REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:


MICHAEL COLLINS – Crime, Punishment, and Resurrection. PI Dan Fortune short stories. Donald I. Fine, hardcover, 1992. No paperback edition. Introduction by Sue Grafton.

   I’m not a big reader of short stories. It isn’t that I dislike them, it’s just that I like novels much more, and my time is sadly finite.

   I do like Michael Collins and Dan Fortune very much, and so couldn’t resist this. Two of the stories including the novella that closes the book are new, the rest (seven of them) reprinted from various magazines.

   The stories ranged in my estimation from barely adequate — “The Woman Who Ruined John Ireland” — to excellent — “The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and the novella, “Resurrection.” The latter is very nearly worth the price of the book. It is a grim and powerful story of a cult and its leader, written with all of Collins’ considerable skill.

   I am not sure, no, not sure at all, that there is a consistently better writer in the hardboiled field today than Michael Collins. Highly recommended.

— Reprinted from Fireman, Fireman, Save My Books #3, September 1992.