Halo in Brass

by Howard Browne

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0939767120
• ISBN13: 9780939767120
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Dennis McMillan Publications
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great Pulp Writing

Howard Browne wrote 4 books featuring his Chicago private eye, then went off to work in films. If you like the 40's-50's literate pulps, can handle dubious moral situations and slight surprises, these are a small treasure. Lots of interesting locations. Three of them have the word Halo in the title, one doesn't.

Another very good Chandler pastiche from Browne.

There were several (and probably more than several) Chandler imitators in the wake of Marlowe's stratospheric rise in the late 30's and 40's. Howard Browne's Paul Pine, a cynical, good-hearted PI based in Chicago, may be the best of the bunch. This is the third Pine novel, following Halo in Blood and Halo For Satan. All of these first three are of roughly equal- and high- quality, but this one is a little smoother overall.There is a less confusing plot than in Halo in Blood, even though Browne tried to make it "impossible" to deduce the murderer, according to the author's brief intro. And I didn't guess the culprit, but I don't think it was "impossible" to someone who pays closer attention than I do. I enjoy the dialogue and style foremost, and everything else secondarily. For what it's worth, I think less of mysteries based on hidden or questionable identities than of other formulas. (It probably read like dynamite when it was published.) Skip that little criticism: there's lots of good, pseudo-Chandlerian dialogue in 'Brass,' and it feels less forced than it did sometimes in 'Blood.' Browne knew that's what paid the bills in those days, and that's why I seek his books out today.As the book opens, our hero and narrator is consulting with a conservative old married couple in Lincoln, Nebraska. It seems their daughter moved to Chicago two years ago, and about one year back quit writing to them. They're worried about her, naturally, and hire Pine, who waives most of his fee for the friendly folks. He begins poking around such dark places as there are in Lincoln and picks up the girl's trail at a local bawdy house. From there (after one murder, the aftermath of which is not dealt with) he heads back to Chicago and continues searching in various night clubs and apartments, both high-rent and low-rent, and questions the girl's circle of close friends. How close were her friends? More on that in a moment.It all wraps up in the time-honored gather-up-all-the-suspects-and-some-law-boys-in-a-rich-old-gentleman's-parlor method. Maybe Pine could have wrapped it up differently, or sooner; maybe he played it the best way. At any rate, the killer's facade cracks in front of everyone, and another case is solved.A lot of people may not enjoy certain aspects of this book, as it deals extensively with lesbianism. Nothing explicit, mind you, but some may not like the subject matter at all, while others may find the 40's attitudes portrayed toward that persuasion quite offensive in this more "enlightened" age.Whatever. It's a well-written trip to yesteryear, and as close to Chandler's form as you will find anywhere.