A cryptic note concealed in a DEAD MAN’S DIARY causes Mike Shayne to return to the past, to trace the secret of the dead man’s life — and he finds himself dangerously involved in murder, both past and present. In A TASTE FOR COGNAC, Mike and a copper-haired girl reporter from New York uncover the crime story of the year — but twenty-four terror-filled hours on a gunmen’s island hideaway create some reasonable doubt whether they will live to tell it. In DINNER AT DUPRE’S, one of Mike Shayne’s clients gets rubbed out in the French Quarter of New Orleans before he can get to Mike’s office. And the client’s untimely death gets Mike into a deep dish of homicide, blackmail, bigamy, kidnaping, and assorted other skulduggery. The cops are after Mike’s blood and nothing but a game of dodge and run saves his license and his skin