Working his way from the misty city of Portland, Oregon, across the United States, Victory Lance, on the trail of a kidnapper/murderer, is prepared to conform to the advice of Police Inspector Borse who tells the P.I. “Just be sure he has a cold piece in his hand when you’re finished with him.” The charismatic detective crosses the States, ventures to the other side of the Atlantic, and capers off to the Orient to steep himself in that culture.
Many romantic adventures inure to the benefit of the P.I. in his travels. The woman who pursues Victory the longest and strongest, however, captures Victory in the end, risking what his editor calls a “fatal flaw” in his work by such a cloyingly - declaration that he is a “happy man”. Oh well, you can’t tell a damn writer anything.
The Author - A native of the boot heel town of Steel, Missouri, Thomas Robbins grew up in cotton country along the Mississippi River and cannot remember having worn shoes until he entered first grade. After high school he became an infantryman and spent five and a half years in Germany. There he met and married Anneliese Hoffman, a holocaust survivor of Dachau. Their 40-year marriage, a beautiful love story, produced a family of five children. It ended after a long illness of his wife’s. During this trying time, Thomas embarked on a spiritual quest to know the “why” of the tragedy and discovered the path to truth leads up many side roads, among philosophers, and into diverse religious teachings.
After the death of his wife , Thomas spent a great deal of time working on VICTORY. As the book progressed, Thomas became obsessed with his alter ego, Victory Lance, declared that were he not Thomas Robbins, he would be Victory Lance, and thus his pen name evolved.