Yes, I am going to whine a little.

We’re at the year’s end for “best of” lists and award nominations, and the best-reviewed book of my nearly 60-year career isn’t showing up. Deadly Pleasures presented its list of best novels and, despite Return of the Maltese Falcon receiving an astonishing three raves in those pages, it is conspicuous in its absence. Even the Scribes, the awards of the tie-in organization I co-founded with Lee Goldberg, ignored the book. No Edgar nom, of course. Nothin’ so far.

I have to wonder if the fact that I’m dealing with another writer’s characters and concepts ruled me out. What is clear is this: a lot of you liked it. The book has sold well and generated a contract from Hard Case Crime for two more in a trilogy following Sam Spade through the years.

So if the awards committees think that’s a faint raspberry they hear, that’s applause my readers hear echoing.

Thank you.

The 50th anniversary Quarry novel, Quarry’s Reunion, is out on Nov. 10. Both giveaways have been completed and everyone who requested a book is getting one (we’re out of copies now, however).

Heath Holland, mastermind of Cereal at Midnight on YouTube, will be interviewing me about the new book and the long-running (albeit start-and-stop) series very soon. I will announce the YouTube showing here as soon as it’s scheduled. Heath is great, not only familiar with the series but also the gent who interviewed The Last Lullaby director, Jeffrey Goodman, and me (the writer), for the December Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber. It will appear as a commentary on the disc. The only Quarry feature film to date, it’s something fans of the novels won’t want to miss – it’s based on The Last Quarry. Also it will have the Quarry short film “A Matter of Principal” in HD.

I’ll keep you posted.

I am dealing with a health situation that I will go into here at a later date, but it’s a good time to acknowledge the most important person in my life, Barbara Collins. She is smart and funny and beautiful and unfailingly supportive; my rock. Pretty damn good writer, too.

We recently made a day trip to Galena, Illinois, to celebrate being together 60 years. We won’t have been married that staggering amount of time until two more blissful years pass, but we started going together (at Muscatine Community College) in October 1966. Here’s a shot of what’s left of me and also of the incredibly well-preserved Barbara Mull at Vinnie Vanucchi’s Restaurant in Galena, our favorite getaway.

Our new book together, Antiques Web, is worth celebrating, too. Order it at Amazon in hardcover and on Kindle.

Mickey Spillane led me to James Bond.

I know, I know – Mickey Spillane seems to have led me everywhere; but he inadvertently made an Ian Fleming fan out of me.

Some of this you may have heard, but stick around.

By 1961, when I was 13, I had inhaled everything by Spillane I could lay my hands on – in particular, his six Mike Hammer novels – I, the Jury; My Gun Is Quick; Vengeance Is Mine; One Lonely Night; The Big Kill; and Kiss Me, Deadly.

Mickey’s paperback publisher, Signet, repackaged those six books again and again during the decade-long break between Hammer novels (the private eye would return in 1962 with The Girl Hunters). Covers by the top artists in the field adorned those reprints, including Barye Phillips.

At the time, Ian Fleming was hot in the UK and getting hot in America, as JFK has listed From Russia With Love (1957) as a favorite novel of his. Fleming was often called (on book jackets and in reviews) the British Spillane, and Bond the British Hammer. In years to come it would be played down, but Bond began as a UK variant on Hammer – taking advantage of the sex and violence quotient Spillane introduced, and sometimes the abrupt endings.

The Bond novels through the 1950s had bounced around American paperback publishers, never taking hold. When the character was adapted for a one-hour TV presentation, he was Americanized as (shudder) Jimmy Bond. The character was a certified flop in America for all of the decade.

But, with Spillane not writing, Signet saw the possibilities in a British Mike Hammer. They used Phillips again as the cover artist and played up the Spillane similarities and had a modest success.

Meanwhile, back in Iowa, I was reading anything that anybody said had anything to do with Mickey Spillane. If Signet Books said Bond was the Brit Bond, I was all in. I read everything they put out, which was a fairly sizeable backlog of books written through the 1950s. I really liked Fleming. He was next-best-to-Spillane.

So when the UK success of Bond, amplified by the paperback success of the Signet reprints and the JFK publicity, led to a movie being made, I was an eager beaver. It debuted in my part of the world in early May 1962 on a Wednesday night – a school night.

I was going to be there (at, I believe, the Capitol Theater).

Of course I was 14 years old and several years away from getting my hands on a car. So it was up to me to convince my parents to take me to the movies in Davenport (thirty miles away!) on a school night. How I accomplished this feat I do not recall. I know begging was involved. God knows what I agreed to do for those people. I may have even agreed to mow the lawn.

But I was there, in the audience, when an actor I didn’t remember ever seeing before said his name was, “Bond. James Bond.”

That moment was the equivalent of the Beatles on Ed Sullivan – it was really part of the same movement, where America was forced to try to be as hip as Great Britain (unsuccessfully, but still).

It’s difficult to explain to young people (which is to say people who aren’t in their seventies) what the impact of Connery’s Bond was. Nothing on TV or the movies compared before or since.

Nothing.

He simply was James Bond. He had crawled off the page even cooler. Connery would play many characters, most of them well, some of them very well; but his style as Bond was unique to the character and himself. The quiet contempt for most of humanity. The light humor in inappropriate situations. The coldness of his attack – “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”

I like Roger Moore. He was an interesting Maverick (didn’t hold a candle, though, to James Garner or even Jack Kelly) and a good Saint, but a most uneven Bond. If the script behaved, he could manage. Otherwise, what the fuck does that have to do with Ian Fleming’s James Bond?

Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan, both fine actors, play Bond well, and I love them both, but neither is Bond. Daniel Craig, the only Bond I’ve met, is fine within the bubble of his variant world. He is more an agent with the code name “James Bond” than James Bond.

Now somebody new is going to be Bond. I’ll be there if I’m on the planet. But he won’t be Bond, because there is only one Bond – Sean Connery. Put the Beatles back together with replacements for Lennon and Harrison, it’s not the Beatles. I don’t care if it’s Bob Dylan and Buddy Holly Back From The Grave. Sorry.

There would be no Lazenby/Moore/Dalton/Brosnan/Craig Bonds without Connery, because if any other actor had been cast in Dr. No, there wouldn’t have been a From Russia With Love much less a Goldfinger.

It’s always been ridiculous to me that the Bond producers have never embraced Never Say Never Again as a Bond film because, after all, it has the only James Bond in it, and he’s wonderful. Despite not being from a major studio, it held its own with the concurrent Moore title (the indefensible Octopussy). And it succeeded without many of the trappings of the Brocccoli-era Bond movies – no gun barrel opening, no James Bond theme, no music at all worth listening to.

And, brother, is that music awful. So inappropriate and disappointing. For some, it ruins Never Say Never Again. For most, it damages it.

But it’s better than the supremely disappointing Diamonds Are Forever. Some say Connery is at his worst in that, and I follow – but really it’s the material. The lyrics in Never Say Never Again are worthy of Connery – it’s the music that lets him down.

A number of fan edits have been done using John Barry music and at least one of these is worth seeking out. I do not generally endorse bootlegs, but for you physical media collectors out there, if you have purchased the Blu-ray of Never Say Never Again, you are justified in going after what is known as the EON edit. It can also be downloaded from somewhere by people smarter than me.

This edit substitutes a certain amount of Barry’s most familiar Bond music – but doesn’t overdo – and the opening titles (which are very Maurice Binder-like) are under Thunderball’s rejected “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” vocal by Shirley Bassey. Yes, Never Say Never Again is a remake of that film, but it’s significantly different, and – in this form at least – arguably better. The rest of the music is appropriate material from other Barry scores and all of it works well. Both female leads are good, a winsome Kim Bassinger and particularly luscious Barbara Carrera as Domino. This means Carrera played the femme fatale to both Bond and Mike Hammer (in I, the Jury, 1982). Domino and Charlotte! Wow.

It’s a tighter edit, too. Much less Rowan Atkinson comedy relief, deleted scenes restored and generally better pacing. Strangely, it actually improves the performances. Klaus Maria Brandauer suddenly seems one of the best Bond villains.

Amazon/MGM holds the rights to the “official” Bond series but also Never Say Never Again. They could have it re-cut and re-scored (in the Barry style) and slap on the gun barrel opening and get the Barry Bond themes in. Tighten the edit up while you’re at it. A fortune could be made and it would do nothing but promote the Bond franchise. Limited theatrical run, big-time streaming and, yes, physical media. What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you stop to pick up money in the street?

I can’t lead you to this bootleg – I can aid but not abet – but the set that I, uh, came in contact with is a doozy: three discs, the original version of Never Say Never Again on both 4K and Blu-ray, and the Eon fan-edit on a bonus disc.

And I hear the same folks have an edit of The Rock as a Bond film under way…in case you were wondering what became of the real James Bond.

M.A.C.

Tags: Antiques Series, Antiques Web, Quarry, Quarry's Reunion, Return of the Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, Trash 'n' Treasures