Ghost Writers
Have Pen, Will Travel

The P.I. genre, like most genres, abounds with pen names and pseudonyms, but it also has plenty of ghost writers. Sometimes, it's actually a real writer who employs a ghost, but more often than not, it's some celebrity whose "work" is actually ghosted.

Real Authors Who Used Ghosts

• Brett Halliday
  Used a string of ghosts to pen numerous novels and short stories featuring Mike Shayne. For the complete list, see Who Was Brett Halliday?
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• William Ard (Lawrence Block and John Jakes)
  New York private dick Lou Largo must have been pretty hot stuff in his time. When creator Ard passed away after having written just two books in the series, Lou's adventures were continued, credited to Ard, but actually written by Block (one book) and Jakes (three books).
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• Leslie Charteris
  The prolific creator of The Saint turns out to be not quite as prolific as suspected.
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• Ernest Tidyman
  Supposedly the latter Shaft books were ghosted.
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• Ellery Queen
  No, Ellery's not a P.I., but I think it's sort of interesting that this well-respected writing team, a corner stone of crime fiction, employed other writers to turn out paperbacks (which were often miles away from the original concept of the character)..

Celebrity Authors and Their Collaborators

Although ghost writers usually aren't credited at all, sometimes they're listed as "collaborators." Who wrote what is anybody's guess...

• Willard Scott (Bill Crider)
  The popular weatherman wrote two books featuring weatherman/amateur sleuth Stanley Waters with Bill Crider, the creator of Galveston P.I. Truman Smith.
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• Peter Duchin (John Morgan Wilson)
  The popular bandleader and wrote Blue Moon with Edgar Award-winning writer John Morgan Wilson, the creator of Benjamin Justice.
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• Christopher Darden (Dick Lochte)
  The infamous prosecuting attorney from the O.J. Simpson Case has written several crime novels with P.I. writer Lochte, the creator of private eyes Leo Bloodworth and Serendipity Dahlquist and Terry Manion.

Celebrity Authors and Their Ghosts

Often the celebrity doesn't admit the ghostwriter's existence at all, although some of them at least offer a slow wink to others in the writing and publishing trade.

• William Shatner (Ron Goulart)
  Many of the novels attributed to T.J. Hambone, including the Tek War series featuring P.I. Jake Cardigan, were actually written by Ron Goulart, the creator of a zillion bizarro sci-fi eyes and relatively straight seventies gumshoe John Easy.
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• George Sanders (Craig Rice and Leigh Brackett)
  The actor's Crime on My Hands (1944) and Stranger at Home (1946) were actually ghosted by these two fine ladies, respectively, although Sanders had the class to dedicate each book to its real author.
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• Gypsy Rose Lee (Craig Rice)
  Rice strikes again! The famous stripper's The G-String Murders (1941) and Mother Finds a Body (1942), both of which feature Lee as a detective, have long been attributed to Craig Rice.
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• Helen Traubel (Harold Q. Masur)
  The opera singer 's The Metropolitan Opera Murders (1951) was actually written by the creator of hard-boiled shyster Scott Jordan.
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• George Kennedy (Walter J. Sheldon)
  The actor's paperback mysteries (Murder On Location, etc.) were actually the work of mystery author Sheldon.
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• Steve Allen (Walter J. Sheldon and Robert Westbrook)
  The mystery novels published in the eighties and nineties, some of which featured a P.I. protagonist, and appearing under the byline of the perpectually horn-tooting TV personality and all-round, self-proclaimed show-biz renaissance man were all actually ghost-written.

SEE ALSO

• Who Was Brett Halliday?
  Hmmm...sounds like a case for Mike Shayne.