COPS AND CORPSES

That was the name of the game, and Mike Shayne was playing every lead as if his life depended on it — because it did.

The Miami cops were putting on heat strong enough to burn his license. The corpses kept turning up, one, two, three. To top it off, his secretary was being framed for murder by an unknown killer who was determined to put her and Mike out of the picture, one way or another.

Who’d ever think that things would reach such a pass in Miami that Mike Shayne would come to the rescue of his arch-enemy, Peter Painter?

Well, that’s the situation in the Redhead’s 40th case. The dapper chief of detectives of Miami Beach plays things just a little too close to his chest this time, concealing vital information that might clear a convicted murderer until the very last moment before his execution to cash in on the publicity value; and then getting himself kidnapped by a ruthless gang of killers who are determined to keep him out of circulation until an innocent man is electrocuted.

Mike Shayne really doesn’t care whether Peter Painter comes out of it alive or not — though he does realize that life would lose some of its savor if there were no Peter Painter for him to needle. But he is concerned about a miscarriage of justice... egged on by the lovely and willing wife of the accused man, and the lovely and not-unwilling widow of the victim.

Ironically enough, while all the clues point to Shayne as Painter’s probable kidnapper and while all the detectives of Miami and Miami Beach are combing the twin cities for the rangy Redhead, he is engaged in an electrifying struggle against time to locate Painter and save him despite himself.

It takes a bomb thrown into the hospital room of a paralyzed man (occupied by Shayne) and the deliberate sinking of a luxury cruiser in the waters of Biscayne Bay (with Painter trapped below decks) to bring this fast-paced story to an exciting and unpredictable climax.

This country’s toughest private eye, and Miami’s most-publicized citizen has never been in a tighter spot or fought his way through against greater odds.

If you watch the Redhead’s synthetic adventures on NBC TV every Friday night, you’ll enjoy reading this to discover what the original stories are really like.

A pleasure cruise had become a trip into terror by the time Mike Shayne boarded the Queen Elizabeth II. A brilliant English scientist sat drunk in the bar waiting for death. A beautiful, sexy American girl kept popping up very much alive in other people’s beds. And a shadow crew of killers haunted the corridors, serving the passengers their daily ration of murder.

The storm warnings were up, the chips were down — and only Mike Shayne could steer the great liner off a disaster course.