Shellshock

The Shell Scott series are great fun. I've been thinking about them recently (I read a BUNCH of them in past years) and decided to try to find a source. Every one of the Shell Scott books I've read over the years was truly enjoyable, light, fast, humorous, & hard hitting. Recommended.

My father always enjoyed reading the novels in this detective series which were very popular in the 1950s and 1960s. So, I decided to read some as well. But, they seem to be hard to come across. I believe that this novel was the last that the author wrote. All of the books in this series are centered about a private detective named Shell Scott, an ex-marine with a bleached-blond crewcut. The first book in the series (there were more than forty) was published in 1950: "The Case of the Vanishing Beauty". "Shellshock" begins when Scott is asked by a friend of his, an attorney in Arizona, to take on an unusual assignment. The attorney's client has to find a daughter that he had abandoned years earlier. And Scott has to do it without knowing the daughter's full name, without using the client's name, and do it discretely in only a few days. In addition, because of the client's former criminal past and current associates, there are men attempting to stop Scott from completeing his task. Interestingly, it is mentioned in the novel that Scott is thirty years old in this novel. That would mean that, when Scott had his first published case in 1950, he hadn't even been born yet! Of course, we readers probably shouldn't read that much into these serials. The Shell Scott stories are probably required reading for serious students of the sub-genre of hard-boiled, private eye novels.

This was the first book I read by Richard Prather, I was instantly hooked. I now own 15 of his books, most of which I had to buy used. I strongly recommend this book for anyone with a passing interest in detective fiction. Since Shell Scott and I have the same taste in women, I find the books so easy to read I just can't put them down until I'm done. If you haven't read anything by Richard Prather, This would be a great first book to read, as it is very well written.