Posts Tagged ‘Do No Harm’

Spillane Giveaway, Bundle Sex & Errors, and Good Reviews!

Tuesday, January 31st, 2023

Yes, it’s another book giveaway!

This time it’s Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by James Traylor and me (published by Mysterious Press). I have ten copies available – eight hardcovers and two trade paperback-style Advance Reading Copies. [All copies have been claimed. Thank you!–Nate]

Is it worth reading?

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal thinks:

Mickey Spillane, in the role of his creation Mike Hammer, on the set of “The Girl Hunters” (1963) with co-star Shirley Eaton.
Mickey Spillane, in the role of his creation Mike Hammer, on the set of “The Girl Hunters” (1963) with co-star Shirley Eaton.
PHOTO: POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
‘Spillane’ Review: He Nailed Mike Hammer
By Michael Saler

Mickey Spillane knew how to make crime pay, and he transformed the American publishing industry in the process. Between 1947 and 1952, his first six novels featuring private investigator Mike Hammer, a sadist with a heart of gold, sold millions of copies in paperback—bringing legitimacy to the fledgling format. Spillane’s global sales now exceed 200 million.

His recipe for success appeared simple. Mix racy innuendo (“She was oozing out of a bikini suit like toothpaste out of a tube”) with graphic violence (“I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone”); season with stereotypes and vivid prose; knead these raw materials into a propulsive plot pitting good versus evil. Et voilà: “The chewing gum of American literature,” as Spillane cheerfully admitted. Many critics of the time, repelled by his vigilantism and sensationalism, condemned his books as nasty, poor, brutish and not short enough. Others found that Hammer’s sincere conviction exerted a powerful spell.

Noir fans know a lot about Mike Hammer, but who was Mickey Spillane? Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor are Spillane experts who have championed the author’s works since the early 1980s. Mr. Collins, a noted crime writer, also collaborated with Spillane and has been completing drafts left by Spillane upon his death in 2006. The biographers concede their partisanship but avow they have been “hard-nosed” about their hard-boiled subject. “Spillane” is an engaging, capacious and largely celebratory account, presenting the writer, his works and their multimedia adaptations as worthy of serious consideration.

Spillane was born in 1918, the only child of a Catholic father and Protestant mother. Religion would play a significant role in his life: He became a Baptist, like his first wife Mary Ann, whom he married in 1945; in 1951 he converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. His biographers suggest that Hammer’s Old Testament, “eye-for-an-eye” justice is partly beholden to Spillane’s religious outlook. As a youth, however, Spillane may not have been devout; he loved adventure and crime fiction and claimed to have published short stories under pseudonyms soon after graduating high school. He left college after two years to join the nascent comic-book industry in New York City, honing his skills by scripting early adventures of Captain America and other crime fighters.

Spillane spent World War II stateside as a flight instructor. His biographers believe he suffered “survivor’s guilt,” which may have contributed to the macho postures he shared with Hammer. After the war he also came to loathe cities and their immoral, high-rise-residing “cliff-dwellers.” Needing money to build a house in the country, Spillane transformed an unsold comic story about “Mike Danger” into “I, the Jury” (1947), which introduced Mike Hammer as a traumatized combat veteran who relishes dispatching killers by employing their own methods. The book sold modestly in hardcover but proved a sensation in paperback, appealing especially to veterans accustomed to reading comics and “Armed Services” softcover editions during the war. Paperbacks had hitherto consisted of reprints; Spillane’s sales convinced publishers to issue original works—a sea change in the industry.

The authors find that the early Hammer novels portray a conflicted protagonist remaking his moral compass. In “One Lonely Night” (1951), Hammer searches for his own identity alongside that of the murderer. He concludes that God has fashioned him as a monster for the greater good: “I was the evil that opposed other evil, leaving the good and the meek . . . to live and inherit the earth!”

After reaching unprecedented popularity by 1952, Spillane ceased writing novels for a decade. Previous commentators assumed he was occupied with, and perhaps inhibited by, his new religion. But the authors suggest that his silence owed as much to his wealth and the distracting hobbies it permitted; he had also sold the film rights to his hero and was biding his time, waiting to reclaim them.

When Spillane returned to writing novels in 1962, with “The Girl Hunters,” his narratives were more polished but lacked the manic energy of earlier works. By this time, both Spillane and Hammer had become pop-culture touchstones. The author would portray Hammer in the 1963 film version of “The Girl Hunters,” and subsequently blurred the line between himself and his hero. Spillane divorced in 1962, marrying again in 1964. His second wife, Sherri, was half his age, a model who played the “doll” alongside Spillane’s public appearances as “the living embodiment” of Hammer. Spillane even assumed the Hammer persona for Miller Lite Beer commercials, a campaign that continued from the 1970s through the 1990s. The genial Spillane and the grim Hammer became coterminous in the public mind, leaching certain dark undercurrents from the fictional character.

“Spillane” emphasizes the gentler side of its subject, only fleetingly considering the charming writer’s crueller opinions and actions. Yet Mr. Collins does recall a frightening instance he witnessed in 1992. Spillane’s home had been burgled and the author, gesticulating with his fists, “told me vividly what he’d like to do to the thieves.” Then the squall subsided. “But I’m not like that anymore. I don’t do that now.”

The biography concludes on such grace notes. After an acrimonious divorce from Sherri, Spillane married for a final time, doting on his wife Jane and her two daughters. He continued to write bestsellers in multiple genres and attained literary honors, including a belated “Grand Master” award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1995. In language consonant with Spillane’s themes, author Donald E. Westlake saw this as “redemption” for a writer long considered a “pariah” among his peers.

Mr. Saler is a professor at the University of California, Davis.

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
* * *

Here is a lovely and insightful Big Bundle review from borg’s C.J. Bunce (that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few quibbles).

Author Max Allan Collins doesn’t let up and neither does his A-1 Private Detective Agency hero Nathan Heller. His client list is one-of-a-kind, including the likes of Clarence Darrow, Amelia Earhart, and Dashiell Hammett. After 17 novels and three collections of short stories, Heller, the “P.I. to the stars” is back in The Big Bundle, an all-new 1950s crime story from Hard Case Crime, available for pre-order now here at Amazon. The first of two historical crime novels from Collins tying in a fictionalized version of Robert F. Kennedy, the story brings together again that classic 1950s triangle: RFK’s Congressional racketeering committee efforts, Jimmy Hoffa’s role in the labor movement and his questionable cohorts, and the antics of low-and mid-level members of the Mafia. But that’s really only the background for a real-life kidnapping that took place in Kansas City in 1953, and Heller, once handpicked by Lindbergh to find the villains in the case of his own missing son, is brought into another similar, gut-wrenching case. His first client was Al Capone. Frank Nitti was his father figure. His best friend was Eliot Ness. But that’s in the past when Nate Heller’s next story begins.
Collins and his well-dressed hero are in prime form–this is one of those Collins novels that one-ups his own famous Road to Perdition, blending in some nasty villains straight out of Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn. His expert storytelling investigates whether or not bad guys have a code, and how much they’ll stick to that code when big money is at stake. Heller comes across bad cops, cops that are just bad at being cops, street thugs, minor and major mobsters, organized labor leaders, politicians, and just plain evil people with no soul. They all say the same thing: “I’d never touch that kind of blood money.” So who is lying and who is telling the truth?

The real-life facts are on the record, but if you believe an event 70 years ago can remotely be a spoiler to talk about, move along and come back after you’ve read the novel, but just note that the story isn’t the reason to read the novel–it’s Collins’ storytelling.

Keeping with his four-decade-long series, Heller sounds like a real person, but he’s not. Heller is Collins’ fictional private detective who has clients of every ilk, but notably each novel features Heller’s exploits with a famous celebrity or historical event–Heller this time has many clients, often with conflicting agendas. In The Big Bundle that includes RFK, Hoffa, and Kansas City multi-millionaire Robert Greenlease, Sr. It’s Greenlease whose six-year-old son Bobby was walked out of a Catholic school by a woman pretending to be his aunt, never to be seen again, as part of an infamous, nationally-reported kidnapping in 1953. A drug-addicted and alcoholic couple from St. Joseph, Missouri–a “Bonnie and Carl,” Bonnie Heady and Carl Hall–were sent to the gas chamber for their crimes, Heady notably as only the third woman ever killed by the federal government, following Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt and the convicted spy Ethel Rosenberg.

Greenlease, a wealthy Cadillac dealer, paid $600,000 to the kidnappers, the largest ransom ever paid at the time. Only $288,000 of the ransom was recovered by authorities. Collins breaks the story into what reads like two separate books. The first covers Heller as one of the shadowy figures that was brought in (as happened in real life) to help sleuth out the kidnappers and hopefully save the boy in time. The second follows Heller as he’s tapped by multiple factions to leverage his underworld relationships–many via characters introduced by Collins in his previous twenty-plus stories.

Collins makes a good effort upfront and in an afterword to make it clear how the events have been altered for storytelling purposes. Heller is an interesting storytelling device, a bit of a time traveler that didn’t exist that is thrust into these historical events as our tour guide. It works, but Heller’s voice may strike fans of Collins’ other voices, like Mike Hammer (who he shares with Mickey Spillane), Quarry, and Nolan, as the furthest away in style and manner. Without reading his past exploits it’s not clear why Heller can afford to be so confident. He strides into situations where others are getting killed for doing much less, and yet he walks out clean–like a protagonist in a slasher film.

The Big Bundle is a noir crime novel, so Collins splices in his dark hero getting a piece of the physical action, like getting beat-up by thugs, and also with the femme fatale/good-bad girl types, including a few sex scenes that seem a little too steamy for a plot about a real-life child kidnapping. But that may just be a matter of personal taste.

Collins’ use of real people gives this novel a cinematic feel in the vein of Oliver Stone, especially his JFK, and David Mamet’s Hoffa. The story shuffles back and forth from the real and fictional somewhat better than in the recent movie based on real facts, Amsterdam. Readers who are fans of The Untouchables will find the setting familiar, and St. Louis and Kansas City is a great undertapped (and the real-life) 1950s venue for a major work like this. Collins’ exhaustive research into the nooks and crannies of every bar, diner, and seedy hotel is evident. The approach reminded me at times of former Kansas City Star reporter Giles Fowler’s non-fiction work Deaths on Pleasant Street. It also plays out like another D.B. Cooper rabbit hole for federal investigators.

Paul Mann creates a very good spin on Heller as he might have been portrayed by Robert Lansing for his painted cover art.

The Big Bundle should land as a major work for Collins, and that’s saying a lot for someone who is so prolific. It’s prime for a movie, complete with a dozen odd characters to be filled by your favorite character actors. This is a must for all noir crime readers, fans of Collins and his detective Heller (especially his 1991 novel Stolen Away), 20th century crime stories found in the movie The Changeling and in the books In Cold Blood, Union Station, and A Bloody Business. Pre-order The Big Bundle in hardcover now in its first-ever publication here at Amazon, scheduled for arrival next Tuesday, January 24, 2023.

Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

You could hardly dream of a better review than this, and seldom have I seen Heller analyzed better. Here’s where I take slight issue. (In addition to disliking David Mamet’s work and walking out of Amsterdam.)

This very generous reviewer expresses that now standard modern-day complaint about “steamy sex scenes.” The current attitude toward sexual content in tough mysteries is something I understand but don’t tolerate. I grew up reading books that were supposed to be racy and then the sex scenes always petered out (excuse the expression). During my college years, when I developed as a writer, the creative atmosphere was impacted by the sexual revolution – pubic hair in Playboy, Deep Throat playing at respectable theaters, soft-core sex scenes in mainstream movies. The idea of heterosexual men objecting to sexual content still bewilders me. When Heller and Hammer and Quarry (who are men of their time) notice the physicality of a woman, they are admiring them, not objectifying them, though admittedly sizing them up; and if men today tell you they do not notice a woman’s pretty face or shapely form, they are either lying or nuts.

In The Big Bundle, a real-life prostitute figures. In part one she tries to seduce Heller, who sends her packing, as he is depressed as hell about this kidnapping (he has a six-year-old son himself). Five years later, he does succumb in a very character-driven sex scene that to me isn’t terribly sexy.

There was very little sexual fun-and-games-type content in the previous Heller, Do No Harm, because neither Heller nor I were comfortable, due to the sex-crime aspect of the murder.

This reviewer rightly says, “It’s a matter of taste,” and I agree. But what in art isn’t?

Heller is indeed a device, a window through which to look at these crimes and mysteries. I try to make Heller as real as I can, and frankly think he’s far more real than most fictional private eyes, despite the historical baggage I make him lug around. When he gets the shit beat out of him, he bleeds and has to recover. He’s been known to fart. One well-known private eye writer criticized me for having Heller take a bribe; another for Heller using a condom. Part of what I was up to with Nate Heller was to make him, on some level, a real guy – which is why he starts out sleeping in his office and works his way up to a coast-to-coast operation. Which is why he marries (more than once) and has a son he loves very much.

In the first Heller, True Detective (1983), I set out to have my detective break every one of Raymond Chandler’s “Down These Mean Streets” rules. And Heller did that very thing, including deflowering a virgin.

I in no way mean to beat up on this reviewer, who did a splendid job; he actually understands what I’m up against, and I am very grateful for a writer this perceptive taking a look at my work. And a good critic, like this one, can see things, perceive things, in fiction writers’ work that the they might well miss, being too close to the material to detect the not necessarily obvious.

I have been accused, properly I think, accurately I’m afraid, of being thin-skinned. Just this week a longtime Heller reader, and a former bookshop proprietor, wrote a lengthy e-mail and sent it to me and to my editor/publisher about some errors in The Big Bundle.

Now, if you’re a regular reader of mine you may recall that in my bibliographic afterword I always state: “Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, some liberties have been taken with the facts, and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, mitigated by the limitations of conflicting source material.”

I responded to this reader in a manner that I think was polite and even friendly, answering each of the reader’s points individually. About half of them had to do with a small town that is mentioned but does not figure in the narrative in a major way. Another cited error was a possible numerical typo, but the rest I just didn’t agree with – for example, the FBI couldn’t know a state line had been crossed until they captured the perps and knew that those perps had in fact crossed a state line.

This reader grew up in the area where the book is set, and of course I did not grow up in the twenty-plus areas where Heller’s novels and short stories take place. From my point of view, this individual was lording it over me for not knowing things he did, as a local resident (as opposed to my book and Internet research).

I don’t think my irritation was obvious in my response, although I would have preferred he would have written me and not ratted me out to my editor/publisher. His response was lengthy and indignant, letting me know he was no longer a fan and would get rid of all my books in his collection, now that he had discovered that he couldn’t trust the details in my books.

As it happens, I dug deeper into the “errors” – about half of them I still do not consider errors. But I learned, after some effort, that there were two small towns, in Missouri and Kansas respectively, that shared the same name. That’s where the confusion came from, and my letter-writer didn’t seem to know that, either…or at least didn’t make that clear. The numerical address that he pointed out to me turned up in two ways in my research, and I have corrected that – and the small-town confusion – for the paperback edition. It shouldn’t cause you any problems reading the hardcover edition. This is minor stuff, but I still like to have it correct.

Look. I know readers just want to be helpful, in pointing our errors, and they are in fact being helpful when they do. I have made corrections in subsequent editions any number of times. But acting like you found a prize in the Cracker Jacks or being gleefully superior about it does not make you popular with the writer. In this case, the writer of the e-mail probably spent at most an hour on his missive, and likely much less. I spent six months writing The Big Bundle. It’s only natural I am irritated when someone seems to play “Gotcha” with me.

One of the reviewers I respected most, and who was a big supporter of mine – Jon Breen, for years the regular reviewer at EQMM – always gave Heller great reviews, if necessarily brief because he was writing a column, not a single review. Yet he always found time and space to list one or two things I got wrong.

Like I said, I am probably overly guilty of being thin-skinned. In reality, I try not to believe reviews – whether good, bad or in between – and only look at them from the aspect of whether they will help sell books or not (obviously, the bad reviews are not helpful sales tools!). I wish I had a better attitude about this, but it’s doubtful I will change.

The critic who is toughest on me is me. That’s why if you point out an error in a book of mine, I react negatively, even emotionally. Because I am mad at myself for making a mistake. I hate getting the history wrong (unknowingly – sometimes, of course, I “adjust” it for the sake of a story).

Two things I would ask the likes of my ex-reader/former bookseller error spotter: try to remember that my books are fiction; and that I am human.

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Here’s a You Tube video about one reader’s Top Ten books written by me.

The Big Bundle is one of ten new books Crime Reads recommends.

CBR says Road to Perdition is one of the most faithful comic book movies.

Here’s a terrific review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction from the great Ron Fortier.

Finally, this excellent video review of the graphic novel, Road to Perdition.

M.A.C.

Everything Old Is “New” Again

Tuesday, September 27th, 2022
Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher
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Audio CD: Indiebound Purchase Link Bookshop Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link

Audio Sample:

The Dark City
The Dark City, 1987 Bantam Paperback

Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life Blu-Ray
Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life
2007 Blu-Ray, VCI

A new book is out about Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher. I’m not going to share the name or much information about that book with you, because the book you should be buying and reading is the 600-page Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by A. Brad Schwartz and me, available now in a handsome and inexpensive ($15.49) trade paperback.

This other Ness/Butcher book (350 pages) is about as redundant and unnecessary a volume as I can imagine. But history is fair game, true crime included, and it’s not like this hasn’t happened to me before.

My theories developed about various unsolved or controversially solved crimes in my Nathan Heller novels have paved the way for non-fiction writers who didn’t have to (and didn’t) credit me, since I had merely written a novel. That those novels are crammed with research, often aided by George Hagenauer and done on site and in libraries and raiding old bookstores at much time and expense, didn’t matter a whit.

My novel Butcher’s Dozen, published in 1988, was the first book-length look at Ness and the Mad Butcher case, and George and I did much on site research about the case, and at Case Western Reserve Library found the massive Ness scrapbooks that hadn’t been seen since 1961 when Oscar Fraley wrote Four Against the Mob about Ness in Cleveland, the only book about Ness in Cleveland prior to my The Dark City in 1987. Since then have come any number of books about the case, including a graphic novel by a guy who used to write fannishly to the letter column of Ms. Tree (where Butcher’s Dozen was announced, advertised and discussed); there have also been scads of movies announced but never made.

Fair game, all of it. Dirty pool, at times, but within the rules.

And I am not here to cry plagiarism against the author of this new Ness/Butcher book. Maybe to cry “foul” a little. Here’s why. As part of the promotion of the book, the Smithsonian announced the author’s appearance for an event called “Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life,” featuring an actor playing Ness (as well as the author).

Some of you may know that I wrote a play that I adapted into a 2005 film for Iowa PBS of that very name – a one-man show with the late Michael Cornelison as Ness. I wrote the Smithsonian and complained. The author wrote me an e-mail saying the title hadn’t been his idea, and that he really admired my work very much. But he assured me that his September 2022 book had not been influenced by the Collins/Schwartz August 2020 book because, after all, he had concluded his research in 2019.

Uh, right.

The author claimed to have great respect for me, but the only book about Ness of mine that is (minorly) referenced in his new book is the Collins/Schwartz Scarface and the Untouchable (2018). There is a vague reference by this self-professed longtime Ness buff in the new book’s prologue (without mention of my name) to my Ness/Batman graphic novel, Scar of the Bat. No mention of Ness being a character in True Detective and subsequent Nate Heller novels. No mention of the four Eliot Ness in Cleveland novels, which have often been prominently mentioned in lectures and in print by Cleveland’s predominant Ness expert, Rebecca McFarland. And of course no mention of either An Untouchable Life or Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher.

It’s a tad hard to imagine that an Eliot Ness buff would never have heard of me or my pioneering research efforts (initially with George Hagenauer and later with Brad Schwartz, the latter the major Ness expert on the planet).

And it’s been frustrating to see friends and friendly acquaintances of mine extolling the virtues of this competitive book with no mention (or possibly awareness) of our book. The MWA Edgar committees did not acknowledge either of our massive, and frankly ground-breaking books, but the author of this new Ness/Butcher book seems a shoo-in, as he’s won before. That howl of anguish you will hear, should this author be nominated or win, will (I assure) you have emanated from Iowa (and Princeton).

When we queried the publisher (also the publisher of four Nate Heller novels, the most recent, Do No Harm, featuring Ness prominently…in Cleveland!) with questions about research material from our book that seemed to have made its way into this new one, we were assured that the author simply used the same sources we had. We were unable to confirm that, but we have been assured that future editions of this rival book will have some mention of ours, perhaps in a “recommended further reading” manner.

We appreciate that.

We don’t intend to take this any further. But if you are thinking about reading – or recommending – a book on this subject, please consider doing what the author of this new Ness/Butcher book doesn’t do: mention Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz.

[UPDATE to this week’s UPDATE written 9/25/’22:] In the Smithsonian event last night (9/26/’22), the author of the Ness/Butcher book did, if belatedly, acknowledge the two Collins/Shwartz Ness non-fiction books, giving them a full screen to themselves. He also listed me as one of “many” who have written Ness novels. That I was the first was not mentioned, nor was my role in rediscovering the Ness scrapbooks. Nor was the one-man show/feature presentation, Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life. But it’s a start.

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On a happier note, I’d like to share a wonderful (starred!) review from Publisher’s Weekly of the forthcoming new Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle due out Dec. 6.

The Big Bundle: A Nathan Heller Novel

Max Allan Collins. Hard Case Crime, $22.99 (304p) ISBN 978-1-78909-852-5

In MWA Grand Master Collins’s superb 18th Nathan Heller novel, (after 2020’s Do No Harm), the PI crosses paths with Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa. It’s 1953 in Kansas City, Mo., when millionaire Robert Greenlease retains Heller’s services after his six-year-old son, Bobby, is kidnapped and ransomed for $600,000. Greenlease makes the payment, but the kidnappers delay returning the child. Heller uses his underworld contacts to try to get a lead on Bobby’s whereabouts by attempting to trace the marked bills used for the payoff, though he fears that the boy is already dead. Flash forward to 1958. Heller is working both for Hoffa, the corrupt Teamsters leader, and Kennedy, then chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee, who’s looking to nail Hoffa. With half of the ransom never accounted for, Kennedy hopes Heller can help him prove it ended up in the Teamsters Pension Fund. Heller’s search for the money and the truth behind Bobby’s abduction proves perilous. Collins again artfully uses a real-life crime, one now obscure but headline-making in the 1950s, as the springboard for a crackerjack plot. This is another standout in a consistently good series.

And I have to share this nifty Big Bundle review from the great Ron Fortier, whose “Pulp Fiction Reviews” column is always a fun, informative read.

THE BIG BUNDLE
by Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crimes
Arriving Dec 6th 2022
295 pgs

This is the 20th in the Nate Heller historical crime series by Collins. If you are unfamiliar with them, the conceit is simple enough. Collins, either working alone, or with other collaborators, researches an actual American crime and then drops his fictional private eye into the tale as either an investigator or actual participant in the events. In this case, he becomes both. The story revolves around the 1953 kidnapping of young Bobby Greenlease of Kansas City. The six year old was the son of Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr, a multi-millionaire auto dealer. His kidnappers were paid a ransom of $60,000, the largest ever paid out in American history at that time.

Collins splits the book in two parts. The first has Heller hired by Greenlease Sr. to help find the kidnappers and rescue his son. We’ve always admired Collin’s ability to empathize with his characters and that is never more evidenced than here. Believing the boy is already dead, after finding Hall, Heller’s emotional restraint is nothing short of painful as his desire to blow away the scumbag killer is kept in check with having to learn the truth. His portrayal of Carl Hall is both deft and creepy at the same time.

At the time of the couples’ eventual arrest, only half the money was recovered. Five years later the mystery remains as to where it went and who ended up with it. Reporters and police investigators suggested the funds had been laundered through organized crime and ended up in Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters Union Fund. Thus Greenlease Sr. once again hires Heller; this time to find out where it went. Not because he needs the money, but is sickened by the thought that unknown lowlifes profited from his son’s abduction. Like his previous Heller books, Collins skillfully weaves his protagonist through the documented historical facts having him cross paths with such players Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy.

“The Big Bundle” is classic Max Collins, that alone should have you pre-ordering it. Of all his Heller novels to date, this one will leave you feeling as if you’d been sucker punched. Since the Garden of Eden, evil has existed in our world. In 1953, it reared its head tragically.

A final note. We rarely mention of the covers of books we review. Hard Case Crime is one of the few publishers out there that always delivers stunning paintings reminiscent of the early 50s paperbacks. Paul Mann does the honors on this title offering up a Nate Heller who looks a whole lot like the late actor Robert Lansing. What we’d call brilliant casting, Mr. Mann.

And the love fest continues with this great Library Journal review of the about-to-be-published (Oct. 4) new Barbara Allan novel, Antiques Liquidation.

Antiques Liquidation Cover
Antiques Liquidation
by Barbara Allan
Severn House.
(A Trash ’n’ Treasures Mystery, Bk. 16).
Oct. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780727850911. $29.99.

Brandy once again finds herself an unwilling partner to her septuagenarian mother’s antiques subterfuge in Allan’s 16th “Trash ’N’ Treasures” mystery (following Antiques Carry On). Awoken early in the morning by Vivian for a shady antiques shopping trip, Brandy is prepared for something to go wrong. With a little blackmail, Vivian has secured access to the auction goods before the auction happens. She has her choice of deadstock, and after an encounter with the police, is able to take it safely home. However, murder is never far behind where Brandy and Vivian are involved, and the auctioneer soon turns up dead. Vivian adds her own interpretation of events throughout the book, often to humorous effect. Readers will also find several recipes and Vivian’s tips for buying and selling antiques. Brandy’s asides about events in the previous novels will help new readers to enjoy this installment without having read the rest of the series. Fans who are returning to the series will continue to find humor in Brandy and Vivian’s relationship and will enjoy seeing favorite characters return.
VERDICT: Best for readers of cozy mysteries who enjoy small-town living, humor with a side of murder, and cute canine companions.
Reviewed by Tristan Draper, Aug 26, 2022

Our old pard Caleb York is getting a boost from Kensington, who will run price discount promotions on the York novels during October at major eBook retailers. For example, Shoot-out at Sugar Creek will be promoted with a BookBub blast on 10/8/2022 – a rootin’ tootin’ 99-cents!

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The aftermath of the presentation here in Muscatine, Iowa, on September 17 of Gary Sandy in my play, Encore for Murder (developed from a Mickey Spillane synopsis), has been gratifying. The people who saw it have approached me with praise, and others with regret that they didn’t see it.

We have just started to scratch the surface of the voluminous footage we gathered on HD of the performance. Excerpts (and interview footage of Gary Sandy and the Velda and Pat Chambers actors) will be included in the new version of my 1999 Spillane documentary, in progress. And I am hopeful we will have a complete feature version of the recorded play as well. I haven’t spent much time in editing suites in recent years and can’t wait to get back in there with Phil Dingeldein and our new buddy Chad Bishop.

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Finally, Craig Zablo gives The Big Bundle a big boost here!

M.A.C.

Short Cuts

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021

I came to short stories late in my career. I had written a good number as a teenager and, in the Writers Workshop format at the University of Iowa, writing short stories was expected. But I didn’t submit anything professionally until the mid-1980s, and then almost always when I was invited. I believe the first professionally published short story was “The Strawberry Teardrop” (a Heller story) for a PWA anthology. I did allow several early things to be published in Hardboiled, back when my pal Wayne Dundee was the editor, but I don’t recall the exact time frame.

The limited number of markets discouraged me, and they still do. I tried Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine with “A Wreath for Marley,” but the editor turned it down as too long (and it’s a novella, so that’s valid) although claimed to like it. I sold a Heller story to them later – don’t recall which one – and since then, on the rare occasions I submit to EQMM, they haven’t turned anything down. This to me is a real honor. I’ve never submitted anything to Alfred Hitchcock, their sister magazine, simply because I have a good relationship with the editor at EQMM.

The response there to my submissions of Spillane/Collins short stories has been favorable – I did both “A Killer is on the Loose!” (from an unproduced Spillane radio play) and “The Big Run” (from an unproduced TV script by Mickey, done for Suspense). And now, for the first time, a Mike Hammer story appears in EQMM (the March/April 2021 issue) and the Spillane & Collins team has made the cover. [Amazon Link]

This, frankly, delights me.

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine March/April 2021

We are the issue’s Black Mask Department story, and are the lead story, which is a thrill. And here is what editor Janet Hutchings says by way of introducing “Killer’s Alley,” adapted by me from a short Hammer film script:

“Although Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer stepped onto the crime-fiction scene in 1947, just six years after EQMM was founded, he’s never appeared in our pages. As we celebrated the magazine’s 80th year, it’s high time he joined EQMM’s panoply of iconic characters.”

One of the joys of being the keeper of the Spillane literary keys is to see how warmly he is now regarded. This is, frankly, a big deal, getting the EQMM seal of approval. Folks my age (and a few of us are still kicking) know how less than warm the reception was to Mickey and his success in the early ‘50s from a lot of critics and writers who should have known better, but were seized by a fit of jealousy.

Short stories have been on my mind of late, because I’ve been dealing with going over the galley proofs of two new collections of my short fiction, Reincarnal & Other Dark Tales and the forthcoming Suspense – His and Hers: Tales of Love and Murder. The latter, due out in September, is a follow-up to Murder – His and Hers, and again collects stories written individually by Barb and me, and together.

Assembling these has not been without speed bumps. Wolfpack has been incredibly supportive, bringing out much of my remaining back list – the four Eliot Ness novels, the two Mommy novels, and Shoot the Moon, though I haven’t seen a physical copy of that yet. They will be bringing out Regeneration and Bombshell by Barb and me, stand-alone novels.

Already they have Murderlized (by Matt Clemens and me, a new collection I’ve very proud of) and the existing collections, Blue Christmas and Murder – His and Hers. Barb’s Too Many Tomcats is out, too, with an intro and a co-written story by me.

Again, there have been problems. I think Wolfpack’s covers are great, but I’ve had copy-editing problems; but editor Paul Bishop has been patient with my fussiness with both Reincarnal and Suspense – His and Hers. Not every problem can be blamed on copy editors, though. These stories span something like 37 years, and each tale is a file, sometimes going back to (ready for this?) WordStar days. So what we delivered sometimes had glitches I hadn’t caught. A typical problem was that, for a long time, editors wanted italics indicated by underlining; maybe a decade ago, they switched to wanting italics indicated by, yes, italics.

And Wolfpack had to get a bunch of my books out all at once. Reincarnal has a problem that a number of you have pointed out – the table of contents page is messed up. One story is not included and the numbering is wrong. I missed this. I frankly never thought to check the table of contents.

The nice thing about the e-book age is that we can correct things like that. So anyone ordering Reincarnal now, whether e-book or physical book, will have a corrected table of contents. The rest of you – well, what do you know? You own a collector’s item!

Seriously, though, folks – if you catch a typo in anything of mine, whichever of my publishers has put it out, let me know at macphilms@hotmail.com. We will at the very least be able to correct the e-book version.

Barb, by the way, has been a natural from the start where short stories are concerned. She grew up on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone and developed a real feel for a compact form with a twist ending. From the start she got great reviews and reactions for her stories, including getting slots in “best of the year” anthologies. For her, novel-writing was a stretch, but she has adapted beautifully. Nonetheless, her touch with the short form remains a strength – we have a story together (conceived by her) in – yes! – an upcoming issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

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Deadly Anniversaries Ebook Cover

I am pleased to share with you something from another of my favorite newsstand publications, Mystery Scene. The great Jon Breen included Do No Harm in an article about recent legal thrillers; a lovely color reproduction of the cover of this latest Heller novel accompanied it.

“Max Allan Collins’s excellent series about Zelig-like private eye Nate Heller fictionalizes major crimes of the past century. Occasionally, Heller drops in on classic trials, perhaps most notably in Damned in Paradise(1996), featuring a complexly characterized Clarence Darrow appearing for the defense in a 1932 Honolulu rape case. The latest in the series, Do No Harm (Forge), considers the murder of Marilyn Sheppard for which her husband Dr. Sam Sheppard, a Cleveland osteopath, was tried and convicted in 1954 and retried in 1966, this time with famed advocate F. Lee Bailey heading the defense. Both trails are visited in a total of about a dozen pages, the first summarized to Heller by newspaper columnist Flo Kilgore (a transparent pseudonym for Dorothy Kilgallen), the second viewed by Heller and including some well-selected quotes from Bailey’s cross-examinations. All the real people in the cast – Bailey, Kilgore/Kilgallen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Eliot Ness, and especially Sam Sheppard himself – come to life as convincing fictional characters. As usual, Collins’ concluding author’s note provides a bibliographic essay on his sources to make the fact/fiction demarcation clear.”

Getting back to short fiction, a story that I consider one of my best – “Amazing Grace” – appears in the MWA anthology, Deadly Anniversaries. It’s on sale now in e-book form for under two bucks, right here.

Here is an absolutely stellar Come Spy With Me review at Bookgasm.

Here’s a mixed but smart review, mostly favorable, of Skim Deep. But for the last effin time, it’s Nolan, not Frank Nolan. He has never been Frank Nolan. Stop it already.

Finally, here’s a nice if belated (but appreciated) UK review of Girl Most Likely.

M.A.C.

52 Cards and a Joker

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020

Today, as I write this (June 1, 2020), is the 52nd wedding anniversary of Max Allan Collins and Barbara Jane Mull, aka Al and Barb Collins, aka Barbara Allan.

Fifty-two cards in the deck and one joker.

We are celebrating almost not at all, as we continue to shelter in place. Our splurge is a bottle of champagne, some wine-cheese spread, and crackers. This evening we plan to watch The Billion-Dollar Brain (a film we saw together on its initial release) as the third entry in our Michael Caine as Harry Palmer Blu-ray festival, having watched The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin on the preceding two evenings.

In recent years we’ve spent our anniversary in Galena, Illinois, at the Irish Cottage hotel, with two days of dining and shopping and doing touristy stuff. It’s something we enjoy very much and hope to do again one day. But going on such an excursion before there’s a Covid-19 vaccine is highly doubtful.

I try to stay away from politics here, though it does creep in. Forgive me, but it’s going to be unavoidable today.

You see, fifty-two years ago was 1968. Barb and I went to Chicago on our honeymoon. We ate at George Diamond’s and Augustino’s, restaurants that would eventually find their way into Nate Heller novels. We saw a bunch of movies, including (if memory serves and it often doesn’t) 2001: A Space Odyssey and a re-release of Gone With the Wind. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry. I also somehow got Barb to accompany me to countless old bookstores, all around the city, looking for the two Richard Stark “Parker” books I lacked, one of which was The Mourner. Not sure what the other one was. All I know for sure is I probably endangered our lives.

At the tail end of the honeymoon, we watched in our room at the Bismarck Hotel the coverage of the murder of Bobby Kennedy. We were both Bobby supporters and it hit us hard. The rest of the trip had been so much fun that even this tragedy wasn’t enough to taint the experience. But it was certainly a strange, haunting way to complete it.

But the year itself brings so much to mind. Barb was working fulltime at the First National Bank, where she would rise to an officer’s position. I was playing in the Daybreakers – our record “Psychedelic Siren” came out early in 1968 and we did many gigs promoting it – and starting at the University of Iowa where Richard Yates became my mentor at the Writers Workshop. I had several hard years of rejection slips ahead, but would sell both Bait Money and No Cure For Death before graduating with my MFA.

That lay ahead. In 1968 assassinations and racial turmoil and general political turbulence had the country by the throat. June 1, 2020, seems uncomfortably familiar. We seem to have made precious little progress, and it’s disheartening.

The only good thing about this familiarity is the woman I’m married to, who remains lovely in just about every way imaginable.

I never dreamed another time as troubling as the one we lived through would come around for Barb and me to experience. I am hopeful, guardedly, that things will change in November. That the cruelty and stupidity around us lessens, and that the partisan divide decreases in intensity. That the absurdity of white supremacy and racial prejudice can finally be overcome. And that Americans, politicians included, will learn the lesson that a pandemic is not red versus blue. That a virus doesn’t give a good goddamn who you voted for.

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The excellent book review podcast, The Inside Flap, has nice things to say about Girl Can’t Help It and includes a long interview with me on that novel and on Nate Heller, as well as excursions into Dick Tracy, Nolan and the Antiques series. The Girl/MAC stuff starts at the 24-minute point.

Jerry’s House of Everything is a wonderful blog by Jerry House, who has been a big booster of my work. As a generous postscript to a look at the IAMTW, the organization for writers of tie-ins that Lee Goldberg and I founded, he has written a very nice piece on Girl Can’t Help It, with You Tube links to performances by the Daybreakers, Crusin’ and Seduction of the Innocent.

I’m taking the liberty of reprinting the Girl Can’t Help It review here.

MAC ‘n’ Roll: Mention of Max Allan Collins above allows me to segue ever so briefly to one of his latest novels, Girl Can’t Help It, the second in his series about Galena, Iowa, sheriff Krista Larson (a highly recommended book; pick it up now!). {I’ve made no secret that I am a Max Allan Collins fan-boy; well, fan-geezer, really.) In addition to having a number of best-selling and award-winning series, Collins has had a long career as a comic strip/book writer (Dick Tracy, Batman, Road to Perdition), tie-in writer (CSI, Bones, Saving Private Ryan), film writer/director (Mommy, Mommy’s Day, Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life), and cultural historian (The History of Mystery, Men’s Adventure Magazines, For the Boys: The Racy Pin-Ups of World War II). Collins has also authored trading card sets, video games, mystery jigsaw puzzles, and Lord knows what else. If all this wasn’t enough, he has also been a professional rock and roll musician since 1966. His bands the Daybreakers and Crusin’ have both been inducted into the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. He also was part of a “comic con band,” Seduction of the Innocent, with actors Bill Mumy and Miguel Ferrer, comics artist Steve Leialoha, and comics fan John Christensen.

Girl Can’t Help It is the first novel by Collins that made use of his rock and roll background. Regional band Hot Rod & the Pistons is inducted into the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and murder begins striking the band members. It’s a well-crafted mystery that seamlessly blends a lot of that state’s rock and roll history — something I was not fully aware of until now.

Here’s some of Collins’ music, beginning with the Daybreakers’ regional hit “Psychedelic Siren”:

And here’s 60’s retro band Crusin’ playing “Incense and Peppermints” at the St. Louis Bouchercon:

And here’s Seduction of the Innocent doing a set at the 1988 San Diego Comic Con:

For those of you who’d like to read Jerry’s piece on the International Association of Media and Tie-in Writers, it’s right here.

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Yet another of these movies-you-didn’t-know-were-based-on-comic-books articles features Road to Perdition.

Finally, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop blog has a nice write-up by “JB” on Do No Harm. The reviewer, like several others looking at this novel, suggests I leave certain things unresolved that the novel really does clarify at least in terms of what happens in Heller’s world. I think the problem (and this is on me) is that part of what I wanted to do was examine every major theory about what happened in the Sam Sheppard case, and that seems to have muddied the waters for some readers. This is a long blog entry about a lot of things, so you may want to scroll down till you come to the Do No Harm cover image.

M.A.C.