moments later, before Shayne has even had the chance to leave, everybody at the house finds out that Natalie Briggs, a maid at the Hudson residence, has been murdered! Shayne soon realizes that he saw Natalie at the casino the night before, and gave her a ride home in his taxi...
Tropes:
- Alcohol Hic: Wilson the cab driver hiccups as Shayne is plying him with liquor in a deliberate attempt to get him to pass out.
- The Alcoholic: Floyd Hudson, Leslie's brother, is perpetually drunk. Leslie ruefully notes that Floyd blew his half of the family fortune on drinking and now he's dependent on his brother, who gives him an allowance that he spends on booze.
- Blackmail: Christine is being blackmailed by an unknown person who has highly embarrassing love letters written to her by her old boss, Victor.
- Blackmail Backfire: For two characters! It turns out that Angus Browne killed Natalie Briggs, who had helped him set up the blackmail scheme, when she demanded a piece of the action. Then Victor Morrison killed Arnold when Arnold tried to blackmail him over the letters.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: The later, hackier Shayne novels by ghostwriters were the Trope Namer. He's never called "burly" in this one but the narrative does remind the reader several times for no particular reason that Shayne is a redhead.
- Cold Cash: Shayne hides Christine's necklace in his refrigerator.
- Continuity Nod: After hiding Christine's necklace in his fridge, Shayne remembers how he did the exact same thing for Phyllis. That happened in Shayne #1, Dividend on Death.
- Cut Himself Shaving: Shayne, who has just gotten beaten up by Barbizon's mooks, tells Tim Rourke that "I cut myself shaving." He's not in the mood to explain.
- Divorce in Reno: It isn't Reno, but 1946 Florida's divorce laws are a lot more lax than New York's, and it turns out that Victor Morrison moved to Florida specifically so he could establish residency and then divorce his wife.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Standard formula in the Shayne novels. Shayne spends 24 very busy hours running around Miami. (In fact, after retrieving the necklace he goes to bed for the night and the main story plays out over 12 hours or so.)
- The Ghost: Lucy Hamilton, the Sexy Secretary and booty call for Shayne since the death of his wife and usually a recurring character in the books, does not appear. She does however send a telegram to Shayne with news of a lucrative case waiting for him in New Orleans, which he has to postpone while trying to figure out who killed Natalie Briggs.
- Inspector Javert: Chief Peter Painter, who loathes Shayne and dreams of putting him away, and is always disappointed when Shayne isn't the killer in his cases.Painter's face grew livid with rage. "By God, Shayne, I'll slam you behind bars if it's the last thing I ever do."
- Leg Focus: Shayne admires the "well-shaped legs" of Estelle Morrison when he visits the Morrison mansion and finds Estelle lounging by the pool in a bikini.
- Mal Mariée: Hot young trophy wife Estelle Morrison is cheating on her husband Victor. Victor for his part is sick of her, hired a private detective to get proof of her adultery, and moved down to Florida specifically because it's easier to get a divorce there than New York.
- Never One Murder: 3/4 of the way through the narrative Shayne stumbles onto the dead body of Angus Browne, floating in the bay. He turns out to have been murdered by a different killer (and he himself was the killer in the first murder).
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Estelle Morrison was galactically stupid enough to pass off the love letters Victor wrote to her three years earlier as love letters that Victor wrote to Christine, as part of a harebrained blackmail scheme. Not only does that get Victor nailed for Browne's murder, it gets both of them arrested for the murder of Victor's first wife, as it's the clinching piece of evidence in that unsolved cold case.
- Old Retainer: Mrs. Morgan, who was a nanny for Christine when Christine was a child, and now is the head maid in Christine husband's mansion.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: "Tiny beads of sweat were standing on Painter's face" after Chief Painter of the police delivers the news about the murder, and Christine faints.
- The Peeping Tom: Estelle hands Shayne her binoculars and tells him to look at a sailboat on the other side of the bay. Shayne does, and sees a naked young woman and a young man feeling her up.
- Perfumigation: Shayne is somewhat bothered by the "expensive perfume" of the blonde at the casino, who turns out to be Natalie Briggs.
- Pool Scene: Shayne first meets Estelle Morrison when she's lounging by her pool. This provides a chance for the narration to not just describe Estelle's sexiness, but also to describe her in a bikini, something that would have been unusual and titillating for 1946 readers, and was before the word "bikini" came to be used as the name of a two-piece swimsuit.The woman wore a wisp of flowered cloth over her pointed breasts, and a triangular piece of the same material for a loincloth.
- Sinister Switchblade: Barbizon the casino owner pulls a knife with a blade that "leaped open from the pressure of a spring", but Shayne dodges and bashes him with a whiskey bottle.
- Smithical Marriage: People cared about stuff like this in 1946, which is why Estelle and the man she was cheating on her husband with had to register in a motel as Mr. and Mrs. D.G. Hays.
- Summation Gathering: Shayne winds up summoning all the characters and explaining to them the mystery, Agatha Christie-style. The interesting thing is that it's a stall tactic as he's about to be arrested himself, and he doesn't know who did it. He strings everyone along until the phone call he's been waiting for comes, and then he drops the bomb on the Morrisons.
- Supermodel Strut: Estelle, who has been coming on to Shayne like gangbusters, pushes it to another level, "swaying slightly above the hips" as she walks away from him.
- Trophy Wife: Both Christine and Estelle are the beautiful young wives of significantly older and very rich men, although Christine and Leslie's marriage is much more secure than the disastrous marriage between Estelle and Victor.
- Water Wake-up: Shayne, who is desperately trying to get a very drunk Tim Rourke somewhat more sober so he can get some information, tosses Tim into the shower and turns it on. Eventually, it works.
