No Good From A Corpse - Leigh Brackett

No Good from a Corpse, (1944, Leigh Brackett, Coward-McCann, hc)
No Good from a Corpse, (1944, Leigh Brackett, Quinn / Handi-Books, #32, $0.15, 143pp, pb)
No Good from a Corpse, (Jan 1999, Leigh Brackett, Dennis McMillan, 0-939767-32-5, $35.00, xi+564pp, hc, coll) Cover: Joe Servello
No Good from a Corpse, (Jul 2004, Leigh Brackett, Blackmask Online, 1-59654-026-5, $14.95, 156pp, pb)
No Good from a Corpse, (Aug 2007, Leigh Brackett, Blackmask.com, 978-1-59654-017-0, $7.95, ebook)
70000 words.

I had read elsewhere that this was rather Chandlerian, and it seems that is certainly the case.

The private investigator in this novel is out to help people, even if he doesn't particularly like them, and even after getting shot, bashed, abused, lied to, and more.

He has made friends (and feels a lot more than that) about a nightclub singer who has an inability to engage in any sort of monogamy, serial, or parallel. He realises that she has a rather dodgy past, and when he gets a whispered phone threat, things turn bad.

This leads to an investigation where he is a murder suspect, as well as trying to clear the name of another man and childhood friend whose innocence he is sure of. Apart from these two gentleman, it appears that almost anyone else that appears could have been involved.

A non-obvious, well done mystery follows, with all sorts of characters, and a witness and lead list that keeps getting terminally shortened.

Quite well done.


4 out of 5