Thu 24 Apr 2025
PI Stories I’m Reading: MICHAEL COLLINS “Black in the Snow.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[7] Comments
MICHAEL COLLINS “Black in the Snow.” PI Dan Fortune. Published in An Eye for Justice: The Third PWA Anthology, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Mysterious Press, 1988). Collected in Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (Donald Fine, 1992).
Of the several pen names used by author Dennis Lynds, I believe (but am not absolutely certain) that Michael Collins is the one he used most often. And of the books and shorter fiction he published under that name, most of them were about PI Dan Fortune.
The most distinguishing physical aspect of Dan Fortune as a man is that he has only one arm. This fact sometimes comes up as a crucial part of story; sometimes, as in “Black in the Snow,” it’s mentioned only in passing. Which is interesting, and maybe someone could write a master’s thesis about it someday, but in all honesty, I don’t think it’s likely to be all that interesting to anyone else but me.
Fortune is hired by a lawyer in this one to look into the death of the female half of a married couple, middle-aged or perhaps later. The husband claims he came home to find her dead, stabbed to death by persons unknown. The man suggests a burglar, which is certainly a possibility. The “black in the snow” is that of the wife’s dog, thrown there by the killer. Quite possibly, but why? Fortune has a job to do.
His investigation is limited. He scours the house for clues and has long conversation with the husband’s sister. I may have made the case sound lengthy and boring, but a writer as good as Lynds can make reading the phone book sound palatable, and Fortune gets to the bottom of things very quickly. (I’d sound like a grouch if I said coming up with all the details he does makes the ending a little sketchy, so maybe I won’t. Or maybe I will.)
April 25th, 2025 at 3:24 pm
Lynds did at least 85 of the Mike Shayne stories in MSMM as Brett Halliday, so that’s probably his most used pseudonym, but I think he’s remembered mostly for those Dan Fortune novels as Michael Collins. He was a really fine writer and gave me some good advice when we were corresponding in the Eighties. I have the collection of his Slot Machine Kelly stories (the prototype of Dan Fortune) that were published in MSMM, but I’ve never gotten around to reading it–which is a phrase I use all too often.
April 25th, 2025 at 7:42 pm
Ouch. Thanks, James. I’d blanked out on all of the Mike Shayne stories that Dennis Lynds wrote. 88 of them, he once said:
https://thrillingdetective.com/2021/03/05/dennis-lynds-2/
I have an almost complete run of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and I think it’s about time I started reading more of them. Same applies to that collection of Slot Machine Kelly stories you mention. I maybe read one of them, but to tell you the truth, I’m not even so sure about that.
April 25th, 2025 at 11:31 pm
The Dan Fortune books were probably Lynds greatest achievement in Private Eye lit though I also liked the Mark Sadler books he wrote.
Among many other things Lynds also penned a few of the Nick Carter Kilmaster titles and all of the Belmont Shadows but the first one.
April 26th, 2025 at 1:45 pm
Lynds was indeed a writer of many talents. He is still very much missed today.
April 26th, 2025 at 5:54 pm
Dennis was a really busy guy in the Sixties. While he was writing a Mike Shayne every month, he also wrote Man From U.N.C.L.E. novellas for the digest magazine, those Shadow novels as Maxwell Grant, Three Investigators novels and other mysteries as William Arden, and who knows what else. Definitely one of my writing heroes once I found out all the things he’d been involved with.
April 26th, 2025 at 8:53 pm
“.. a really busy guy in the Sixties…” is both true and a tremendous understatement. He was also quite the gentleman in person, not that I ever met him in person. We were only ever in touch by email.
Here’s what I had to say about him after his death, as posted on the Thrilling Detective website:
“Ed Lynskey and I had the opportunity of interviewing Dennis Lynds for Mystery*File 47, and let me tell you what a pleasure it was. What a charming, gracious person he was to work with — and very much opinionated, too, in the best sense of the term. He didn’t quite say so, but he seemed pleased that his work is undergoing an upsurge in popularity. I only wish that he could have lived longer to continue to enjoy this somewhat belated recognition — and of course there are the books and stories he had in the works that we probably won’t be able to read now. I never met him in person — we were in touch only by email and through his postings on rara-avis earlier this year — but I’m very much affected by his unexpected death and saddened that he’s no longer with us.”
https://thrillingdetective.com/2021/02/11/dennis-lynds/
April 26th, 2025 at 8:54 pm
PS: https://mysteryfile.com/Lynds/Collins.html