A 1988 reprint of the 1938 novel
42 Days For Murder, the only novel penned by prolific pulpster Roger Torrey, who contributed a lot of stories to detective pulp magazines like
Black Mask,
Detective Fiction Weekly, Private Detective Stories and
Dime Detective. It features private eye Shean Connell who is of the classic mold of the hard-drinking, fast-talking, two-fisted PI. Connell is a piano player who plays well enough to take nightclub jobs when the cover is useful. One of the great attractions of the novel the setting of Reno, Nevada. Torrey lovingly describes a wide-open town, where gangsters, crooked politicians and others were running the gambling, prostitution and drug rackets. As well as the "easy divorce" rackets.
Reno, at the time, was known as the divorce capital of the United States. Nevada's divorce laws were more lenient than in other parts of the United States in the early 20th Century, which had strict divorce laws and complex legal barriers. In order to establish residency and be eligible for the courts of Nevada, it was necessary to live there for six weeks - hence the title. So because of this "divorce boom" a lot of lodging and entertainment was built near the Reno courthouse to attract "divorce tourists", and there was plenty of gambling and other sorts of nightlife in the city.
The plot starts out simple enough, Connell's associate Joey Free brings him a new client, rich businessman Tod Wendell had just returned to New York from South America and found his wife, Ruth, had split without a word and she's staying in Reno in order to divorce him. Wendell is still in love and his attempts to contact Ruth have been stymied by her lawyer, Crandall, a man with considerable influence in Reno ("I've always hated the fat, smooth toad type and he was the perfect example.") Wendell and Free made an effort to meet her, ensconced inside Crandall's house but between hired goons and threatening local police, they were forced to leave. From this simple base, Connell's assignment builds into a twisted but well-worked out plot and he sallies forth with the aid of Lester, his 19-year old sidekick. Among other moments, Lester starts falling for a huge "brassy" blonde dame and Connell tries to warn him off:
She's too big for you; she'd grapple with you and take two falls out of three.
At another point, Lester comments on the youth of a prostitute (who told the cops "Just a minute Chief. You ain't getting any cherry; I been pinched before") that she hardly seemed more than a child:
She's been further under the barn after eggs than you've been away from home, kid. That's a tough baby.
Plus, there is a certain amount of violence as the case proves more complex than it did at first:
My slug had caught him just below the knee and ranged up the whole length of his thigh. They dug it out up by his hip but they had to cut off his leg to find it.
While there have been reprints of Torrey's short stories, there's only been one or so of the eight Connell short stories reprinted in anthologies.