All Hail the Shamus

I didn’t know before this evening that, as the blog Guns, Gams & Gumshoes reports, today was National and International Private Investigator Day. It also happens to be the 243rd birthday of Eugène François Vidocq, a criminal who became the founder of France’s Sûreté Nationale and later took up practice as a private detective. All of this seems worth remembering for next year.



The Private Eye, by Cleve F. Adams (Signet, 1957). This is apparently the only novel in which California shamus John J. Shannon stars—though as The Thrilling Detective Web Site explains, he “also makes an appearance in No Wings On a Cop (1950), a novella completed by Adams’ friend, Robert Leslie Bellem, creator of Dan Turner, after Adams passed away. It’s a sort of prequel to The Private Eye, with Shannon still a police officer.” Cover art by Robert Maguire.