The Night Runners — Michael Collins

Wallace Kern was a rich man, president and owner of his father's pharmaceutical company. His brother, William (“Bill”) Kern, was just a car salesman and disdained by his ambitious family. But then, Bill was also a compulsive gambler who went on sprees and wrote bad checks to cover his losses. In the no-holds-barred Chelsea district of 1970s New York City where private detective Dan Fortune worked, Bill Kern was known as a paperhanger. Wallace hires Fortune to drag his gambling brother back home from his latest fling. But Fortune soon discovers the truth: the brother has disappeared with the money he was supposed to use to get Wallace's son out of a Mexican jail. That's a big problem. Followed by a bigger problem: murder. Here is a gripping story of the iconic detective following the violent twists of a trail that leads him from mansions and glassy skyscraper offices to dark Manhattan rooftops where cop and killer stalk one another. You'll watch backroom card games and meet gamblers, dope-pushers, and killers �" the nightrunners �" until, finally, and worst of all for Fortune, he has to avenge a personal loss.