Posts Tagged ‘Nolan’

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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.

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Get Fancy, Stream at Your Own Risk & Plot, Plot, Plot

Tuesday, July 18th, 2023

Out of the blue, two nice reviews of my novella Fancy Anders For the Boys popped up on the Internet.

Here’s one from that pro’s pro, writer Ron Fortier, at his Pulp Fiction Reviews site. Ron has, in part, a very personal response that is quite fascinating.

FANCY ANDERS – FOR THE BOYS
By Max Allan Collins
Illustrated by Fay Dalton
Neo Text
118 pgs

This is Collins’ second book featuring Hollywood debutante turned detective, Fancy Anders, set in the early days of World War II. What with Pearl Harbor fresh in the minds of most Americans, the people in Los Angeles right worry about a possible Japanese invasion and the Army quickly establishes military outpost in the hills overlooking the city. Many of these set up with anti-artillery installations.

With that many boys in uniform soon flooding the streets of Hollywood, the movie community comes together under the leadership of actors John Garfield and Bette Davis to open a canteen exclusively to cater to these servicemen and staffed by cinema stars and young, beautiful ingénues.

When Army Intelligence learns of possible enemy saboteurs targeting the famous Hollywood Canteen, Fancy is recruited, along with several of her girl friends, to pose as canteen hostesses and ferret out the foreign agents. Once again, Collins uses his considerable imagination to drop the reader into the middle of one of Hollywood’s most memorable locales. Through his words, it is so easy to see the beautiful ladies, the eager young men away from home and hear the big band music. It all comes alive against a backdrop of a world turned upside in the throes of war.

“Fancy Anders – For the Boys” is a fun read. Especially for this reviewer, whose father, Pfc. George Fortier served on one of those gun crews and spend his 1942 Thanksgiving, along with two other men, at the home of crooner Bing Crosby and his family. All before he shipped out for the Philippines and three years of hell.

And here is another great review, this one from GoodReads (unfortunately, unsigned):

Fancy Anders plays hostess at the Hollywood Canteen where soldiers and sailors about to ship out mingle with movie stars in this second of three thrilling mysteries by Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins, with stunning illustrations by award-winning artist Fay Dalton.

October 1942. With her private detective daddy in the OSS chasing saboteurs, Fancy is stuck playing receptionist/cleaning-gal at the empty Anders Confidential Inquiries office. But then the 24-year-old Barnard grad – expert in shooting, flying and jujitsu – is recruited back into action.

Hollywood, with Bette Davis and John Garfield leading the charge, has put together a night club where servicemen are served by waiters and waitresses with famous faces, from Gable to Dietrich, from Abbott to Costello. With starlets acting as hostesses, gorgeous Fancy fits right in. But this pistol-packing mama knows her real job is solving the murder of Who Killed the Hostess – a Victory Girl who became an LA battle casualty. In the meantime, saboteurs are targeting the Canteen for maximum damage, hoping to wipe out half the stars in Tinsel Town and blast a hole in America’s morale.

Portraying the times vividly with his trademark historical accuracy, Mystery Writers of America grandmaster Max Allan Collins has created a series protagonist both of her time and far ahead of it. Lavishly illustrated by James Bond artist, Fay Dalton.

The three Fancy Anders novellas are designed as essentially a serialized novel, in the hope they will be collected (Fay Dalton’s great illos and all). My structural pattern was Hammett’s great The Glass Key. Fay is working on the third novella’s illustrations right now (Fancy Anders Goes Hollywood).

Fancy Anders Goes to War cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Amazon Purchase Link
Digital Audiobook: Amazon Purchase Link
MP3 CD: Amazon Purchase Link
Fancy Anders For the Boys cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Amazon Purchase Link
Digital Audiobook: Amazon Purchase Link
Audio MP3 CD: Amazon Purchase Link
Audio CD: Amazon Purchase Link

Neo Text bought them as e-books but, at my request, have also made them available in book form. This has caused some confusion from readers who can’t figure out why the books are so short, although the books at Amazon are clearly listed as novellas.

Fay’s illos (cover excepted) appear in black-and-white in the physical books and in color in the e-books. My hope is that they will be in color when the three novellas are eventually collected, and in fact I’ll probably insist they do. We have not gone out to publishers about the collected novel version as yet.

This was a Covid lockdown project, largely, and one I truly loved doing, from the research through the writing. Fancy is sort of a young Ms. Tree, though she definitely has her own personality. Within the context of my work, the novellas are reliably tough, though not as extreme in that regard as Mike Hammer, Nate Heller and Quarry.

You can get them at Amazon. Here’s Fancy Anders Goes to War.

And here’s Fancy Anders For the Boys.

As I’ve mentioned here before, Skyboat Media has done phenomenal audiobooks of the Fancy novellas, with full sound effects, music and a fine female narrator in Gabrielle De Cuir.

The Amazon links I provided will also take you to ordering info on the e-books and the audios mentioned above. But of course my preference is physical media.

Fancy Anders Goes to War is $6.99 and Fancy Anders For the Boys is $5.99 in physical book form.

* * *

My ongoing rants about my love of physical media and disdain for e-books and streaming video probably needs some clarification.

Nothing wrong with e-books. If I were younger, particularly if I were commuting by train to work or doing a lot of flying on commercial airlines for business, I would certainly have a Kindle. My son Nate has long read books on Kindle and, when he really likes them, gone on to buy those books in their proper physical media form.

A great deal of my income comes from e-books, as the links I provide here to Amazon sales on a fairly regular basis indicate. I have been very fortunate to have been one of the authors who early on was approached by Amazon, and they have kept me in print (and have sent regular checks) at a time in my career when that comes in very handy indeed. They publish physical media versions, too, but the e-books are the moneymakers.

Frankly, I was one of the handful of living authors approached by Amazon for my backlist – which included not only Nate Heller but Mallory and the “Disaster” series and a few standalones. Ian Fleming was one of the others, for example, all deceased except me. For a while they were publishing new novels of mine – including the very successful Reeder and Rogers political thriller trilogy, co-written by my pal Matt Clemens – though the current editorial staff expresses no interest in publishing new material by me.

No harm, no foul. What they already have continues to generate sales. The most recent titles are the two Krista Larson novels, Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It, which continue to sell if not at a clip at a steady pace.

But my frustration with the streaming services continues, and the writers and actors who are on strike are actively seeking help in that area, understandably. As a consumer, I am angry – but not even a little surprised – to see them (post-Covid lockdown) eliminating all sorts of stuff that I might have wanted to watch, and this includes things I bought for my library. Things like the 1950 Li’l Abner and the Sidney J. Furie The Lawyer have disappeared after I bought them, supposedly permanently.

If you drop by here regularly, you’ll know I set out to show Barb and myself every Raymond Burr-era Perry Mason episode that was based on an Erle Stanley Gardner novel or story. We have completed that mission, and I think it adds up to 90 episodes or so (remarkable that an American series did so many adaptations of the source material).

But during the relatively short time it took to do that, a whole season (season 7) disappeared from Paramount+, and a number of episodes from the other seasons disappeared without a trace much less a warning. These tended to be Gardner-derived episodes.

Fortunately, I owned the entire nine-season run on DVD and had been watching the Paramount+ episodes only because they were of the higher high-def quality. You haven’t lived till you’ve examined the wrinkles on the faces of Hamilton Burger and Lt. Arthur Tragg in high-definition.

“Incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial!” you say.

Well, I’m fussy. And some who’ve been witnessing these irrational tirades of mine frown and waggle a finger – maybe it’s all well and good for an incredibly wealthy, world-famous author (pause for my hysterical laughter) to spend some of his endless funds on one Blu-ray and actual physical book after another. And it’s true that I wallow in laserdiscs, DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K discs, and that books are stacked everywhere around here waiting in hopeless desperation to be read.

But I never meant to imply that the unreliability of the streaming services and the convenience of e-books meant that I expected you to spend your food money on physical media. Only an obsessive idiot like myself – and I am not alone, I assure you – would buy as many discs and books as I do, despite the dwindling number of years that I face ahead to actually watch or read them.

What I mean to suggest about DVDs, Blu-rays and 4Ks is that if you like a movie or TV series, if it’s one of your favorites or even if it’s just something you might think revisiting is a distinct possibility, buying those movies (and/or TV shows) on physical media is well worth considering.

And as for e-books, my son Nate’s approach makes a world of sense – read it on Kindle (or whatever), and if you really, really like it, invest in a physical copy for your book shelf.

Books by me, for example.

* * *

I intend to start writing a new novel tomorrow (Monday, July 17, as I type this) – Quarry’s Return. It is, not surprisingly, for Hard Case Crime.

I spent all of this past week (including earlier today) on plotting the novel – specifically, writing a 2500-word synopsis. In the past, I have not always plotted in this much depth. My first few novels – Bait Money, No Cure for Death, and The Broker (aka Quarry) – were not plotted at all. I just flew by the seat of my pants.

No Cure for Death – a mystery – found me having to write two chapters to explain what the eff had been going on. I swore to never put myself in that position again, and never did. Crime novels were less a problem, because they don’t always include a strong mystery element. But as the years passed, and boy have they passed, I gradually began to need to plot.

It begin with plotting just a few chapters ahead. By recent years, I’ve come to need a full chapter breakdown. On the other hand, I frequently depart from the synopsis when the characters decide to come up with things of their own to do that I hadn’t anticipated. So I almost always have to re-plot a few times during the writing of a novel.

The more detailed plotting began with True Detective in the early ‘80s – I was dealing with history and a certain amount of plotting had already occurred by way of events. Surprisingly, the historical nature of the material did prevent the need to re-plot as I went along, because the characters would again surprise me and, because I continue to research as I write, new information would present itself and demand attention.

* * *

The ESO network has published another Ron Fortier review, of the Spillane/Collins The Menace, a book you should consider picking up. It’s a horror novel, Spillane-style, plus two bonus stories. From Wolfpack.

Finally, this is a rather wonderful review (in French – you may have to rely on your browser to translate) of the graphic novel, Road to Perdition. One of the smartest, most in-depth reviews of that work I’ve seen.

M.A.C.

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Rule #1: Never Respond to a Reviewer

Tuesday, June 6th, 2023

Before we get started, I want to share this link for a nice if unexpected endorsement of the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective, by Paul Davis of the Washington Times.

* * *

I am going to share a review with you from the Borg site, a mixed one by C.J. Bunce, who has generally liked my work and to some degree likes it here. It’s almost never a good idea to respond to critics, but one aspect of the Borg review touches on a topic I feel requires at least some response. So I am going to take this opportunity – one writers generally do not get or at least have sense not to avail themselves of – to respond to that objection, and a few other negative aspects of the review. Let me say that as the author, my view is skewed and biased to say the least, and Bunce – a solid reviewer – has every right to his opinion.

Mad Money cover
Retro fix–Max Allan Collins’ giant Nolan novel “Spree” returns in 2-for-1 volume “Mad Money”

BORG: If you were going to stage a heist at a shopping mall, how would you do it? Would you steal from all the stores in the mall in the same heist? Back in 1987, when malls were still in their prime, Max Allan Collins made an attempt in the pages of Spree, his longest novel in the Nolan series. His anti-hero Nolan is the Michael Corleone of grime fiction – they keep trying to pull the retired thief back in just as he’s ready to settle down (Collins pulls him back in each of his 9 novels). Collins knows how to reflect the ugliest people in the ugliest of underworlds, and he does it by creating criminals in Missouri that would make New York mobsters look like wimps.

COLLINS: Is “grime fiction” a knowing pun or a typo? Is it a term that’s previously been used by Bunce and others? Just asking. If it’s purposeful, I might use it myself sometime.

BORG: Spree sees a reprint this year thanks to Hard Case Crime in a 2-for-1 edition called Mad Money. It’s bundled with Mourn the Living, another Nolan novel, and the last of a series of reprints that provide some of the best value around for pulp crime readers and fans of Collins’ unique voice. I thought the hillbilly Comfort family of Missouri was vile in the last Nolan novel I reviewed here at borg: Hard Cash, the fifth Nolan novel. I had no idea.

As you see in the cover of Mad Money and the other novels in the series with art by Mark Eastbrook, Nolan is Collins’ Lee Van Cleef lookalike, a bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy in a world of creeps and criminals even worse. With Spree, Collins again pushed the boundaries of pulp crime. It’s full of the writer’s brand of rough sex, racist characters, and violence we’ve seen in his Quarry series and earlier Nolan stories, but this time that includes threats of incest and underage sex, the kind of cringey content that paints the darkness into the story’s villains. It’s also the kind of shock and awe that would later make Quentin Tarantino win movie awards. It all goes full circle, because Nolan was inspired by Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novels, which inspired every other pulp crime writer, including Tarantino. Spree takes Collins into horror territory, something that may give readers a Silence of the Lambs vibe.

I’m still reading and enjoying Nolan novels, with five more to look forward to, but I think Collins’ effort to stretch out the word count of this book is reflected in page after page of padding. Collins is a master of brevity in his books, and he spent more time in this book with descriptions that neither enhance the mood and setting nor further its plot. At a few points his leads Nolan and frequent sidekick Jon even make mistakes that the characters I thought I knew from Bait Money, Hard Cash, and Skim Deep were too smart to do. Maybe I was wrong about them?

COLLINS: I don’t ever knowingly pad. I understand it might come off that way, and I do get accused of it from time to time; but it’s not something I do to plump up page count or whatever. Nor am I in particular a “master of brevity.” If anything I am criticized for writing too much description of setting and wardrobe, which has irritated some readers and reviewers. I don’t care. My object is to use setting and wardrobe for purposes of characterization.

The book is a longer one than the other Nolans and was, like Stark’s Butcher’s Moon, designed to be more in depth than the somewhat brief paperback originals preceding it, and in a way to sum up the series (also like Butcher’s Moon). If by padding, Bunce means more characters than usual, I am guilty. The narrative technique in the Nolan books is to immerse the reader in point-of-view chapters of various characters, some rather minor. I learned this – borrowed (stole) this – from Westlake’s “Richard Stark” persona. This technique is an effort to make the world seem bigger.

BORG: Here’s the set-up for Spree: Nolan’s nemesis, hick Comfort family patriarch Cole discovers where Nolan has landed: owning a restaurant/nightclub named Nolan’s attached to a typical 1980s mall in Davenport, Iowa. Nolan previously killed some Comfort family members in a past exploit, and Comfort decides it’s time for payback. He stakes out Nolan and his mall and, along with his son and daughter, kidnaps Nolan’s girlfriend Sherry. Cole tells Nolan he must help him rob all the mall stores or he’ll kill her.

Collins provides the minimal details to show how the heist might be possible, but not quite enough to make it believable. The players are numerous: a few guys who worked jobs with Nolan before, plus a set of shoot-first triplets who can fence the loot later. Sherry, the great, tough, equal to Nolan, is relegated here to the victim role, and the 1980s shine through with Sherry as the only woman lead of the story. The only other woman is Cole’s “slutty-looking” daughter, who Cole hits on because she looks like her mom. Yikes. In no doubt Jon’s worst moment of the series, he has sex with the teen (who worships Jon from his days as small-time rock band member), which is bad choice #1, then instead of holding her to swap for Sherry he just lets her go (bad choice #2). Nolan has his worst moment by not grinding the story to a halt and holding the girl for a swap, maybe slapping Jon a few times. The story also just stops, and we don’t get to see the aftermath, which is a disappointment after all the build.

COLLINS: Sherry is held captive and (SPOILER ALERT) frees herself by way of a combination of her courage and ingenuity. Hardly a “victim” role. The structure becomes a back-and-forth report on the heist Nolan and Jon are forced into mounting for Cole Comfort and Sherry’s captivity and her efforts to free herself. At the time, I considered this effective and well-handled…and I still do.

The punchline of the massive robbery is (SPOILER ALERT) when Nolan makes his accomplices put everything back. The last dozen pages are devoted to the “aftermath.”

Of course, Bunce has every right not to like how I handled this, and for it not to work on him. Fine. A novel is a collaboration between writer and reader, and sometimes that collaboration goes better than other times.

Now, however, we arrive at the reason I have chosen to respond to this review. Bunce appears to be object to (or be offended by?) Cindy Lou, Cole Comfort’s seventeen-year-old daughter, being described as “slutty-looking.” But that description comes not from an omniscient author, rather a character in the novel, in that character’s point of view. The reviewer considers Jon’s “worst moment of the series” as having sex with this teenage girl. It’s a “bad choice.”

As we say in the funnies, “sigh.” I run into this with modern reviewers all the time. They object to sexism but not to homicide. Jon is a traveling rock musician in his early twenties; Cindy Lou is seventeen (the age of consent in Iowa is sixteen – making their consensual tryst “cringey” perhaps, but not “underage”). Still, that may indeed be a bad choice. You know what else is a bad choice? Being an armed robber. This is similar to the reviewers who criticize Quarry for sizing up women based on their attractiveness. I guess you’d expect better behavior from a murderer.

Nolan’s “bad choice,” Borg informs us, is that the retired thief does not kidnap Cindy Lou and try to swap her for Sherry. So we’re in favor of kidnapping now. In fact, the second section of the book concludes with a discussion, almost an argument, between Jon and Nolan about whether to kidnap Cindy Lou for this purpose, and how that might play out (not well)…or instead to manipulate this unhappy, abused girl (yes, manipulate – shame on them!), into helping get Sherry back. One of the darkly comic aspects of the novel, and that specific scene, is that Nolan and Jon are not as bad as Cole Comfort. Still, that doesn’t make them “good.” And the story does not “stop” here – it’s a cliff-hanger at the end of a section.

Also, and this is key, certain aspects of how the heist will go down are not revealed until (wait for it) the heist goes down.

BORG: Nolan, Jon, Sherry, and the reader know there is no way Sherry is going to get out of this alive. That’s the story Collins tells, but not quite where it lands – Collins doesn’t stick the landing as satisfying as in his other works (whether in his Nolan, Quarry, Heller, or Mike Hammer novels). Nitpicking aside, appropriate bad guys get theirs, just not directly proportionate to their level of vileness, and that’s a shame. But the bookending Collins incorporates is clever and almost delivers some satisfaction.

COLLINS: This grudging praise is for an aspect of the novel that I am rather proud of – the resolution of both Sherry’s escape from captivity and what Nolan does about the mall robbery he’s been forced into engineering. The fates of Cole and Lyle Comfort are very satisfying to the author and I believe probably are to most readers.

BORG: Jon returns as a slightly older young version of Nolan – who also has all those interests of a young Max Allan Collins – a guy who wants to create comic books for a living. He’s lost his apartment, which drives him back to Nolan for help, where he meets Sherry. He’s at a down point in his life with Nolan, but that doesn’t explain his extra dose of bad judgment this round.

COLLINS: Again…it just may be possible that Jon’s bad judgment was when he decided to be a fucking armed robber. Here, when he (like Nolan) has moved away from that into a more acceptable mode of living – the ironic theme of the series is that all Nolan wants is to realize the American Dream – Jon is still paying for the genuinely bad choice he made in this series, i.e., robbing a bank with Nolan in the first novel (Bait Money).

By the way, the supposed aspects of my life and interests as expressed in the Jon character are exaggerated by Bunce and others. I use my knowledge of comics and being a rock musician to provide some verisimilitude. But nothing else in Jon’s background or frankly character is drawn from me. On the other hand, the Mallory character (in No Cure For Death and other early novels of mine) is me, which is why I don’t write about him anymore – too boring.

BORG: Is there a worse pulp crime family than Collins’ Comforts? I don’t think so. Spree is not a typical Collins quick read, and that epic mall heist only gets to what you could imagine as the montage sequence in the movie adaptation. If the film rights were exercised today, the cast would need to be better developed and the execution a bigger part of the story. Here the idea is so good, but the delivery not so much.

COLLINS: I guess faint praise is better than no praise at all. In the context of my career, Spree was the first Nolan novel I wrote after the early Nathan Heller books (none of which is a “typical Collins quick read”). In fact, the success of those early Hellers got me the contract to do Spree (and Primary Target). Spree was a hardcover (not a paperback original, like the previous entries) and was a story designed to have some heft (not padding).

BORG: It may not be Collins’ best, but it’s still fun, and it will keep you engaged. Order Mad Money, including Spree and Mourn the Living, here at Amazon, and check out the other double-trouble sets, Two for the Money, Tough Tender, and Double Down, and the final novel in the series, Skim Deep (reviewed here). I reviewed Hard Cash here and Bait Money here. Keep coming back to borg where we’ll double back to the second novels in these 2-for-1 editions from Hard Case Crime later.

COLLINS: I am grateful for the attention Borg/Bunce brings to this series, and mean zero offense by this response. But I consider Spree the best Nolan novel, and feel it resolves the larger issues of the series, and the specific ones of the narrative at hand, rather well. So much so that I considered the series finished till editor Charles Ardai talked me into doing a coda by way of Skim Deep.

I also know that Spree is the Nolan novel most often cited as the favorite (or best) in the series by readers. Considering Bunce’s speculation that a modern screen version of Spree would probably improve it, I’ll mention two related facts: my own screenplay of Spree was optioned several times (twice by Bill Lustig), and right now Lionsgate is developing a Nolan film…based on Spree.

I want to make it clear that C.J. Bunce is an able reviewer and the Borg a worthwhile review site. Visit them here.

The issues I touch on above are nothing I usually would have bothered discussing – they are strictly a matter of opinion, and no one is more biased than the author. What made break Rule #1 (never respond to a reviewer in print) (or otherwise) is what I’ll call (for want of a better term) the Political Correctness Issue.

The first time I encountered this was with the publication of Bait Money in 1973, when I was criticized for Nolan thinking of young women as “girls.” A forty-eight-year-old-man in 1971 (when I wrote the book at age 21) would hardly think of a young woman in any other terms. But I began being careful about that.

Nate Heller was another matter, and he continues to be. Reviewers would occasionally complain about his sexism and racism, among other isms. Heller is a man in this twenties in the early 1930s and we are with him until he’s in his fifties in the mid-1960s. I try to be true to who the character would logically be, and what is appropriate to the year at hand. I tend to use “colored” and “Negro” most often, but have occasionally been beaten up for that. Heller indeed sizes women up by their looks, and has certain sexist tendencies (he hangs out at Hefner’s Chicago pad and dates Playmates, Bunnies, strippers, models and showgirls). A early lost love followed by an unhappy marriage made him a shallow swimmer in the male/female relationship pool. But he also treats women as equals and I am proud of the depiction of the major female characters in the novels, from Sally Rand to Amelia Earhart to Marilyn Monroe.

None of these offended critics has ever commented on the fact that Heller frequently murders the bad guy, Mike Hammer-style. Not once. As Tarzan might say, “Sex bad. Violence good.”

Quarry, similarly, is mostly a ‘70s and ‘80s character with views and modes of expression appropriate to those times. (Quarry’s Blood is modern-day and an exception; but Quarry remains a guy born around 1950) (a murderer, by the way).

Is a guy in a rock band in the mid-1980s, in his early twenties, making a bad choice having casual, consensual, legal sex with a teenage groupie? I’ll leave that up to you. But reviewers cheerfully accepting murder from Jon, Nolan, Quarry, Hammer and Heller, without comment, is an interesting commentary on what we consider acceptable in a fictional narrative.

* * *

A nice mini-write-up about the Antiques series is here (scroll down).

Finally, here’s an analysis of the graphic novel Road to Perdition.

M.A.C.

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The Awesome ‘80s Prom & Memorial Day Thoughts

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

This past Saturday evening (May 27) Barb and I attended the Awesome ‘80s Prom put on by my buddy Chad Bishop, who is the producer of the Blue Christmas project. Chad is a fun, funny, gifted guy and the evening he put together was a blast. There were Arcade games (a whole room of ‘em), New Wave music, food and (spiked) punch, and potential prom kings and queens trolling for votes. It’s one of those almost-a-plays that have structured elements but also have a large cast circulating as characters (prom attendees) and make it an interactive event.

We were accompanied by Barb’s sister Judy and our brother-in-law Gary, who admittedly looked a little more like he was attending the Manson Family Reunion than the Awesome ‘80s Prom.

Max and Barb at the Awesome '80s Prom
’80s Prom Goers!
Manson Family Reunion?
Manson Family Reunion?
* * *

J. Kingston Pierce, who for my money is the best friend the mystery/crime genre has here in the 21st Century, has posted info about the Blue Christmas crowd-funding effort – now in its final few days – that is better and more complete than I ever could:

Efforts by Iowa novelist Max Allan Collins to raise the money necessary to turn his A Christmas Carol-like detective short story, “Blue Christmas” (published in a 2001 collection), into a movie seem to be going well. With less than two days still to raise $5,000 through the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, he’s already brought in … $5,750!

Contributions are still being accepted here. As an incentive, if you pony up $25 to $500, Collins says you can write him at macphilms@hotmail.com to request copies of his older books to add to your collection. Click here to learn more about that offer.

Meanwhile, the author is hoping to score matching funds for this endeavor from the Produce Iowa-State Office of Film and Media’s Greenlight Grants program, which is designed to “support entrepreneurial projects that can accelerate business and careers in film.” Collins acknowledges, however, that there’s no guarantee he will succeed in this second venture, given the caliber of rival proposals. If Produce Iowa turns him down, he says he’ll mount a live production of Blue Christmas, which will be recorded.

More news on this matter to come.

Here is a link for the Rap Sheet post that includes this write-up.

* * *

Girl Most Likely will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals at Amazon, starting 6/1/2023 and running through 6/30/2023. The novel will be offered at 2.49 USD during the promotion period. If you haven’t tried one of the two Krista Larson novels, now is the time!

Fate of the Union (the second Reeder and Rogers thriller) is being offered during this same period at $3, and Flying Blind – one of my favorite Nate Heller novels – will be available at $1.99. The first of the three Reeder and Rogers novels, Supreme Justice, will be available at $2.99 for one day – June 3rd.

* * *

The great Paperback Warrior has posted a terrific review of Double Down, focusing on one of the two Nolan novels therein: Fly Paper.

Nolan #03 – Fly Paper

Max Allan Collins’ Nolan series is his pastiche of Richard Stark’s Parker series. The third novel in the chronology was Fly Paper written in 1973 but not published until 1981. The book has recently been repackaged by Hard Case Crime in a twofer marketed as Double Down.

For the uninitiated, Nolan is a hard-nosed thief who makes a living pulling heists that inevitably run into problems. Much of this book’s focus is on Jon, Nolan’s comic book collecting sidekick. The action kicks off with a colleague named Breen, who has a good thing going with a parking meter rip-off scam. Breen was working the coin theft organized by the redneck Comfort family before those hillbillies shot and double-crossed Breen landing him squarely in Nolan and Jon’s orbit.

This leads to a plan to rip off the Comfort family in a heist-the-heisters kinda deal. The action moves from Iowa to Detroit in the shadow of a large comic book convention. The heist itself is really a side-dish in the paperback with the main course being the commercial airline getaway that is interrupted by a skyjacking.

Between 1961 and 1972, there were 159 skyjackings in American airspace with the majority between 1968 and 1972. It was a vexing criminal social contagion without a clear solution – similar to the problem America currently faces with mass shootings. Collins draws upon this phenomenon as the backdrop of Fly Paper when a married guy plans a D.B. Cooper style airplane heist with a parachute getaway.

When Nolan and Jon are coincidentally on the plane as the dude takes control of the jet, the plotting and action soar. These are the best scenes in a book I’ve read in ages. The creativity at work with the dilemma facing Nolan and Jon sets Fly Paper apart from other heist novels of the paperback original era.

Fly Paper is also unquestionably the best of the first three Nolan novels. The inclusion of Jon as a sidekick gives the book its own identity rather than just being a cover song from a Richard Stark Tribute Band. The skyjacking storyline was brilliant, and everything about his slim paperback leaves the reader wanting more. Highest recommendation.

I would take slight issue with this review only in that it describes the Nolan series as a “pastiche” of Westlake’s Parker series. I usually describe it as an homage, but Westlake himself said that the series was distinct from its inspiration by the inclusion of the surrogate father-and-son relationship of Nolan and Jon, which humanizes Nolan in a way Parker never approached (nor wanted to).

The review got me to thinking, though. The first Nolan and Jon novel, Bait Money, was designed as a one-shot and really was me trying out everything I had learned from the Parker novels – not just the heist artist aspect, but the strict Point of View approach. As some of you already know, my original version of Bait Money had Nolan dying at the end. My then-agent Knox Burger, who had always disliked that ending, encouraged me to do a different ending in which Jon came back and rescued Nolan. After the original version got six or seven rejections, the new version sold first time out.

The second Nolan novel, Blood Money, was a direct sequel to Bait Money, really the second half of the first story. The two novels have been reprinted in the single volume, Two for the Money, by Hard Case Crime.

So in a very real way, Fly Paper was my first shot at doing a Nolan novel in a series format. I would always leave dangling aspects to be picked up in later novels; but this was nonetheless a self-contained series entry. More would follow.

Don Westlake and I made several appearances together, notably at Mohunk Lodge mystery weekends (see Nice Weekend for a Murder), where in my speech to the assembled fans/mystery gamers I shared the fact that Don referred to me as the Jayne Mansfield to his Marilyn Monroe, and I corrected him, saying I was the Mamie Van Doren. I remember seeing him laughing his generous laugh in the audience upon hearing that.

Don is a friend who is gone, however vividly he lives in my memory. Mickey Spillane is gone, too, of course, though he is with me every day. So many writers I’ve known and read and liked, who I’ve gotten to know personally, are gone now – one of the aspects of being 75 that never occurred to me till I got here.

On Memorial Day I reflect on my Dad, who served in the Navy as described in USS Powderkeg, and my Uncle Mahlon and Barb’s dad Bill Mull, who both endured horrific combat and came home with memories that must have been a burden.

It’s risky for me to do this, but as I write this Update on Memorial Day, friends who have passed seem to be looking over my shoulder. I will cite some, but not all of them. A good number were in either of my two bands, the Daybreakers and Crusin’ (or both), starting back around ‘65.

Paul Thomas was my chief musical collaborator for decades in both the Daybreakers and Crusin’. He came in as a tech wizard who ran sound, developed into a fine bass player and later was our lead guitarist. He was funny as hell and it’s a rare day when I don’t think of him.

Others of my bandmates have passed and yet remain vivid in my mind. Bruce Peters, the troubled genius who was the best showman, the finest guitar player, the most incredible songwriter, and the single funniest human being I ever knew. I quote him regularly.

Terry Beckey was a great singer and bass player and also very, very funny – murdered, goddamnit, on the road. Like Paul Thomas, he came into the Daybreakers as the sound man and worked his way up to front man.

Chuck Bunn was our first real bass player, a guy who didn’t hold grudges, he cherished them. But no one was ever a better band member, putting together lighting systems and other gizmos for us in his spare time – he lived for the band. He died shortly after this appearance at Bouchercon.

Brian Van Winkle came in as the brother of our then guitar player Jim after Chuck passed. He developed into a fine bassist and performer, and was incredibly fun to be around. Like so many of my bandmates, he had a wonderful if unprintable sense of humor. He also was the gentlest and sweetest member either band ever had. He appeared with us at the Indication Concert at the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Most of my best friends – maybe all of them – have been creative collaborators. People like Phil Dingeldein, who is alive and well. But some of our film collaborators are already gone, like Steve Henke, the skinny, cranky pro who kept us honest. Steve was my chief collaborator on Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop.

Probably the loss among my Film Family felt most deeply is Mike Cornelison, the actor who guided me through all of my indie projects. Mike appeared in Mommy, Mommy’s Day, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market, and of course Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life. He also took the leads in four short films of mine and was the narrator of both Caveman and Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. He played Pat Chambers in both of Stacy Keach’s audio productions of my scripts, The Little Death and Encore for Murder.

Mike had spent almost a decade in Los Angeles appearing on top TV shows and movies as well as starring in a trio of pilot films. He was knowledgeable in ways that turned me from a rank amateur into, well, an amateur who knows a little about what he’s doing.

On the Mommy movies, when Mike wasn’t working as an actor, he was my right-hand man, whispering in my ear when I got something wrong or needed to be doing something. He was also a pop culture expert and our conversations in that area were more fun than should be legal.

These are the friendly ghosts who walk with me through the remainder of my Act Three.

* * *

The Dave Thomas/Max Allan Collins episode of Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast got rerun recently, and has generated some nice buzz for our novel The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton (have you read it yet?). And let’s raise a glass to Gilbert, as well, gone way too soon.

M.A.C.

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