Now that he is on the wagon and in love, life seems to have taken a good turn for New York detective Frank Devlin, but all that changes when he is framed for the murder of a junkie.
Roderick Mayne Thorp, Jr. was an American novelist specializing mainly in crime novels.
As a young college graduate, Thorp worked at a detective agency owned by his father. He would later teach literature and lecture on creative writing at schools and universities in New Jersey and California, and also wrote articles for newspapers and magazines.
Two of his best known novels were adapted into popular films: his 1966 novel The Detective was made into a 1968 film of the same name, starring Frank Sinatra as Detective Joe Leland, and his 1979 sequel to The Detective, Nothing Lasts Forever, was filmed in 1988 as Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis. Though Die Hard was relatively faithful to Nothing Lasts Forever, it was not made as a sequel to the film version of The Detective. Two other Thorp novels, Rainbow Drive and Devlin, were adapted into TV movies.
Thorp died of a heart attack in Oxnard, California.
Frank Clancy is 51, ex-alcoholic, divorced and a New York cop. One night Jack Brennan, rich Irish socialite and presidental candidate, is found dead beside a dead young girl. Investigating the deaths, Clancy's past begins to haunt him - he was once married to Brennan's younger sister.