Back in the day, the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City wasn’t hip, chic, expensive, and yuppified, with a Starbucks on every block. In fact, it was such a lousy place to live, you could hardly give the real estate away. Populated by gangsters, muggers, grandmothers with baseball bats, and parents working long hours on the wrong side of the law to pay for tenement apartments with no view, the place was also colorful, with memorable characters straight out of a Damon Runyon novel. It was in this live-by-your-wits atmosphere that Dan Fortune grew up. One of his best boyhood friends was Andy Pappas. They broke into the holds of ships together, stealing cargo, watching one another’s back. But things happen. Dan lost his arm in a failed robbery attempt, and decided it was time to figure out another way to make a living. With the people and geography of Chelsea his only areas of expertise, he put out his shingle: Dan Fortune, Private Detective. But Andy liked his life of crime, and power was addictive. Andy stayed the course, killing his way up until he took over the docks. He was boss of bosses, a vicious racketeer. Still, he’d let Dan be familiar, call him by his first name, even give him crap – until now. Now Dan is trying to track down a teenager named Jo-Jo Olsen. It looks like a routine missing-persons case, until Jo-Jo’s friends start dying violently, one by one, just before Dan can question them. Then Andy Pappas warns Dan that unless he cools it on Jo-Jo, he’ll end up on the rapidly growing pile of corpses. It doesn’t make sense. Why does Andy Pappas care about Jo-Jo, and what does Dan need to do to stay alive long enough to find out and save the kid? Act of Fear is the winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel “Collins has the ability to set in motion a sequence of events that moves with the inevitability of a huge boulder rolling down a mountainside.” – New York Times “A master of crime fiction.” – Ellery Queen “Act of Fear is the most interesting private detective novel I have read in a long time. It is a highly original piece of work in a field not noted for much originality. Mr. Collins is a writer to watch and, above all, to read.” – Ross Macdonald

Act of Fear: #1 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Lynds, Dennis

Mystery

Canning Park Press

Con artists and call girls, hoods and hippies, and New York City’s untouchably wealthy populate this smashing tale of a small-time crook wanted for a murder he swears he didn’t commit. The problem lands with an ominous thud in the office of Dan Fortune, Private Investigator, when the crook, Sammy Weiss, comes begging Fortune for an alibi. But the alibi Sammy needs is for a beating, not for the murder for which he’ll soon be charged. Fortune says no. The Brass Rainbow is the second novel featuring Dan Fortune, following the Edgar Award–winning Act of Fear. In this one, Fortune goes on the hunt when an uptown blueblood ends up dead and Sammy vanishes. Sammy had always been a loser, and a petty liar, and a magnet for hard luck. Still, Fortune doesn’t think he killed the guy. What else can a one-armed detective do, if not help his friends? And Sammy is a friend. Soon Fortune finds himself targeted, and the disappearance of Sammy becomes more puzzling. Is Sammy the killer – or the victim of a frame-up? Written in the crisp style he helped popularize, the legendary Lynds opens the floodgates to the bygone colorful era of ‘60s Chelsea – no pricey real estate then, just a teeming Petri dish of hustlers and pigeons and those trying to make a living any way they can. Lynds captures the richness and exposes the underbelly in a tale The New York Daily News called, “engrossing.” “The man who won the Mystery Writers of America award ... has given readers another exceptional story.” – Parade of Books “Skillfully plotted with finely honed suspense.” – New York Times “[Lynds] is a writer to watch and above all to read.” – Ross Macdonald “A master of crime fiction.” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

The Brass Rainbow: #2 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

The one time Dan Fortune met Anne Terry, she made a memorable impression on him. She was not only gorgeous, but she radiated a bold spirit, the kind that signaled bravery and honesty, and he admired that. Reading about her disappearance in the morning newspaper, he remembers with disgust how Ricardo Vega, the Broadway impresario, had verbally humiliated her when she tried to reignite their affair. Vega is “Rey” Vega to anyone who claims to know him well – El Rey, the King. He’s handsome, rich, and powerful, and he always gets his way. Sitting there, holding the newspaper, Fortune feels a tide of hot jealousy sweep through him. Rey has set his sights on another beautiful actress, Martine Adair, the woman Fortune loves, and his lover. Until now, she’s resisted, and Fortune wants to protect her from the power plays that Rey is known for. Fortune has something going for him, too. He’s a private detective, seasoned, and angry. If Rey had something to do with Anne Terry’s disappearance, Fortune will find out, and he’ll use what he knows to stop the bastard from hurting Marty. Unfaltering suspense and vivid characterizations make this tale of the 1970s theater world in New York riveting. Here is an understanding of human weaknesses, a feeling for life in a great city, and an illuminating examination of the values we all live by that give this novel its unusual power. “Tough, believable.” San Francisco Examiner “Really moving ... emotional soundness without sentimentality.” San Francisco Chronicle “[Lynds] handles an excellent and complex plot with ease.” The Washington Star “In the American private-eye tradition of Chandler, Hammett, and Macdonald.” The New York Times Book Review

Night of the Toads: #3 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

It's the 1970s, and the edgy metropolis of New York attracts waves of newly liberated young women. Like most of them, Francesca Crawford finds an apartment and a job, and she begins dating. She's making a life. She's just twenty years old. When she's stabbed to death, a man twenty-five years older than she appears in the office of private investigator Dan Fortune and offers $2,000 - much more than Fortune charges even on his best day; he'll tell you that himself - to find out who murdered her. The man, a salesman, insists that no one can know he's the guy who hired Fortune. As curious about the salesman as about the victim, Fortune soon discovers the young woman ran away from home three months earlier. Her father is the prominent mayor of an upstate city, from an old, aristocratic Dutch family. Still, in New York City she had been working for tips as a cocktail waitress under an assumed name for the two months before her death. Why had she been using a made-up name, and where had she been in that first month after she left home? Fortune hits the streets to find out. Violence follows him as he heads north. Then, oddly, the trail takes an abrupt turn southwest, to a desolate Arizona Indian reservation. When Fortune uncovers what happened during the missing month, he reveals the terrible secret of why Francesca slammed the door on her past. Swift and passion-filled, the much-lauded Walk a Black Wind is a tale of half truths and lies that erupt in murder. "In the American private-eye tradition of Chandler, Hammett, and Macdonald." - The New York Times Book Review "A master of crime fiction." - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine "[Lynds] writes tales distinguished by a strong personal flavor and originality ... enriched because of Dan Fortune, the compassionate and philosophical private investigator." - Crime and Mystery "This is an admirable specimen of the hard-boiled but literate detective novel whose intricately conceived puzzle is matched by its well-paced narrative style." - The Armchair Detective

Walk a Black Wind: #4 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

New York Times: “One of the year’s Best Mysteries.” It’s summer in New York, 1972, and the city is steaming. Actress Martine Adair can’t stand it any longer. She sends her lover off to pawn the diamond ring he gave her, so they can spend the next month cooling off at the beach. Her lover is private detective Dan Fortune, who works the worn high rises and dangerous alleys of the edgy Chelsea district. At the neighborhood pawnshop, Fortune not only picks up cash, he meets Claude Marais and his wife, Li Marais. Claude is a retired soldier who fought on the losing side during France’s humiliating defeats at Dien Bien Phu and Algiers. Convinced someone is trying to kill him, Li asks Fortune to stand guard outside their hotel room that night. Fortune agrees – the money will be enough to redeem Marty’s ring and still take her to the beach. In the morning Claude is fine, but his brother – Fortune’s friend, the gentle pawnbroker – is dead, his skull bashed in. The police think it’s a robbery gone bad, but Fortune disagrees – why would a robber leave $300 untouched in the cash drawer, and besides, how could the thief have gotten into the highly secure shop, unless the pawnbroker himself let him in? It had to be an inside job, yet the pawnbroker apparently had no enemies, no dark secrets. Foreign adventurers, vicious gang members, an exotic beauty from Thailand, and an alcoholic Chinese populate this riveting tale, leading Fortune to a hair-raising ending and revelations of a tortured past no one wanted to remember but just wouldn’t die.

Shadow of a Tiger: #5 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

The Silent Scream: #6 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

Dan Fortune, the iconic private detective who operates out of New York's bohemian Chelsea district, has just taken on a baffling case. It should've been an ordinary business transaction, but Leslie Carter - Fortune's friend and a retired belly dancer - asks for help. It's time for her new husband to pay the lease on a parking garage they own, but her husband can't find anyone to take the money. A mammoth corporation owns the property now, and no one there will see him or talk with him about it. It's 1975, and the country is sliding toward recession. Already on a financial cliff, the Carters will lose everything if they can't hold onto the lease. When Fortune goes out to handle the matter, he finds himself the victim of a strange runaround, too. But his ends in murder. From Manhattan's executive towers to the raucous saloons and bordellos of Hoboken, Fortune is caught up in the lives of men so powerful they can order murder with a nod, and of twisted criminals who openly attack him to stop his probing. There are women, too, some greedy, some gentle, who conceal private nightmares behind smooth smiles. Someone is hiding the secret that has driven an unlikely killer to murder, and no matter what, Fortune intends to uncover him - or her.

Blue Death: #7 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

Dan Fortune doesn't forget. Particularly, Fortune has never forgotten actress Martine Adair - Marty, the woman he loved, and maybe still does. Five years ago, she abruptly stopped seeing him. The next thing he knew, she'd married her Broadway director. Fortune read in the trades about the two plays she did with her new husband. That's when he accepted there was no way a private detective could ever have given her what she wanted, the money, the prestige, the theater roles. Next he heard she'd moved to Hollywood, divorced the director, and married again, this time to some kind of movie magnate. Yesterday she called from the West Coast and asked for his help, and all of it came back to him, the years together, the intensity, the sex - he still missed her. Marty was the woman he thought about late at night alone, the way he thought about his missing left arm. And now she needed his help. His help. Her new husband's niece is dead, the victim of a vicious serial killer the newspapers were calling the Canyon Slasher. According to the police, the niece's murder fit the psychopath's modus operandi in every detail. But Marty tells Fortune the police have it wrong, and then she says she's not the only one who thinks so. Can it be, Fortune wonders as he rides the train from New York to Los Angeles, that Marty has doubts about her new husband, about his real relationship with his niece? And is she counting on Dan's loyalty no matter what? First published in 1980, The Slasher kicked off Dan Fortune's second decade as the iconic private detective from the rapidly changing Chelsea district of New York. Hailed with rave reviews, The Slasher is also a transitional book, introducing Fortune to Southern California and to Kay Michaels, who might eventually become Fortune's greatest romantic love. Still, when the case is finished, Fortune returns home to New York and the next job.

The Slasher: #10 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

It's 1983, and a wild weekend at the Jersey shore can lead to serious trouble, or to lifelong happiness. Which is it for newlyweds Alan and Helen Kay Campbell? Alan's father, computer mogul Ian Campbell, didn't really approve when Alan married his Jersey shore girlfriend, but still, he gave the young couple a house as a wedding gift. That was the year before. But now someone has sold the house at a loss for quick cash, and Alan and Helen Kay have vanished. The only clue is a note pad in the kitchen on which someone has repeatedly scribbled a single word: Freak, Freak, FREAK. Worried, Ian Campbell hires New York private detective Dan Fortune, who figures either they've run away for some reason the father doesn't know, which would be typical, or they're victims, perhaps kidnapped, maybe worse. On the hunt, Fortune discovers what he hadn't expected - some strange relationships in Ian Campbell's cutting-edge computer company. Why is the vice president for security trying to find Alan on his own? Plus there are two menacing strangers looking for the pair, too. When Fortune runs into a brutal murder, it's evident Alan and Helen Kay are in danger. From an affluent New Jersey suburb to the resort towns of the Jersey shore and sleazy one-night-stand hotels of mid Manhattan, Fortune tracks the kids to a surprising place - Arizona. Or is it surprising? The case explode into a nightmare of terror, and Fortune fights for his life as he uncovers the true reason for Alan Campbell's disappearance and follows the trail of murder.

Freak: #11 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

Minnesota Strip: #12 in the Edgar Award-winning Dan Fortune mystery series

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