The Amazing Adventures of Shell Scott

The opening to Take a Murder, Darling is one of the most memorable ones I’ve encountered this year. Shell Scott has already been on the case for a while, but he opens on a glimpse of the action yet to come. First he describes an alluring woman… which turns out to be merely the statue of an alluring woman. And then comes the description of the corpse:

He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and strangled. Either somebody had really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I’d ever heard of.

Sounds like just the kind of crazy case Shell Scott would get himself involved in! And so we find out how Shell Scott got to be standing by a deader-than-dead corpse: the whole thing started when Shell was hired to take care of a few jobs for Mamzel’s. Mamzel’s is starting to turn into quite the large chain—it’s something like a women’s physical fitness centre, but the object of the program is basically to make women’s bodies perfect through exercises and other such things. So poor old Shell must suffer the sight of hundreds of women bouncing around in minimal clothing, getting their bodies into shape.

A Kindle Exclusive to Kick off the New Year

In 2011, I made my first acquaintance with Shell Scott after the urging of Barry Ergang, who has given me plenty of recommendations for hardboiled authors for me to read. While I haven’t had as much experience in the hardboiled field as Barry, I loved Strip for Murder for what it was: an outrageously funny book with a pretty good mystery and some very good standout scenes.

But when I found out about it, I hesitated before buying an Exclusive Interview with Richard S. Prather, Author of the Best-selling Shell Scott Mystery Series for my Kindle. Mainly I hesitated over its length. The print length is a mere 78 pages— far too long to read on a computer, but too short to publish as its own book. (The Kindle market is practically perfect for things like this, isn’t it?) Would it be worth the cover price?

Viewer Discretion is Advised

You can tell right from the beginning that Richard S. Prather’s Strip for Murder is going to be something special. This is a mystery novel in the hardboiled vein, starring wisecracking private eye Shell Scott. (“Shell” being short for Sheldon.) Scott starts the narrative off with a bang, when he’s out of place at a fancy party-- "and," Shell Scot declares, "if this was the Smart Set, then I was glad I belonged to the Stupid Set".

Naturally, as a private eye, he isn’t getting paid to party—he’s been summoned there by a potential client, the rich heiress Mrs. Redstone, who has two young daughters who will inherit the estate one day. Naturally, the lady doesn’t plan on dying any day soon, but she’s worried about daughter Vera, who’s gotten herself involved with a scumbag, Andon Poupelle, who seems to be after her money. (Which is of course a real shock, since the term “sex bomb” may have been coined to describe Vera herself.) She’s already hired one detective, Paul Yates, to look into Poupelle’s background, but Yates has just turned up with a hole in his chest where his heart used to be. Yates had already delivered his report, where he gave Poupelle a clean bill of health, but he’s been known to be not-quite-honest when the money’s right.