The Slasher — Dennis Lynds

Dan Fortune doesn't forget. Particularly, Fortune has never forgotten actress Martine Adair â€" Marty, the woman he loved, and maybe still does. Five years ago, she abruptly stopped seeing him. The next thing he knew, she'd married her Broadway director. Fortune read in the trades about the two plays she did with her new husband. That's when he accepted there was no way a private detective could ever have given her what she wanted, the money, the prestige, the theater roles. Next he heard she'd moved to Hollywood, divorced the director, and married again, this time to some kind of movie magnate. Yesterday she called from the West Coast and asked for his help, and all of it came back to him, the years together, the intensity, the sex â€" he still missed her. Marty was the woman he thought about late at night alone, the way he thought about his missing left arm. And now she needed his help. His help. Her new husband's niece is dead, the victim of a vicious serial killer the newspapers were calling the Canyon Slasher. According to the police, the niece's murder fit the psychopath's modus operandi in every detail. But Marty tells Fortune the police have it wrong, and then she says she's not the only one who thinks so. Can it be, Fortune wonders as he rides the train from New York to Los Angeles, that Marty has doubts about her new husband, about his real relationship with his niece? And is she counting on Dan's loyalty no matter what? First published in 1980, The Slasher kicked off Dan Fortune's second decade as the iconic private detective from the rapidly changing Chelsea district of New York. Hailed with rave reviews, The Slasher is also a transitional book, introducing Fortune to Southern California and to Kay Michaels, who might eventually become Fortune's greatest romantic love. Still, when the case is finished, Fortune returns home to New York and the next job.