Blood on the Black Market (later reprinted as Heads You Lose) is a 1943 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name for Davis Dresser.
It is an installment in the long-running mystery series about hardboiled private eye, Michael Shayne. In this one, Michael Shayne is dealing with grief after the death of his wife Phyllis, killed off between this book and prior Shayne novel Murder Wears a Mummer's Mask. He is woken up from an uneasy sleep one night at midnight by a phone call from his friend Clem Wilson, a gas station owner. Wilson, in an agitated voice, says that something big has happened and Shayne must come right away. Shayne then hears the sound of breaking glass—and a gunshot.
Shayne rushes out to Clem's gas station to find that his old buddy is in fact dead. He relates to Chief Will Gentry, on the scene for the Miami police, that Clem said he'd been harassed by crooks looking to enlist him in a bootleg gasoline smuggling scheme. (The USA is at war and gasoline, and tires, are tightly rationed.). Shayne does not even have a client to pay him but decides to investigate anyway. He deliberately gives everyone the idea that Clem told him who the bad guys are—in fact Clem was cut off before he could tell, but Shayne thinks this will smoke the bad guys out.
Naturally, murder and mayhem ensue.
Tropes:
- Black Market: The central mystery. It's World War II, and gasoline and tires are both rationed—gasoline for military needs and tires both for military needs and because almost all of the world's supply of natural rubber was in the hands of the Japanese. Shayne uncovers a scheme in which gasoline and tires are being sold illicitly with the cooperation of gas station owners.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: The women in Mike Shayne books were always busty and hot. Shayne admires the form of Edna Taylor, observing that she has "firm curves in the right places."
- Chalk Outline: "Chalk lines and a pool of blood" are all that's left after Clem Wilson's body is taken away.
- Counterfeit Cash: Counterfeit ration cards! Shayne eventually figures out that the scheme doesn't actually involve rationed gas being illicitly sold, something that's tough to get away with as the authorities tightly monitor gasoline inventories. No, instead, the racket involves forging ration cards, which subscribers buy illicitly and then use to get more than their share of gas.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: An unusual example in that Shayne notices before he gets into his car that someone else is in there, but gets in anyway, because he wants to get to the bottom of things.
- Deus ex Machina: Carlton probably would have gotten away with Clem Wilson's murder if he hadn't suffered a flat tire on that back road less than a half a mile from the crime scene. Otherwise there would never have been anything to connect him.
- Double Tap: The cops tell Shayne that the first shot went through a glass window before hitting Wilson in the chest, but the eye shot was delivered by someone standing directly above him.
- The Dying Walk: Shayne shoots Pat, a hulking brute of a mook three times. Pat's partner Gene escapes in a motorboat. Shayne is astonished to see Pat get up and stagger to the beach, saying "Gene...don' leave me." Gene proceeds to shoot Pat a fourth time before motoring off.
- Edgy Backwards Chair-Sitting: Gene and Mark the mooks are holding Shayne captive, but he wants to intimidate them and he's pretty sure he can talk his way out of the jam. So he "turned the other chair around and sat down facing its back", before addressing Gene and Mark and demanding they let him go.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Per the Michael Shayne formula. The entire story takes place over about fifteen hours.
- Functional Addict: Hard-drinking Michael Shayne, as always. He may rush off in the middle of the night to answer his good friend's emergency call, but he makes sure to grab a bottle of cognac to slip in his pocket on the way out.
- I Have No Son!: In the backstory, Clem Wilson's reaction when he found out his second son Bob had deserted from the Army. He pulls Bob's pictures down fromn the wall.
- Killed Offscreen: Phyllis, a recurring character in all of the first seven Michael Shayne novels and Shayne's wife since the end of the second one, is killed off between the previous novel and this one. There is a vague suggestion that she died in childbirth but it would not be for several more books that this was confirmed. The reason that Phyllis was killed off is that author Davis Dresser noticed that 20th Century Fox, the film studio making Michael Shayne B-Movies wasn't using his stories. Dresser asked why, and was told that Fox didn't like Shayne being married. So Phyllis got killed off.
- Lady Drunk: Herbert Carlton's wife Laura is drunk in the afternoon. Despite the fact that Herbert is sitting right there and can hear every word, Laura calls her husband a coward and says that she can't stand him.
- Lap Pillow: Shayne lays down on Edna's couch and puts his head in her lap. It's a bit of subterfuge, putting her at ease right before he exposes her as a killer in the Summation Gathering that soon follows.
- Letting Her Hair Down: When Shayne comes to Edna Taylor's place, Edna still has the suit she was wearing at work, "but her hair was brushed out in soft honey-colored ringlets."
- Mathematician's Answer: Chief Gentry asks Shayne why Shayne asked Edna if she knew Eddie Seeney. Shayne's answer: "I wanted to find out." Gentry is irritated.
- Moe Greene Special: Shayne is shown the body of Clem Wilson, with "an ugly hole where his left eye had been."
- New Child Left Behind:
- Clem Wilson's son, Joe, recently killed when his ship was torpedoed in the Solomons, left behind a wife now seven months pregnant.
- Eddie Seeney might have been a hoodlum and a scumbag, but he didn't deserve to get murdered. As the book ends, Shayne vows to see justice is done to all the crooks, on behalf of Eddie's infant daughter Jessica.
- Officer O'Hara: Pop Gans, the old cop who mans the archives, greets our protagonist with "'Tis a fine lad you are, Mike."
- Sexy Sweater Girl: As Edna fetches Shayne a drink he can't help but notice that "her breasts swelled the tailored coat" of the suit she wore home from work.
- Sherlock Scan: A rather uncommon use of this trope in the Shayne series. Shayne reveals that he knew all along that Carlton killed Wilson, noting that Carlton was supposedly changing a tire but his hands and the knees of his pants were clean.
- Slip into Something More Comfortable: Edna, who has come straight home from the office and is still wearing her suit, says that she needs to change. She slips into the bedroom and comes back out in pajamas and a "Mandarin coat."
- Summation Gathering: Shayne gathers everyone together at Edna's house to reveal the truth, that the Motorist Protective Association is a racket, that Dennis Kline has been buying up gas stations as part of the plot, that Edna killed Seeney to keep him from talking and that Carlton is the one forging the ration cards and the one who killed Clem Wilson.
- Villain with Good Publicity: The Motorist Protective Association, which Brannigan runs and Edna works for. It's supposed to an organization giving drivers advice on stuff like how to maximize their gas ration, and how to find ride shares. Instead it's a racket that prints out phony gas ration cards for members in the know.
- Weapons Breaking Weapons: Accidentally. Shayne can't understand why Gene the hoodlum didn't shoot him when Shayne was struggling with Pat, the other hoodlum. He picks up Gene's abandoned gun, observes that the trigger has been destroyed, and is shocked to realize that the first shot he got off hit Gene's gun right on the trigger and rendered it useless.
