Bodies in Bedlam - Richard S. Prather

One of the greatest writers of classic American pulp crime fiction, the works of Richard S. Prather have been largely overlooked, but his Shell Scott series, running to around 40 novels and a number of novellas and short stories featuring his LA private investigator, Sheldon Scott, deserve greater recognition. Perhaps it's because there is often a tongue-in-cheek humour, a certain sauciness, Shell spending as much time ogling and bedding numerous beautiful women as he does investigating crime, that the stories are not held in the same esteem now as other pulp authors working through the 50s, 60s and 70s, but there is great crime writing here, the books filled with memorable lines as witty as anything in Raymond Chandler.

Bodies in Bedlam, 1951 

Opening line: "It was Babel, and Babylon, and Baghdad galloping, and Lady Godiva in the middle naked as an artificial eye on a white-satin spread. And not a sign of a horse."

There's no party like a Hollywood party and being an LA private detective, Sheldon 'Shell' Scott gets the occasional invite through contacts in the movie industry. This one, the wrap party for 'Cry Cry' is turning into a bit of a doozy, a masked ball that hides faces but little else. Shell inevitably falls for the charms of a masked beauty, despite getting involved in a bust up with an objectional individual called Roger Brane. That's a score he intends to settle later but before the masks come off at midnight, Brane ends up dead, leaving Scott with a mystery and the finger of suspicion pointed at him.  Or, as the cover to my Gold Medal paperback edition a little more colourfully puts it "SHELL SCOTT, up to his neck again in guns, gals and gore".

Which could, to be honest, be the tag line for any Shell Scott Mystery. But this one is on another level. It seems like Brane wasn't that popular in town and not just because of his obnoxious personality that Shell has already experienced first hand. Brand was an artist and photographer and blackmailer with some juicy photos of budding starlets whose career could be quickly finished should they be spread around. That means visiting all the glamourous Magna Studios actresses in town to see whether they have had any dealings with Brane, and figure out how he managed to get them out of their clothes.

Since most of them seem to be wearing very little when Shell comes calling and feeling like a little company, Shell has little difficulty matching up the pictures found in Brane's studio with some of the movie industry's top talent, but there's a danger he might get distracted and take on a little more than he can handle. It's a tough job, a man's job, but fortunately, Shell seems to be up to the challenge..

Favourite lines:

"Seemed like everybody I ran into … got undressed sooner or later. There were sure a lot of bodies in this bedlam, and it seemed like all of them but the corpse were naked." 

"Costanza Carmocha, red-hot star of Magna Studios and chilli-hell on wheels, didn't have a gun. She didn't need one. She had all the weapons that have ruined men from time immemorial. Or time immoral, I forget."

"She looked good on the screen, but this was different. This was in all three dimensions. She was two feet away, but I felt like she was crowding me. This was almost as dangerous as getting shot at."

Reading notes: Bodies in Bedlam was first published in 1951. I picked up this Gold Medal second-hand 1963 vintage reprint paperback edition from a charity bookshop.