Fancy Anders For the Boys « Friends/Family/Fans of Max Allan Collins

Fancy Anders and the Beck/Woods Boys

Tuesday, March 14th, 2023

E-Book:

Trade Paperback:

Digital Audiobook:

Audio CD:

Fancy Anders For the Boys – the second of the three Fancy Anders novellas – is out now, available in trade paperback, e-book and on audio. Each has its advantages – the trade is an actual physical book (yay!) while the e-book includes the Fay Dalton illustrations in full color, whereas the trade paperback has black-and-white versions (the cover is obviously in color). The audio is fabulous – Barb and I have been listening to it in the car, and Skyboat has again done an exceptional job featuring sound effects, music and a wonderful Gabrielle De Cour narration. Having a skilled female narrator reading Fancy is just perfect.

Here’s where you can get the trade paperback, the e-book, and audio.

I really love these novellas, and hope one day to collect them in an oversize hardcover edition with all the Fay Dalton illos in full color…but for now this is how they exist (and will exist – we have one more to go). I intended this project to be a full-length mystery novel that would first appear as three standalone novellas (much as Dashiell Hammett did in The Dain Curse). I wrote all three during the Covid lockdown and the length of time between publication of each book reflects the time it takes Fay Dalton to do these great illustrations. Worth the wait!

A lot of love and research went into these, which were inspired to some degree by a desire to do an American variation on the Australian “Phryne Fisher” mysteries (the TV series – I’ve never read the novels). Ms. Tree began similarly, as an attempt to be the “answer” to the UK’s Modesty Blaise. Fancy is sort of a younger version of Michael Tree, definitely sharing some storytelling DNA; but she is definitely her own specific character, a spoiled rich girl with a spine. But I also have long wanted to do something that really drew upon my love for Golden Age Hollywood, and Los Angeles during World War II attracts me as a particularly rich period to write about.

In the first Fancy Anders novella, Fancy Anders Goes to War, she goes undercover at an aircraft plant as a war worker, a rivetter; in this one, she is undercover as a hostess at the Hollywood Canteen among Bette Davis and other Hollywood stars.

We only have three Amazon reviews so far, two of which are glowing, the other being rather puzzling in its negativity. After saying how great the first novella was, the reviewer complains about how short this one is – actually, it’s exactly the same length as the first book – and the reviewer complaints that Fancy manages to always be in the right place at the right time. Okay, I would suggest two things: first, any detective in a mystery who is in the wrong place at the right time isn’t going to accomplish much of anything; and just about all of the action takes place at the Hollywood Canteen, where Fancy is working undercover. Of course she’s in the right place at the right time.

Anyway, if you read (or listen to) Fancy Anders For the Boys, your Amazon review will be appreciated, unless you hate it. And Fancy Anders Goes to War is still very much available here, in trade paperback, e-book and on audio (another elaborate Skyboat production).

* * *

M.A.C. and Phil Dingeldein with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck

Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the two young filmmakers who started making films at age 11 in their native Quad Cities, made it big by writing the smash hit A Quiet Place. They have since done a terrific little horror picture, Haunt, and now have a new science-fiction thriller, 65, hitting theaters – starring Adam Driver, no less.

These are two very nice and obviously talented guys and deserve their success. Barb and I, with my filmmaking associate Phil Dingeldein and his wife Shelley, were invited by the Woods and Beck team to attend a screening of 65 on March 11 in Davenport. They were kind enough to single Phil and me out, in the audience, as having been inspirations to them. Again, these are nice guys.

The really good part is how terrific their new film is. I’ve seen it get a few bad reviews and I frankly don’t understand it, unless petty jealousy is in play (and it frequently is). It’s an exciting ride with a great heart and I don’t know what more you can ask from a movie that already is giving you space ships and dinosaurs.

Barb and I have walked out on the last two movies we attended – both the new Antman movie (and we both like Paul Rudd) and Guy Ritchie’s latest film (and we both like Ritchie) after a painful half hour of each. 65 is 90 minutes that held us every one of those minutes.

* * *

Speaking of movies, March is my birthday month and here at the Collins abode we are commemorating it with a Max Allan Collins Film Festival, which is not a festival of Max Allan Collins films, but rather his (my) favorites. Here are the presentations thus far:

1. Chinatown. Probably the greatest private eye film ever made, not even excluding Kiss Me Deadly and The Maltese Falcon.

2. The Two Jakes. The criminally underappreciated sequel to Chinatown. Looks like it’s getting some reappraisals lately.

3. Here Comes Mr. Jordan. A fantasy film I’ve loved since childhood, featuring Robert Montgomery’s greatest performance.

4. American Graffitti. The film that gave me the idea to do a ‘50s/’60s nostalgia band, which became the you-can’t-kill-it-with-a-stick Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Association inductees, Crusin’. We saw this easily ten times in the theater, pre-home video.

More to come.

* * *

Here’s a short but sweet review from The Saturday Evening Post:

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. This is the definitive biography of the incredibly popular creator of the Mike Hammer novels. Collins knew Spillane and has taken over the writing of the novels, so he knows his subject well.

Here, speaking to Paul Davis, is the late great Elmore Leonard on Mickey Spillane.

And here is Paul Davis on Mickey and the Collins/Traylor biography on Spillane.

M.A.C.

Tags: Fancy Anders, Fancy Anders For the Boys, Mickey Spillane, Movie Reviews, New Releases, Reviews, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 2 Comments »

Bundle and Spillane Reviews – And Audio!

Tuesday, February 7th, 2023

For those of you who have never tried one of the three Reeder and Rogers political thrillers, written by Matt Clemens and me, the first of the trilogy – Supreme Justice – will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, starting 2/1/2023 and running through 2/28/2023. It will be available at $2.99 during the promotion period.

This is one of my bestselling books (the trilogy has sold in the hundreds of thousands) and a novel readers mention to me all the time. But readers of Nate Heller, Quarry and Mike Hammer sometimes skip these books. I think those readers would enjoy them.

Here’s another good review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, although the reviewer questions whether I should be writing about Mickey since the Mick and I were friends. Apparently having an inside track is a bad thing….

The very smart and articulate Ed Catto has written a honey of a Big Bundle review at the Pop Culture Squad site. I will immodestly share it with you now:

The Big Bundle
By Max Allan Collins

It’s so good to start the year off with another Nate Heller thriller. Like so many in this series, this mystery is brilliant. It’s hard to believe, but about 35 years ago I stumbled across Max Allan Collins’ first story featuring Heller. I had enjoyed the Ms. Tree strip, written by Collins and illustrated by Terry Beatty and Collins’ Batman adventures (although not everyone did.)

Nate Heller is a fictional detective, a hero yet a flawed person full of many regrets, who typically gets involved with the biggest cases and personalities in the last 50 years. Collins has written stories where Heller gets involved with the gangsters who ‘created’ Las Vegas, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Marilyn Monroe’s death, Huey Long’s assassination and more. And just when you think Collins has exhausted all the good stuff, the next novel comes roaring back.

The latest historical adventure, The Big Bundle, has a lot of roar in it. This one focuses on the Greenlease kidnapping in the 50s. I didn’t know anything about this one, and I don’t know much about St. Louis’s history, despite visiting the city a couple of times. My trips there were nothing like Heller’s, though. He gets into it all in a way that turns what you thought was going to be a casual read into a “I can’t put this down” book.

These Heller books are meticulously researched with juicy details. I found myself pausing to run down little rabbit holes along the way. For example, Heller rides the historical landmark Angel’s Flight. It was described in such a way that I had to learn more about this narrow gauge funicular railway. When I’m reading, I usually like to leave my cellphone in the other room, but with this Heller mystery, I had to keep it handy for additional research. Collins tends to introduce me to so many fascinating places, events and people.

As a writer, Collins always finds innovative ways to describe people and settings. This is a crime thriller to be sure, but I often pause at the clever descriptions. For example.

The hero walks into a diner and Collins gives the reader something to think about and to remember: ”The bedraggled adults in booths and at tables were like predictions of how the town’s teens would turn out.”

Or earlier in the novel, as Heller meets a key character: “In his mid-thirties, my host was of average height and weight with a squared-off head and a rounded jaw, his forehead so high it was like his features had slipped down too far on his oval face.”

After reading a novel like this, my pal Mike Gold used to always make the joke “If you only read one Max Allan Collins novel this month, make it this one.” The gag still holds up and it’s truer than ever.

The only way I could get a better review is to write it myself…although actually I’m pretty hard on myself. If you want to read Ed’s review in context, go here.

While I’m wallowing in a self-congratulatory stew, here’s the fine Mystery Scene review (in its final newsstand issue – damnit!) of The Big Bundle:

The Big Bundle
Hard Case Crime, January 2023, $25.95
by Max Allan Collins

Opening in October 1953, Max Allan Collins’ 18th Nathan Heller adventure finds the middle-aged detective in Kansas City, consulting on a kidnapping, this time involving Bobby Greenlease, the 6-year-old son of multimillionaire auto dealer Robert Cosgrove Greenlease, Sr. Although Heller works with both the local police and the FBI, the case ends tragically, with the death of the child and half of the ransom money seemingly vanished.

Collins then fast forwards to August 1958, as Heller covertly investigates what happened to the missing ransom, at the behest of both Jimmy Hoffa and Robert F. Kennedy, who want to uncover the sordid truth about the tainted money.

Simply put, if you’ve enjoyed this series thus far, you’ll find plenty to like about Collins’ latest fictional foray, as, like previous installments, the story expertly interweaves fact and fiction in an entertaining and winning manner. If you’re new to the series, this is a great place to start, as it finds Collins at the top of his considerable game.

The author’s crisp writing and canny plotting, supplemented by his thorough and revealing research, are on ample display from start to finish. It’s an impressive piece of work, especially when you consider that this MWA Grandmaster, who has been at it for close to half a century now, doesn’t falter once.

Now let me give The Big Bundle my own good review – no, not my writing, but the reading Dan John Miller brings to narrating the book on the Recorded Books audio of the novel. On various car rides, Barb and I have been listening to it (we’re deep into the second of two sections) and are blown away by how much Dan “gets it.” He has read every Heller on audio to date, and he’s really become the voice of Nathan Heller. As I’ve said before, I don’t really feel like a Heller exists until I hear Dan John Miller read it.

Dan John Miller

Another great narrator who deserves kudos is Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat, who has taken over the unenviable task of stepping into Stacy Keach’s shoes in reading the Mike Hammer novels. He is also Quarry these days, and Skyboat’s Gabrielle de Cuir has just completed reading Fancy Anders for the Boys. Stefan and Gabrielle’s production of Fancy Anders Goes Hollywood is wonderful – with sound effects and music – so I expect great things.

Stefan Rudnicki

Gabrielle de Cuir

And speaking of Fancy Anders, you can now pre-order the second book (as a trade paperback, e-book and audio), right here. Fancy Anders For the Boys finds her working undercover on a murder case at the movie star-flung Hollywood Canteen.

* * *

Two documentaries, streaming right now, are worth your time, particularly if you’re interested in the history of pop and rock music.

Joan Jett

The Joan Jett documentary, Bad Reputation (2018), looks at the phenomenal rocker whose story is a fascinating bumpy ride, starting with the Runaways and continuing up to her Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction. The tough road any rock artist trods is even tougher for women, and the sacrifices a road warrior takes on personally are a constant undercurrent. Excellent doc. It’s on Hulu and Prime Video, among others (and in some theaters).

Dionne Warwick

HBO Max is perhaps best known right now for what it’s dropping (and not as in new programming “dropping,” but in the where-the-hell’s-the-content sense). But right now they have an excellent Dionne Warwick documentary – Don’t Make Me Over – which is a loving but unflinching look at this amazing artist. What became readily apparent to me was how Warwick coming together with the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David was one of the most fortunate collaborations in the history of popular music – that neither the singer nor the songwriters would not likely have had the enormous pop cultural impact without each other. Like Joan Jett, Warwick is a strong, opinionated woman who used her position in the music industry to do good things for humanity…and never in a self-serving manner. I found this documentary extremely moving and highly recommend it.

M.A.C.

Tags: Deals, Fancy Anders For the Boys, Mickey Spillane, Nate Heller, Reeder and Rogers, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, Supreme Justice, The Big Bundle
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 6 Comments »

A Free Quarry Book, Plus Why Reviews Do and Don’t Matter

Tuesday, January 25th, 2022

Here is an interview with me about two upcoming Hard Case Crime titles, Quarry’s Blood and Tough Tender, conducted by the great Andrew Sumner of Titan.

* * *

Trade Paperback:

E-Book:

And now – the first book giveaway of 2022. I have ten advance copies of Quarry’s Blood available to the first ten interested readers. [All copies have been claimed. Thank your for your support! — Nate]

More book giveaways will follow – I hope to get some copies of No Time To Spy to offer soon, and I have on hand advance copies of Tough Tender (which collects the Nolan novels Hard Cash and Scratch Fever), which will be given out possibly next time.

These reviews are extremely important in an era when I am no longer doing signings and haven’t done a convention since Covid came calling. Even brief reviews are appreciated, particularly since there are a handful of apparent trolls out there who want to make sure I can’t make a living during my dotage.

A No Time to Spy review, by the way, accuses you fine people of laziness, concluding: “And by the way most of the positive comments to the Sand trilogy as of today are copy and paste from the Collins blog.” (Feel free to defend yourself in the comments area under that review, which is by Robert Hölzl, who knows he hates all three Sand novels – would you keep reading a series you dislike? – but does not know how to spell my name.)

Just to clear the palate, here is a wonderful write-up from Facebook that just popped up out of nowhere, from Rick Greene:

I love the Quarry novels. They are all fast reads, masterful page-turners that one completes in one or two sittings, wildly violent, wickedly funny, the ultimate anti-hero. As much as I love Quarry – and the Spillane/Collins Hammer novels – I consider Max Allan Collins’ masterwork to be the Nathan Heller series. I’m just more than halfway through these detective thrillers that take real life crimes and revisit them via a fun house mirror. The Heller’s are NOT fast reads – they are dense, complex, deeply moving stories that often leave the reader emotionally shattered at the finale. You have to pay attention and turn the pages slowly. The Heller’s are books to savor, to immerse one’s self in. I’ve said before that the Quarry books are cake and ice cream where the Heller series are a five course gourmet meal. I love them all for different reasons. Collins is my favorite living author… and I hope he goes right on living and writing for a few more decades. Just imagine if Ian Fleming had lived another twenty years – the unusual and complex places he could have taken James Bond as they both aged together. I can’t wait to read about the true last Quarry adventure and to revisit Heller as much as Collins will indulge us with. Bring it on.

This came at a lovely time because (a) the new Quarry book is about to be published, and (b) I have just started writing the new Nate Heller. And the Hellers have always been hard to write, but I find that, at my age, the process may be the same but I am not. I was struggling with the first chapter and then Rick Greene’s nice words came along.

What was really nice about these words is that they were just a heart-felt reader’s outpouring of appreciation – not a review. I feel like I can take Rick’s words to heart whereas it’s dangerous to believe any review, good or bad. And then there’s karma….
Later the same day I read Rick’s celebration of my work, I came upon a current review of (the 39-year-old) True Detective that was patronizing and close to nasty in things it said about my work. I write “bad dialogue,” I’m told, and the reader has to slog through my work, and as a stylist I have all the poetry of the directions on a paint can. I would have shared this condescending thing with you, but I failed when I tried to track it back down via Google.

The review was well-written and not stupid, although – as usual – no proof backing the opinions was provided. How about quoting a few clumsy sentences to make your point, or reprinting a particularly bad patch of dialogue? (By the way, I have been publishing since 1971 and have never before had my dialogue singled out for anything but praise.)

The danger for a writer – and let’s pretend Rick Greene was writing a review and not just a sending me a valentine – is that if you take the good reviews seriously, you have to take the bad ones seriously, too. And doing so will make a real writer – which is to say, a working writer who makes his or her living this way – crazy. I will admit that the day after I read that largely negative True Detective review, I found myself back at work on The Big Bundle, second-guessing every Heller sentence I wrote.

The truth is, many of us in the arts can remember every bad review – can quote from memory reviews dating back decades – whereas the positive ones fly away like tissue paper on the wind. It’s human nature, I guess, but at the same time I know that I have to pay no real attention to any reviews. I am past the point, fifty-one years into my novel writing career, that I can learn much. I do still learn, but it’s incremental, and it comes from trial and effort, not something a reviewer points out or suggests.

The True Detective reviewer clearly considered me a pedestrian stylist. Hey, I think I can turn a pretty fair phrase. But I can guess the writers that this reviewer likes – the ones who are writing to impress, not to entertain. I pick up books at Barnes & Noble or BAM! and read the first paragraphs by writers with reputations as stylists, writers far more celebrated than I ever will be, and what I see is overloaded, overwritten, trying-too-hard bullshit (do not ask for names).

Reviews, as far as my growth is concerned, are irrelevant to a writer who has been working as long as I have. All I know how to do at this stage is write the book I would like to read. Really, I think that should be every novelist’s goal – write a book you wish somebody else would have. Please your own taste and hope enough others out there will have similar enough tastes to keep you in business.

And yet I am doing a book giveaway, soliciting reviews. I don’t do this so that you will tell me how wonderful I am (though feel free to do so). I do it to help sell books, so I can stay in business. To get the word out.

I talk a lot here about how, in recent years, in recent days, I have felt cut off from current popular culture. Today I went over the copy edited manuscript of the second Fancy Anders (Fancy Anders For the Boys) and was told I shouldn’t mention Mantan Moreland or Jap Zeroes. How am I supposed to react to that? As someone who writes about the Twentieth Century, must I clean up that century’s idiosyncrasies and failings? Or do I have a responsibility to depict that century as accurately as my flawed memory will allow?

But the truth is, it’s harder for me now to be accepted in a world of publishing where I am white and old and male. It’s not the marketplace’s fault – it’s just the reality. I am so very, very lucky that publishers like Hard Case Crime, Titan, Neo-Text and Wolfpack still find me a worthwhile addition to their lists. In a world where I have to explain to people who Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer are, I am damn lucky to still be in business at all.

* * *

Some advance readers of Quarry’s Blood have nice things to say about it at Goodreads.

Check out this lovely piece at Crimereads on Marshall Rogers, who illustrated my brief run on the Batman comic strip.

Finally, has it really been twenty years since Road to Perdition was released?

M.A.C.

Tags: Batman, Fancy Anders, Fancy Anders For the Boys, Giveaways, Hard Cash, John Sand, No Time to Spy, Nolan, Quarry, Quarry's Blood, Reviews, Road to Perdition, Scratch Fever, Tough Tender
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 5 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘Fancy Anders For the Boys’

Fancy Anders and the Beck/Woods Boys

Bundle and Spillane Reviews – And Audio!

A Free Quarry Book, Plus Why Reviews Do and Don’t Matter