Customer Reviews

Slot-Machine Kelly: The Complete Private Eye Cases of the One-Armed Bandit

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This is a complete collection of the short stories featuring Patrick "Slot-Machine" Kelly, the one-armed PI created by the author using the pen name Michael Collins. The 13 stories were written between 1962 and 1966. The first story, "If the Whiskey Don't, the Women Will," was the first commercial short story and the first PI story written by the author. At a penny a word he was paid $40. Payments for short stories have not improved a lot since that time.

I pointed out to someone once that writing stories is like announcing sports, there is play by play action and there is color commentary. At a penny a word, an author had to crank out a lot of words to make any money, and good authors became adept at the color commentary. Reading the stories from start to finish, one can see the development of both the main characters in the stories, and also the development of the author as a writer as he honed his writing skills.

The author finished the editing shortly before his death last year, and added introductory comments before each story, something of possible value to fledgling writers. The main character in the stories eventually evolved into Dan Fortune, and a collection of those short stories is available separately (see Fortune's World). The author was an exceptionally talented writer, able to devise a large number of plots.

The last story, "Viking Blood," is obviously the best, and raises the question of where a person's obligations lie, i.e., to his family, to society, to his friends, or possilby to himself. This applies to a lot of characters in the story. Will a mother sacrifice a child for the good of the family? Will a son go against a family's interests to save himself? And who do you need to fear the most?

Like most collections, the stories have a somewhat mixed quality, and you will like some better than others. It is especially recommended to fans of PI type fiction.