MICHAEL COLLINS – Blue Death. Dan Fortune #7. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1975. Playboy Press, paperback, 1979.

   Blue Death finds Dan Fortune a little less introspective than in his earlier cases, but with no less of a passion for the truth. Once more he is brought into a case for a simple $50 fee, and once more he finds himself with more than he bargained for. What appears a simple matter – locating the member of a giant corporation who has the power to sign a lease agreement for a parking lot – turns out to involve quadruple murder.

   Along the way Fortune is beaten, drugged, and nearly starved, but he cannot be scared off the case. He suspects that a member of the corporation is blackmailing another member for murder, and his chain of reasoning is correct. All the facts fit. Unfortunately, he finds that he has been on the wrong track entirely, and before he is able to bring things to a close, the fourth murder occurs.

   The amoral world of the large corporations comes under savage attack in Blue Death; its members appear virtually unassailable in their complacency and power, and even in the end one cannot be sure that justice will be served.

   But justice is not always the point, or at least not justice under the law. Fortune is still looking for the perfect world where we are all free to run ourselves, and sometimes he gives others that chance. As in Act of Fear (reviewed here) the ending may not be entirely satisfactory, but it is appropriate. Anyone looking for the best in private-eye writing in the Chandler/Macdonald vein will appreciate any title by Michael Collins.

   Other notable books in the Dan Fortune series include The Brass Rainbow (1969), Walk a Black Wind (1971), The Nightrunners (1978), and Freak (1984).

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.