Jake Dekker
Created by Stanley Ellin

Stanley Ellin seems to have cornered the market on cold, calculating and thoroughly professional private detectives serving the rich and powerful of New York, although for while there it seemed Lawrence Sanders was intent on horning in on the action, before Sanders decided on more southern locales. JAKE DEKKER is a freelance insurance investigator who lives high on the hog. He's a member of the veddy, veddy prestigious Watrous Associates, located at Madison and 60th.

Dekker appeared in only one novel, 1970's dark and tense The Bind, which became, through the usual twisted, everyone-must-be-on-drugs Hollywood logic, a frothy, lightweight farce called Sunburn starring Farrah Fawcett and Charles Grodin. In the film, Fawcett-Majors masquerades as insurance investigator Grodin's wife, to crack a murder/suicide fraud in sunny Acapulco. Even Art Carney along as another gumshoe can't save this poorly conceived piece of crap.

Although best known for his short fiction, Ellin also created two other big shot, hot stuff N.Y. P.I.s who appeared in novels, Murray Kirk and John Milano.

UNDER OATH

• "Farrah plays a giggly, blonde model who helps an insurance investigator investigate a suspicious death in Acapulco. Dave Brandstetter, this guy is not. It's mostly about Farrah and her bathing suits, and whenever I want to feel better about being blonde and giggly, I watch this. Because life is all about choices."
  (D.L. Browne)

NOVELS

• The Bind (1970)

FILM

• SUNBURN...Buy this video
  (1979, Paramount)
  94 minutes
  Based on the novel The Bind by Stanley Ellin
  Screenplay by James Booth, John Daly and Stephen Oliver
  Directed by Richard C. Sarafian
  Original music by John Cameron, Graham Gouldman  
  Original song: "You Bet Your Love"by Herbie Hancock
  Executive producer: Jay Bernstein
  Produced by John Daly and Gerald Green
  Starring Farrah Fawcett-Majors as Ellie
  and Charles Grodin as JAKE
  Also starring Art Carney, Joan Collins, William Daniels, John Hillerman, Eleanor Parker, Keenan Wynn, Mark Elmes, Robin Clarke, Joan Goodfellow, Jack Kruschen, Alejandro Rey, Jorge Luke, Seymour Cassel, Joanna Lehmann, Alex Sharp

Thanks to Jim Doherty for the lead on Sunburn.

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