Dan Fortune
Created by Michael Collins (pseud. of Dennis Lynds)

A kid from the streets of New York, DAN FORTUNE (born Fortunowski) lost his arm in an accident while he was looting a docked ship. Taking the incident as a sign that a life of crime might not be the best career path to take, Danny decided to go straight. After a stint in the Merchant Marine, he returned home and got his P.I. ticket, setting himself up as a one-man agency in the Chelsea and Greenwich Village section of NYC.

Not your typical let's-get-physical hardboiled dick (having only one arm sorta cuts down on the urge for fisticuffs), Dan has to rely more on his intelligence and compassion. Fortunately, Danny's no dummy--he's well-read and self-educated, and his empathy for other people makes him a great interrogator. People seem to really open up for him.

It's a good thing, too. More than any other private eye, Fortune is driven by the compulsion not just to know who? what? where? and when? but to also know why. The other questions interest him, but for Dan, the all-consuming obsession is not just to know, but to understand. He's a persistent little cuss, and has done one thing few series detectives have ever managed, namely changing locations. Dan has moved from the back alleys and bars of New York City to the wide-open sun-filled plazas of southern California.

Dan's compassion, particularly for society's underdogs, has resulted in a series that has evolved into one of the most compelling and insightful private eye series of the last few decades. Charges of political preachiness have been levelled at the series, particularly in the more recent novels, but anything more than a cursory reading will reveal that Dan's interests (and, presumably Lynds') lie more in understanding people than in any particular agenda. Highly and heartily recommended.

Author Michael Collins is just one pseudonym of Dennis Lynds (Collins was an Irish revolutionary), who also writes as William Arden, John Crowe, Carl Dekker, and Mark Sadler. Dan Fortune may be his most famous creation, but he's also found time to create other PI's, including Paul Shaw and Kane Jackson. Dan Fortune himself is actually a more refined, socially- and politically-aware version of an earlier detective character of Lynds', Slot Machine Kelly, who appeared in several short stories in such digests as Manhunt and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Lynds also wrote many of the Mike Shayne short stories under the house monicker of Brett Halliday for the latter magazine.

Lynds won The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1988.

Other one-armed sleuths include Sid Halley and John Kenneth Galbraith Jantarro.

UNDER OATH

• "To spin tales as intriguing and thought provoking as these for three decades is a remarkable enough achievement. Even more remarkable is the sustained quality... It takes style to bring that off. Bravery, too, of course."
  -- The L.A. Times, on Fortune's World

NOVELS

• Act of Fear (1967)
• The Brass Rainbow (1969)
• Night of the Toads (1970)
• Walk A Black Wind (1971)
• Shadow of a Tiger (1972)
• The Silent Scream (1973)
• Blue Death (1975)
• The Blood-Red Dream (1976)
• The Nightrunners (1978)
• The Slasher (1980)
• Freak (1983)
• Minnesota Strip (1987)
• Red Rosa (1988)
• Castrato (1989)
• Chasing Eights (1990)
• The Irishman's Horse (1991). Buy this book
• Cassandra in Red (1993). Buy this book

COLLECTIONS

• Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (1992). Buy this book
• Fortune's World (2000). Buy this book

SHORT STORIES

• "No One Likes to be Played for a Sucker" (July 1969, EQMM; First Cases)
• "Scream All the Way" (October 1969, AHMM)
• "Long Shot" (June 1972, AHMM; also AHMM Borrowers of the Night)
• "Who?" (August 1972, AHMM; AHMM Death Reach)
• "The Woman Who Ruined John Ireland" (November 1983, AHMM; AKA Dan Fortune and the Hollywood Caper)
• "The Oldest Killer" (November 1983, The Thieftaker Journals)
• "Eighty Million Dead" (1984, The Eyes Have It)
• "A Reason to Die" (September 1985, New Black Mask #2)
• "Killer's Mind" (June 1986, New Black Mask #6)
• "The Motive" (1987, A Matter of Crime #2)
• "Black in the Snow" (1988, An Eye for Justice)
• "Crime and Punishment" (1988, A Matter of Crime #3)
• "The Chair" (1990, Justice for Hire)
• "Role Model" (1992, Deadly Allies)
• "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" (1992, Crime, Punishment and Resurrection)
• "Murder Is Murder (1992, Constable New Crimes 1)
• "Culture Clash" (November 1994, EQMM)
• "Angel Eyes" (1994, Deadly Allies #2)
• "A Matter of Character" (1994, Partners in Crime)
• "A Death in Montecito" (April 1995, EQMM)
• "Can Shoot" (1998, Private Eyes)
• "Family Values" (2000, Fortune's World)
• "Disney World" (May 2002, EQMM)
• "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (2002, Flesh and Blood: Dark Desires; also 2003, Mystery: The Best of 2002).
• "Next-Door Dave" (July 2004, EQMM)
• "Someone" (2004, The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits)
• "Dan Fortune Has His Say" (Summer 2005, Thrilling Detective Web Site)
  Not really a short story, more an op-ed piece.
• "The Kidnapping of Xiang Fei" (2005, Murder in Vegas)
• "The Smoking Gun of Elizabeth Henze" (July 2006, EQMM)

RELATED LINKS

• Dennis Lynds
  It may have taken a while, but Dan Fortune's creator finally has his own site. Albeit perhaps a little reluctantly. Here's how he announced it in March 2000: "Please forgive this mass e-mail, but did want you to know that not only did the Berlin Wall go down, so did my resistance to having a website, although it took me another 13 years." No need to be shy, Dennis. It's a pretty good site, with a bibliography, a list of his numerous awards, ordering info on his books, even some of his short stories, including the recent (and Edgar-nominated) "The Horrible, Senseless Murders of Two Elderly Women."
  
  
• Dennis Lynds, 1924-2005
  The Mystery Community Pays Their Respects...

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.