Shamus McCoy (Burt Reynolds) character is a tribute to Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) in this film; McCoy's meeting in cold study with E.J. Hume resembles Marlow's meeting with General Sternwood in a hot greenhouse; McCoy enters bookstore in order to keep an eye on someone in a business across the street, seduces the shopgirl, who pulls the closed shade, and after an unseen tryst, offers the gazette, which is nearly identical to scene with Humphrey Bogart and Dorothy Malone.