Posts Tagged ‘Nate Heller’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Stockings Well-Stuffed

Tuesday, December 13th, 2022

I have been getting my stocking stuffed early (I am very happy to say) with good reviews for The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction.

You may recall that The Big Bundle received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and went on to being one of PW’s Books of the Week. Now here is PW’s starred review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction (due out the first week of February and can be pre-ordered now):

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction cover
Pre-order now!
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction

Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. Mysterious, $26.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-61316-379-5

In 1947, Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) unleashed his hyperbolic private eye and WWII vet, Mike Hammer, on the world with I, the Jury, a revenge saga that featured a major infusion of sexual innuendo and unfettered violence that scandalized not only other mystery writers but also the publishing industry and beyond. In this illuminating biography, the first devoted to Spillane, MWA Grandmaster Collins (the Nathan Heller series), a late-life collaborator of Spillane’s, and critic Traylor provide incisive analysis of Spillane’s unique career. Employing exhaustive research and their access to Spillane’s personal archives, the authors move from Spillane’s precocious childhood to his time at comic book publisher Timely writing text fillers; his WWII service as a flight instructor; the epic breakthrough with the Signet/NAL paperback edition of I, the Jury; the superstar years of 1948–1953, when each Mike Hammer novel was reprinted in the millions; and his surprise conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness movement. Spillane’s growing appetite for acting and star-making turn in the 1970s as a TV pitchman for Miller Lite beer is recounted in colorful detail, while his long-delayed triumph in being named a Grand Master by his MWA peers in 1995 is quite affecting. The book concludes with several highly informative appendices, including Collins’s fascinating “Completing Mickey Spillane.” This definitive work is indispensable for any fan of the revolutionary Spillane and his two-fisted novels. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Feb.)

* * *

Not to leave The Big Bundle out of the mix – available now on e-book and on audio and in hardcover next month – here’s a great write-up from that pro’s pro in prose (sorry!), James Reasoner.

Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:
The Big Bundle – Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins’ Nathan Heller series began in 1983 with True Detective. (Almost 40 years ago? How is that possible?) True Detective is one of the best private detective novels I’ve ever read. Through 18 more novels and story collections since then, Collins has maintained an incredibly lofty standard on this series and kept it alive through several different publishers, a pretty impressive feat in itself.

The Heller series moves to Hard Case Crime, a match that seems well-nigh perfect to me, with The Big Bundle. The Heller novels always involve real-life crimes, and in this one, it’s a high-profile kidnapping in Kansas City in which the six-year-old son of a wealthy Cadillac distributor is abducted. The kidnappers want $600,000 in ransom money. There’s something off about the whole deal, however, and Heller is called in to try to help recover the boy before it’s too late.

A lot of twists and turns and violence and tragedy ensue. The kidnappers are caught, but only half of the ransom money is recovered. What happened to the other half? That’s the question that brings Heller back to Missouri five years later, in a high-stakes mystery involving not only many low-level criminals but also Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.

As always, the research is thorough and meticulous, the background is fascinating, and the pace is great. Collins had me staying up later than usual and flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen. And of course, Nathan Heller is a great protagonist, smart, stubborn, plenty tough when he needs to be. The Big Bundle is classic private-eye fiction, just like the rest of the Heller series. I had a great time reading it and give it a high recommendation. It’s available in e-book and audio editions now, and a hardcover is on the way.

* * *

I have been working on the video presentation of the Mike Hammer radio-style play, Encore for Murder, performed here in Muscatine, Iowa, on September 17 with Gary Sandy reprising his role as the famous detective. Phil Dingeldein, Chad Bishop and I recorded the performance on multiple cameras (and recorded two dress rehearsals, too, for protective coverage).

Chad – who was the on-stage foley artist, again radio-show style – is an expert editor (among much else) and he and I have been assembling the show from the available material. It’s a big but fun editing job.

I frankly think it’s very good, but there’s a chance I’m just deluded. I can tell you I am almost giddy being back in an editing suite and working on what is essentially an indie film again. I think our local cast did a terrific job supporting a pro like Gary, whose presence raised everybody’s game. Gary, as you may know, played Lt. Max Anderson in my feature, Mommy’s Day (1997)

Phil and I, of course, are longtime collaborators. It’s always a joy to work with him. (He produced the two commentaries I did, and the restored Brian Keith pilot film, for Classic Flix on I, the Jury as well as the forthcoming The Long Wait.)

What are we going to do with this thing?

I am considering entering it in a few Iowa film festivals, and may offer it to Iowa PBS and/or the Quad Cities PBS station, WQPT. I will show it to my buddy Bob Blair, the honcho at VCI home video, where we are talking about releasing an expanded version of my documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1999), which is still in progress. Encore for Murder might be a bonus feature there…or possibly a separate release. I need to see how people outside the Muscatine bubble might react.

I can only say that everywhere I go around here, I am still hearing from locals about how great the show was…and it’s been almost three months since our one-night performance.

For you Mike Hammer fans, I promise that at the very least I will make it available here, possibly as a DVD.

Stay (as we used to say) tuned.

* * *

If you are looking for stocking stuffers (for yourself or others) and have already ordered the Classic Flix Blu-ray/4K/3D I, the Jury, here are other Mike Hammer flicks that are available on Blu-ray at Kino (all under twenty bucks each):

The Girl Hunters (Mickey as Mike; includes my commentary)

My Gun Is Quick (flawed but interesting)

I, the Jury (1982 remake with Armand Assante)

* * *

I have said here several times that the Michael Bay movie The Rock (1996) is really the slightly disguised last Sean Connery-starring James Bond movie. The proof has been assembled here, and it’s worth your time if you’re at all a Bond fan (are you listening, Matthew Clemens?). (How about you, Nate Collins?…It’s a Nic Cage movie, son!).

The great J. Kingston Pierce at the equally great Rap Sheet site catches people up to what I’ve been doing of late. I should say that my assumption (which Jeff reports) that Too Many Bullets will be one of the longest Heller novels to date did not come to pass. Oh, it’s pretty long – 80,000 words – but that’s the length of The Big Bundle, and both fall short of True Detective and Stolen Away, in the door-stop length department.

Here’s a good Big Bundle review at Bookgasm, though I disagree with the reviewer’s assessment of the second half of the novel, the second section having been singled out for praise elsewhere (some nice reviews are already posted at Amazon).

I am very pleased (no surprise!) with narrator Stefan Rudnicki’s reading of the new Mike Hammer book, Kill Me If You Can. He’s managed to make the loss of Stacy Keach as narrator much easier to go down. Stefan is the honcho at Skyboat Media, and while first appearing back in 2015, this essay on my work and Skyboat’s interest therein you may find worth your time. A video clip of Stefan at work on Quarry’s Choice is included. By the way, Stefan and Skyboat just picked up the short story collection, originally published by Mysterious Press, A Long Time Dead – A Mike Hammer Casebook. Should be out on audio next year.

It should be noted that Kill Me If You Can might be considered a collection, as the Hammer yarn of that name might rightly be considered a novella, and the rest of the book includes five Spillane/Collins short stories, two of which are significant Hammer tales taken from film scripts of Mickey’s.

* * *

Several books are reviewed here, and one of them (scroll down) is Kill Me, Darling.

Next is this very good and wide-ranging essay (at the sublimely named site Monkeys Fighting Robots) on my work with an emphasis on Road to Perdition. Check it out.

The prose novel version (the one from Brash Books) of Road to Perdition gets a nice write-up here. It’s about books you might like if you’ve enjoyed the work of George V. Higgins. Somewhat ironically, it was the fiction of Higgins that made me stop reading other authors of crime fiction because I felt myself being too influenced by his distinctive style. The same write-up (from author J.T. Conroe) makes an appearance in a column about Richard Stark’s The Hunter.

Finally, this is an annotated list of the best 12 Mickey Spillane novels – and about half of them I had something to do with! That’s gratifying, but in any case, this is worth a look.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 4 Comments »

A Stocking Stuffer and Christmas Crime

Tuesday, December 6th, 2022
Blue Christmas cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Indiebound Purchase Link Bookshop Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link Barnes & Noble Purchase Link

If you are looking for a stocking-stuffer type gift – a book, say – you might consider Blue Christmas and Other Holiday Homicides from Wolfpack, available in trade paperback (also e-book, but I’m not sure how you stuff one of those in a stocking).

I’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again on the occasion of the Christmas Season. Just before Thanksgiving 1992 – right before – I received a letter from the Chicago Tribune Syndicate editor letting me go from the Dick Tracy strip after my 15 year run. Shortly thereafter Bantam cancelled Nate Heller and returned the novel Carnal Hours to me after the editor there had accepted it enthusiastically. (The previous entry, Stolen Away, had won the Best Novel “Shamus” award from the Private Eye Writers of America.)

On Christmas Eve 1992, still shellshocked, I wrote “A Wreath for Marley,” the lead story in the Blue Christmas collection. It has been published several times, including in the Otto Penzler anthology, The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. The story is what they call (hideously) a “mash-up” – of A Christmas Carol and The Maltese Falcon. Its significance is that it showed me getting back into the game after two bad batterings. The story is a long one, probably 15,000 words, and was done in one fevered sitting. It remains my favorite short story of mine.

It almost became my second indie movie – there’s a script, you will not be surprised to learn – but the success of Mommy led to us deciding to do Mommy’s Day instead.

Anyway, on the occasion of the Christmas season, what follows is largely a rerun from 2020, but reworked with some new stuff interspersed.

Let’s start with the five great Christmas movies:

1. Scrooge (1951). Alistair Sim is the definitive Scrooge in the definitive filming of A Christmas Carol. And let’s definitely not start with the current Spirited, an overstuffed turkey that some misguided souls are already calling a Christmas classic. It has a nice premise (the story told from the ghosts’ POV) and lots of songs, most of which sound like each other, and tons of gymnastic dancing and one shaky premise blending into another (Is it about people being able to change? Or about having no friends and finding one? Is it the story of the Ghost of Christmas Past falling in unlikely love, or the story of his charge getting over himself?). As an added bonus, it goes on forever. Actually, the stars – Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds – have nice, funny moments now and then. But we have a candy cane of an eighty-minute movie stuffed inside a two-hour stocking full of lumped coal.

2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Hollywood filmmaking at its best, with Edmund Gwen the definitive, real Santa Claus, Natalie Wood in her greatest child performance, John Payne reminding us he should have been a major star, and Maureen O’Hara as a smart, strong career woman/working mother who could not be more glamorous. Beware at all costs the 1994 remake.

3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Heartwarming but harrowing, this film is home to one of James Stewart’s bravest performances and happens to be Frank Capra’s best. This one got a good TV-movie, gender-reversed remake that may turn up again this year: It Happened One Christmas (1977) with Marlo Thomas and Wayne Rogers.

4. A Christmas Story (1983), Jean Shepherd’s unlikely claim to fame, and a Christmas movie with Mike Hammer and Carl Kolchak in it. Now if only the four PBS specials about Ralphie and his family would emerge on legal home video! What we have instead is a weak Christmas Story 2, a true sequel with a tragically miscast Charles Grodin in the McGavin role (A Summer Story), and this year’s A Christmas Story Christmas with the original Ralphie, Peter Billingsley, uneven but worth a watch.

5. Christmas Vacation (1989) uncovers every Christmas nightmare possible when families get together and Daddy tries too hard. This holds up very well and has unexpectedly eclipsed the original film. Its secret is nailing every real Christmas-at-home horror and taking each up a notch. And it’s easily Chevy Chase’s best performance.

Other worthwhile cinematic Christmas cheer:

Bad Santa (2003). This dark comedy has a warm heart, but you have to wade through a whole lot of black humor to get there – well worth it, though. Billy Bob Thornton is wonderful, but the late John Ritter (who apparently died during the production) has the funniest moments in a side-splitting film. Its very underrated sequel, Bad Santa 2 (2016), is perhaps even funnier with Kathy Bates almost stealing the picture playing Billy Bob Thorton’s genuinely evil mother. The original film is out there in two versions, a Director’s Cut and an Unrated Cut (well, a third version if you want the theatrical cut). Both versions are good and you might alternate them from Christmas to Christmas, year to year. The unrated cut is twelve minutes longer.

Holiday Inn (1942) is easily better than White Christmas, although the latter has its charms – it’s helped keep Danny Kaye from being forgotten, and my pal Miguel Ferrer’s mom is in it. The original is funnier and ultimately more heart-warming, though the Lincoln’s Birthday blackface number is not just tasteless, it’s one of Irving Berlin’s worst songs (“Abraham”). Shudder for a few moments, then fast-forward.

Bell, Book and Candle (1958) is an old favorite of ours, the movie Kim Novak and James Stewart made together right after Vertigo, serving as kind of an unlikely happy-ending coda to that great film. With Jack Lemmon and Ernie Kovacs bouncing beautifully off each other, it’s a precursor to Bewitched with a great George Dunning score.

The Family Man (2000) with Nic Cage, a modern reworking of It’s a Wonderful Life, is heartwarming and funny. Cage may be an over-the-top actor, but the man commits – he gives one thousand percent to every performance, and this time he has a terrific movie to do it in. There is a melancholy feel to the ending, though, as the path not taken by Cage dissolves behind him at the close, meaning some cute kids bite the imaginary dust.

The Twelve Days of Christmas (2004). This shameless reworking of Groundhog’s Day as a TV Christmas movie is funny and rewarding – good-hearted but with a darkly comic sensibility. Steven Weber is excellent as the successful slick businessman who has twelve tries to get Christmas Eve right. Molly Shannon gets her best post-SNL role. If Hallmark movies were this good, we wouldn’t be bitching about them.

Three Godfathers (1948). This John Ford western stars John Wayne and is surprisingly gritty and even harrowing before a finale that you may find too sentimental – that combination is typical Ford, though. It’s dedicated to Harry Carey and “introduces” Harry Carey, Jr., who is very good, as is Pedro Armendariz.

Prancer (1989). This features a naturalistic performance from child actor Rebecca Herrell in a smalltown/rural variation on Miracle on 34th Street. Is the reindeer the little girl helps back to health really Santa’s Prancer? Sam Elliot is uncompromising as the father who doesn’t understand his daughter, whose mother has died.

Remember the Night (1940) is the second best (after Double Indemnity) of the films Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray made together. Written by Preston Sturges, it makes its humanistic points with sentiment, not sentimentality, with an occasional noir jolt.

I, the Jury (1953). On the joyous occasion of its 3-D Blu-ray/4K release, note that this much underrated first Mike Hammer movie is set at Christmas and plays off of that throughout, with holiday cards and carols the connective tissue. Biff Elliott (like the movie itself) is much underrated, and the cast is filled with wonderful character actors. The great John Alton shot it. And I am thrilled that many of the reviews of the Classic Flix limited release are giving this strong private eye film reconsideration and overdue praise.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015) features William Shatner as the comic glue (a disc jockey) holding together inter-related stories about Krampus and Christmas. There are almost as many horror movies about Christmas as there are Christmas movies, but this is one of the best in a now cluttered field. It was put together by many of the Orphan Black people.

Office Christmas Party (2016) is a very funny raunchy comedy that eventually betrays a good heart. The great cast includes Jason Bateman and Kate McKinnon. I would recommend the theatrical release, as most of the raunch included in the unrated cut isn’t particularly funny and tends not to involve any key players.

Scrooge (1970) is the second-best Christmas Carol movie. Albert Finney is wonderful as Ebenezer in this musical version, with the Leslie Briccuse score perhaps the one most like his work with Anthony Newley, who did not contribute to this score but who played Scrooge in the much-seen British stage version (which came after the film). The best song in the current Spirited (“Good Afternoon!”) is a rip-off of this film’s “Thank You Very Much.”

Arthur Christmas (2012) is a CGI cartoon with a smart, witty script. The voices in this British production include James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent. The neglected son of Santa rises to the occasion when a toy isn’t delivered despite a state-of-the-art technologically advanced system of his favored brother’s. My seven year-old grandson Nate likes this one and so do I.

There are several special Murdoch Mysteries Christmas movies, and not all are good. But one of them is: “The Night Before Christmas” (2021), a witty Agatha Christie Old Dark House tribute. This long-running show is comfort food for Barb and me, and this example shows why we put up with the occasional clinker (to quote Ralphie’s Old Man) for the joys of most episodes.

The two Poirot/David Suchet Christmas episodes are also worth seeking out for seasonal viewing: “The Theft of the Royal Ruby” and the movie-length “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas.”

* * *

Publisher’s Weekly chose The Big Bundle as one of its “Books of the Week.”

Finally, here’s a great You Tube review of the I, the Jury disc.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 8 Comments »

A “Big” Book Giveaway

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
The Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

I had hoped to do a book giveaway with copies of the Spillane bio, but I don’t have enough copies to do so – what I have has to go out to a handful of professional reviewers. Apologies.

But we do have a book giveaway this week – the new Nathan Heller, The Big Bundle, from Hard Case crime. I have ten trade paperbacks of the novel (which will be published initially in hardcover – these are ARC’s, Advance Reader’s Copies).

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

Because the physical copies of the book are tied up at the London docks, the novel won’t go on sale until some time in January. But the e-book is available Dec. 6 and the audio (indeed read by the great Dan John Miller!) is available now. So you should be able to post Amazon reviews as soon as you’ve read the book.

By the way, I received copies of the audio of The Big Bundle a few days ago, so it exists!

Speaking of which, here’s a spiffy review of The Big Bundle from the Considering Stories web site to whet your appetites:

THE CASE OF THE MISSING $300K:
MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ THE BIG BUNDLE
by Daniel Robichaud

When detective-to-the-stars Nathan Heller is called in to consult on the kidnap job in 1953, he’s got a few successes under his belt for work he’s done. The big marks on his record in terms of working kidnapping jobs was the work he did on the Lindbergh Baby case, which history has shown did not end at all well. Still, he’s a fresh set of eyes and ideas for the job, and the person or people who took Robert and Virginia Greenlease’s son Bobby from a boarding school are not exactly criminal masterminds. They snatched the kid just fine but walking the parents and the authorities through the ransom process has been trial after trial, with bumbling, idiocy, and amateurism on the kidnappers side. However, the ransom is the biggest on record so far: $600,000 in cash.

Well, Heller finds himself involved, but not as much as he might’ve wished. The FBI is calling the shots, when the local law is not interfering, and when Nate has the opportunity to wait for the perps and tail them or beat the answers out of them, he’s pulled away in an effort to save the kid’s life. By the novel’s midpoint, that particular mystery is mostly resolved: the fate of the kid is answered, the kidnappers are identified, and the money is recovered. Well, half of the money is recovered. The rest of the cash just vanishes into midair. All of that is historically correct, author Max Allan Collins finding gaps in real history to find a space for his fictional detective’s involvement along with some sly reworking of the facts and involved persons in order to make a satisfying narrative. As Westlake alluded in the opening of his tabloid-themed novel Trust Me On This, the real world seldom relies on plausibility while novelists are constrained by an audience’s suspension of disbelief.

One could consider the book to that point a rather involving work in its own right, but once that case is resolved, Collins really opens up the period and the scope, as parties are interested in figuring out just what happened to the missing cash. Fast forwarding to 1958, we find Senator Robert Kennedy convinced the money has made its way to the Teamsters via gangster connections—his Senate Rackets Committee is trying to find a platform to prosecute the leadership of that union. However, Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa believes the cash ended up in crooked hands. Both of these men want Nate Heller to go looking, and all roads lead him back to Saint Louis where the money disappeared in the first place.

It is there that Nate finds himself once again in crosshairs, people working angles and exploring various lines for locating the missing cash. Some familiar faces might know more than they are letting on, but all of them are interested in getting their own piece of the action, whether that’s a percentage of the missing fortune or a kickback. Will Nate find out what happened to all that boodle, or will he wind up one more victim, his career or even his life laid upon the sacrificial altar of mankind’s greed?

Max Allan Collins has been chronicling the life, times, and career of Nate Heller. The Big Bundle is the eighteenth novel featuring the detective, though he’s also appeared in numerous short stories and novellas. Heller’s adventures kicked off with 1983’s True Detective (which takes place in the 1930s). The books are generally engaging historical thrillers, balancing good research, engaging characters, and twisty mysteries. This eighteenth volume is no exception, either.

In The Big Bundle, we find Heller in his late forties. He’s got enough experience to know how to handle himself, and he’s not as prone to the sorts of leaps that younger folks get up to—but he’s also not so old that he’s completely risk averse. There’s a measured quality to his embrace of trouble that is engaging. Here’s a guy who will still get in over his head, who better understands the stakes as well as his own abilities. It’s the perspective of age that makes this adventure all the more intriguing. In fact, Collins has never shied away from involving Heller in some major historical crimes and situations.

The historical elements in The Big Bundle are big headline stuff from the times, in fact. The details behind the Greenlease Kidnapping and its resolution are easily available to true crime afficionados, and the general beats of the case are unchanged here. Those in the know will not find surprises in the flow of the case itself, but Collins does inject his character into the scenario in unexpected ways. Because Nate Heller has a history with corruption himself, he’s just as often seen as a force of law and order as a tool of the Chicago mob, and this dual reputation gives him access to places and people that normal law enforcement cannot. Collins uses the duality quite nicely here. That he gets to engage with people on both side of the case is quite enjoyable.

The later stuff takes a bit more license with history, using some big events and personalities as well as some created characters. It all rings just true enough that I don’t feel compelled to check a history book, which is how I most enjoy my historical fiction. A lived-in sense of the world, and a quirky perspective on the times are more enjoyable for me than a strict, dry, academic approach to the subject. Fans of James Kestrel’s Five Decembers will find plenty to love in Collins’ playing with history. The Big Bundle is a straight-ahead suspense yarn, a pairing of mysteries nested comfortably in real world events, more or less.

And though it is the eighteenth book in the Heller series, it stands on its own quite well. The first person narration hits on some of the events from past novels but does so without spoiling the secrets and suspense those books contain, inviting us to continue with the Heller series if we like the character here.

And there is plenty to appreciate. Nate Heller is a detective, and therefore a kind of knightly character committed to the resolution of mysteries. He’s not necessarily as righteous as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but he does walk down some mean streets. And given the aforementioned dual reputation, he’s as bound to rub elbows with racketeers or hoods as he is with honest citizens or law enforcement. In fact, Heller is a just character in terms of his understanding of right and wrong, as it applies to the way he operates and leads his life. But he also compartmentalizes this moral code while operating in a tough world.

The Big Bundle is a sprawling epic of mystery and suspense, a private eye story without any dames walking into offices but plenty of big, bad world to challenge our point of view character’s moral compass and detective skills. The book is bound to win new fans to the author’s series character, and one hopes Heller gets a bit of the same treatment as either Collins’ Quarry or Nolan characters, which both saw new releases as well as reissues of the earlier books in slick, new Hard Case Crime editions. The book is a dynamite read.

The Big Bundle is available for pre-order in eBook, hardcover, and audiobook editions from the fine folks at Hard Case Crime. The earlier novels have appeared in affordable eBook, paperback, and audiobook editions along with much of the prolific author’s backlist.

Check out the website here.

I have completed Too Many Bullets, the even newer Nathan Heller novel (out some time next year), and thanks to my indefatigable editor at Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, it’s really completed. Charles is blazingly fast, at least with my books. As almost a practical joke, I sent the novel out on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, saying it was just in time to ruin the long holiday weekend.

Well, Charles had finished his read-through and had all his notes…Friday morning! I spent the day dealing with his notes and fixing typos and such he’d spotted (and I’m pleased, even proud to say he likes the novel a lot). And now, with the ink barely dry…the novel is finished. Really finished.

Charles and I even worked on the backcover copy, which will also appear on the HCC web site.

All that remains is, at some point, a proof-reader to go through it and I’ll have a few questions to answer. Understand that this process can take months. And months. To finish a novel and two days later be doing the corrections and editorially requested tweaks is…astonishing.

Now I feel a little lost. I puttered around Saturday not knowing what to do with myself. This is a common feeling I have when I finish writing a book. I am working my ass off to finish it, then…what am I to do with myself?

I am taking most of December off from novel writing – I will have my draft of Antiques Faux to write come January. But I will be working on the video edit of the Mike Hammer play with Gary Sandy, Encore for Murder. I’ve seen the first act of two from editor Chad Bishop, and I like it. Not sure what to do with it, since it is after all an amateur production…though Gary, a real pro, is at its center; and the local cast seems pretty darn good to me.

As you may recall, this is a radio-style production, scripts in hand, though there is costuming and a big screen for scene-setting slides. We did this professionally, twice, in Owensboro and Clearwater, and I think this one stacks up nicely.

One idea I have is to include it as a bonus feature on the proposed disc of the expanded documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, which is in progress.

* * *

A movie recommendation and a Blu-ray recommendation….

The Menu

The Menu (in theaters now) is an excellent black comedy with a strong cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anna Taylor-Joy (in probably her best post-Queen’s Gambit role). Writer Seth Reiss is a veteran of the Onion and Comedy Bang! Bang!, his co-writer Will Tracy comes from Succession. Those credits make a lot of sense, because The Menu is very funny and very dark. The critics have mostly liked it, but miss the point by focusing on the film as a satire on the foodie culture when it’s much more about class in general.

El Vampiro Negro

From Flicker Alley on Blu-ray comes El Vampiro Negro, another outstanding Eddie Muller discovery, the best yet of the South of the Border noirs he’s dug up (which is saying something). Despite the “Vampiro,” this is not a horror film – rather, amazingly, it’s a remake of Fritz Lang’s seminal crime thriller M (1931), in which Peter Lorre made himself known to the world in all his creepy glory. M is one of the great movies, and it spawned a strong American remake of the same title by director Joseph Losey, a film doomed to be underrated.

What is amazing about El Vampire Negro is that it rivals the original and, in my admittedly skewed view (but one that Muller agrees with), is my favorite of the three versions. It just might be superior to the original. (Muller agrees.)

While Negro has familiar elements from Lang – the whistling by the serial killer of “Hall of the Mountain King,” for instance – it has an entirely new twist by putting women…the mothers of the little girl victims…at the center of the narrative. The main character, nowhere to be seen in M, is a chanteuse (Olga Zubarry) in a seedy nightclub. Madame Zubarry is excellent, alternately recalling young Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Graham. The seeming hero, a pillar of law enforcement, is a bully and a creep (though humanized by his love for his crippled wife). The shadows and Dutch angles are superbly rendered. This is a genuine noir find.

El Vampiro Negro
* * *

Rod Lott, guru of Bookgasm, also has the Flick Attack movie site, where he talks about I, the Jury (1953) and does so intelligently.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 1 Comment »

Thankful for Nathan Heller

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

I have completed Too Many Bullets, the next Nate Heller novel, with the exception of my final read-through doing corrections and tweaks. That will take much of the week, particularly since Thanksgiving is in there.

And I am certainly thankful to have finished it. My health was sketchy throughout much of the process, but I seem to be back to normal now, thanks to my general practitioner being on top of things, adjusting meds and such.

I began the writing of the book around the start of September. I’m actually surprised it went that quickly – it will be about three months when I wrap up the corrections, which for a 400-page (double-spaced) manuscript is a decent pace. I thought my health issues – the A-fib stuff, which included two cardioversions – would have slowed me down. But in retrospect I can see that I felt my best and the most myself when the work was distracting me.

On the other hand, I seem to have spent the previous three months researching the book. I didn’t have George Hagenauer helping me this time, so the process where he and I would divide up the reading and then discuss it as we go was not in the mix. I have never worked harder on research. The books were gathered, but the number of biographies of RFK and the stack of books about the assassination were daunting. I was determined to be really well-organized this time, so when I’d finished enough of the research to write a working synopsis – broken into chapters, about a half a page to a page per chapter – I went through my filled notebook of the research and annotated each chapter break-down with the page number in the research book, so I’d know where to find what I need writing that chapter.

In addition to that, I wound up filling three notebooks – this is more than any previous Heller – and I had a lot of on-the-fly Internet research, too, particularly on locations, everything from defunct restaurants to Griffith park to Caesars Palace and the Classic Cat strip joint in LA.

I feel good about each chapter but have my usual fear that when I read the book as a whole, they may not cohere. This has never happened but I always I’m afraid it might.

As I’ve mentioned here before, my original plan for this novel was far different from what it became. It was going to focus on the 1950s Heller/Hoffa story (often referred to in other Heller entries) with the RFK assassination an envelope that would take up around 100 pages, 150 at most. But as I researched the Sirhan Sirhan case, I realized I had a tiger by the tail and this new version has the Hoffa story jettisoned, perhaps to be handled next time, but this time with Hoffa barely mentioned at all.

The other factor was that my synopsis for the novel, the chapter breakdown I mentioned, included a B-plot and a return of mad doc Dr. Gottlieb from Better Dead, who in fact turned up in the history. But the B-plot would have weighed things down, and – coming along in the final third – be a distraction; and Gottlieb’s presence just over-complicated matters.

In fact, I did more composite characters than usual, too, in an effort to keep things moving and doing so smoothly. If this book is good – and I think there’s a chance it will be among the best Heller novels – it will mean I’ve mastered this difficult process of my own creation. It’s only taken three and a half decades.

I am sharing the cover with you, even though you haven’t even been able to lay hands on the previous Heller, The Big Bundle – the new Heller in terms of publishing.

Too Many Bullets cover

The Big Bundle is a book I am very proud of, and I am frankly pleased that it is so different from the novel I just completed. It’s a point of pride to me that no two Heller novels are alike. The Big Bundle was designed to be “right” for Hard Case Crime – to have traditional noir elements that would introduce Hard Case Crime readers unfamiliar with the Heller books to what I’m up to in a way that would be user friendly. In a sense, I wanted The Big Bundle to be a strong example of a traditional private eye novel while hitting the notes that are unique to Heller. It is a change of pace, of sorts, as the crime itself is not a familiar one to most (though it was incredibly famous at the time).

My hope is that following up with the very different Too Many Bullets – with an extremely famous crime at its center – will demonstrate to new readers, and remind longtime readers, exactly what it is I’m up to.

The needle I’m trying to thread is keeping the Hard Case Crime readers interested when they have entered my domain by way of Quarry, mostly. I love doing Quarry and the novels are much more fun to do than Heller, which is a brutal damn process. But I know that my best work, my most important work (if any of it is important), is the Heller memoirs.

I have had to struggle to keep doing them. It’s unusual that I’ve been able to keep Heller alive at various publishing houses – in my time in this field, it’s become obvious that nothing is harder than moving a series to a new house. And if you manage it, you manage it once. I’ve managed it five times.

No question about it. I am a stubborn mofo. It is my hope, even my dream, for the Heller novels to be recognized in the upper echelon of private eye fiction, alongside Hammett, Chandler and Spillane. That hasn’t happened yet and it may not happen in my lifetime, but I am gambling my time and energy – and to some degree my income-earning ability – on these novels.

Possibly I’m a fool. (Possibly?!?!) I always think of Conan Doyle, who felt Sherlock Holmes was a trifle and that his historical novels would be his enduring legacy. He was wrong and I may be wrong, but neither of us would have done it any differently.

* * *

This is the Thanksgiving edition of my weekly update/blog. I am thankful for a lot of things – my health, my family, but also my readers. I am thankful for you.

* * *

It’s a tragedy for the mystery field to lose Mystery Scene, a truly great magazine founded by my late friend (and much missed) Ed Gorman, and continued with flair by Kate Stine.

Read my thoughts on the subject and those of others right here.

The Big Bundle audiobook cover
Digital Audiobook:

You can pre-order the audio of The Big Bundle here. It seems to be read by the great Dan John Miller, though I haven’t had that confirmed (Audible thinks it is, anyway).

Here is another strong review of the I, the Jury Blu-ray/4K/3d release.

And another.

M.A.C.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 6 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »