Halliday, Brett

Brett Halliday is one in the long row of pseudonyms used by the American author, editor, publisher and writers’ agent Davis Dresser. The name Halliday, however, was later taken over by other authors who wrote about Dresser’s hardboiled private detective Michael ‘Mike’ Shayne. The Shayne character became something of a mass-media phenomenon in the USA: he appears in books, cartoon series, radio and TV series and films too, and was a central figure in one of the most popular detective-story magazines, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, published for 30 years, 1956-85. A novel about him, Murder is My Business (1945), was even re-worked into a play for the theatre.