***SPOILERS*** Just when private detective Michael Shayne, new suit and all, was about take his long suffering girlfriend night club singer Joanna La Marr down to city hall to tie the knot things really started jumping. That's when he hears a scream upstairs from his hotel room at the Du Nord and gets himself involved in a double murder of both Broadway producer Louis Lathrop and his lead singer Desiree Vance. Putting the wedding off Shayne soon starts to poke his nose into the crime to the distaste of the man in charge of the murders Inspector Pierson who feels, rightfully so, he's messing up the evidence at the crime scene.
Shayne not at all disturbed in what Inspector Pierson feels about him soon uncovers evidence that the two were involved in a reunion of their 1915 hit play "Sweethearts of Paris" who's star in the play Carlo Ralph played the leading role of "Beppo the Dog". Shayne indistinctly feels that somehow Ralph, he doesn't really say why, somehow had something to do with both Lathrop and Vance's murders in finding a dog custom, as a calling card, over Lathrop's dead body. The problem is that Ralph supposedly died in German captivity during WWI back in 1916 some 25 years ago.
****SPOILERS Shayne uses all his skills and talents to track down Lathrop and Vance's killer and in the process has the hotel maid Emily found dead in her room from poison that she supposedly took. In a suicide letter Emily states that not only is she former actress Lynne Evens but that she murdered both Lathrop and his lover Desiree Vance for cheating on her. That's because Vance was romantically involved with Lathop who dropped her for Vance when her back was turned! As Shayne soon found out this was all a BS story on the real murderers part who in fact turned out to be the supposed long dead Ralph coming back from the dead or so everyone thought. That's to get his revenge for being chested out of his salary in his leading part as "Beppo the Dog" in the play by Lathop while in German custody. As for Shayne his involvement in the case got his soon to be fiancée Joanne La Marr so mad that she dropped him and went back to her first love Bruce who at least unlike Shayne put her first before anything else!
Shayne not at all disturbed in what Inspector Pierson feels about him soon uncovers evidence that the two were involved in a reunion of their 1915 hit play "Sweethearts of Paris" who's star in the play Carlo Ralph played the leading role of "Beppo the Dog". Shayne indistinctly feels that somehow Ralph, he doesn't really say why, somehow had something to do with both Lathrop and Vance's murders in finding a dog custom, as a calling card, over Lathrop's dead body. The problem is that Ralph supposedly died in German captivity during WWI back in 1916 some 25 years ago.
****SPOILERS Shayne uses all his skills and talents to track down Lathrop and Vance's killer and in the process has the hotel maid Emily found dead in her room from poison that she supposedly took. In a suicide letter Emily states that not only is she former actress Lynne Evens but that she murdered both Lathrop and his lover Desiree Vance for cheating on her. That's because Vance was romantically involved with Lathop who dropped her for Vance when her back was turned! As Shayne soon found out this was all a BS story on the real murderers part who in fact turned out to be the supposed long dead Ralph coming back from the dead or so everyone thought. That's to get his revenge for being chested out of his salary in his leading part as "Beppo the Dog" in the play by Lathop while in German custody. As for Shayne his involvement in the case got his soon to be fiancée Joanne La Marr so mad that she dropped him and went back to her first love Bruce who at least unlike Shayne put her first before anything else!