"A Good Detective Ought To Be Part Actor and Not Look Like a Shamus"

SHOW BUSINESS has proven to be a fertile ground for authors in every fictional genre to plant their storylines in; today's tale involves an actor on the precipice of insolvency hoping to obviate his problem quadrupedally . . .

"To Slay a Man About a Dog!"

By Fredric Brown (1906-72).

First appearance: Detective Tales, September 1944.

Reprinted in Dime Detective, June 1952.

Novelette (13 pages; 2 illos).

Online at Archive.org (HERE; original text, 13 pages) and The Luminist Archives (HERE; original text, 13 pages; it will be necessary to download the entire issue; go down to text page 48).

Peter Kidd's first day as a private detective is proving to be pretty hairy—no, make that shaggy . . . .

Segments:

Chapter 1: Doggerel of Death

  "The shaggy dog murders had hardly started . . . ."

Chapter 2: "The Dog of a Murdered Man"

  "The man pulled the trigger . . . ."

Chapter 3: "Escape His Fate, Sir, If You Can"

  "If the shaggy dog hadn't been the dog of a murdered man before, it was one now."

Chapter 4: "Two Damn Shaggy"

  "The killer's been trying to get that money back."

Principal characters:

~ Peter Kidd:

  ". . . should have suspected the shaggy dog of something, right away."

~ Rover:

  "Are you sure it has antecedents?"

~ Asbury:

  "I want you to find the owner of this dog."

~ Harrison:

  "Quite all right, Mr. Asbury. Your cards will be ready for you."

~ Miss Latham:

  "You mean you've solved it?"

~ Wheeler:

  ". . . forgot to come back to the phone. Maybe it's just as well."

~ Powell:

  "Musta burned him down, lammed quickly."

~ Mrs. Drake:

  "It was Hatchet-Face herself, but she wasn't frowning."

~ Miss Ames:

  "The police just left. They told me not to g-give out the story . . ."

~ Lieutenant West:

  "You mean you think it's counterfeit?"

The "moment" again, when the sleuth is illumined:

  "He broke off abruptly and his eyes got wider. 'Lord,' he said, 'it's obvious!'"

References and resources:

- "Alexander Pope wrote about two hundred years ago": Sarcasm and wit were right up his alley:

  "Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century and a master of the heroic couplet, he is best known for satirical and discursive poetry . . ." (Wikipedia HERE).

- "The shaggy dog story": Perhaps you've been victimized by one:

  "In its original sense, a shaggy dog story or yarn is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax. Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience's preconceptions of joke-telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner" (Wikipedia HERE).

- Another story with bogus money as a plot mover is Lawrence Treat's "Counterfeit Killer," which we highlighted (HERE).

- Our latest meeting with Fredric Brown was his SFFnal one-pager, "(The) First Time Machine" (HERE).

- Over the years we've featured a couple of short fictions with showbiz backgrounds: William E. Fark's SFFnal "Murvyn the Magnificent" (HERE) and John D. MacDonald's "Death Is the Answer" (HERE).

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