Posts Tagged ‘Mike Hammer’

A Book Giveaway & A Preview of the Spillane Blu-Ray & DVD

Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
Too Many Bullets cover

Too Many Bullets, my new Nate Heller novel from Hard Case Crime, will be out on Oct. 10. I am offering ten copies of the trade paperback ARC (the actual book is hardcover) to the first ten of you who request it in exchange for a review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble or Goodreads (or your own reviewing site, if you have one).

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you for your support! –Nate]

This is for American readers only. That’s only because mailing outside the USA has become so expensive. Keep in mind you can’t review at Amazon until the book is actually available, which (again) will be Oct. 10.

I also want to share with you the front jacket of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (the expanded documentary), a Blu-ray release from VCI that includes the 90-minute Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder with Gary Sandy in a Golden Age Radio-style live performance. When I say Golden Age Radio, I don’t mean this is audio only, but a movie experience much like being in the audience at a radio show of the ‘40s. Gary, who appeared in Encore at Owensboro, Kentucy, and Clearwater, Florida, is the only actor to date to portray Mike Hammer on stage.

Encore for Murder will be available separately on DVD and I’ll share that front jacket art with you, too.

These are teasers. We don’t have release dates yet, but it will be yet this year.

* * *

I want to share with you a particularly nice review of Dig Two Graves from the Crime Fiction Lover website.

Dig Two Graves by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
By Paul Burke 29 August, 2023

Once, when someone complained that Mickey Spillane had eight books in a top 10 chart, he replied along the lines that the reader should be thankful he didn’t write two more. It’s hard to overestimate Spillane’s popularity in the 1950s and 60s. He has sold over 225 million copies and when he died in 2006 left a wealth of unfinished stories, many of them featuring his hardboiled PI, Mike Hammer. That’s where Max Allan Collins comes in. A crime fiction author with a solid record of his own, including Quarry and The Road to Redemption, he was invited to carry on Spillane’s legacy and Dig Two Graves is the 14th Hammer novel he’s developed and finished.

The story is set in 1964 and Allan Collins has slotted it into place in the series at the appropriate point. Velma is Mike’s girlfriend, and the US has government borrowed her for a little job behind the Iron Curtain because she’s a former cop and secret service agent, but nobody told Mike. He hits the bottle hard thinking Velma has been kidnapped or, maybe worse, killed. Then Velma just turns up, Mike pulls himself around and they’re a team again.

There are other bridges to be mended though and Velma is about to meet up with her mother to smooth over her disappearing act. At the rendezvous the woman is mowed down in front of Velma and Mike. The Chevy responsible crashes a little bit further up the road and Mike is on the driver immediately but can’t squeeze anything out of the man before he dies.

Clearly it’s no accident. In the hospital Velma’s mother suddenly confesses that Velma’s father is not the man she grew up with, who died in the line of duty. Instead, it was a gangster named Rhinegold Massey – AKA Rhino. Is this somehow connected? Mike pumps his police friend Captain Chambers for info. It turns out Rhino died in an armoured car robbery and his then girlfriend, Judy, vanished years ago. But that’s all a cover and actually Rhino was placed in witness protection, the first such programme set up.

Rhino is linked to a retirement village in Phoenix called Dreamland Park so Mike decides to head out there, and there’s no way Velma will be left behind. When they arrive, it turns out a lot of people with connections to Rhino have been dying in mysterious circumstances lately. Mike books himself into the village and it’s not long before he’s being shot at and, naturally, he shoots back.

Blood and bullets are easier to come by than answers for much of the novel. A game of cat and mouse ensues, played out against the backdrop of lies, secrets, conspiracy and revenge. And, did I mention a double cross love betrayal? Allan Collins and Spillane riff nicely on a theme that goes back to Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

Spillane wrote page turners and some of the best action scenes in crime fiction and that’s his great strength. Max Allan Collins knows that Mike Hammer readers want more and there’s no shortage of it here. He’s a subtler writer than Spillane so he nuances the plot, refines it for modern sensibilities without gutting the style. The characters have a little more depth but not too much.

The action is propulsive and the bodies drop regularly. It’s a deft art to recreating a novel that has to slot into a particular time in the Hammer cycle but the fact that Hammer has an arc means it’s crucial. In this case it’s Velma’s Russian sojourn and Mike’s descent into alcoholism in her absence. They add some humour to the plot, with references to his fitness and jibes along the lines of, “You used to be Mike Hammer.”

There’s a hint of sex smouldering behind the scenes and some cracking one liners in the snappy dialogue that give off a hardboiled vibe. Early in the book, the pace is a little more sedate than expected but it’s smoking by the denouement. Max Allan Collins really gets what makes Mike Hammer fun and never loses sight of that in the narrative. It’s a juggling act refreshing the form but maintaining the original ethos and mood, but mostly it is mission accomplished here. Hardboiled is alive and kicking; for a pulp fix this nails it pretty good.

For more revitalised Mike Hammer, see Murder Never Knocks.

As I say, a lovely review, but…the common mistake in reviews these days is calling Velda “Velma.” Apparently Mickey Spillane is getting confused with Scooby Doo.

* * *

Serious pre-production continues on Blue Christmas. We are hoping to secure Gary Sandy for the role of Jake Marley (the source novella is entitled A Wreath for Marley and is featured in the Wolfpack anthology, Blue Christmas).

We do need to raise some more money (having already raised $7000 from an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign). I am willing to dig into my stash of my stuff if you are missing anything in your M.A.C. collection. Tell me what you need and I will give you a price (it will not be outlandish) (maybe landish, though). Go this route and you’ll be listed in the credits.

* * *

Barb and I, as some of you may recall, are what might be called first generation Star Trek fans. We began watching when it was still on NBC, caught up with the first season via the James Blish short story collections (based on episodes), went to great lengths to see William Shatner in The Seven Year Itch at Pheasant Run outside of Chicago, saw Leonard Nimoy in The Fourposter at another dinner theater and also at a McGovern political event (recounted in Quarry in the Black), and cultivated a friendship with Walter Koenig.

Also, we stood in line for over an hour in the cold and snow to see, on opening night, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. We still consider it the best of the Star Trek films, not a widely held opinion, but Robert Meyer Burnett – who knows Star Trek as well as anyone alive – agreed with me when I shared this opinion with him. He feels it’s far and away the best original cast Star Trek film. So there.

Anyway, we did not watch Star Trek: The Next Generation when it aired. (I watched the opening episode and bailed.) But we did go to the four TNG motion pictures in the theater (usually on opening day) and liked all four, particularly the second one, First Contact. We also watched the handful of TNG laser discs that were issued, back in my laser collecting days. Liked those, too.

We have finally gotten around to watching the entire series – we started with Season Seven and worked our way back, for reasons too idiotic to share – and have more than warmed to TNG. We like it, perhaps even love it, and consider it a worthy continuation of the original series. We had been spurred to watch TNG by the excellent third season of Picard, which was essentially a long-form final movie for the original cast. (Picard season one was good, but the second season was dire, and like a lot of watchers, we only tuned in to season three because it restored the original TNG cast.)

Then Barb and I revisited the four TNG features, which we’d seen several times on Blu-ray and then 4K discs. And we discovered these films were much richer for us, a much more satisfying experience, having seen the entire run of TNG series.

And Star Trek: First Contact ties for second place (with Wrath of Khan) after Star Trek: The Motion Picture in our estimation.

Your warp speed may vary.

M.A.C.

Quarry’s Return, Rodriguez, Barry Newman & William Friedkin

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2023

I have completed Quarry’s Return and shipped it to my editor Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime and to my longtime agent, Dominick Abel. This included a long day of re-reading the 60,000-word manuscript and another day of entering my tweaks and corrections, assembling the chapter files into one big file, and doing a conversion from Word Perfect to Word, followed by a page-by-page check for glitches (and there were some).

This was something of a test case for me, as I have (as regular readers of this update/blog know) been dealing with health issues. My wife Barb has been encouraging me to slow down the writing process, and I have to a degree, but my approach is dependent to some degree on momentum, so I like to get a book done in as short a time as possible because I believe the narrative drive benefits.

This is the second novel I’ve written this year. The Mike Hammer novel, Dig Two Graves, was written starting in February and March. It’s a fairly short book, about 50,000 words, and I wrote it in three weeks, which impressed and sort of irritated Barb, who spends six months on her Antiques drafts before handing one over to me.

Between the two books I’ve written several book proposals, a short story with Matt Clemens (just sold to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine!), and revised a couple of screenplays. Also, we completed the expansion of the Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary and the edit on Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder, both with VCI releases yet this year.

The month I spent on Quarry’s Return included my hospital visit for a heart procedure, followed by a complication from which I am still recuperating (but doing very well). I only lost about three writing days due to the procedure – writing seems to be something I can do and feel “normal” doing, even when I’m under the weather.

Quarry’s Return is a coda to a coda, the latter being Quarry’s Blood. I did not expect to be writing about the older Quarry again (the Quarry who is about my age), but that’s the story that occurred to me and that my editor liked the sound of. What transpired was a novel that took Quarry back to Port City, Iowa – the site of his first recorded adventure, Quarry AKA The Broker (1976) – which plays into the title and to the coda of coda notion.

Will there be more Quarry? As long as there is more of me, probably…though any subsequent Quarry novel will likely be set in the past, as the other HCC Quarry books have been.

Quarry’s Return feels like a good one, but until I hear from Charles and Dominick, I won’t know for sure. Turning a novel in can be followed by requested rewrites in some cases. To me, it’s a nice combo of the Richard Stark-inspired crime novel side of the series and the Mickey Spillane-inspired private eye aspect of the series…in addition to being a hitman (various varieties of which depend on where a story falls in the timeline), Quarry often acts as a sort of P.I. That’s even got him occasionally nominated for a Shamus award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

The novel also has my trademark combination of human sentiment and inhuman behavior that no doubt confuses some, and keeps me off some readers’ preferred reading list.

I don’t recall when it’s scheduled to come out. Probably 2024. I’ll let you know here.

* * *

I have several meetings this week as we move into serious pre-production on my micro-budget movie, Blue Christmas. We suffered a blow when (apparently) we did not receive any Greenlight grant money. That parenthetical “apparently” reflects the failure of the program to come even close to when they were supposed to reveal the results of the competition, which they haven’t officially yet.

This blow puts us further into the micro budget area, and decisions have to be made, and will be made shortly. But unless my health intrudes, I intend to will this sucker into existence. I have great help from my collaborators Phil Dingeldein, Liz Toal and Chad Bishop.

I want to spend at least part of the next few years returning to film projects – sort of my last chance to do so.

Phil and Liz and I, and my Hollywood “guy” Ken Levin, are working hard to get my horror film Reincarnal made. Some of you have read the novella it’s based on, the title story in a Wolfpack collection of mine (Amazon link). [And in the soon-to-be-released Max Allan Collins Collection Volume Four: Dark Suspense (Amazon link) – Nate]

I am in early stages of working with Phil, Mike Bawden and the great Robert Meyer Burnett to create a Heller podcast series that would, we hope, seed the clouds for a Nathan Heller movie or TV series. A long ago project that I was working on for (and with) the late Miguel Ferrer – a film based on my novella Dying in the Post-war World – is in the mix.

We still have an eye on getting Road to Purgatory produced. I have the rights back on my screenplay from my novel, the direct sequel to Road to Perdition.

Other things whirling in the currently strike-stalled land of the wooded holly: the recently announced Mike Hammer feature film from Skydance; a Nolan movie from Lionsgate; and an Eliot Ness in Cleveland mini-series from CBS Films.

Sounds glittering and great, huh?

If I were confident about the big-time stuff happening, would I be preparing to do a micro-budget Christmas movie?

I ask you.

* * *

Among the bad things about writing a weekly update like this at my age is how many people I admire do us the disservice of dying.

But two of my favorites have passed and I must comment.

Rodriguez is a musical artist I discovered recently, thanks to my guitarist in Crusin’, Bill Anson, turning me onto him. I’d had the documentary Searching for Sugarman (2012) on my DVD shelf for some time – my agent gave it to me for Christmas years ago – but had not gotten around to watching it. I finally did, and if you haven’t seen it, you need to.

The basic story is simple if incredible. A talented singer/songwriter out of Detroit, Rodriguez made two wonderful albums (Cold Fact, 1970, and Coming from Reality, 1971) that were mostly overlooked by critics and completely overlooked by the public. He returned to a life divided between playing in small venues and doing day labor, taking great pride in the latter. He essentially fell off the national grid, and legends grew up about him dying on stage, sometimes committing suicide at the end of his set. He became huge in South Africa and popular in Australia, as well, and continued to be unknown here until the documentary came out in 2012.

Some of you know that I am not a fan of Bob Dylan the vocalist, though I like much of his songwriting. His nasal off-key singing is fingernails-on-the-blackboard stuff to me, though I find it interesting that both Tom Petty and John Lennon used him as a vocal role model, but did so by restoring the concept of singing in key.

Rodriguez is often compared to Dylan, but it’s a pretty shallow comparison. You can’t deny Dylan was a prolific singer/songwriter, and his catalogue of compositions is staggeringly large and impressive. Rodriguez did two albums of beautiful melodies and poetic skill in a warm, eccentric vocal style that displayed a limited vocal range but is the perfect vehicle for emotional material delivered from a cool distance.

He’s great.

And he’s gone, at 81. After his discovery made him if not a household word but at least well-known among popular music buffs, new albums from him were limited to a couple of live performance CD’s. He copped to having continued his songwriting all those years, but no new album emerged. I am hopeful that there’s a vault somewhere at his regular label, Light in the Attic Records, that will bring more of his material to light.

* * *

My friend Bob King edits the great Classics Images (published right here in Muscatine, Iowa), in which he covers all kinds of wonderful mainstream and obscure aspects of classic Hollywood. I always check the obituaries (like George Burns, I’m checking to see if I’m there) and now and then a shock comes to the system: Barry Newman has died at 92.

Barry Newman was – no, damnit, is – one of my favorite actors. He came out of the gate fast and was a popular leading man and unlikely action star in the 1970s. He top-billed the cult classic Vanishing Point (1971) as well as Fear Is the Key (1972), and The Salzburg Connection (1972). He later became a star of TV movies, headlining twenty films in the ‘80s. Later he turned up now and then in bigtime films like Daylight (for which I wrote the novelization), The Limey and Bowfinger. But largely he fell off the radar. I never understood that and still don’t.

He made his first splash in The Lawyer (1970), which was based on the Sam Sheppard murder case and evolved from an intended biopic of then famous attorney F. Lee Bailey. His charismatic performance as the title lawyer, Anthony Petrocelli, led to a TV movie (Night Games 1974)) as that character and the two-season, Emmy-nominated Petrocelli TV series (1974-1976). The showstopping aspect of The Lawyer was Newman’s outrageous courtroom performance topped by his summation to the jury, in which he presented an alternate version of the crime to interpret the facts that ultimately got his client sprung. This trademark jury summation followed Newman and the character into the series.

Much of Newman’s success in The Lawyer is due to the dynamic direction of Sidney J. Furie, who put Michael Caine on the map in The Ipcress File (1965). But Newman rose to the occasion.

The Lawyer Episode Guide Cover

I got in touch with him a few years ago, in part because I’d written an introductory piece about The Lawyer and Petrocelli for a Bear Manor Media book about the TV series. Mostly I wanted to get in touch with him because it was The Lawyer (more than The Fugitive) that made me want to do a Nathan Heller novel about the Sheppard case.

When I called him – this is typical Newman behavior – he answered in an old man voice and pretended to be his own grandfather. When he determined who I was, and that I was worth talking to, he became Barry Newman again and might have been thirty or thirty-five, judging by voice alone. We had several wonderful phone conversations and I sent him my Sheppard “Nathan Heller” novel, Do No Harm (2020). He is thanked and recognized in both the text of the novel and the afterword.

He was very complimentary about my essay about him and his work on The Lawyer, and was nice enough to say that my piece was his favorite thing in the Bear Manor Media Book, which you can buy here.

The TV series is available here.

Unfortunately The Lawyer is not available legally on physical media, other than in the wonderful but expensive Sidney J. Furie boxed set currently out of print (but you can find it on e-bay).

The Lawyer is available on Amazon Prime.

I intended to call Newman to congratulate him on the Blu-ray box with The Lawyer finally doing him and that film justice. But I hadn’t got around to it. I do know that he and director Furie were trying to put a movie together with Newman starring. This was just before Covid hit.

But somehow I find it reassuring that in his late eighties, Barry Newman was looking for the next project.

* * *

I mentioned here that Robert Meyer Burnett’s enthusiasm for To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) had found me ordering a film that I’d despised in the theater on its first release.

I do occasionally discover a film I’d not enjoyed years ago turning out to strike me differently today. But I am more inclined to continue liking the films that I liked then. If you had asked me for a list of my favorite films, in 1985, I’d have said, Vertigo, Kiss Me Deadly, Gun Crazy, Chinatown and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (can you spot the non-noir in that list?). I would have cited Alfred Hitchcock and Joseph Lewis as my favorite directors, and James Bond as my favorite film series. Hardly any change.

Revisiting To Live and Die in L.A. was a different ride. First off, its star – William Peterson – I have always liked, going back to Manhunter (1986) and Long Gone (1987); and I did (with Matt Clemens) my long run of CSI novels, comics and even video games with Peterson playing Gil Grissom not only on TV but in the theater of my mind. He even spoke my dialogue in the CSI video games.

What quickly became clear to me (I’d probably noticed this on first viewing, too) was that director William Friedkin was doing a West Coast variation on his very successful East Coast cop thriller, The French Connection. I’ve liked a lot of what Friedkin did, but I don’t think he ever topped The Exorcist and The French Connection.

His work generally strikes me as that of someone who is a great storyteller but not a great writer. He is at his best adapting a novel or play or non-fiction work. Left to his own devices, he can create a vivid movie filled with compelling scenes, and To Live and Die in L.A. certainly qualifies in that regard.

And it’s based on a book, but not a particularly good one. I don’t like to comment on other novelists’ stuff, so that’s all I’ll say.

But this narrative, as presented by Friedkin, has so many cliches, it’s no wonder it pissed me off in 1986. And, look, Friedkin was thinking about doing my True Detective and did this movie instead, which at the time undoubtedly pissed me off. Still, this is a movie that begins with the young lead character’s veteran cop partner having only three more days on the job, with only one dangerous gig ahead. This is a character who says the immortal line, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

It’s also a cop movie where the naive, idealistic new partner eventually becomes the continuation of the corrupt veteran partner who has died in the line of duty. That this is an unbelievable character shift is in no way justified.

Many of the semi-improvised scenes work, a good number do not. It does have some interesting female characters and a car chase designed to out-do the famous one in French Connection. And it comes very close.

I now like this movie, with reservations. Like a beautiful pock-marked woman. SPOILER ALERT: …… killing the lead with fifteen minutes of the movie left was a bold move that irritated me then and makes me smile and nod now.

Incidentally, I accidentally ordered the Blu-ray, not the highly regarded 4K disc. They share the same transfer and special features and I thought it looked fantastic.

I should say that the fuss over 4K may be at least partially dependent on the size of your TV. I have three TVs – a 55″ flat screen in the living room (with a shallow viewing distance between my recliner and the screen), a 45″ TV in my office, and a 19″ tube TV also in my office, for viewing laser discs. The 55″ is from a brief period where you could find monitors that could present both 3-D and 4K. My 45″ is 3-D but not 4K.

Why do I mention this? Because some people say that you need 65″ or larger to appreciate the difference between Blu-ray and 4K. This isn’t entirely true, but there’s something to it. The Blu-ray of To Live and Die in L.A., which I almost sent back unopened to exchange against the 4K, really does look excellent on my 55″ screen.

And for me having the ability to screen 3-D is a must. I have too deep a 3-D library to feel otherwise.

I am also not as attuned (shall we say) to sound. I have a sound bar with a sub woofer and to me everything sounds great. Terms like Dolby Atmos and DTS and 7.1 are outside my area of interest and expertise. For one thing, the reality of my life is that once Barb goes to bed (at 10 pm) I can’t watch anything loud, anyway. I usually watch with subtitles, and still get scolded by the angry woman who storms out, my charming understanding bride having been somehow absconded and replaced by this unforgiving one.

It’s not unlike my situation where my collector gene comes in conflict with my realization that at my age, I have better ways to spend my time and money than upgrading everything from Blu-ray to 4K, and spending big bucks on collector sets with lobby cards and booklets and do-dads that I’ll look at once, smile, and stow away.

* * *

Here’s an article about filmmaking in the Quad Cities, covering a gathering at Phil Dingeldein’s dphilms stuido.

M.A.C.

R.I.Pee Wee, Mike Hammer at the Movies, E-Bay Deals

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023
Skyline and Mike Hammer banner

The big news this week should be that the long impending Mike Hammer movie deal with Skydance has solidified, and been announced in all the trades. The upside is that Skydance has purchased the film rights for the entire franchise, which includes the books I’ve co-authored. The downside is…things like this, announced or not, often do not come to pass.

Yes, I am an executive producer. That often simply means that when you come to make your set visits, a director’s chair with your name on the back is waiting. On the Cinemax Quarry set (where I was suffering, unknowingly, congestive heart failure) they didn’t let me near the director and other mucky-mucks till they needed me for photos. And I was, again, an executive producer.

I often have mentioned that I did not tell my parents about the Road to Perdition movie sale till Barb and I were on set watching Tom Hanks and Paul Newman shooting scenes under the direction of Sam Mendes.

The news this week that impacted me more, personally, was the loss of Paul Reubens, who had been privately battling cancer for half a dozen years.

Paul Reubens dressed in black with a Pee-Wee Herman Doll in his breast pocket. Art Streiber / August @aspictures

I have frequently commented here about the annual Christmas cards that Barb and I have received from Paul Reubens over many decades. To me it has not officially been Christmas until the Pee Wee card arrives from Paul.

Here’s what I wrote in December 2013:

For me, Christmas begins when I receive my yearly Christmas card from Paul Reubens. Sometimes Paul writes a personal note. The cards are always charming and even hilarious, and we have easily two dozen of them. This year Barb made a wreath out of some our favorites.

I went crazy over Pee-Wee with his HBO Special, The Pee-Wee Herman Show in 1981. I was doing the Dick Tracy strip at the time, and I put Pee-Wee in the strip – he was on television saying, “My name’s Pee-Wee – what’s yours?” And a TV-obsessed villain of mine replied, “Splitscreen!”

Paul Reubens phoned me shortly after that, delighted by the Tracy appearance, and we chatted. Shortly after that, taking time out from a San Diego con, Terry Beatty and I visited Paul in LA – he was in a small one-story brick house filled with funky toys and oddball memorabilia. We watched a version of The Pee-Wee Herman Show that the cast had looped with blue improv material. The Pee-Wee Herman suit was on a coat tree. I asked Paul how many of those suits he had, and he said, “Just the one.” Then, noting my surprised reaction, he added, “Sometimes Pee-Wee doesn’t smell so good up close.”

Paul knew that I was a movie buff, and he was working on getting a Pee-Wee film going. Late at night, we would talk on the phone and (at his request) I would send him Betamax copies of offbeat films like Eddie Cantor’s Roman Scandals and Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! He called once every month or two for a couple of years, sometimes when he was off shooting a movie. (One was a Meatballs sequel, and I asked him what it was about. He said, “A virgin sees her first dick.” I thought he was kidding till I saw the movie.) Barb and I (and sometimes Terry) would go to live shows of Paul’s, and we’d see him after – we did this in New York and Chicago.

When the Pee-Wee movies and TV show kicked in, Paul changed his phone number and I haven’t heard from him since…except at Christmas. Always a wonderful card, and sometimes a warm personal note. I still love Pee-Wee Herman, and it’s been a nice perk of my minor celebrity that I got to know Paul Reubens a little. It’s very thoughtful and generous of him to send me these fantastic cards every year.

Shortly after the above piece appeared, Paul got back in touch with me – someone had forwarded the posting about him – and we began occasionally exchanging e-mails. Knowing Paul, and having a small impact on his work (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! had an obvious influence on a sequence in Pee Wee’s Big Holiday), is one of the most amazing things that has happened to me in an amazing life, despite never having moved from the small Iowa town where I was born.

This is my reflection on the passing of John Paragon, Paul’s partner in comedy – the great, much lamented Jambi.

Paul wrote me thanking me when he saw this tribute to his friend and collaborator.

I don’t know what else to say about Paul and Pee Wee. We weren’t close friends exactly, but we were real friends and the sadness I feel is hard to communicate. But he contributed a character, a concept, and point of view that I truly think will last until (as Paul Williams wrote) “the sun is just a bright spot in the nighttime.”

* * *

A flurry of M.A.C. e-books sales at Amazon have hit and I will share them with you now.

First, True Crime will be $1.99 on August 8 only, the day this update/blog appears.

From now till August 31, Girl Can’t Help It will be on sale for $2.49. If you haven’t read this one yet, please pick it up – this is one of only two titles (the other being Girl Most Likely) that have not “earned out” at Amazon and have apparently impacted their decision not to publish anything else new by me.

From now till August 31, Million Dollar Wound (Nate Heller), What Doesn’t Kill Her (Matt Clemens and me doing our American riff on Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), and Midnight Haul (my Mallory-ish eco-thriller) will all be available at $1.99 at Amazon on e-book.

Also wading in to the e-book wars is Wolfpack, who are doing e-book boxed sets that are an opportunity to pick up a lot of my backlist (some of which is out of print) at a low price.

The Max Allan Collins Collection Volume Three collects all three Jack and Maggie Starr mysteries as well as the Westlake-ish Shoot the Moon for under four bucks (okay, a penny under…).

The Max Allan Collins Collection Volume Four collects Mommy, Mommy’s Day, No One Will Hear You (co-authored by Matt Clemens), and Reincarnal and Other Dark Tales. Get it here.

Reincarnal, by the way, is one of several indie movie projects we were developing (“we” being my pal Phil Dingeldein and I). Chad Bishop are starting pre-productions on Blue Christmas.

Again, these are e-book “box sets” that are at a $3.99 price point. Such a deal! (The Max Allan Collins Collection Volume One is the four Eliot Ness books, and The Max Allan Collins Collection Volume Two is the John Sand collection (the trilogy plus a short story, by Matt Clemens and me).

Now, some of you are not into e-books. You like physical media. Me, too.

Buy the hardcover Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher by M.A.C. and Brad Schwartz here (from Daedalus Books) at a mere $6.95 (originally $29.99).

Daedalus also has the previous Nathan Heller hardcover novel, which thus far does not have a paperback reprint, Do No Harm, with Nate tackling the Sam Sheppard murder case.

* * *

Early tomorrow morning [Monday, 8/7–Nate], I am going into the hospital for a procedure that, with any luck, will get me back home the same day. So by the time this appears, I should be able to post something about how it went.

This is what’s called an ablation, which is done to deal with a-fib, which has been slowing me down since before my heart surgery in 2016.

[Update: The procedure went smoothly, and Max is back home recovering.–Nate]

* * *

Here’s an interesting Tom Hanks article, suggesting he’s the reason the violence in the film version of Road to Perdition was dialed back some.

* * *

The exciting Skydance announcement about Mike Hammer is all over the Net. Here’s an example from Deadline.

A few more (of many):
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2023/08/skydance-bringing-mickey-spillanes-mike-hammer-back-to-the-big-screen/
https://www.thewrap.com/skydance-mike-hammer-franchise-ip-rights/
https://www.darkhorizons.com/skydance-planning-a-mike-hammer-film/
https://www.joblo.com/mike-hammer-movie-mickey-spillane/

M.A.C.

Dig the New Mike Hammer Novel & The Real Perry Mason

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023
Dig Two Graves cover
Hardcover:
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Over the years, I’ve had many a bad review from the notoriously tough Kirkus book reviewing service. Lately they have liked me more – perhaps it’s my age. I keep remembering John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown observing, “Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

Dig Two Graves, the new Mike Hammer – right now scheduled to be the penultimate book in Titan’s Mike Hammer Legacy series – will be published August 22nd and can be pre-ordered now.

Here’s how Dig Two Graves is described at the Amazon site:

Mike Hammer, the iconic PI created by the master of noir Mickey Spillane, takes on the mob in the first of two gripping final novels for the deadly private eye.

Winter 1964. After a hit-and-run accident nearly kills her mother, Mike Hammer’s partner (both in life and the PI business), Velda Sterling, learns her father is not who she thought he is. Seeking to uncover her true, troubling heritage, Velda and Mike travel to Phoenix, Arizona – and sunny Dreamland Park, where retired law enforcement officers protect and corral notorious criminals held under Witness Protection.

Mike and Velda find themselves swept up in escalating violence, fueled by the missing millions from an armored-car robbery, which leads them to a deadly midnight confrontation in a cemetery – where secrets are buried and open graves await.

Speaking of Mike Hammer, a Facebook scribe in the midst of a bunch of nice praise by others for the Spillane/Collins novels tried to dissuade Spillane fans from reading these novels, thusly: “The parts by Mickey are great, (but) when it shifts, it stops reading like Mickey and I’ve studied Mike hammer novels for my own writing back when and can tell the difference. I like when Collins writes his own characters but not much on the hammer.”

Here’s the thing: this reader makes the assumption that when Mickey’s material runs out, I take over and finish up the book. Some of you may recall, from previous posts and from an essay in the back of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction – that this assertion is as inaccurate as it is confident. With the longer Spillane manuscripts – the 70-page to 100-page ones – I expand the material to fill to double that length. So my work is interspersed with his from the start. That’s partly to create a consistently shared voice that I can continue when the Spillane material runs out.

But that’s an over-simplification, because I have used the material in Mickey’s extensive files in a bunch of ways. For example, I sometimes combine manuscripts – Lady Go, Die! is mostly from the late ‘40s, but I weave in a similar serial killer chapter from the ‘60s to provide more genuine Spillane material. In Complex 90, the books begins with Spillane (expanded by Collins), then flashes back to a Hammer in Russia sequence I wrote, then when we come forward and Mike is back in New York, I’m working from Mickey’s material again.

Also, I have scraps of Spillane, paragraphs that he jotted down – descriptions of Manhattan, action scenes – that I weave in when I can. Sometimes he has provided plot and character notes that I use; other times he has written a rough draft of the ending. I worked from the more extensive manuscripts at the beginning, because I wanted to get that stuff out there – The Goliath Bone; The Big Bang; Kiss Her Goodbye; Lady, Go Die!; Complex 90; King of the Weeds; Kill Me, Darling; Killing Town. Murder Never Knocks had several chapters and a last chapter from Mickey; The Will to Kill had a few opening chapters but the mystery was wholly set up as if a blueprint had been given me; Murder, My Love and Masquerade for Murder came from Spillane synopses with scraps of description and action by him from the files woven in.

Both Goliath Bone and Kiss Her Goodbye had two versions of their partial manuscripts, which in both cases I combined. The former also had half a dozen versions of the first chapter. The latter shared the same basic premise but went off into two entirely different mysteries, which I combined. Kill Me If You Can utilized an unproduced TV pilot Mickey wrote. The upcoming Dig Two Graves combines two unfinished manuscripts, including a first pass at Dead Street, and this – Dreamland Park – was the major building block of Graves. But the other unfinished manuscript suggested an evocative back story involving a gangster who had fathered Velda.

A lot of work and, frankly, ingenuity goes into this process, and I frankly resent it when supposed hardcore Spillane fans turn their noses up because I’m involved and not every word choice sounds to them like Mickey would have made it.

I don’t try to write like Mickey – I don’t have to. I took in his words like vitamins starting when I was 12. I concentrate on getting Hammer himself right – Mickey considered character all important. Now and then I have a spooky burst like he is taking over. I was watching TV one Sunday morning (during the writing of Goliath Bone) and I suddenly reached for a scrap of paper and in a blistering array of words recorded the last few paragraphs of the novel. To me, they read like the Mick. It felt like automatic writing.

Here’s the thing: when Mickey, not long before his passing, asked me to complete the unfinished material in his files – in part to keep his name out there, but primarily to provide some income for his wife, Jane – he made it clear that these would be collaborations. When Jane reminded Mickey that I was not a Jehovah’s Witness and would likely indulge in more sex and violence than had been in his more recent work, he was fine with it.

Listen, these books are not pure Spillane. They are Spillane/Collins collaborations. I am not writing them by working with a Ouija board. I bring my own sensibilities in, but do not let them swamp Mickey’s. There are differences between Spillane and Spillane/Collins, just as in any good collaboration the end result is two plus two equals five. My Hammer novels reflect my wise-guy sense of humor more than Mickey’s Howard Hawksian male kidding. I do some of the latter, but I am not about to leave my wit behind when I work on Hammer.

I also tend to give Velda more to do. Mickey created a great character in her that I like to utilize, particularly in the post-Girl Hunters material. I also pay more attention to continuity than Mickey did. Like Rex Stout, Mickey paid scant attention to the details of continuity, though time-passage shifts in character (echoing his own over the years) are a huge part of his work.

I have tried to make sense of some things, to make them hang together. The origin for Velda (in the LP Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story) I re-reworked giving her a vice cop background that made it possible for Velda to get a PI license in New York state, and for her to have a reason to abruptly abandon Mike (in Kill Me, Darling) to pursue her vice cop boss’s murderer in Florida. (That novel, by the way, combined two Spillane manuscripts.)

So, yes, to some degree this is my take on Hammer, not Mickey’s. But, as I say, my mandate is to be consistent with the character as Mickey conceived him. And, further, to keep each Spillane/Collins novel in the context of when Mickey wrote the material I am working from. This means when I write King of the Weeds, I’m doing the older, Killing Man/Black Alley Mike Hammer; and when I’m putting together Kill Me, Darling and Killing Town, it’s the young Hammer of I, the Jury and My Gun Is Quick. Many of the books – The Big Bang, Kiss Her Goodbye, Complex 90 – were begun by Mickey in his “comeback” period, after The Girl Hunters (1962).

Some Hammer fans only like those first wonderful six ‘40s/’50s novels, from I, the Jury to Kiss Me, Deadly. Understandable, as those are masterpieces of the genre. I most enjoy writing about early, psychotic Hammer – from the very first novel about him (Killing Town) to exploring his descent into the bottle (Kill Me If You Can). But my job was to complete the books Mickey began – so if it was a ‘60s manuscript, the ‘60s Hammer was who I wrote about; if it was an early 21st Century manuscript, I wrote about that older Hammer. It was Mickey, not me, who put a cell phone in his hero’s hands.

I don’t mean to suggest that I’ve had a lot of criticism from Hammer fans – quite the opposite. And the reviewers have largely come around to the once reviled Mickey and Mike, through my efforts. It’s gratifying.

Still, it’s disappointing that a few hardcore Spillane/Hammer fans are denying themselves these novels, particularly ones like The Big Bang and Complex 90, which were announced during Mickey’s lifetime. When I remember how frustrating it was to be waiting for those books to come out – waiting and waiting and waiting – and now to glance across my office to the bookcase where the shelf of the Spillane/Collins hardcovers reside, and see those very titles looking back at me…wow. The long wait is over.

* * *

Elsewhere – and here, a little – I’ve discussed the HBO reboot of Perry Mason. And I’m going to do that again – right now.

First, an interesting take on reboots from my eight year-old grandson, Sam. His father, Nathan, was telling him about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Turtles movie. Both Nate and Sam are Turtles fans, you see. Sam has a remarkable sense of what he’s ready for, in terms of pop culture that may not be appropriate for a boy his age.


Sam Collins is astonished to see his grandfather’s name on a book at the local library.

When Nate told Sam about the upcoming Turtles movie, Sam thought it might not be right for him. Nate asked him why.

“It’s a reboot.”

Nate said it was a reboot, yes.

“Well,” Sam observed, “reboots are dark.”

And isn’t that the truth. The Michael Keaton Batman, decades ago, started the trend – reboots had to be dark and serious and grown-up, even when the subject matter was inherently juvenile.

The HBO Perry Mason, which has considerable merits, is a case in point, sort of. Erle Stanley Gardner was one of the best mystery writers of his day, and remains eminently readable. His Mason novels are like James M. Cain stories combined with a mystery – the same Cain-like subject matter, sex and money, and (again, like Cain) display a genuine interest in how businesses work. Perry and his secretary Della Street had a warm relationship that one assumed was sexual, away from work…but we rarely saw them away from work. Mason and his detective, Paul Drake, reflected the way criminal lawyers work, i.e., with an investigator or investigative staff.

Mason, well into the 1950s, was something of a sleaze. Remember the line in Better Call Saul? “You don’t need a criminal lawyer…you need a criminal…lawyer.” Perry hid clients, messed with evidence, switched guns, broke and entered, and it was just delightful.

A lot of that went into the first few seasons of the original Raymond Burr series. Some of that gets into the good but not great HBO reboot. The second season of the new Mason was a big improvement, but it still suffers from anachronisms (it’s set in the early ‘30s) and with a subservience to current sensibilities. Some of that doesn’t hurt, even helps. Paul Drake, for example, is Black here, and lives in a Black part of town; this puts flesh on the Gardner Drake’s bare bones and is an enhancement. But do both Della and Hamilton Burger have to be gay? Isn’t one of them enough? Must Della be Perry’s pal and not sly lover? Must she really be a superior lawyer to Perry, even though she isn’t one? Did I really see him (and an unsympathetic judge!) allow her to handle a key courtroom cross-examination in a murder trial? In 1934?

Yikes.

But if you’re young enough, you won’t care; and if you’re old enough, and haven’t thrown anything through the screen yet, you’re in for some good acting, crafty plot twists and great production values.

My advice to the producers of this series (which will not be heeded) is to at least make Della bisexual so she and Perry can be more than good buddies. And stop using phrases like “throwing shade” and “gaslighting,” and instead make use of actual colorful ‘30s argot.

Also, read some Gardner and watch some Raymond Burr Perry Mason episodes. (I did a project with Burr and he was a wonderful, smart man with a great sense of humor. He was planning to have Perry marry Della in the final of the later TV movies.) Right now Paramount Plus is running the first eight (of nine) Perry Mason seasons. The series is also available on DVD.


Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale as Perry Mason and Della Street

To you mystery fans out there, I would recommend the many episodes based directly on Gardner’s novels. The non-Gardner-derived episodes are entertaining but cookie-cutter, where Gardner is a wild, unpredictable ride, rarely telegraphing which character will be the murder victim. The first season of the series consists almost entirely of adaptations of Gardner Perry Mason novels (or short stories) – something unique in the history of American broadcasting. The second season is about half Gardner adaptations, and then after that it’s more sporadic. As it progressed, the show was actually adapting Gardner novels within a year or so of publication! Toward the end of the long run of the series, remakes of adaptations were also made, under new titles.

I tried hard to find a list of the Gardner adaptations on the Internet, to no avail. I decided to put just such a list together, for myself and Barb and, dear reader, you. You are very welcome.

Perry Mason Episodes
Based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s Novels and Short Stories

Season 1 (1957 – 1958)
1. The Case of the Restless Redhead
2. The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece
3. The Case of the Nervous Accomplice
4. The Case of the Drowning Duck
5. The Case of the Sulky Girl
6. The Case of the Silent Partner
7. The Case of the Angry Mourner
8. The Case of the Crimson Kiss
9. The Case of the Vagabond Vixen
10. The Case of the Runaway Corpse
11. The Case of the Crooked Candle
12. The Case of the Negligent Nymph
13. The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink (pilot)
14. The Case of the Baited Hook
15. The Case of the Fan-Dancer’s Horse
16. The Case of the Demure Defendant
17. The Case of the Sun Bather’s Diary
18. The Case of the Cautious Coquette
19. The Case of the Haunted Husband
20. The Case of the Lonely Heiress
21. The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister
22. The Case of the Fugitive Nurse

23. The Case of the One-Eyed Witness
25. The Case of the Empty Tin
26. The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife
28. The Case of the Daring Decoy
29. The Case of the Hesitant Hostess
30. The Case of the Screaming Woman
31. The Case of the Fiery Fingers
32. The Case of the Substitute Face
33. The Case of the Long-Legged Models
34. The Case of the Gilded Lily
35. The Case of the Lazy Lover
37. The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde
38. The Case of the Terrified Typist

39. The Case of the Rolling Bones

Season 2 (1958 – 1959)
41. The Case of the Lucky Loser
44. The Case of the Curious Bride
45. The Case of the Buried Clock

50. The Case of the Perjured Parrot
52. The Case of the Borrowed Brunette
53. The Case of the Glittering Goldfish
54. The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll

58. The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat
59. The Case of the Stuttering Bishop
62. The Case of the Howling Dog
63. The Case of the Calendar Girl
65. The Case of the Dangerous Dowager
66. The Case of the Deadly Toy
68. The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom
69. The Case of the Lame Canary

Season 3 (1959 – 1960)
72. The Case of the Garrulous Gambler
79. The Case of the Lucky Legs
86. The Case of the Mythical Monkeys
87. The Case of the Singing Skirt

Season 4 (1960 – 1961)
111. The Case of the Waylaid Wolf
121. The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

Season 5 (1961 -1962)
139. The Case of the Shapely Shadow
144. The Case of the Mystified Miner

Season 6 (1962 – 1963)
166. The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe
175. The Case of the Velvet Claws

Season 7 (1963 – 1964)
184. The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito
187. The Case of the Reluctant Model
188. The Case of the Bigamous Spouse
197. The Case of the Ice-cold Hands
204. Case of the Woeful Widower (Fiery Fingers)

Season 8 (1964 – 1965)
224. The Case of the Blonde Bonanza
235. The Case of the Careless Kitten
239. The Case of the Grinning Gorilla
241. The Case of the Mischievous Doll

Season 9 (1965 – 1966)
244. The Case of the Candy Queen (Silent Partner)
246. The Case of the Impetuous Imp (Negligent Nymph)
255. The Case of the Golden Girls (Vagabond Virgin)
258. Case of the Vanishing Victim (Fugitive Nurse)
260. Case of the Sausalito Sunrise (Moth-eaten Mink)
265. Case of the Fanciful Frail (Footloose Doll)

M.A.C.