Howard Browne (1907–1999)

Howard Browne (sometimes writing as John Evans, among other pseudonyms) wrote three private eye novels about a Chicago shamus named Paul Pine, all with "halo" in the title. All three books were very good novels. But Browne figured he'd done all he could with the character and dropped it. A few years later he was persuaded to do one more. He considered the result, THE TASTE OF ASHES, to be his best. I agree. It's several steps above the other Pine novels, which were wonderful themselves. This story about Pine's investigation of the death of another private eye is superbly written with a clear yet rich style. It's also got a real sense of human beings as opposed to the mere plot devices characters sometimes end up being in lesser writers' stuff. It's not Chandler or Macdonald, but very, very good stuff.… (more)

In the 1940s, Howard Browne (sometimes using the pen name "John Evans") wrote a short series of hardboiled detective novels about a PI named Paul Pine. Browne skirted the edges of some controversial topics in his books, never more so than in this one, in which the subject of homosexuality is clearly acknowledged. Some of the views of lesbian orientation are pretty quaint, to put it gently, from a 21st-century viewpoint, but Browne writes a compelling mystery and even his antiquated perspective rarely becomes harsh. What's great about this book is that it's a believable private eye engaged in a plausible mystery and it's written with a flair that only the great masters of the period (Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald) exceeded consistently. All three Halo books are good. I liked this one a lot.… (more)

*Partial spoilers ahead*

Browne hadn't written a Paul Pine detective novel in nearly a decade when The Taste of Ashes was published in 1957. By that time he was a considerably more mature writer, and the fourth (and final) Pine book is a near-classic. He never quite emerged from the shadow of Raymond Chandler, however, and reminds the reader of that fact by sending Pine on Marlowe-esque navel-gazing jags every few pages. (During the first half of the book, Pine seems inordinately distracted by air conditioning, which I suppose was something of a novelty in the late '50s. This happens so often that it's almost like Browne was trying to offer some subtle commentary on affluence. Did he mean to say that air conditioning is a ridiculous first-world luxury? I don't know. Maybe there was no conscious intent.)

Here, Pine is called out of Chicago to the little town of Olympic Heights, where a blackmail case gets serious as bodies begin to pile up. One of those bodies is a colleague Pine knew only vaguely, but liked. The local cops are tough (behind a veneer of chilly politeness), other men's wives are attractive, and the hoods who carry saps aren't afraid to use them. The elements of Browne's plot are familiar, but he breathes life into them with solid and occasionally inspired writing. This book has been compared to Ross Macdonald, but it's not in that class; Macdonald found his own voice, but Browne always relied to one extent or another on Chandler's. If you haven't read Macdonald's work (or Chandler's masterpiece The Long Goodbye), you might mistake The Taste of Ashes for a great hard-boiled detective novel. It isn't, but it's a very good one that deserves to be in print again.… (more)

In Halo for Satan (1948), his second novel about Chicago private eye Paul Pine, Howard Browne (writing as "John Evans") tones down some of the more overt Chandlerisms that had filled Halo in Blood to bursting. It's a welcome change, and even though the many elaborate descriptions of houses, furniture and clothing obviously exist to stretch the rather thin plot to book length, Browne creates some terrific individual scenes. (Pine's conversation on a battered rooming house porch with an old man who takes a dim view of property ownership is especially good; in fact, it's good enough to rival Philip Marlowe's encounters with the funeral home owner and the elevator operator in Chandler's The High Window.) There's not much action, but readers hankering for a Chandler-style yarn aren't interested in heavy violence, anyhow.

When a paleographer disappears after claiming to be in possession of an ancient manuscript written by Jesus Christ, a Chicago bishop hires Pine to find out what happened to the man. It isn't long before Pine learns that some dangerous underworld figures (and a couple of beautiful young women) are interested in the paleographer's whereabouts, too. Good fun for Raymond Chandler fans in particular and fans of hard-boiled crime fiction in general.… (more)