This Is It, Michael Shayne is a 1950 novel by Brett Halliday (a pen name for Davis Dresser).
Private detective Michael Shayne makes his way to the office after a day out fishing. He finds three notes from his secretary Lucy Hamilton, informing him that a Miss Sarah Morton is urgently trying to contact him. Next to the notes is a special delivery envelope. Shayne opens the envelope and finds three threatening notes to Sara (no "H") Morton, telling her that she has three days, two days, and one day left to live. Enclosed with the threatening notes is a message from Sara Morton, telling Shayne that she has given up waiting for him to contact her, and that she hopes he will catch her murderer.
Shayne hustles to Morton's hotel room, and sure enough, finds her murdered. But who did it? Edwin Paisly, Sara's shifty fiance? Ralph Morton, Sara's even slimier husband that she is trying to divorce? Leo Gannet, the hotelier and runner of illegal casinos that Sara was investigating? (She was a reporter.) Burton Marsh, the real estate developer that, as it turns out, Sara was blackmailing? Carl Garvin, Sara's editor who was in debt to Gannet? Surely not Sara's faithful secretary, Beatrice Lally. Shayne, feeling somewhat guilty about not coming to Sara's aid in time and not really trusting the cops, starts his own investigation.
The character of Michael "Mike" Shayne is forgotten in the 21st century but at one time was a full-on franchise, with books and short stories, a B-Movie film series, a radio show, and a TV show. (This novel was used as the source material for the pilot of the Shayne TV series.)
Tropes:
- Blackmail: Real estate developer Burton Marsh says he was being blackmailed by Sara Morton, who was going to expose an incident from Marsh's youth where he was indicted for murder—apparently Marsh beat the rap but airing that story out could wreck Marsh's business, which is in a delicate state.
- Blackmail Backfire: Seemingly played straight, then played with. Shayne guesses that either Burton Marsh, the man Sara was blackmailing, or Marsh's prospective son-in-law Carl Garvin, might have killed Sara to shut her up. It turns out that the blackmail did backfire, but in a different way. It was Beatrice Lally the secretary who was blackmailing Burton Marsh with stuff she'd learned from Sara's reporting. Sara found this out, so Beatrice killed her.
- "Burly Detective" Syndrome: The later, even more hacky Michael Shayne books written by ghostwriters are the Trope Namer. This one doesn't actually describe Shayne as a "burly detective", but the author is strangely compelled to remind the reader that Shayne has red hair, referring to "the redhead's tousled hair" or how he "jerked his red head" or how he "rubbed the red bristles on his face" or how his "bushy red brows" came together when he frowned.
- Camp Straight: Edwin Paisly, Sara Morton's fiance. At one point when Shayne is grilling him, Edwin nearly bursts into tears. Shayne calls him "just a bit swishy" and thinks he's a gold digger, and towards the end he's described as being a "wrist-slapper", an archaic term for an effiminate man. But it appears that Edwin is not a closet case, as when he's dragged into the police station near the end, he's in the company of another woman that he was seeing behind Sara's back.
- Coincidental Broadcast: They happen in books too. Shayne flips on a radio, right in the middle of a news report about the Sara Morton murder.
- Cut-and-Paste Note: The envelope from Sara Morton contains notes with words cut and paste from magazines, saying "YOU HAVE THREE DAYS TO GET OUT OF MIAMI ALIVE," "TWO MORE DAYS," and "ONE DAY LEFT."
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: A rather creepy part of the book describes Shayne finding the corpse of Sara Morton. She was wearing a gown with a "plunging neckline", and the blood from her slashed throat ran between her "firm breasts."
- Extremely Short Timespan: One very busy night, starting with Mike Shayne finding the note from Sara Morton shortly after 8 pm, and extending into the small hours of the next morning.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: There's more than one reference to how Miss Lally looks like a prim, efficient secretary with her glasses on, but becomes much more alluring and seductive when she takes them off. Then near the end Beatrice herself takes her glasses off when she's trying to seduce Shayne to win her over.
- Glasses Pull: Beatrice turns around "and lifted her face, sliding the glasses off," when Shayne reveals that he knows she killed Ralph Morton and she realizes that she's going to have to win his sympathy.
- Inspector Lestrade: As usual, Chief Gentry of the Miami police is weirdly accomodating of Shayne's antics. When Shayne flatly refuses to produce Beatrice Lally, a prime suspect in the Sara Morton murder, Gentry just lets him go about his business rather than, say, arresting him for obstruction of a police investigation.
- Never One Murder: Towards the end Ralph Morton is shot and killed in his room. It turns out that Beatrice killed him because she knew he could explode her alibi.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When Shayne grills Garvin about where he was at the time of Ralph Morton's murder, asking "Where were you at twelve-fifteen?""I—don't—know." He spaced the words evenly and spoke with shrill vehemence. "I don't keep a timetable of every move I make."
- Sexy Secretary: Lucy, as usual in the Michael Shayne books, although it's played down here, other than a scene where he gives her a long, passionate "Shut Up" Kiss when she starts acting jealous about Beatrice.
- Stress Vomit: Carl Garvin, who was both drunk and something of the cowardly type, vomits while getting the third degree at the police station.
- Title Drop: Shayne's internal monologue, and what he imagines Sara Morton to be saying, after he rushed to her room to find that she was dead.This is it, Michael Shayne. At the moment of my death this is my way of saying to you what I left unsaid in my hasty note.
- Too Dumb to Live: Subverted. People wonder why, once Sara Morton gave up on contacting Shayne, she sat in her hotel room and waited for death rather than call the police. It turns out that she wasn't afraid of being murdered after all and the whole thing was a smoke screen concocted by Miss Lally.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: Some racist humor with a "Negro boy" elevator operator who shivers and rolls his eyes with fright and says stuff like "When they gonna bring out the daid man?"
- Wham Line: How The Reveal happens, as Shayne takes Beatrice Lally back to her hotel for what she obviously thinks will be sex, only for him to say "Why did you kill Ralph Morton?"
