But now the moment had come and Tony Morrison had, as expected, been sentenced to two year’s penal servitude and any minute now they would be bringing him out. A lull settled upon the scene—due process of law was, almost always, mostly a trial of patience. The women and press and other onlookers began to stir and then the police appeared, a forward party clearing the way with stern looks. Morrison, respectable in suit and tie, neat hair, a handsome young man with a future as a host of television children’s shows, came down the steps with policemen linking his arms, his head raised, saying nothing. The ladies from Save Our Sons stood stoically—the less disciplined flapped their banners slightly—as the convicted man was hurried into the waiting car and away. It was all over in a few seconds, the cameras had whirred and the people shouted and the police maintained order. Everyone had played their rightful part to ensure the public would see what they were supposed to see on the six-thirty news.

Now the girdle. “I’m sorry. I don’t need that little pussy trying you on for size.”
“Where do you get that?”
She wasn’t looking at him. Nude, she shook out the girdle and the half-slip. “You’re not naive, Joe. I saw her in the restaurant. I’m just glad she’s as big as she is, although I don’t think it would stop her.”
“Karen, I told you. Do you want me to drop the case?”
“Of course not.”
    Husband and wife discuss his newest case in Roderick Thorpe’s The Detective, which is a sheer class above the average crime thriller. The plot is terrific.
    Joe Leland runs a top New York private detective agency, and is asked by a pregnant woman to investigate the death of her homosexual husband, which slowly plunges him into the depths of top level corruption in the city. And then he discovers that he is caught up in it himself when it turns out that, back in the days when he was NYPD’s most decorated cop, the murder case that was the basis of his fame and for which the perpetrator was executed, turns out to be a wrongful conviction. Furthermore, the colleagues who verballed the guy are now his friends and are the Police Chief, the Mayor, a senator... Joe, in love with the preggers sheila, saddled with an unfaithful nymphomaniac wife, sees his whole world crumbling around him. Does he tell the truth, destroying his now powerful friends and himself? Or does he shut up about it, since all the people likely to be helped by the truth are now dead. He decides that nothing is to be gained by the truth and tells his friends so. But his corrupt friends are unable to trust him, and threaten him. In the end, his disgust at the reaction of everyone around him makes up his mind for him.
    Stylish and convincing, it’s a fine book, made into a good movie with Frank Sinatra as Leland, Jacqueline Bissett, Lee Remick as the unfortunate wife, Robert Duvall and Ralph Meeker as other cops and Horace McMahon rehearsing the Police Chief role he would soon immortalize in The Naked City, which, stylistically, imitated this movie. Roderick Thorpe went on to write the Die Hard movies, amongst other good stuff. All in all, very satisfying and considerably ahead of its time.