Softly As I Kill You

I have known Dan Benton for many years. He’s a hard work-ing private investigator, private eye, troubleshooter, you name it.
The following book is his.
To give you some background about this man and how this book happened to come into being, I’ll put down these few words of introduction.
He’s cool-headed. Normally.
His line of work often involves following husbands or wives to see if they are cheating on one another. Usually he is lucky enough not to get involved in murder cases, though there have been some along the way.
When he came out of the service and attempted to get a job, it was to discover that he just didn’t dig working under the thumb of others, following the book rules that big and little business require people to live by.
As a result, he decided to use what little knowledge he had picked up in his work in the armed service, via self-protection, via hand to hand combat.
Being a troubleshooter, his way of putting it, seemed like a logical means to make a living without being forced to work for oth-ers in a direct manner.
Bosses, he doesn’t like.
Yet, when it comes to friends, he would lay his life on the line, give his last shirt or dime away. Because of this, his involve-ment in the following case was a highly personal one, starting as a result of his friendship with a long-time buddy who had saved his life.
As for women, they go for him, although he is not the kind of man who openly comes right out and says it that way. He’s a good looker. The kind of male females go for in a big way.
Yet, as he has pointed out, men in his line of work seldom, if ever, have beautiful young things throwing themselves at his feet every day, as suggested in so many detective novels.
It might sound hard-boiled at times, but his attitude toward life and women is highly refined and it is that of a total gentleman.
Even in telling me his story he was reluctant to reveal any more details than are outlined in this book.
It is enough to say that very few people are as loyal or as generous as Dan.
Being a writer, myself, I suggested that his experiences told here would make a very exciting book. Thus, we sat before a tape recorder and he started talking. I questioned him at times. Some of the conversations had nothing to do with the case. Cigarettes, booze and friendship cause side conversations to develop in a very natural way. So some editing and even restructuring were necessary to smooth out minor spots.
After having all of the story on tape the only thing required of myself was to get a secretary to transcribe the whole thing. After that, I edited and polished where necessary. When I showed the fin-ished product to Dan, he had only one comment to make: “You’re kidding? I didn’t think I could tell it that way!”
That’s Dan for you.

—Charles Nuetzel