The Uncomplaining Corpses is a 1940 novel by Brett Halliday, the pen name of Davis Dresser.
It is the third novel in what became a nearly 40-years series of detective novels starring hard-boiled private eye, Michael Shayne. In this one, Shayne has just gotten back from his honeymoon with his lovely bride Phyllis when he is approached by an arrogant businessman, Arnold Thrip. Thrip would like to enlist Shayne in an insurance fraud scheme: Shayne is to enter Thrip's house and pretend to steal his wife's necklace. Shayne will get the $1000 bill that's in the otherwise empty jewelry box and Thrip will get a lot more than that from the insurance. Shayne is offended, and flatly refuses.
Soon after, Shayne is approached by one Joe Darnell, an ex-con with a pregnant girlfriend who is looking for work. Shayne, still irritated by Thrip's offer, suggests that Joe sneak into Thrip's mansion and take the money while leaving the box behind. That same afternoon, Arnold Thrip's wife Leora comes to Shayne's apartment and asks him to reconsider and take the case. She catches him by surprise when she speaks to him not of an insurance scam, but a case of blackmail by her old lover, Carl Meldrum. Shayne agrees, and afterwards tries to contact Joe Darnell to call him off. But he can't reach Joe, and soon he gets shocking news: both Joe Darnell and Leora Thrip have been found in the Thrip mansion, murdered. Arnold Thrip reports that he shot Darnell to death after catching Joe killing his wife. With Leora's killer himself dead, the cops turn their attention to the man who sent him there: Michael Shayne.
Tropes:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: The butler at the Thrip house describes how Ernst Thrip was assaulted as him being "robbed by ruthless ruffians."There was a hint of relish in the butler's suave voice.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Arnold Thrip hated his wife. Leora Thrip was sexually frustrated and cheating on her husband. Arnold's children Dorothy and Ernst hated their stepmother, and Dorothy is going out with Carl Meldrum, the man who has just gotten out of an affair with Leora. Then there's Leora's stepbrother Buell Renslow, an ex-con who hates Leora for not helping him avoid that long prison sentence, and for not forking over his half of the family inheritance.
- Blackmail:
- Subverted in the case of the notes Leora Thrip was getting, as they were actually sent by her husband Arnold.
- Later played straight by Carl Meldrum, who saw Arnold strangling his wife and blackmails him over it, leading to...
- Blackmail Backfire: Arnold Thrip kills Carl Meldrum after Carl tries to blackmail him over Leora's murder.
- Buxom Beauty Standard:
- Shayne admiringly observes Mona Tabor's "high breasts" even as he's resisting her attempt to seduce him.
- Later he admires the "full breasts" of the strippers at the nudie bar where he goes in pursuit of Carl Meldrum.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Will Gentry needs "three shaky tries" to light a cigarette during a tense interrogation of Shayne.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: Shayne arrives at the crime scene and takes a long look at the naked, dead body of Leora Thrip.
- Exact Words: Shayne wrangles a $6000 payment out of Arnold Thrip by promising to reveal Leora's murderer to the cops. At the Summation Gathering he does so, fingering Thrip for all three murders and then saying that he never told Thrip who he would give to the police.
- Functional Addict: A running theme in the Shayne series was the prodigious amount of alcohol (almost always cognac) that he could down while on the job and still function as a detective. In this one, he goes back home after finding out about the Thrip/Darnell murders and starts pounding cognac in the morning. By noon he's already downed a full bottle of cognac and is into a second one. He then takes the second bottle with him when he goes out to investigate the case.
- He proceeds to take the cognac bottle (his second of the day, this still in early afternoon) out of his pocket and chug it during his interview with Mona Tabor.
He was too drunk to cope with this sort of thing, and he knew it.- Later he's still downing cognac while on the job, while reflecting how "mental stimulus" sobers him up.
- And after that he's downing port wine—his third liquor bottle of the day—at a club, while looking for Carl Meldrum.
- Friend on the Force: Will Gentry, chief of Miami PD, who unlike his colleague Peter Painter is a good friend of Shayne's and gives him tremendous latitude. Among other things, he passes up a chance to arrest Shayne despite knowing there's a warrant out for him after Shayne punched Peter Painter, and he also helps Shayne cover up Shayne's beating of Ernst Thrip.
- A Glass in the Hand: Shayne "gripped the glass tight enough to shatter the fragile rim" when Mona Tabor tries to stop him from pouring cognac into said glass.
- Inheritance Murder: The actual motive. Arnold Thrip killed his wife to get his hands on her vast fortune that she wouldn't let him touch. The Insurance Fraud scheme was only to get a fall guy into Leora's bedroom so Arnold could shoot him and pin the blame on him.
- Inspector Javert: Peter Painter, chief of Miami Beach PD, who hates the crap out of Shayne and longs to put him in prison. Painter plants a nasty story about Shayne and the Thrip murder in the newspaper in order to get his PI license pulled, and hopes to charge him with accessory before the fact to murder, for sending Joe Darnell into the Thrip mansion.
- Insurance Fraud: Arnold Thrip's scheme, as he explains it to Shayne. Shayne is to break into the Thrip mansion and steal a jewelry box with a $1000 bill in it. Thrip both gets to file an insurance claim on the necklace, and presumably sell the necklace on the down-low later.
- Kimono Fanservice: Sexy Mona Tabor greets Shayne at her apartment wearing a "rich and yellow silk kimono of Oriental design." The narration that follows has Shayne noticing her large breasts and long legs. She then tries to seduce him, still in the kimono with its "clinging silk."
- Lap Pillow: The rather unhealthy relationship of Arnold Thrip's children Ernst and Dorothy is underlined when Shayne meets them in the immediate aftermath of the deaths. They are on a couch, him lying down on it with his head in her pillow.
- Leg Focus: Mona Tabor's sexy attire (a kimono) allows Shayne to admire "the longest legs he'd ever seen."
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Leora Thrip is embarrassed but still manages to admit to Shayne that she fell into an affair with Carl Meldrum because her husband Arnold is impotent.
- Narrative Profanity Filter: Mona "tottered to her feet and mouthed an assortment of curses" after Shayne finally walks out of her apartment.
- Never One Murder: Towards the end Shayne arrives at the scene of the murder of Carl Meldrum, killed in a case of Blackmail Backfire.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Will Gentry "mopped sweat from his forehead" as he tries to get Shayne to fork over an incriminating note.
- Police Are Useless: Peter Painter is beyond incompetent and cares only about pinning the crime on Shayne. And also there's how Shayne twice punches a cop in the face and gets away with it.
- Spotting the Thread: Shayne realizes that the blackmail note couldn't have been meant for Buell because it directed the recipient to "306 Terrace Apartments", when Buell knew Mona well and had been to her apartment for sex, and would not need to be told which apartment was Mona's.
- Summation Gathering: Shayne gathers the two cops Gentry and Painter, Buell Renslow, and Arnold Thrip all together to make The Reveal that Thrip is the murderer.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: A little racist humor has Shayne encountering a "Negro porter" with "black pupils spinning in white orbs" aka "comical eyes" who says stuff like "Down yonduh, suh, at th’ee-o-six, but I don’ reckon Miss Mona done got up yit."
- While You Were in Diapers: Part of the reason why Chief Will Gentry helps Shayne is that he can't stand Shayne's enemy, Chief Peter Painter. Gentry says that "I was running this department when Painter was wearing a safety pin instead of a belt buckle."
- You Just Told Me: Shayne makes a comment about Carl Meldrum being Mona's husband. When she gasps and says "How'd you know—" he answers "Smart guessing."
