[4] Co-stars include Lee Remick, Jacqueline Bisset, Jack Klugman, William Windom, and Robert Duvall, with a script by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Abby Mann.

The Detective was Sinatra's fourth collaboration with director Douglas, having worked together on Young at Heart (1954), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), Tony Rome (1967), and then later Lady in Cement (1968).

New York City police detective Joe Leland is called to the home of a murder victim who has been beaten to death, head crushed, and has had his penis removed.

The case goes unnoticed until the much-younger wife of the dead man, Norma MacIver, comes to Leland's office and asks him to look into it, believing something far more complex is involved.

Roberts insists that Leland keep MacIver's confession secret to preserve the detective's professional reputation as well as the powerful interests who do not want their crimes exposed.

Roger Ebert praised his performance and the concept of the film, stating: "It is pretty clear that Sinatra wanted 'The Detective' to be as good a movie as he could manage.

"[7] Vincent Canby of The New York Times thought that the Thorp novel on which the film is based "had all the literary grace of a mile-long comic strip without pictures."

As for the movie, he wrote, "Although it makes some valid comments about contemporary society, it exploits its lurid subject matter in a show-offy, heavy-handed way designed as much to tease as to teach compassion."

[citation needed] In 1979, Roderick Thorp wrote a sequel to The Detective called Nothing Lasts Forever, in which Leland is trapped in a skyscraper after it is taken by German terrorists and must rescue his daughter and grandchildren.

[8] As Die Hard was based on the novel sequel to the film adaptation of The Detective, the studio[vague][specify] was contractually obliged to offer Sinatra the role.