Freak: A Novel of Suspense

by Michael Collins

Book Overview

Freak by Michael Collins released on Apr 24, 1990 is available now for purchase. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396081045
• ISBN13: 9780396081043
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Dodd Mead
• Length: 213 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Another Side to Dan Fortune

It's hard to argue with success. And Michael Collins has certainly been successful with his Dan Fortune novels. Fortune keeps you glued to the book as he wisecracks his way through a case. Bodies pile up, he inevitably has left his old gun back in the car or in the office, somewhere else when he needs it the most. He often winds up the punching bag, unable to fight his way out of most situations due to his lack of an arm. But until FREAK he's never been a coward. He actually hides in the bathroom while a woman, he'd apparently led the bad guys to, gets killed. He agonizes, rationalizes that he couldn't do anything, after all, he only has one arm. Later the cops say that it wasn't he fault, he'd have been killed too. Stupid to go up against someone you can't possible win against. Sorry, that wasn't good enough for me. Fortune should have busted the bathroom door down earlier, while the woman was still alive. He should have tried. Like all of Mr. Collins's books, Fortune tenaciously plods his way to a successful outcome, leading the reader on first one path, than another, pulling out a beautiful twister of an ending, but I just couldn't get that act of cowardice out of my mind. It just sat there like a lump in my gut throughout the rest of the book. Good book that it was, I gotta take away a star for the character acting out of character so.

Dan Fortune vs. Murders and Kidnappers, No Contest

When one-arm private investigator Dan Fortune went out to Ian Campbell's to find out why the man wanted to hire him, he ran into a couple guys who were already there. A small men who was dressed straight out of the Roaring Twenties, spats included, and a big black man in a blue leisure suit. They left and Campbell hired Fortune to find his missing son, Alan, who had vanished with his new wife, Helen Kay.From Campbell, Fortune learns that Alan and his new bride had sold the house they'd been give for less than it was worth and that Campbell had given Alan money to invest in a fast food restaurant, that he'd apparently never invested. Fortune hot foots it over to the restaurant only to find the partner Alan was going to invest with, recently murdered and hanging on a hook in a closet like a slab of meat.Add that to the fact that Dan gets a couple glimpses of the guy in the blue leisure suit following him and he knows something isn't quite kosher with his investigation. Then someone tosses his office and tosses a neighbors ageing poodle off his roof. And then another potential witness he wanted to interview gets dead. It's beginning to look like someone doesn't want Alan and Helen Kay found, but find them he does, only to let them slip away again.Not one to give up, Dan tracks them to a hotel only to find the guy whose dresses out of his decade and the leisure suited guy. They claim to be holding Alan and Helen Kay for ransom. They want a million bucks, but Dan talks them down to a quarter million. When he tells Campbell about the kidnapping, the man agrees to pay, but Fortune grabs his nose, because this kidnapping stinks to high heaven.This is still another well penned novel by Michael Collins that I read in one sitting. I was reasonably sure I had FREAK figured out, but Collins pulled a neat twist at the end that had me completely flummoxed. Five stars from me for this one.Reviewed by Vesta Irene