True Noir for Christmas! Also Quarry News

December 17th, 2024 by Max Allan Collins

Do you know what you want for Christmas?

In case you’re confused, go to truenoir.co and order True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak right now – the First Act (episodes 1, 2 and 3) drops on December 20! In fact, go there and buy True Noir even if you aren’t confused.

True Noir banner

For those of you who’ve been with me for years – some since the publication of True Detective (the specific source of True Noir) – will understand how thrilled I am to have Nate Heller, beautifully portrayed by Michael Rosenbaum of Smallville fame, brought to life in Robert Meyer Burnett’s incredible nearly seven-hour immersive audio drama from my nearly 400-page script.

(Has anyone besides me noticed that actors who play Superman and Lex Luther respectively – Tyler Hoechlin and Michael Rosenbaum – have appeared in M.A.C. productions?)

It’s been quite a trip returning to this novel to adapt it after so many years. True Detective was written in 1981 and ‘82, published in 1983, and won the Best Private Eye Novel “Shamus” award in 1984, presented by the Private Eye Writers of America. It represented several years of research by myself and my research associate George Hagenauer. And I think it’s fair to say that True Detective is the novel most important in (and to) my career.

What? You think that’s Road to Perdition? Well, Road to Perdition is a spin-off of the Nathan Heller novels, particularly the first two (True Crime being the other one). I was asked by DC Comics in early 1994 if I’d develop a series essentially in the Nate Heller universe but new, something that would be specifically for DC. That’s what Road to Perdition came to be. It required some fancy footwork in my novel Road to Purgatory to keep Nate Heller from running into Michael O’Sullivan, lemme tell ya.

Road to Perdition, of course, was the project that lifted me from the doldrums of the aftermath of my then-current firing from writing the Dick Tracy comic strip (for 15 years). Another result of reacting to that firing was a novella I wrote called “A Wreath for Marley,” which became a modest but heart-felt film in 2023 called Blue Christmas. You can buy it on Blu-ray or DVD in time for Christmas right now from Amazon and a bunch of other places, including Diabolik and Hamilton Books – it’s on sale for about eighteen bucks (and you can rent it on Amazon Prime for under two bucks).

And if you saw and liked Blue Christmas, don’t be shy about leaving a review at Amazon. Right now there’s only one.

Blue Christmas banner toast

Speaking of Blue Christmas, one of its two headline stars, Alisabeth Von Presley, presented her annual Christmas show at the Paramount Theater in Cedar Rapids last Friday (Dec. 13), and Barb and I were in attendance. Alisabeth, a phenomenal performer, put on a fantastic show. She’s truly a Midwestern superstar and I hope to do more movies with her (she’s also in Death By Fruitcake), if she’s interested (and if Barb lets me out of the house).

I will share a few photos here from the Von Presley Christmas show (Christmas in the Key of Pink) which will give you a sense of the spectacle she mounted for a full house at a classic old theater. Alisabeth, of course, appeared on American Idol and American Song Contest (she debuted several new songs at the show).

Christmas in the Key of Pink
Christmas in the Key of Pink
Christmas in the Key of Pink

In other news, I’ve been reminded by a number of readers that 2026 will mark fifty years of Quarry novels. Under its original title The Broker, the novel Quarry was first published in 1976. I had planned to write a Nate Heller novel in 2025 for publication in 2026, but we – editor Charles Ardai and I – have decided to do a 50th Anniversary Quarry novel to be published in 2026 (in addition to Return of the Maltese Falcon, which will appear in January 2026).

So the next Nate Heller, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, will be a 2026 project and a 2027 publication. I may go ahead and write the Heller this coming year, since at my age putting things off isn’t the best idea.

I’m just starting to noodle with the idea for this special Quarry, and I’m leaning toward another one that has him older, and nearly my age. I really did enjoy writing Quarry’s Blood and Quarry’s Return. He doesn’t seem to be any less lethal past 70.

As for making any more of my indie movies, I have two ideas (one already scripted), but it’s complicated by money matters and by Barb’s unwillingness to participate (she has grandkids to spoil). The idea of making a movie without Barb at my side is a painful one, and perhaps impractical, because she has been an indispensable part of every movie I’ve made. The “money” factor I mentioned has to do with whether Blue Christmas and Death By Fruitcake are successful enough to justify continuing on this quirky cinematic path.

A few bigger-time movie projects are perking, but frankly that kind of thing only comes to fruition rarely.

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Here’s an interesting write-up on my Mike Hammer graphic novel, The Night I Died.

And a nice look at Road to Perdition the movie.

This is a look at Paradox Press and how that now-defunct DC imprint published Road to Perdition and other noir-ish graphic novels.

Happy holidays, everyone!

M.A.C.

Reviews Discussed…and Shared!

December 10th, 2024 by Max Allan Collins

Barb and I did a book signing at Greenpoint Mercantile, as part of the annual holiday stroll here in Muscatine. Thanks to this new bookstore and to those who dropped by to chat…and to buy and chat especially.

Just around the corner, our Blue Christmas/Death by Fruitcake star Alisabeth Von Presley was doing her thing, with my film-making crony Chad Bishop at the controls.

Alisabeth is a force of nature!

Alisabeth Von Presley performing at the 2024 Muscatine holiday stroll.
Alisabeth Von Presley performing at the 2024 Muscatine holiday stroll.
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Let’s discuss reviews.

The baseline of this one-sided discussion is a truism: no two people experience a work of art the same way. A book is the author plus the reader. A film is the movie plus the audience member. A painting is the canvas plus the viewer. This, like all truisms, should be obvious. And yet people argue about whether a novel, say, is a masterpiece or stinks on ice, and every stop in between.

Several things have occurred in recent years that have frustrated any worthwhile discussion of (let’s say for the sake of argument) a novel or a feature film. Reviews used to be the domain of professional reviewers – individuals who worked for a newspaper or perhaps a radio or television station, and presumably had credentials for such work. In recent years – starting with the Internet and careening into the Social Media era – anyone, everyone, is a critic. This is democracy. But democracy is sloppy. And the end result seems to be that everything is judged, minus nuance or context, as either good or bad.

I am thinner-skinned than a professional writer should be. I will brood over a bad review – not long, but enough to make it hard to get to sleep for one night. However. My thin skin has less to do with criticism and more to do with marketing. In other words, I view a good review as something that generates sales, and a bad review as something that lessens sales. The audience, or I should say potential audience, doesn’t necessarily know the difference between an informed review and an unprofessional one.

Which is not to say informed reviews are necessarily “right” – but they are opinions that might reasonably be taken more seriously. And that is largely lost.

Anthony Boucher, probably the greatest reviewer of mystery fiction who ever lived (and a fiction writer of some skill himself), hated Mickey Spillane’s work on the initial publication and success of the Mike Hammer novels. But as the years passed, he re-evaluated Mickey, and came to (somewhat grudgingly) revise that opinion and become an advocate of Spillane as the last of the great pulp fiction writers. That indicates thought, and growth, and yes nuance, on Boucher’s part.

I distrust reviews as they pertain to my potential growth as a writer. That may seem counter-intuitive, as if I want to improve, listening to criticism makes sense. But writers of fiction must have confidence and conviction in what they are creating. Allowing a bad review to undermine you – or a good review to give you a swelled head – is not productive.

There’s an argument, and not a bad one, that if you allow yourself to believe the good reviews, you have to believe the bad ones, too. That however, it seems to me, would lead to mental whiplash or maybe the onset of a bipolar condition. A more nuanced approach would be for a writer (or filmmaker) to consider each opinion on its own merits, and while this makes sense, it can get in the way of the creative process – it leads not to creativity but to second-guessing yourself.

When my first two novels came out in January 1973, I was fairly well-known in small-town Muscatine (pop. 25,000) largely due to my father, Max Allan Collins Sr., who was the director of a national-championship men’s chorus, a beloved former high school music teacher and a choir director at the Methodist Church. If I am half the writer he was a musician, I must be pretty damn, excuse me darn, good.

So eyes were on me when I published Bait Money and Blood Money. And I expected praise. And I got some. But mostly I got dirty looks and dirtier comments because my novels were considered by local residents as, yup, dirty. Should I have taken this criticism to heart and cleaned up my act? Fuck no. Did it hurt my feelings? A bit. Surprised me, more than anything.

My attitude toward reviews, good and bad (few are in between in these black-and-white times) is, “Is there a nice quote that can be pulled from here?” Not that I am either a genius or a fraud. Bad reviews are worthless because you can’t pull a quote for promotional purposes. There was a time, when a mixed review was more common, that you could pull a quote and leave the rest behind, including negatives.

Do I ever allow myself to be seduced by a really terrific review? You bet. Briefly. Do I ever allow myself to be hurt by a really cruel review? Sure. Briefly. But mostly it’s, “That’s going to be helpful!” Or, “That’s not going to be bring some new readers in!”

None of this means that a thoughtful, well-written negative review can’t be helpful. There’s less of that these days because of the this-book-is-fantastic, this book-sucks-donkey-dick dynamic. Also, politics has started to enter in. I first noticed that when Matt Clemens and I got negative Amazon reviews from far-right readers about Supreme Justice – when the book wasn’t available yet, not even advance reviewer copies.

As absurd as that is, it does come back to the point that a book, a movie, a painting, is the artist plus the recipient. That’s especially true with a novel – with a movie, everybody sees the same narrative; they take it in differently, but it’s a shared visual experience. A novel is a movie that plays in the head of a single reader. And sometimes you play at an arthouse, sometimes the local multi-plex, and other times at the Three Mile Island Community Playhouse.

Movies are hostage to their budgets. The most money I’ve ever had to make a movie is half a million dollars. Most recently, I’ve had eight grand to make Blue Christmas and twenty-four grand to make Death By Fruitcake. Before that, Encore for Murder had zero budget – it was strictly a local production I recorded and edited (with Phil Dingeldein and Chad Bishop respectively).

And yet.

I recall back in the early ‘80s when I’d hear from Paul Reubens with a late-night phone call where we’d discuss the Pee-Wee Herman movie he was trying to get off the ground. When he got Warners Bros on board, he was concerned about budget. I told him, “The more money they give you, the more trouble you’ll have.” He said he agreed with me, but not to tell Warner’s. As it was Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure had a modest budget and a terrific unknown director and did just fine.

If a reviewer – a viewer – doesn’t have a sense of scale, of making an effort to meet a movie on its own level, the filmmaker is screwed. Last week, I shared with you a wonderful review of Blue Christmas from a professional critic whose work I admire. Getting that review, I admit, felt great.

But a day later we got a review that dismissed us as low-budget bilge. The reviewer was nobody I’d ever heard of, but I’m sure he has an audience. And I get that when you are used to seeing movies made for hundreds of millions of dollars, or for just a paltry five or ten million, an eight-thousand-buck “blockbuster” like Blue Christmas may be difficult to meet on its own terms.

But a reviewer should try. We all should meet art on its own terms (and I use the word “art” to cover a lot of ground, and perhaps “craft” would be more appropriate). Blue Christmas, a little micro-budget movie that I am pleased with, was worth making. I have been trying to get it done, in various ways, on assorted levels, since 1994. Finally, with my own clock winding down, I came up with a way to do it on a very limited budget, and now – for better or worse (and I obviously feel it’s better) – Blue Christmas exists. (It’s still available as I write this for under two bucks at Amazon Prime; and the Blu-ray release from VCI is pretty nifty, by my biased standards.)

Allow me, if you will, a sidebar about the cast of my little movie. It’s a large cast for a micro-budget production – twenty-four – and consists of professionals, semi-pros (day-job folks who appear in, for example, regional dinner theater), and community theater amateurs. I am grateful to them, every one of them. Our top-billed duo, Rob Merritt and Alisabeth Von Presley, are both well-known in this corner of the world and are film-festival award-winners for their performances in Blue Christmas.

I am pleased and proud to say that we’ve had mostly good reviews for Blue Christmas, a few of which have been raves or nearly so, outnumbering a handful of bad ones.

Now after all that, I’m going to share a really good review with you, our first, for True Noir (based on the first three episodes), the budget for which was around $250,000 and whose cast is overwhelmingly stellar. The review is written by a professional fiction writer and literary critic, by the way.

Here it is:

Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Richard Diamond, Nero Wolfe, Pat Novak, Johnny Dollar – at the height of their popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, when radio was the primary means of home entertainment in the United States, detective story serials drew tens of millions of listeners. These serialized private eye dramas, which hypnotized audiences with crackling writing, stirring voice acting, gripping plots, colorful characters, and atmospheric sound effects, were gradually relegated to silence as the art form of immersive audio storytelling went extinct–until now. Enter True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, a spellbinding sonic re-imagining of the first installment in Max Allan Collins’ most celebrated series, the Nathan Heller casebooks.

Crisply directed and impeccably edited by Robert Meyer Burnett, based on Collins’ excellent screenplay treatment of his own novel, the audio drama drops listeners into an aurally vibrant and thoroughly realized 1932 Chicago, where we follow the shady power plays of characters both fictional and historical. Michael Rosenbaum brings Nate Heller to life with a captivating blend of playful gusto and sensitivity, pulling double duty with a voiceover simultaneously dynamic and velvety. The stacked supporting cast, which includes Bill Smitrovich, David Strathairn, and Katee Sackhoff, unfailingly deliver performances that pop with nuance and flavor. Michael J. McDonald’s phenomenal sound design, which expertly suggests spatial relationships through the subtle manipulation of audio channel elements, such as floating wisps of background dialog, further orchestrates the drama’s heightened sense of reality. Ingenious transitional effects, like traveling through a telephone wire or experiencing a sensory flashback, invent a whole new vocabulary of acoustic alchemy. Alexander Bornstein’s tastefully interspersed original score, with its sultry jazz influences, smoky sax tones and melancholy piano chords, evokes the best retro-noir scores of the twentieth century, like Jerry Goldsmith’s Chinatown, John Williams’ The Long Goodbye, and John Barry’s Body Heat. We can only hope for its eventual release as a standalone presentation.

World-building is a term commonly applied to literary and visual media – but True Noir proves that with the right team at the conductor’s podium, it can be equally batoned to mesmerizing effect just through sound. In a smoky netherworld somewhere between bitter memory and bygone dream, the ambiance-drenched True Noir is the perfect marriage of our past’s most beloved tried-and-true storytelling tradition with the latest cutting-edge technologies of creative soundscaping. The play’s still the thing, and this one hits all the right notes.
—-Author & critic Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

I will add only one slight correction – I’ve never written a screenplay version of True Detective. My adaptation was based on the novel itself, and is to a degree screenplay-style.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is the author of the well-regarded 2024 novel, Equimedian.

True Noir promotional banner
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Here is a great review of the new Ms. Tree collection by Terry Beatty and me, Ms. Tree: Fallen Tree. (Scroll down a bit.)

Never heard my punk classic (let’s make that “classic”), “Psychedelic Siren”? Now’s your chance.

There’s some interesting stuff about Road to Perdition as a graphic novel that inspired a big-time Hollywood movie right here.

Never mind what I said above about reviews – this one from Paperback Warrior about the current Quarry’s Return is a honey! Exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

M.A.C.

My Bestsellers, A Great Blue Christmas Review, and Quarry

December 3rd, 2024 by Max Allan Collins

You may not know what my bestselling books actually are. And I don’t know for sure that these three novels have outsold everything else I’ve done – various editions of Road to Perdition for example – but they continue to sell and generate income.

They are on sale right now.

Supreme Justice cover
E-Book:
Executive Order cover
E-Book:
Fate of the Union cover
E-Book:

Supreme Justice, Fate of the Union and Executive Order will be $2.99 each starting 12/1/2024 and running through 12/31/2024. These are e-books not physical publications. (The physical editions are nice, just not on sale.)

The novels, the last of which was published in 2017, have some interesting themes, considering what has transpired in America since.

Supreme Justice dealt with a Conservative-stacked Supreme Court; Fate of the Union was about a multi-millionaire who runs for president and tries to overthrow the government; and Executive Order concerns a coup by the Secret Service to replace the President.

My co-author Matt Clemens and I have pitched several further Reeder-and-Rogers novels with Thomas & Mercer and have gotten nowhere, despite the strong sales of this (what now appears to be a) trilogy. As tumultuous as the politics are right now, Matt and I actually feel a little relieved not to be adding to the Reeder and Rogers canon. They take place somewhat in the future – not enough to be viewed as science-fiction certainly – and despite what some have posted on Amazon reviewing pages, the books do not take a political stand, at least not overtly. The politics of the two main characters are not the same, for one thing.

I mention all this because (a) you might have been unaware of them and that they are among my bestselling novels, and (b) they are on sale right now.

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Blue Christmas banner

You’re going to have to put up with me talking about Blue Christmas for the next few weeks, since we need to encourage you to buy it on physical media or stream it on Amazon Prime (and a couple of other places) before Christmas 2024 is in the rear-view mirror. I encourage you to use Diabolik, but you can get it from Amazon, obviously. Don’t pay more than around twenty bucks, despite its official price of thirty or so.

We had hoped to do a few more Iowa advanced screenings of Death by Fruitcake, but that hasn’t jelled. We have not been helped by how late Thanksgiving came this year, and how suddenly we’re in December already.

I made a calculation that following Blue Christmas up with a second Christmas movie was the smart thing to do. I still think it was – particularly since the two movies are very different – but it made dealing with a limited theatrical release in our native Iowa become problematic. We did do very well with our Death by Fruitcake advanced screening in our native Muscatine, selling out the houses on the two nights we premiered the production.

We spent a little more money, and took a little more time, on Death By Fruitcake than we did Blue Christmas. I think it represents a step up. But I am grateful to the reviewers and, well, viewers who have been gracious about the micro-budget nature of Blue Christmas.

To all of you who have posted glowing reviews, positive Facebook posts and nice e-mails about our modest little effort, thank you so much…and merry Christmas.

One of the best reviews we’ve received is from the well-respected Douglas Pratt at his DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter.

Have a Blue Christmas!

We hate to spoil it, but it happens in the first few minutes anyway and it is just the very beginning of the film’s inspirations when you hear that the name of the grumpy detective’s dead partner, at the start of the VCI Entertainment MVDvisual Blu-ray, Blue Christmas), is ‘Jake Marley.’ It is 1942, and Marley was killed a year ago, of course, on Christmas Day. What happens when you take A Christmas Carol and cross it with The Maltese Falcon? Well, with a good-sized cast and the creative inspiration already in place, you get the most perfect community theater property to show up this side of Mamma Mia! That is how the very low budget film plays, but its imagination and wit are so compelling, and the Dickensian emotional hooks are so effectively preserved, that it can do no wrong. Written and directed by Max Allan Collins, Rob Merritt stars as a 4F detective who is running a reasonably successful detective agency in Chicago, even though he’s chintzy with his staff and blows off requests for charity. He falls asleep at his desk that night, and the visitors start coming, the first of which is his former partner, who needs him to find the killer. Everything else in the 79-minute feature is such a joy to discover, we will leave it to you with glad tidings.

The entire film was shot on a single set, mostly as the detective’s office, but redressed slightly for a few flashback scenes and the like. The one quibble we would have is that the film, shot on HD, is presented in widescreen format with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. It is very clear in scene after scene that there is not enough decoration to support the framing and that blocking the movie in a squared, full screen image would not only have given it greater production value, but would have better captured the Forties tone the film otherwise so lovingly conveys. Nevertheless, the colors are bright and sharp, and the endless string of instrumental Christmas tunes playing on the soundtrack are well served by the modest dimensionality of the stereo sound. There are optional English subtitles, a trailer, an excellent 26-minute profile of the Iowa-based Collins that barely mentions his work as a film director as it focuses on his prolific writing career (nothing like the Iowa cost of living when you’re trying to get by as a writer…), and an extensive 102-minute collection of post-screening interviews with almost the full cast and crew at different locations, as they all share their eagerness for the project and the enjoyment they had putting it together. Although she only appears in one of the Q&A’s, it is worth noting that regional actress Alisabeth Von Presley is as captivating in person as she is in the memorable part she plays in the film as the specific and inspired ghost of Christmas Past. Scot Gehret, as another inspired ghost of Christmas Future, also has several crowd pleasing moments in the interviews.

Collins and producer Chad Bishop provide a decent commentary track, talking about each cast member (including how they were chosen, their working methods, their personalities and many other details), the technical choices, the adjustments when they decided to do the whole thing in one location (they shot it at a college theater in Iowa in 6 days), how the story was gestated, its previous iterations, and what their own working relationship was like.

Doug Pratt’s ability to take the production on its own (admittedly limited) terms is textbook Good Reviewing.

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I have delivered Return of the Maltese Falcon to Hard Case Crime and sister company Titan Books.

Publisher/editor Charles Ardai got back to me lightning fast, as is his habit, so the book has largely been put to bed – though not due out till January 2026. My Mike Hammer editor Andrew Sumner, at Titan, will be giving it an editorial pass soon, which will really finalize matters.

That gives me a year to be ready for what I think will be a lot of praise but possibly as many attacks. For readers of hardboiled/noir fiction – or just great American fiction – my providing a sequel to a work of this stature – takes a good deal of nerve…and maybe reckless abandon.

But I’m something of an old hand at taking over for my heroes – scripting Dick Tracy for fifteen years, completing Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer over a period of seventeen years. It’s done out of love and respect, I assure you. And I consider it an incredible privilege to walk in such shoes, despite the unlikelihood of ever really filling them.

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Quarry's Return audiobook cover
Quarry’s Return Audiobook Cover

Sample Audio:

Trade Paperback: Bookshop Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link Barnes & Noble Purchase Link
E-Book: Google Play Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Audible Purchase Link Google Play Kobo
Audiobook CD: Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link
Audiobook MP3 CD: Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link

With all the fuss over my little movies here of late, the new Quarry has gotten a bit lost in the shuffle, But we have 24 Amazon reviews currently, all five-star.

And Barb and I are listening to Stefan Rudnicki’s reading of Quarry’s Return right now, and he’s done usual terrific job – he really gets it.

In case you didn’t see it, here’s the Publisher’s Weekly review.

QUARRY’S RETURN
Max Allan Collins. Hard Case Crime, $12.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-80336-876-4
Retired hit man Quarry returns to the killing business with ruthless efficiency in the highly satisfying 17th entry in Collins’s crime series (after Quarry’s Blood). When a journalist shows up at Quarry’s door searching for his daughter, bestselling true crime author Susan Breedlove, Quarry senses trouble. Predictably, the reporter turns out to be a hired assassin, and his expert knife skills make him more than a match for the 71-year-old ex-killer. Fortunately, Quarry’s former lover Luann Lloyd, who he believed was dead, arrives in the nick of time to rescue him. But Quarry’s daughter is far from safe; evidence suggests she’s been abducted while investigating a series of cold case murders, forcing Quarry to return to Port City, Iowa, where he met Susan’s mother and left contract killing, and where Susan had been conducting research. With Luann’s help, Quarry begins his own investigation into the killings Susan was writing about, in the belief that exposing the culprit will lead him to her. The fluid narration is better than ever, and Collins brings the proceedings to an exhilarating and unexpected conclusion. Fans will hope Quarry returns again soon.
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I hope all of you had lovely Thanksgivings – we did, with a jaunt to the Amana Colonies for an incredible meal – and are dealing with the imminent arrival of Christmas.

Really comes roaring down the track this year.

M.A.C.

Being Thankful

November 26th, 2024 by Max Allan Collins

With a contentious election behind us, and an even more uncertain American future ahead, the arrival of the holiday season and those family-oriented juggernauts Thanksgiving and Christmas threaten to make not all of the noises joyful. But speaking from a strictly personal perspective, I have plenty to be thankful for, starting with my family – a smart supportive bride who was beautiful when we married in 1968 and still is, astonishingly so; and a great, talented son and a terrific daughter-in-law and two bright, funny grandkids (Sam 9, Lucy 6).

There’s more. Two Christmas movies, Blue Christmas and Death by Fruitcake, have been added to my list of indie productions I’ve mounted when I didn’t think it likely I’d ever do another project of that kind again. Barb worked on both and co-produced the second; our son Nate toiled on both as well, and grandson son made it into Blue Christmas (both Sam and Lucy are in Death by Fruitcake). As is always the case on a film, I worked with cast and crew both old and new, and my creative circle grew.

M.A.C. on set of Blue Christmas

Despite health issues, I have managed to stay not just active but prolific, if not as much so as in the past. Barb is writing her draft of our next Antiques novel, a series we began twenty years ago. Our son Nate’s career as a Japanese-to-English translator continues to flourish, though it’s hard, hard work. I’ve written a ten-part audio drama, in post-production now, True Noir (directed by new friend Robert Meyer Burnett) based on the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective, with an all-star cast, and have another Heller to write for Hard Case Crime in the coming year – the 19th I believe. I have just completed a dream project, The Return of the Maltese Falcon, for publication by HCC/Titan in January 2026, and the final Mike Hammer novel, Baby, It’s Murder, comes out from Titan the day after my March third birthday, March 4 of 2025.

Regardless of how I might feel about the macro state of America, the micro world of the Collins family reminds me of Cary Grant being sent a telegram from a news service asking him, “How old Cary Grant?” And Cary Grant responded with, “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”

At the age of 76, I face a future that remains uncertain in that inevitable certainty. But being alive (thank you, Sondheim) remains a trip I’m pleased to still be taking, and the specific life I’ve been living has largely been sweet. The bittersweet is in there, too, of course. Many of my best friends and valued collaborators are gone. But how wonderful it’s been to have them in my life. I’ve finally hung up my rock ‘n’ roll shoes, but the talented and funny people I’ve known, the gigs I’ve been able to enjoy (and sometimes endure), are something I’m delighted to have experienced.

It’s not all good, of course. Both the far right and the far left want to control my speech, in varying ways. As I have long said, where the far right and the far left meet is at a book-burning – they’re just bringing different books. I’ve been cancelled by both of ‘em at various times in my career, which starts to feel like a badge of honor.

But, hell – I’ve been able to make a living in the storytelling business. Telling lies for fun and profit, as Lawrence Block said. Doesn’t get better than that.

So you bet I’m thankful.

And a lot of that is due to those of you who drop by here regularly who have supported my life-long journey to avoid actual work.

So on this contentious year at this wonderful, difficult time of year, let me say this: let’s put the “Thanks” into Thanksgiving. Corny, I know. But as my late friend, filmmaker Steve Henke, once said of me, “Max will write something nasty but then ruin it with something sentimental at the end, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

So thank you.

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Quarry’s Return from Hard Case Crime is out right now, and a few reviews have rolled in. This is a particularly nice, smart one.

And this one’s nice, too.

Looks like the old boy has some life left in him. I started the series in the mid-1970s and against all odds it is still kicking.

Same could be said of its author.

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Speaking of reviews, scroll down and read a nice one of Blue Christmas.

And this one.

And some nice Blue Christmas coverage is here.

And how about this terrific Blue Christmas review?

We’ve received a few negative ones, anyway two that I know of – one flat-out mean, another basically dinging us for being so low-budget, a hurdle the reviewer can’t get over. He’s been served a hamburger and, damnit, he insists on steak.

I get it. Doing a micro-budget indie film is a challenge, and the result is so different from the Hollywood variety – where millions of dollars can be spent on a movie called “low-budget” – that a little production like Blue Christmas requires understanding that a budget under $10,000 isn’t going to produce Gladiator 2.

I’m a big believer in meeting art (if I may be so bold as describe what I do as “art”) on its own level. What is it trying to do, and what were the obstacles that may have had to be overcome? That said, some of you may find Blue Christmas a bridge too far, and that frustrates me but I do understand. It’s very low-budget, and the reviewers (including the positive ones) often compare us to a community theater production (not always in an unflattering way). If you can’t meet a book or movie on its own terms – or if you feel those terms are at odds with your point of view, your tastes – I understand.

To put it in perspective, we couldn’t afford licensing a version of the song “Blue Christmas” for a movie called Blue Christmas. That would have taken ten times the budget we had for the whole flick.

But I will say this. As some of you know, Blue Christmas was written to be a bigger budget movie (by “bigger” I mean half a million dollars) back in the days when we did the two Mommy movies. But we weren’t able to make that happen. Periodically over the years, I tried to mount it, including as a stage play with Iowa PBS in mind, but never could get the job done. When I had the opportunity to do a rewrite for a micro-budget version and actually produce it…actually have it exist…I couldn’t resist. And I like this version just fine, and the way it works on (basically) a single set, emphasizing the Christmas Carol-like visions of private eye Richard Stone.

I’ll remind you Blue Christmas is available on Amazon Prime for under three bucks, on Blu-ray and DVD from VCI and MVD (available at Amazon and Diabolik and elsewhere), and on a few streaming channels for free but with commercials.

Now I’ll wind up this commercial and get back to the main attraction: me wishing you and yours a happy Thanksgiving.

M.A.C.