Another excellent character--I like everyone you've introduced

[in which I attempt to reconstruct a comment I thought I had left days ago, which it seems my browser ate instead]

I was saying to spatch that The Gay Detective really is a hard-boiled novel, it has personal betrayal, institutional corruption, brutal murders, the works, but it also has such a colorful and tight-knit cast of characters who come safe through the wild ride of the plot that it doesn't feel heavy or bleak. I would cheerfully have read a string of stories about this main cast once assembled. I'm so disappointed audiences of 1961 didn't feel the same.