Fortune's World

Rating:
Summary: Fine Detective Fiction with a Social Conscience
Review: FORTUNE'S WORLD is a collection of fourteen stories featuring Michael Collins' (pseudonym of Dennis Lynds) one-armed PI, Dan Fortune. Thirteen of these stories were published between 1969 and 1998. The final tale, "Family Values," was written especially for this volume.

Fortune, who lost his arm while looting a docked freighter at the age of seventeen, begins his career as an investigator in the Chelsea district of Manhattan where he grew up. Later, he ups and moves to Santa Barbara, California. There, Collins' gutsy and introspective shamus walks the same beat once pounded by Ross MacDonald's archetypal detective, Lew Archer. This is not merely a matter of two fictional characters - albeit separated by a decade or more - who just happen to inhabit the same geographical locale. (Readers are sure to recall that MacDonald's Santa Theresa is his fictionalized version of the real-life Santa Barbara, after all). No, the connection between Archer and Fortune goes much deeper than that. The two characters, and thus the two authors, traverse the same psychological and moral landscapes as well.

Like his famous predecessor, Fortune's concern is not merely to "solve" his cases in the sense of satisfying the demands of justice in a strictly forensic or juridical sense. Rather, what drives him - and what drove Archer before him - is a compulsion to unearth the hidden motivations (be they psychological, societal, economic or political) which prompt people to act they way they do. Indeed, Collins' fiction is even more overtly preoccupied with political, social and philosophical concerns than was MacDonald's. The list of political "hot-button" topics that form the basis for many of his more memorable stories reads like the front page of most morning newspapers.

The high literary quality of Collins' work notwithstanding, it's a safe bet that not all mystery fans will like the stories in FORTUNE'S WORLD. The positions that Collins takes and the questions he has Fortune raise are just too disturbing. (The most powerful story in the collection, "Angel Eyes," concerns the death of a young, developmentally disabled girl and is a good case in point. The morally ambivalent denouement will send many readers scurrying for tamer, more conventional fare). At the same time, no one can dispute Collins' talent or the fact that his yarns are firmly rooted in the hardboiled tradition. At the same time and, again, like MacDonald, Collins dares to expand the parameters of the genre in ways that are bold, creative and downright provocative. (The full text of this review was first published in JUDAS: Hardboiled EZine Vol.1, No.2)