Crime, Punishment, and Resurrection

This fast-paced book is a collection of eight short stories and the excellent novella, "Resurrection," featuring Dan Fortune, the wise-cracking, one-armed private eye.The short stories are just what one would expect from Michael Collins, short, sweet, to the point. The are Fortune at his best. Fortune always gets his man, or rather could if he wanted, but sometimes, as in the opening story, "Crime and Punishment," he has a choice, bring in the killer, or ignore him, let him go. A hard choice.But imagine the circumstances, a wealthy slum lord is murdered. Fortune is hired to find the killer. One of the slum lord's buildings burned down because the building's heat have been off for five years and one of the tenants fired up an illegal heater which fired up the building. A heroic young woman saved several, but lost her life in the fire. There is nobody to prosecute the killer except maybe the woman's lover. Should Fortune bring him in?Then there is the case of the deadly cologne in the story, "Who." A young healthy man dies of a heart attack. His mother believes it was murder and hires Fortune. Fortune finds an empty cologne bottle in the victim's room and traces it to a pharmacy. It was lost during a delivery, the dead boy apparently found it. Fortune traces the bottle to a chemical company that makes a drug for the government that simulates a heart attack when it kills. So who was the intended victim.There are six more Fortune stories that I just loved and after you've devoured them, there's the Fortune novella, "Resurrection" that showcases the one-armed man at his best. As usual, Michael Collins has delivered a terrific read.Reviewed by Vesta Irene