Bodies Are Where You Find Them (20 page)

He
acts
on impulse sometimes, or on hunches; but always the impelling force is definite logic. While other detectives are wandering aimlessly about in a maze of conjecture and doubt, Mike selects a certain path and drives forward inexorably in one direction until he is proved right—or wrong. When he makes a mistake, he wastes no time in idle repining, but adjusts his sights and turns just as inexorably in another direction.

At various times readers have complained to me that in my books about him Mike seems to seek danger needlessly; that he seems to take an almost masochistic pleasure in thrusting himself into a situation which inevitably results in physical pain to himself.

To those readers I can only say that I fear they have not followed the published accounts of his cases carefully. I have never heard Mike say, “Had I but known.” Invariably, I have seen him calculate the risk involved carefully, weighing the results that may be attained by a certain course of action against the probable lack of results if he chooses to move cautiously. Once convinced that a risk is worth taking, he pushes forward and accepts the consequences as a part of his job.

It is this driving urgency and lack of personal concern more than any other thing, I think, that serves to wind up most of Mike’s most difficult cases so swiftly. In time, few of his cases have consumed more than one or two days. Readers have complained that he doesn’t seem to eat or sleep on a case. He does, of course, but only if there is nothing more important to do at the time. He drinks more cognac than any other man I have ever known, but I have never seen Mike drunk. Actually, while relaxing between cases he is a very moderate drinker.

This sums up Michael Shayne as I know him. The hardest work I do in writing my accounts of his cases is attempting to make my readers see Mike as he is, to feel what Mike feels, to know the man himself as I know him. Insofar as I succeed in this, my books are successful. Certainly no writer ever had a better subject with whom to work.