Minnesota Strip

The turf grabbed by pimps in Manhattan is central to Collins's latest thriller, starring his admirable one-armed private eye, Dan Fortune. He invades the notorious Minnesota Strip (the squalid area near Times Square), looking for young Roy Carter, missing since the murder of Jeanne-Marie Johnson, a Vietnamese refugee, whom the Carter family had given a home. Questioning the hustlers in the city jungle, Fortune hears that Roy has killed Coley Olson, importer of Oriental women and dealer in drugs, who was probably the sole lead to Jeanne-Marie's murderer. Broadening his search to the dismal Rescue Mission, Fortune finds a glimmer of hope, but not much protection from the gunmen menacing him and Roy. Fighting a nearly impenetrable web of circumstances, the detective witnesses events strange even to his case-hardened experiences of human nature at its best and worst. (July 7)