Posts Tagged ‘Quarry’

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Murder – His and Hers, Venturing Out & Tracy One Last Time

Tuesday, August 25th, 2020
Murder - His & Hers
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link

On September 2, Wolfpack’s new Kindle edition of Murder – His and Hers will be available at Amazon.

This collection was previously only an expensive hardcover by Five Star. This new edition will be followed soon by Too Many Tomcats, and before too very long a companion volume, Suspense – His and Hers.

These books collect short stories that Barb and I have written together as well as some written by us individually. Too Many Tomcats, which I edited, is mostly Barb’s solo stories, but all of these will be marketed as by “Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins.” Wolfpack wants to focus the books as part of their M.A.C. publishing program, so don’t think it’s my ego run (further) amok.

I am hoping that Wolfpack will eventually be publishing our the two collaborative novels, Regeneration and Bombshell, that preceded the long-running Antiques series of mysteries. Those, our first two novels together, were originally published under both our names and later, by Thomas & Mercer, as by “Barbara Allan.” We’re reverting to a joint byline for marketing purposes. All of these will soon be available in print editions (stay tuned).

We also have a collaborative short story coming out in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, though we haven’t been told in what issue yet – “What’s Wrong with Harley Quinn?” – set at the 2019 San Diego Comic Con, which seems like a very long time ago and a different world now. (I also sold a collaborative Spillane/Collins story to EQMM – “Killer’s Alley,” which will be the first Mike Hammer story ever published in those pages; naturally, it will be in their Black Mask section. Barb and I are both thrilled to be contributers to EQMM.)

My bride and I have been writing together for a long time. The process is similar to the one Matt Clemens and I use, although I don’t sleep with Matt, a situation he and I are both fine with. One difference is that I tend to come up with the initial idea when writing with Matt. Usually Barb comes up with the initial idea. Then she and I plot the story together, she writes the rough draft, and I do the second draft. It’s the same for both short stories and novels.

Tomorrow (Monday, as I write this) I will begin work on the new Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery novel – Antiques Carry On. Barb has completed her draft and I will start in, revising and expanding (she has given me 250 double-spaced pages and I will write 300 to 350 double-spaced pages). The only unusual factor this time is that I’ve already done my draft (from hers) of the first three chapters. That was necessary because we moved to a new publisher and needed to provide a substantial finished sample of the book to that publisher in the effort to land a contract.

We fully intend to keep going with the series, but we are at a funny (odd) juncture, which I trust is one many mystery writers with long-running series are experiencing. In plotting the next book, do we set it pre-pandemic or post-pandemic, or even during pandemic? The problem with post-pandemic, of course, is that none of us know what that will look like.

For seniors like us – and I have underlying health issues that magnify the situation – even a post-pandemic world will be tricky. Maybe it’s already occurred to you that you may have eaten at your last buffet. Or that how (or even if) you go out to the movies will be radically different.

Today, suffering from almost six months of cabin fever, we ventured tentatively out. Prior to Covid-19 we almost always took a day off every week that included going to either the nearby Quad Cities or Iowa City/Cedar Rapids for shopping, dining and sometimes a movie. We also have a nice movie theater here in Muscatine, and often took in films there – you may remember how often I did little movie reviews here back in the Good Old Days.

Since then, trips out for groceries and meds have been about it. I’ve cancelled doctor’s appointments and – although going to the local hospital for blood work – have had my consultations over the phone. We have been essentially sheltering in place since fairly early March.

But today we drove to the Quad Cities. We went through the drive-through at Portillo’s and got delicious food, which we ate in the car. We went briefly into the Davenport Books-a-Million, where masks are required and where the filled parking lot places were fairly sparse, and shopped a little and used the restroom (carefully) and drove home. An outing. An honest-to-God outing. On the way home we took the river road, which is scenic as hell and includes the quarry that Quarry was named after. We were listening to the audiobook of Quarry’s Ex read by the fabulous Stefan Rudnicki, so it was fitting.

In terms of what we used to do, it was kind of pitiful. After six months of sheltering, it was fabulous.

I don’t feel like we took any risks worse than our weekly grocery run. I know a lot of seniors get their groceries delivered, or pull up outside the supermarket for curbside service. But I rather pathetically look forward to a weekly grocery run – it’s early morning (we get up at six a.m. to make it there by seven) and it’s worth it, because the music is oldies, not country western, which you may have noticed I despise. The joy of hearing Bobby Rydell singing “Wild One” or Bobby Darin doing “Things” while I look for mini-cans of Coke Zero is difficult for me to articulate.

Meds we get going through a drive-up.

Also, I have a new appreciation for McDonald’s and Burger King.

So. What world will Barb and I write about when we do the next book about Brandy and Vivian Borne, if we’re lucky enough to get to keep going (as writers and as living breathing human beings)? How much zany laughter does a pandemic produce, anyway? I am planning to write a new Krista and Keith Larson novel – should I set it during the pandemic? Would that be interesting? Or will this be a period that no one will want to re-live? Yes, we look at movies made during the Depression, but mostly they are full of guys in tuxes and gals in ballgowns, or maybe Toby Wing wearing nothing but a great big dime.

And why is anybody still on the planet who would make a Toby Wing reference?

And yet the beat goes on.

* * *

This past week found me finishing up the second novella in the new series I’m doing for Neotext – more about that soon – and cleaning my office and dealing with copy-edited manuscripts and clearing my desk of smaller projects before I dive into Antiques Carry On.

One of those projects is writing the introduction to the 29th volume of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy for IDW. I have written introductions to the previous 28 volumes, too.

And now, with Intro 29, I will have written about the entire run of Chester Gould’s Tracy. This volume ends immediately before my fifteen-year tenure begins. Writing about the last, less than stellar year and a half or so of Chet’s work – though that work definitely has its rewards – was a bittersweet experience. My intro gets personal, as during this period my pal Matt Masterson and I were, every six months or so, getting together with Chet at his Tribune Tower office and dining at the prestigious Tavern Club for lunch. On the first such visit, I met my future collaborator, Rick Fletcher. At the time I had no idea that I would be the second writer on this great, important comic strip.

So writing this final intro was indeed a bittersweet thing. Like this damn pandemic, it was gave me a real sense of my mortality – although once you’ve had open heart surgery, your mortality’s on your mind quite a bit, actually. Like – am I dying, or is that just gas? When I first met Chester Gould, he was 72. My age now.

I hope you Tracy fans are taking the time to read my little introductory essays, which I think are pretty good. And fans of mine who haven’t been collecting these Tracy volumes ought to start – but not with the last one. Try something from the ‘40s or early ‘50s and see just how good Chester Gould was at his peak.

* * *

Here’s a nice review of Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother. Scroll down for it.

And here’s a Quarry’s Choice review. Again, scroll down for it. This may be my favorite Quarry novel – definitely my favorite “list” book.

M.A.C.

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A Typical Day in the Neighborhood

Tuesday, July 28th, 2020

In previous updates, I’ve mentioned that I am currently working with two publishers who are primarily e-book-oriented. One is Wolfpack, where I’ve just sent in my first original novel (co-written with my longtime collaborator Matt Clemens). I am not ready to reveal the title or the genre as yet, but I will say we’ve committed to at least three entries in this new series, and that I’m very pleased and excited with/by this first entry.

Wolfpack ad for Eliot Ness Omnibus

Wolfpack continues to be incredibly supportive. Take a gander at this ad that ran in Publisher’s Weekly for their first publication of my work – The Eliot Ness Mystery Omnibus, which collects the four Ness-in-Cleveland novels. For those of you with Kindles, you can get this omnibus – all four novels – for $2.99 (free for Prime Unlimited members).

Those of who you have already read these and own them in some other form are encouraged to write reviews of the omnibus, which as of now has only a single, lonely review. And Do No Harm, Girl Can’t Help It, Masquerade for Murder, Antiques Fire Sale and Hot Lead, Cold Justice have all kind of stalled out on the review front, so if you haven’t got around to posting yours, doing so would be appreciated.

The other e-book project I’m working on is for a new company that got a splashy welcome fromThe Hollywood Reporter (among others).

I am not ready to reveal what the Neotext project is, other than to say it’s a new detective series with a female lead and that I’m doing three novellas (30,000 words each) about the character. Okay, here’s a few more tidbits – it’s set during World War II, and it will be illustrated by a terrific Hard Case Crime artist, providing not just a cover but one painting per each chapter (ten per novella).

Initially these novellas will be published as e-books, one at a time, with an eye on later collecting them in physical book form. But so far Neotext itself is strictly an e-book publisher.

I am starting work this week on the second novella for Neotext. And Matt and I are meeting, via Zoom, to plot the second novel for Wolfpack. Both publishers have me creating new series, although Wolfpack is also publishing back list (including short story collections) and are up for me continuing existing series…in fact, have signed me to continue both Krista Larson and Reeder & Rogers.

This brings me to the non-promotional (at least not overtly so) portion of this update.

A question I am frequently asked is what my work schedule is – “What’s your typical day?”

In a way, I don’t have a typical day. Each morning does begin about the same, with the usual rising groggily, throwing down a handful of pills, scarfing down a mini-donut or two, guzzling some sparkling juice, and spending half an hour or so in my recliner watching Morning Joe (I’m a liberal – get over it).

Barb, in her neighboring recliner, always says, “Tell me about your day in the greatest of detail.” And I share my best-laid plans before the day proceeds to do whatever the hell it feels like.

When I am bunkered in writing a novel, which is most of the time, I attempt to write in the morning with lunch arriving no earlier than 11 a.m. and no later than noon. We used to go out for it, but now we rustle up our own (yes, I help in the kitchen, though my efforts are somewhat pathetic). When lunch happens depends on how my writing is going and, of course, how Barb’s writing is going. Barb has to get her writing done in the morning, as she is providing Day Care for our two grandkids a few houses up the street from one p.m. till shortly after five. I write all afternoon.

But fulltime freelance writing is a small business and both of us have to deal with business stuff as well as feed our muses – Barb in particular handles the financial side of things. But I have editors and agents and collaborators to deal with, and when galley proofs arrive I generally have to set my work schedule aside and deal with that aspect of things.

Between novels I do my best to attend to smaller projects, like short stories and the intros to the IDW Dick Tracy collections. I also always clean my office, which deteriorates to disaster-level proportions as a novel progresses – scattered research volumes, wadded-up paper on the floor, discarded drafts of pages and even chapters, and so on.

Also intruding on the actual writing are the requests for interviews, which I mostly try to handle via e-mail, but which sometimes require the phone or Skype or Zoom. These updates are written either Sunday evening, late, or first thing Monday. The longer ones sometime drain my energy to the point that no other significant writing gets done that day.

My pattern has changed radically over the years. As some of you may recall, for much of my professional life I was a night person who did most of his writing starting around midnight, going to bed at eight or nine a.m. and sleeping till noon. I had enormous energy as a younger person, needing little sleep; most nights I wrote a finished chapter, including long ones like those in a Nate Heller novel. But when we did the Mommy movies, and I had to rise at six a.m. or so – the director has to be first on the set and last to leave – my inner clock got changed. Ever since, I’ve rarely risen any later than eight a.m. or so. Now, as an old man (goddamnit!), I sometimes wake as early as six a.m.

And I hate it.

On such mornings, I start writing early, even before Barb gets up. So there are factors that come in, as you may have already noticed, that mean there is no really typical day.

On the other hand, sheltering in place for the corona virus has made one day seem much like another. Oddly, for Barb and me, time is passing more quickly, which seems like the opposite of what you’d expect.

* * *

The Quarry series was selected by Crime Reads as one of ten most binge-worthy series of the 1970s, which is a nice honor. In the comments, I corrected the assumption that the Memphis setting of the TV series is the same as the books.

Here is the opening sentence of a patronizing review of the Johnny Dynamite collection: “The opening introduction by writer Max Allan Collins is more a biographical essay about writer Frank Morrison Spillane (alias Micky Spillane) and writer/artist Pete Morisi. Not to mention it is excessively long. (Then again the title of this collection is also excessively long.) Though Collins’s introduction should please those wanting more knowledge about the subjects’ lives and/or the early comic book industry. While the introduction by artist Terry Beatty is of reasonable length it has one or two sentences that are a little clunky.”

I have a few thoughts to share. First, what other kind of introduction is there but an “opening” one? Second, if you’re going to be dismissive about Mickey Spillane’s role in this collection, at least spell his name right (not “Micky”). If you’re going to accuse my co-editor of writing a “clunky” sentence, perhaps you should learn to write in complete sentences yourself. Do you wonder why reviews like this irritate me?

On the other hand, here is Ed Catto’s terrific (and well-written) review of that same book, interspersed with quotes from an interview I gave Ed.

Here’s a brief, positive review of Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher – the non-fiction follow-up to Scarface and the Untouchable by A. Brad Schwartz and myself that will be published…next week!

Finally, the “lost gem” that is my single Batman comic strip continuity (with the late great Marshal Rogers) is discussed here.

M.A.C.

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Both Girls Are on Sale, Plus the Perdition Saga

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

Some great deals on Kindle this week.


First, Brash Books is offering the complete Perdition saga (novels, not graphic novels), which includes the long suppressed full-length novelization of Road to Perdition, plus my two sequels, Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. The fine folks at Brash are offering this through Amazon for a mere $9.99.



Girl Can’t Help It is on sale for $1.99 as a Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deal from now through June 30. And Girl Most Likely is just $0.99 in that same sale.




All three Reeder and Rogers novels are, too – $1.99 each as Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals through the end of the month – Supreme Justice, Fate of the Union and Executive Order. [Note from Nate: if you purchase or own any of the Girl or Reeder and Rogers books on Kindle, the audiobooks might also be available at a significant discount — I’m seeing them for $1.99.]

Speaking of political intrigue….

This is going to be a little tricky to write, so forgive me.

I belong to a number of writers’ and screenwriters’ organizations. They vary from quite active, guilds for example, to others that serve mainly to be a means of presenting awards in a chosen genre, with all the stops between. All of these approaches seem valid to me.

One of these organizations – please don’t try to guess which, because I do not wish to embarrass or criticize anyone, really – briefly became embroiled in the current, understandably heated conversation about the Black Lives Matter movement and the police in America.

I think “Black lives matter” gets fuzzy, because there’s an organized group but also the phrase itself. I can see how someone might have an issue with the group, but not how anyone could really thoughtfully object to the phrase. The “all lives matter” response is glib – of course all lives matter. But pointing out that black lives matter reflects the undeniable reality that a minority has literally been on the firing line for as long as any of us can remember, and a lot longer than that.

Here’s where it gets tricky. A member of the writers group in question is a retired police officer. He objected to some of what was said (or at least implied) about the police, and pointed out that police are also on the firing line and have been stabbed and spit upon in the aftermath of the horrific crime that took the life of George Floyd. He specifically objected to a pro-Black Lives Matter statement from our organization because, as a member, he wasn’t in full agreement with it. (I should say that this exchange took place before the disturbing footage emerged of a seventy-five-year-old man being shoved to the pavement and left to bleed there.)

Many members of our organization responded negatively, a very few getting personal. I tried to pour some water on the fire, but may have inadvertently poured gasoline instead, when I suggested we add a line pointing out that most police officers, a good number of whom are African-Americans, are dedicated public servants.

No one liked that suggestion, and I quickly withdrew it.

Within perhaps an hour and a half of the discussion between members (on line) beginning, the former police officer resigned from our organization.

I have frankly been trying to process this. Part of me thinks, as a writers organization, we should not have waded into politics. And yet is racism really politics? Isn’t it the sin that has stained America from day one, and goes way beyond politics? Doesn’t it go past left and right and into simple humanity?

Of the various writing and filmmaking organizations I belong to, I share membership with writers whose work I admire, but others whose work I dislike. As artists, we don’t always agree – in fact, we often don’t. For me, it’s about storytelling and creativity. I can respect a fellow writer whose writing I don’t admire because that writer is living the writer’s life that I am, with the rewards but also the problems that come with it – chasing the next gig, for example. On a basic level, we’re all just trying to make a living. Professional writers, no matter what they think of each other’s work, have that in common.

I feel our organization should have respected this member and his right to disagree. And if he objected to the statement the organization made, he should have had a better option other than to resign. Anyway, I’m not sure an organization should make a statement that all of its members haven’t signed off on. That statement should probably have included only the names of those members who did. I would have gladly signed. Proudly signed.

This (now ex-)member was a work horse, a dedicated member of the organization, and an award winner. It makes me sad and a little sick that we have lost him. Part of me knows that creative people have to take a stand against something as major as racism, and yet I admit to keeping (mostly) quiet about political figures who seem to me to be blatantly racist because I don’t want to offend any of my readers. That’s probably cowardly, but I have a living to make, and maybe there’s a subversive aspect to my fiction that might make somebody’s thinking change or at least shift a little over time. I don’t know. Really don’t. Maybe I’m just a coward.

On the other hand, Quarry setting fire to a Ku Klux Klan rally in Quarry in the Black may have indicated where I’m coming from.

Limiting freedom of speech within our writing and screenwriting organizations to those who agree with us is antithetical to everything those of us who create for a living are about. And this ex-member’s objections did not reflect racism, but in fact spoke of years of effort to battle against it within the system.

An organization’s mission statement can spell out certain things that won’t be tolerated – racist bile would seem high on that list – but to be intolerant of a reasoned position from another point of view is dangerous. Someone in power whose name I won’t mention is pretty cavalier about the Constitution. Maybe the writing and screenwriting communities should take better care of the First Amendment.

M.A.C.

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Mommy Streams, Backlist Bubbles, We Binge

Tuesday, May 12th, 2020

Both Mommy and Mommy’s Day are now streaming on Amazon Prime. (Links: Mommy; Mommy’s Day) How long they will be there I can’t say (Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life has disappeared, though some other streaming services have it). If you’re a Prime member, it’s included.

[Note from Nate: Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life is currently on Tubi, free (with ads?)]

So if you haven’t seen both or either of these films, now’s your chance. If you have the earlier full-screen versions, this is an opportunity to see the widescreen versions that Phil Dingeldein and I recently labored to create. I do warn everyone not to expect HD quality (despite being streamed as HD) – the picture (particularly on Mommy) is rather soft. But it’s probably the best either one is going to look.

As I’ve said, compromises were made to be able to afford the wonderful casts.

remain proud of these films, and the Blu-ray double-feature release has received mostly good to great notices. People seem to understand where these little movies were coming from – which is to say blackly humorous melodrama, and a tribute to The Bad Seed and to Patty McCormack herself.

Mommy and Mommy’s Day are streaming on Fandango, too, for a couple of bucks. It may show up elsewhere (I am not kept terribly well in the loop by the distributor). (Links: Mommy; Mommy’s Day)

The novel versions will be coming out again one of these days, part of a package I am negotiating with a major e-book publisher for the seven remaining novels on my backlist (Amazon has most of the rest, Dover has the first two Jack and Maggie Starr novels).

We are also discussing a group of collections of my short fiction (and Barb’s), reprinting Blue Christmas, Too Many Tomcats, and Murder – His and Hers, plus a follow-up to that last title, a collection of my horror stories, and two collections of the stories Matt Clemens and I have done together.

Pulling these stories together has been a big job. They go back to the nineties in many cases, and were written using the word-processing program (wait for it) WordStar, and then converted to now nearly obsolete versions of WordPerfect maybe twenty years ago, and finally to Word. So while I have most of the files in some form, the dizzying array of conversion glitches causes twitches.

For the horror collection I decided to include the radio scripts of “Mercy” and “House of Blood,” written for the Fangoria radio show, Dreadtime Stories. I had adapted a number of my short stories for producer Carl Amari, but had two indie movie ideas I wanted to get up on their feet, and that’s how the two scripts above came to be written. The scripts were in a format (basically a very narrow strip of copy, maybe four inches wide, that required hours of work transforming them into more standard pages of text that wouldn’t bewilder or annoy readers. Fortunately, I have a staff to do such scut work. No, wait – I don’t!

Ultimately, though, it will mean the vast majority of my work will be available in e-book (and real books), with only a handful of things lost to the mists of time.

* * *

What have Barb and I been watching lately? Now that we don’t go to the movies anymore?

We finally got around to Ozark, which had been recommended to me by smart people, who were right. It’s a terrific show, very well-acted and full of twists and turns. Several people had told me that somebody (or somebodies) at the series seemed to be fans of mine or were influenced by me, and I think that might be the case. If so, it’s flattering. If not, it’s not the first time I’ve been deluded.

But there’s a hillbilly family reminiscent of the Comforts from the Nolan novels, a character called Boyd (Quarry’s partner in those novels), and a major villain in the first of the three seasons so far is played by the actor (Peter Mullen) who was the Broker in the Quarry TV series. And the good man doing bad things to keep his family afloat is Road to Perdition 101. Maybe half a dozen times I turned to Barb and said, “At least somebody’s reading me.”

The series itself is obviously something that wouldn’t exist without Breaking Bad, and it challenges you (in a Quarry-like way) to root for and identify with people who are making really poor choices. I don’t mean to overstate any debt anybody owes me, because (a) I owe plenty of debts myself, and (b) I may be full of shit about this.

The Guardian describes Ozark thusly: “Ozark follows the misadventures of Marty Byrde (the perpetually clenched Jason Bateman), a financial adviser forced to relocate from Chicago to Osage Beach, Missouri, where he launders money on a scale that would give Al Capone a cluster migraine.”

Bateman uses his standard glib, slightly put-upon persona to nice comic effect initially, and you are slightly amazed at first by how well that persona works in a dark melodrama. But as that melodrama grows darker, and the consequences ever more dire, Bateman’s performance deepens. Other mesmerizing performances come from Laura Linney, as Bateman’s even more glib wife, whose sunny smile delivers manipulative self-interest in such a “helpful” way; and Julia Garner’s Ruth, the most original and unique character in Ozark, a hillbilly girl with a good heart and a crushed soul, capable of kindness and murder, when either is called for.

I like the series and I think you will, too.

We also have recently enjoyed the surprise gift of a second season of Rick Gervais’ After Life, the touching drama/comedy (you don’t think I could ever type the vile word “dramedy,” do you?) that explores the road back for a husband consumed by grief over the loss of a wonderful wife.

The very special thing about After Life is its signature combination of mean humor and genuine sentiment. It’s a show about a man so depressed that suicide is an understandable option, and it’s often frequently hilarious.

I am a Gervais fan and have been for a long, long time. This little series isn’t much talked about, but it may represent his best work.

On the film front, we have watched a lot of British comedies of the late ‘40s and 1950s – such Alastair Sim gems as our perennial favorite, The Belles of St. Trinian’s, but also Laughter in Paradise and School for Scoundrels; and Alec Guinness in All at Sea, The Captain’s Paradise and Last Holiday.

And the most current season of Midsomer Murders, a favorite comfort food of ours, seemed particularly strong after a few missteps the season before.

* * *

Bookgasm, which is a book review site you should be regularly visiting, has posted a wonderful review of Girl Can’t Help It that’s been picked up all over the place, and I provided a link last week. But in case you haven’t seen it, I’m going to share it here, right now:

Notoriously prolific author Max Allan Collins has added a second entry to his Krista Larson series, GIRL CAN’T HELP IT. It’s also a stretch back to Collins’ past (and present) as a rock and roll musician. True! I didn’t know this either but Collins apparently wrote the song “Psychedelic Siren” recorded by The Daybreakers in 1968 (here, watch it on YouTube). In the author’s note, he states this is the first time he has mined his rock and roll experience for a book. Well dang it, more of this please. Mr. Collins.

The first book in the series, Girl Most Likely, features Krista Larson as the Chief of Police in Galena, Illinois. She is assisted by her able staff but also by her father, a retired cop from the Dubuque Police Department who does invaluable detective work. In this second work, Girl Can’t Help It, the Larson duo is back on the job.

The book title refers to a song title recorded by local Galena band Hot Rod & The Pistons. They scored a huge hit with the song in the 80s when retro rockabilly hit big (think Stray Cats). They managed two albums and then faded away. But after their election into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they’re set for a reunion gig and maybe even a little tour. The town of Galena is excited and creates a special musical festival to kick off the whole thing. All well and good.

Until one of the members is found dead of a heart attack in a bathtub. Oh well, old guys do die. But then a second band member commits suicide and his apartment has been ransacked. This hits the Larsons as fishy, and they’re fairly convinced that both deaths are murders.

Of course, we the readers know these are murders because we have chapters written from the point of view of the murderer. The crimes continue to escalate and it’s a battle between the murderer and the police department to see who will come out on top and if the entire lineup of Hot Rod & The Pistons will be killed off one by one.

Everybody knows Max Allan Collins by now. He has multiple series in place, writes another successful series with his wife (the duo goes by Barbara Allan) and is one of the solid bricks in the pyramid of genre writers over the past 40+ years. A lovely, smooth and polished style coupled with a brisk pace makes for quick reading short chapters, believable characters, behaviors and dialogue. If you like any of Collins’ works, you’ll like GIRL CAN’T HELP IT. I think this series has real promise. Recommended. —Mark Rose

Get it at Amazon.

A fun podcast about books, The Inside Flap, was kind enough to give Do No Harm and Nate Heller some attention. The Do No Harm stuff happens a bit after the hour mark. You’ll hear one of the participants wish that I would have Heller solve the JFK assassination (guess what books I sent along to them).

The great blog Paperback Warrior is posting their all-time ten favorite posts, and the one focusing on The First Quarry is #4.

Here’s a great interview with my buddy Charles Ardai, touching on our projects together.

The fantastic Stiletto Gumshoe site talks about Mike Hammer and Masquerade for Murder, and provides some links to things you may have missed.

This nice review of Antiques Fire Sale is a little quirky – doesn’t like all the talking to the reader, and thinks referring to Vivian as “Mother” is disrespectful – but some nice insights are on hand, as well. Loving us is preferred, but liking us is just fine, too.

Finally, check out this terrific Mystery Tribute piece about Mike Hammer and Masquerade for Murder.

M.A.C.

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