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    Dead Dames Don't Sing
    Dead Dames Don't Sing
    Dead Dames Don't Sing
    Ebook66 pages53 minutes

    Dead Dames Don't Sing

    By John Harvey

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    About this ebook

    The stylish tale of a dead poet, a rediscovered pulp novel, and a lovely lady with a story to sell from the author of the Charles Resnick Mysteries.

    Ex–Metropolitan Police Officer Jack Kiley spent his career discerning fact from fiction. Now a private detective, Kiley has agreed to investigate the provenance of a newly discovered manuscript. Lost for decades, Dead Dames Don’t Sing is typical pulp fodder: “Hard, fast, and deadly,” according to Daniel Pike, the rare book dealer who hires Kiley. What makes it unusual—and potentially valuable—is that the novel appears to have been written by the late poet William Pierce before he made a name for himself. Pierce’s bewitching socialite-cum-model daughter, Alexandra, insists that it’s genuine, but Kiley isn’t so sure. Something doesn’t feel right, but the deeper he digs, the more he wonders if poetry and pulp really are such strange bedfellows.

    Hailed as “one of our most accomplished writers” by The Daily Telegraph, John Harvey brings swinging London—both past and present—to life in this gripping novella.

    The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateMay 2, 2017
    ISBN9781504045629
    Dead Dames Don't Sing
    Author

    John Harvey

    John Harvey has been writing crime fiction for more than forty years. His first novel, Lonely Hearts, was selected by The Times as one of the '100 Best Crime Novels of the Century' and he has been the recipient of both the silver and diamond dagger awards.

    Read more from John Harvey

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      Book preview

      Dead Dames Don't Sing - John Harvey

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      Dead Dames Don’t Sing

      John Harvey

      Once upon a time Jack Kiley lived over a bookshop in Belsize Park. Nights he couldn’t sleep, and there were many, he’d soft foot downstairs and browse the shelves. Just like having his own private library. Patrick Hamilton, he was a particular favorite for a while, perversity in the seedier backstreets of pre-war London: The Siege of Pleasure, Hangover Square. Then it was early Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, Gerald Kersh. He was four chapters into Night and the City when the envelope, pale blue and embossed across the seal, was slipped beneath his door. Notice to quit. The shop was being taken over by a larger concern and there were alternative plans for the building’s upper floors that didn’t include having a late-fortyish private detective, ex-Metropolitan police, as tenant. Kiley scoured the pages of the local press, skimmed the Internet, made a few calls: the result, two rooms plus a bathroom and minuscule kitchen above a charity shop in a less buoyant part of north London, namely Tufnell Park. If not exactly low rent, it was at least affordable. Just. And no more a true park than its upscale neighbor.

      Having to pass through the shop on his way upstairs, Kiley’s eye grew used to picking out the occasional bargain newly arrived on the rail: a v-necked sweater from French Connection, forty percent cashmere; a pair of black denim jeans, by the look of them barely worn, and fortuitously his size, 36 waist, 32 inside leg. The book section was seldom to his taste, too many discarded copies of J. K. Rowling and Fifty Shades of Grey, whereas the ever-changing box of CDs offered up the more than occasional gem. A little soul, late ’50s Sinatra, Merle Haggard, a little jazz. He was listening to Blues with a Reason, Chet Baker, when his mobile intervened.

      Jack? I’m across the street at Bear and Wolf if you’d care to join me.

      Kiley pressed stop on the stereo and reached for his shoes.

      Bear and Wolf was an upscale coffee shop with more than half an eye on the growing number of affluent couples and laptop-toting singles newly moved into the area, the women unstylishly stylish in a cool kind of way, the men mostly tall and bulky and distinguished by their lumberjack shirts and metrosexual beards.

      Kiley made his way past the workaholics hot-desking at the front table and, pausing at the counter just long enough to order a flat white, ran the gauntlet of buggies and small children to where Kate Keenan was sitting, an oasis of apparent calm around her, in the furthest corner. Kate looking unimpeachable in a dark linen trouser suit and cream shirt, dark hair framing her face as she smiled.

      So, Jack. Long time, no see.

      It had been a month or so back, a private view for an exhibition of Saul Leiter photographs at the Photographers’ Gallery, Kate there to do a piece for The Independent, one of the last before the print edition of the paper folded. Kiley had liked the photos, the color shots especially, but felt uneasy in the crowd. After twenty minutes he’d made his excuses and left.

      Been keeping busy, I trust? Kate asked now.

      Not so you’d notice.

      Don’t tell me things in the PI business are slowing down?

      Kiley shrugged. Kate liked to tease him in a good-natured way about his late-chosen profession, referring to it with appropriate hard-boiled inflections, as if he were some combination of

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