This was a really good private eye novel that doesn't have a private eye in it. The hero is Jordan Mace, a lawyer who works for a lawyer named Desmond Cabot.

Their relationship is kind of like Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe's, but not nice. Cabot is brilliant but manipulative and greedy and lacking in empathy.

Mace has been twice married and twice divorced, both times to brilliant women whom he loved and who loved him back. But they had rival careers and Cabot's demand that Mace be on call at all hours, every day, didn't leave much room for marriage.

The set-up for this one is that a ravishing movie star, Roxanne Royal, basically Marilyn Monroe, has just escaped a murder attempt. A woman who looks like her, employed as her stand-in and driving her car, has just been killed by a shotgun blast that took off her entire head.

Cabot and Mace let everyone think that Royal is dead while they try to figure out what's going on and protect her from whoever is trying to kill her.

This involves a descent into a totally corrupt California coastal gambling town called Panamo, kind of a discount Personville.

Daniels appears to have been making up the story and the plot as he went along, as each turn in the road just sort of appears as necessary. The only consistent thread is Mace's first-person narration and he's an amusing character, given to witty remarks without overdoing it.

It was fun to read with some deft writing, vivid characters and some moments of sex and violence that were more explicit than usual. If you've read any Mickey Spillane you'll probably guess where it's going to end up.

The first line is "It was a Hollywood super-colossal, technicolor, wide screen, panoramic special of a funeral—for a girl without a head!".