Chasing Eights

One-armed private eye Dan Fortune, seen before in Minnesota Strip , is hired to trace Jack Price, whose wife is suspicious of his mysterious all-night absences from their home in Santa Barbara, Calif. Fortune discovers that Price is ``chasing eights'' as one of the members of a continuing poker game with business partner Ed Brower and others who play for high stakes. But Fortune stumbles on a body, the first among various members of the group who become victims killed on orders from one of the players, a financier. Price, starting to suspect that a ``big deal'' promised him by the financier is collapsing, and that he's set to lose everything as part of a scam that depends on murder to succeed. Other than Price, the other potential victims are a Mexican-American and his wife; a militant liberal and the homeless people he shelters; and, ultimately, every one of Collins's fully realized characters, lured into a trap baited by hope. Humming with tensions, this page-turner is first-rate, yet veers alarmingly close to modern reality. (Feb.)