The Shell Scott Sampler - Richard S. Prather
The Shell Scott Sampler, 1969
1. The Guilty Party
In The Guilty Party, Prather goes for all-out saucy comedy. A hot tomato walks into his office asking him to investigate a bugging device she has found under her bed; a bed bug evidently. The entire opening exchange in the office is hilarious, the whole thing quotable, never mind trying to pick a favourite line out of it. Shell is forced to put on a big act in order to draw out the bounder who would put a listening device in a lady's bedroom. 'Rotty' Fish indeed.
Favourite line: "She smiled, but still didn't say anything. Maybe she couldn't talk. Maybe she was an idiot. I didn't care. But if curves were convolutions, she had an IQ of at least 37- 23- 36, or somewhere in that neighborhood, and that's the high- rent district."
Some things are too good to be true, like the double doozies at the end of The Cheim Manuscript, and Shell is not unused to finding a naked woman sprawled out in his apartment waiting for him; but three? Sounds like fun, but the guy with the sap and the one with the camera are however a few guests too many. Shell suspects that this setup might be something to do with shadowy racket boy, Victor Grieg, who he suspects of being involved in the murder of a Judge that he is investigating.
Favourite line: "Well, it is widely known that I have an eye for the women. As a matter of fact, it is pretty well known that if I had eight eyes, I would have eight eyes for the women."
3. The Da Vinci Affair
Things are a little more serious in the third slightly longer story in The Shell Scott Sampler, so serious in fact that Shell cancels a booty call from a hot tomato just waiting for him. Yeah, that serious. That's because a call has come from a very wealthy man G Ranry Madison at his Bel Air estates. A recently purchased Da Vinci sketch, a study for the Battle of Anghiari has been stolen and the owner wants it back but handled discretely with certain conditions. For the money he is offering Scott is willing to comply.
There aren't too many crooks that can handle merchandise like this, so Scott has to rely on less reliable informants and they indeed prove to be less than reliable, almost getting him killed. It also takes Scott into more open society in the late-sixties of gay bars and long haired effeminate types that don't share his taste for juicy tomatoes. So to go along with his period sexist misogyny, he's a little bit wary and homophobic about it. Hey, Shell Scott didn't get to where he is and stay alive this long by being a bit limp wristed.
All in the service of his client of course, Shell does get up to some tricks involving all over body powder that lights up in the dark if you've been handling any woman wearing it. He's aware that this might be something of a wild goose chase, but he's had worse times than observing a fight between two naked women. The Da Vinci Affair is all good clean fun in the service of an entertaining short thriller.
Favourite line: "I could see her in my mind's eye: a long, luscious Italian tomato with thick amber- colored hair; dangerous heavy-lidded eyes, passionate plump lips, breasts like twin Vesuviuses momentarily dormant, white skin smooth as ice but warm enough to melt the wax in your ears, a 37-ah, 22-oh, 36-wow steamy Italian pizza fresh from the Mediterranean oven, still cooking."
4. The Bawdy Beautiful
A naked woman walks into Shell's apartment. Just another tomato for Shell Scott you think, only this one is a woman in trouble and has just forgotten - as you do when you are distressed of course - that she isn't wearing any clothes beneath her damp coat. Shell knows a naked woman when he sees one and thinks he recognises that shape, and indeed she turns out to be the same woman he was watching on a TV commercial for Zing! soap with its secret SX-21 formula. Her state of undress is down to the fact that she has just come off the set shooting her latest sensational ad.
After complementing her on her performance and attributes, Shell gets around to finding out what is wrong and why she is calling around at his door. It's a murder at the pool where filming was taking place. She doesn't want Shell to investigate as much as retrieve her clothes, afraid to get caught up in a scandal as she is about to get her big break in a TV series. Although he hasn't got time to waste, Shell of course picks out the murderer in time to get back to his apartment and the lovely naked lady working up some suds in his own bathroom. And it's not Zing!
Favourite line: "One of my virtues, or vices, is a sort of three- dimensional imagination complete with sound effects and glorious living color."
5. The Cautious Killers
The title seems a little off as there is little that is cautious about the shooting that takes place at a fancy restaurant where Scott is dating a lovely tomato called Jazz or Jasmine. Not only does the shooter kill defense attorney Vincent Blaik and wound his date, but Shell gets grazed by a bullet in the seemingly indiscriminate hail of bullets.
There is little that seems cautious either when the police pick up a suspect Leslie Moulder passed out drunk in the car used for the shooting. Leslie, just out of prison that date, having formerly threatened to kill his attorney Blaik for failing to adequately represent him in court on a charge of defrauding a business associate, doesn't seem to have wasted any time settling scores. Except he claims he knows nothing about it, and Scott has suspicions as well.
He's going to need to work fast though, as this is only a short novella in the collection, and besides there's the lovely Jazz that he didn't quite manage to take home after her filling meal. Other opportunities present themselves but Shell knows better than avail of what is really on offer.
Favourite line: "She sounded as happy as a sore loser halfway through hara-kiri."
Reading notes: The Shell Scott Sampler by Richard S. Prather is included in the Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Five, part of an inexpensive six volume collection that covers the complete Shell Scott series (or as good as). The series is published as eBook/Kindle editions only by Wolfpack publishing. The Kindle edition is excellent, the set a bargain for a collection of such great and entertaining crime writing.
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