The Nightrunners: Michael Collins

I love the beginning paragraphs of this book... They set the story up so well.

It was the kind of house that made my father feel small–a nobody, nothing. Three stories, nearly thirty rooms, and half hidden by its own tall trees on some ten acres of Connecticut woods. A rolled lawn still green in November before the first snow, and a triple garage, with rooms above, that had been a coach house when the country was young. Not the Rockefeller mansion, no, but you knew that the people who lived here were someone.

My father had looked at houses like this one and talked about being no one. Not when I was small, but later, just before he disappeared. When I was small he'd been proud of being a New York City cop,  but later he watched important men in big cars driving out of big houses and talked about not even existing.

In this ninth book in the series, Dan Fortune has been summoned by Wallace Kern, President of Kern Laboratories, to find Kern's brother, William, a gambler who has disappeared. Fortune succeeds in this mission, but soon realizes that there is more to the story, and continues investigating. This story has twists and turns I did not anticipate, and not only in the mystery plot. Primarily set in New York, there are also side trips to Southern California and Mexico.

Fortune has only one arm, and he feels this makes him depend on his common sense and intelligence. Not much is said here about how he lost his arm. I enjoyed getting to know Dan Fortune and I liked the author's writing style. In this book, there is less action and gun play, and more emphasis on brains and persistence. Dan doesn't like to give up on a case. I will be going back to the beginning of the series to see the character's development, but also because the first novel in the series, Act of Fear, was very highly acclaimed.

Michael Collins was a pseudonym for Dennis Lynds. Lynds was from New York like his protagonist, but he moved to Santa Barbara when he was 41 and several of the books in the Dan Fortune series are set there. In Santa Barbara, Lynds became friends with Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar),  who "wrote a letter of introduction on Collins’ behalf to his old editor Ray Bond at Dodd, Mead paving the way for Act of Fear’s publication.  Macdonald also hooked Collins up with literary agent Dorothy Olding." (See this interesting article and interview at Mystery*File).

See Barry Ergang's review at Kevin Tipple's blog, Kevin's Corner.

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Publisher:  Robert Hale, London, 1979 (orig. pub. 1978)
Length:      216 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Series:      Dan Fortune, #9
Setting:     New York
Genre:      Mystery, Private Investigator
Source:     I purchased my copy