Synopsis
“Who shoots a bag lady?” the policeman asked. No one had the answer – yet. In this riveting novel set in 1988 New York, private investigator Dan Fortune faces a tough Who’d want to murder Rosa Gruenfeld, nearly ninety years old and a lifelong fiery Communist living in a derelict hotel in the bohemian Chelsea district? In the hospital, confused and hallucinating, she’s visited by son Nicholas, who walked away from her years before, fed up with her Marxist doctrine and her shopping bags of pamphlets and handouts. But Granddaughter Lennie has her own causes, and one of them is Rosa. A rock singer, Lennie hires Dan to uncover the would-be killer. Dan promptly finds himself targeted, too, and the only way he’s going to stop whoever it is, is to find out who in Rosa’s past hated her so much he or she still wanted her dead. From her three husbands to her children and her brother, to the police and to the FBI, Dan is propelled on a trail of history and politics, bitterness and hope. As Kirkus Reviews said, “When it’s all over, the pieces of the puzzle fit with sweet inevitability. Dan survives a variety of attacks to fight the good fight another day. The reader can hope it’s in a story as suspenseful, character-rich, and absorbing as this.”
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From Publishers Weekly
Collins's reputation stands on a series of novels with qualities rare in the mystery/thriller genre. The hero of Minnesota Strip, Freak, etc. is one-armed private eye, Dan Fortune, who tackles a weirdly complicated case here. In a New York City welfare hotel, 88-year-old "Red" Rosa is shot and lies comatose in a hospital, unable to name her attacker. Although Rosa has been a Communist agitator all her life, no one really hates her, according to her granddaughter Lenny, who hires Fortune to solve the case. No one except Lenny's father, Rosa's son, who has long since cut himself off from his embarrassing mother. But the detective learns tawdry secrets about various people in Rosa's life, and he follows a crooked path that leads to a group of citizens trying to free a black athlete convicted on perjured evidence. The case seems unconnected to Rosa's until Fortune uproots proof of dirty tricks buried by cynical politicos and government officials. Although he knows his life is at stake, the detective confronts the crooks, bringing the story to a smashing close.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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