Shag and Bones

 

cover by Norman Saunders

Shaughnessy Roberts and Bones McPherson are investigators who work for a small-loan company. You wouldn't think that this line of work would toss Shag and Bones into the middle of murder investigations on a regular basis. But you'd be wrong. It happens to them all the time.

Shag is a "tough guy with a baby face," while Bones is described as "tall, skinny and with a lot of freckles; but his dress was Broadway, and he was neat, well-groomed." The two appeared in seven novellas published in Ten Mystery Aces in 1938 and 1939, all written by Russell Bender. Their premiere adventure--"Murderers' Rebellion"--ran in the March 1938 issue.

It's a fun, well-constructed mystery. A man and woman have been stealing identities of people on vacation, using those identities to take out loans from the National Finance company, then essentially disappearing with the money. They've finally been identified, but the man has been murdered. The woman disappears.  Shag and Bones are tasked with finding her and getting the money back in exchange for not prosecuting her for the theft. She'd be on her own in the murder investigation.

Because the job does involve a murder and might be dangerous, Shag and Bones are told the assignment is voluntary. But Shag respects his boss enough to give it a go.

He and Bones use a clever trick on the woman's brother to get the address of her hide-out, though this in turn gets them shot at by someone. When they arrive at that hide-out, they find her, her stepdaughter and a guy with a rifle. This requires some fast talking and a few punches to come out on top. But then someone unexpected walks through the door and upsets everyone's calculations...

It really is a fun story. Shag is the narrator and the character who Sherlocks his way to the solution, while Bones also has opportunities to demonstrate that he's a skilled investigator in his own right. The mystery is a good one and the ending combines a summation by Shag with some gunfire to bring the case to a satisfying conclusion. I haven't read the other Shag and Bones stories yet, but I've put an anthology containing their adventures on my birthday list and I'm looking foward to eventually diving into them.

"Murderers' Rebellion" is available online HERE.