Posts Tagged ‘Spillane’

Cancellation, Liquidation & Other Heart-Stopping Adventures

Tuesday, August 16th, 2022

Barb and I have had to cancel our Bouchercon registration and we are sad and sorry we won’t be seeing any of our friends and fans who might be in Minneapolis in a few weeks. The reason for this is discussed below, but I wanted to get the word out right now that we won’t be there (we’d been scheduled for several panels).

We’ve had our first review for the upcoming (Oct. 4) Antiques Liquidation. It’s from Publisher’s Weekly, and it’s a good one. Here it is:

Antiques Liquidation

Antiques Liquidation
Barbara Allan. Severn, $29.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-7278-5091-1

At the start of Allan’s madcap 16th Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery (after 2021’s Antiques Carry On), flamboyant septuagenarian Vivian Borne – honorary deputy sheriff of Serenity, Iowa, antiques dealer, and magnet for murder – awakens her long-suffering 33-year-old daughter, Brandy, at 2 a.m. for a questionable meeting early that same morning with sleazy auctioneer Conrad Norris to purchase dead stock (aka “old unused new merchandise”) for their shop. Vivian blithely ignores the dangers of entering a decrepit warehouse once owned by Lyle “the Liquidator” Dayton, who mysteriously disappeared years earlier. Vivian uses some dirt she has on Norris to blackmail him into letting her cherry-pick from the stock before he auctions it. When Norris ends up dead atop an elevator after the auction, Vivian is determined to solve the case. With a reluctant Brandy and her fiancé, Tony Cassato, Serenity’s chief of police, Vivian investigates a lengthy list of suspects with reason to kill the double-dealing auctioneer. Can Vivian and Brandy expose the murderer before he permanently liquidates them? Humorous asides and loads of antique lore will please series fans. Allan (the pen name of Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins) delivers the cozy goods. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Oct.)

In addition to this being a nice review, it’s nice to be reviewed at all with an entry in a long-running series. Reviews no longer come automatically from the trades (Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist) for the long-running Mike Hammer and Quarry novels, and we feel lucky for the attention.

In our local area, the news about Gary Sandy coming to town to star as Mike Hammer in a radio-style production of Encore for Murder has hit local media. Check it out.

In the meantime I have been working with my old pal Phil Dingeldein on other 75th Anniversary of Mike Hammer matters, specifically recording and editing a wraparound for the restored 1954 Brian Keith TV pilot that will be part of the ClassicFlix release of the 1953 version of I, the Jury. As I’ve mentioned here before, that release will really be something special – 4K, Blu-ray and (for those with capability) 3D. My commentary has been edited and is ready to go.

Additionally, Phil and I are working on the expanded version of my 1999 documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. I’ve already recorded some material for that, and more will be shot here in my office. We’re expanding it from 47 minutes to around 60 and will be covering Mickey’s passing and what the Spillane Estate and I have done since then with Mickey’s unfinished work. We have a distributor interested in taking it out to the streaming services.

* * *

Despite my insistence last week that my discussing heading into the hospital was not a cry for sympathy – you may recall that sympathy can be found in the dictionary (between shit and syphilis) – a number of you wrote me anyway with your good wishes and support. Thank you for that, and it came in handier than I’d anticipated.

The cardioversion treatment for Afib – jump-starting your heart like an old Buick to get it back in proper rhythm – is a procedure I’ve had several times before, and never had to take much recovery time after. This was different. I was there for a long day, and am told the anesthetized me came off the hospital bed during two shock treatments like a bad comedy effect in a Bowery Boys movie.

Initially it didn’t take, and Barb and I sat in the very nice hospital room in Bettendorf, Iowa, feeling gloomy until, a couple of hours later, the doctor came in and looked at a monitor and pronounced the procedure had taken after all. That lifted our spirits at least as much as the shock treatment had me catapulting off the bed.

But this week has been a long slog. The burns from the paddles created a lot of discomfort by way of itchiness and while my heartbeat was behaving, I remained short of breath and really, really fatigued and flu-ishly achy. Among other things, I considered cancelling my band job on Sunday (it’s Sunday as I write this) and – as indicated above – we had already decided, with my doctor’s prompting, to cancel attending Bouchercon at Minneapolis in a few weeks.

Like Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther films, however, every day in every way I’ve been getting better and better. With Barb and Nate set to help me load and set up my band equipment – and with God favoring us with nice weather for the outdoor event – my band Crusin’ (including me) will be playing later this afternoon.

Crusin' at Sunday Night Series 2022
Crusin’ at Second Sunday Summer Concert Series, August 2022

The band has one more date this year – the Ice Cream Social next Sunday at the Muscatine Art Center – and that will be it…maybe the final two Crusin’ dates period. I have a dream of doing one more CD and presenting it in a farewell appearance, but that may not happen.

Right now I’m happy just to be able to perform. Our previous gig, two Sundays ago (a private party), was where I got really sick and stupidly didn’t recognize that I was in Afib. The reason for that lack of recognition is that Afib symptoms are pretty much identical to Covid symptoms. By the way, anybody over 70 already has most of those symptoms every effing day whether they have Covid or not.

Finally, on this subject, let me apologize for being a big crybaby. My God, what I went through this week was nothing compared to the bad shit thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of my fellow humans suffer every day. So my embarrassed apologies.

* * *

I’ve had some very positive things to say about some of the movies and limited series that Barb and I have watched on various streaming services, and we continue to make nice discoveries.

For example, I had no idea Christopher Guest had done another film in the vein of Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show – favorites of ours – but Mascots appears to have been around since 2016. Apparently it went directly to Netflix, which we didn’t have at the time.

Mascots operates on the Best in Show template, a competition in an arena this time showcasing sports mascots. While Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara are noticeably absent – they’d have been up Schitt’s Creek at the time – most of the other Guest regulars are present, including the great Fred Willard (now sadly gone), Parker Posey, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr., Don Lake, Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Balaban and John Michael Higgins, among others. Chris O’Dowd from Guest’s HBO series Family Tree is onboard too, and Spinal Tap’s Harry Shearer is the stadium announcer.

Though easily the least of the Guest mockumentaries, it’s still a joy if you like the others. The presentations of the routines by the mascots are beautifully staged, and Guest again walks his unique line between mocking and loving the characters so deeply involved into something inherently absurd. You know, like life.

So that was a nice discovery. Not so nice were the experiences of two series that caught us up and then, boy, let us down. Hard.

The first season of Picard was fine – not on a par with the recent Star Trek – Strange New Worlds, but a Firefly-like set-up with interesting new characters supporting Jean Luc Picard and just enough visits from the Next Generation cast to warm a trekker’s heart.

And then came the second season.

I can sum it up best by saying that Barb – at least as big a Roddenberry-era Trek fan as I am – bailed two-thirds through. Most of the new characters were back but in needlessly reworked fashion. I can’t critique this in detail because I’ve washed most of it from my memory – what I mostly recall is the cast being separated off into groups of two and wandering around a 21st Century city (it’s time travel) uttering meandering dialogue. The worst Trek I’ve ever endured.

The powers-that-be seem to know it, as the third (and announced final season of Picard) is going to feature the original Next Generation cast.

Then there’s The Old Man. I had avoided this FX series because it was a little too Quarry-like in its set-up (that kind of thing always annoys me) and even had several episodes directed by the main Quarry director. But we got caught up in it immediately, with both Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow excellent in a story that had a long-retired CIA agent forced out of retirement. And the first four episodes are compelling, just riveting…and then at first gradually and then picking up speed as it heads off the cliff, this initially fine show goes to crap.

This appears to have happened for a couple of reasons. My understanding is that initially the episodes were faithful to the source novel by Thomas Perry. Then, apparently, it veered away because, you know, what does the person who created the thing know, anyway?

But Covid is at least an accomplice in this descent into Shitistan. Originally scheduled for ten episodes, The Old Man became seven episodes when it shut down, a period during which Bridges got Covid among other even more daunting ailments. He recovered, but the show didn’t. And a good share of it is reflective of Covid precautions: much, much time is spent with people riding and talking in the front seats of cars.

And while Bridges can seemingly do no wrong as an actor, Lithgow goes from understated to full on ham, as he tries to salvage things from a script that makes so little sense the actors appear embarrassed. What began as a fine performance by Alia Shawkat in the first half of the season becomes an almost desperate cry for an acting coach. Not her fault. Bad script. Dismal direction.

My review to Barb, who somehow didn’t bail although her growing disgust became apparent, was to blow a Bronx cheer. A guy my age could really, really use those seven hours back.

* * *

The articles about the film of Road to Perdition just keep coming. Here’s a nice one.

We’re here, too.

And finally this really smart review of The Girl Most Likely (and my definition of smart is, of course, that the reviewer liked the book).

M.A.C.

A Darling Deal, and Heller on My Mind

Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
Kill Me, Darling cover
E-Book: Google Play Kobo

Another book deal has popped up, this time BookBub, and it applies to Kill Me, Darling, one of my favorite of the posthumous Spillane collaborations. I was working from a false start on The Girl Hunters where Velda’s disappearance didn’t have to do with Russia and espionage, but rather Florida and vice. (So in the Hammer canon Velda now disappears twice…not counting kidnappings.)

Anyway, I don’t understand BookBub and if someone wants to straighten me out, I’m fine with that. But it would appear this deal lasts for about a month. Like the still ongoing Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It offers, Kill Me, Darling is 99-cents on e-book. Unlike the Amazon deal, this extends to Nook and other e-book platforms.

Here’s how BookBub describes Kill Me, Darling:

From the authors of Murder Never Knocks. Private investigator Mike Hammer heads to Miami to find his ex-lover Velda — and figure out her connection to the disturbing murder of her old colleague. “Mike Hammer is undeniably an icon of our culture” (The New York Times).
$0.99 (regular price $7.99).

* * *
Seduction of the Innocent band photo

You may have seen my Seduction of the Innocent bandmate Steve Leialoha’s query to me in the comments last week, regarding my current project, Too Many Bullets, Nate Heller looking into the RFK assassination. He asked me if I’d ever talked to Miguel about the night of the assassination at the Ambassador Hotel, saying that Miggie and his mom were there that night.

This was news to me, and I kicked myself, because I’ve known for years I would eventually do Bobby Kennedy, and I never discussed it generally with Miguel. Why would I? You might ask.

Well, Miguel was a big Nate Heller fan. He always requested signed copies to read on set in his trailer (actors have a lot of down time). We talked Heller a lot. We were hoping to do a movie at one point with him in the lead (the novella Dying in the Post-war World was written with that in mind). Didn’t happen but I sure do wish it had.

Miggie’s (and my) pal Bill Mumy, a fellow Seductive One, was…and probably still is…a Heller fan, too. Like Miguel, he has read Heller novels during on-set downtime, and after all he wrote the song “True Detective” for our CD, The Golden Age. I’m proud to have these two among Heller’s supporters. And it hurts that Miguel didn’t get to read any Heller past Ask Not. Maybe, somewhere, Miggie and Bill Crider and Ed Gorman are in a book club, keeping tabs on me.

Chris Christensen, the other Seduction bandmate, also reads Heller, or anyway he used to. Chris did the music for my documentaries Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and Caveman: V.T. Hamlin and Alley Oop). Very talented guy, and like all the Seductive Ones nice and fun.

If you were unaware of my friendship with Miguel, or even if you were and this is old news, you may wish to read this post from January 2017. It’s one of my favorites.

That Miguel could have shared his memories about a tragic, historic night about which I have yet to write gives me an extra pang in an already sensitive part of my psyche. But it also points out how weird the experience of writing Nathan Heller can be.

Miguel and his mom (Rosemary Clooney!) had been at the Ambassador Hotel that wonderful-turned-terrible night, and in an odd way that connected me. I already had an odd Kennedy connection because Jackie Onassis had been my editor on a book I co-wrote with a political figure (a ghost job). I had spoken on the phone with her many times and got to know her in that “phone friendship” way that can be very real. I have a letter she wrote me saying what a great job I did on the book. My University of Iowa mentor, Richard Yates, had been a Bobby Kennedy speech writer, as I learned after I plucked a copy of The Enemy Within off my mentor’s shelf and saw that it had been warmly signed to him. My collaborator Dave Thomas is a fellow assassination buff who knows Paul Schrade and promises to connect me with him. Paul Schrade was standing in back of Bobby Kennedy that night and also got shot in the head, but survived and is now 97 and still researching the case he was in the middle of.

This brings up an interesting point or two. I never know, in doing a Heller, whether I should talk to living participants in the cases I explore. They tend to have their own agendas and I can get caught up in them. For years after writing Stolen Away, I got phone calls from two of the men who thought they were the Lindbergh baby (and one might have been). I need to have my own point of view. My own take.

The other thing is weirder yet. Barb and I were on our honeymoon in Chicago – we were married on June 1 – when the Robert Kennedy assassination occurred in the early hours of June 5. We were staunchly anti-war and were RFK supporters. The news, made strange by not being home at the time, hit us hard, but…and this is the weirdest thing…I remember that I felt (can’t speak for Barb) that American political assassination had become just something to be expected. I was in high school when JFK got it, and not long before Bobby was killed MLK had been taken down, and I was at least vaguely aware of Malcolm X being in the same category. I remember thinking, “So this is how it’s going to be now.”

Maybe the lone nuts decided to find a new hobby (they certainly have one now). Or maybe the powerful figures in the darkness moving chess pieces decided their moves were getting too obvious. But the next time I had a similar feeling was on Jan. 6, last year. I paused writing in my office and went downstairs to get something to drink, and flipped on the TV, and saw Trump’s mob crawling over the face of the Capitol like bearded ants.

And with a shrug I said softly to nobody, “That’s about right.”

It looked like this was how it was going to be now.

Getting back specifically to Nate Heller, my overriding job with all of these cases – unsolved or controversially solved – is to write a hard-hitting private eye novel, with the humor and sex and violence that people expect out of me. That I expect out of me. Part of a Heller novel can be disturbing and even sad, like Chinatown. But it also has to be exciting and interesting and, yes, fun. Like Chinatown.

So how do I face something as terrible, as nation-shaking as Bobby Kennedy’s death without trivializing it?

That is very much on my mind right now. Serving history. Serving my readers. And not doing either of them an injustice.

* * *

Here’s a story about Mickey Spillane walking out on I, the Jury in 1953. Maybe it’s true. The sentiment on his part is accurate. But the movie’s actually pretty good.

The great James Reasoner writes about the collection of the Mike Hammer comic strip that I edited and introduced for Hermes Press a while back.

Nice Road to Perdition (the film) essay here.

This review looks at Headed for a Hearse by Jonathan Latimer and my introduction (which was written some time ago for an earlier edition, though the writer seems unaware of that). It’s a pretty good essay but drifts into the area of judging yesterday’s fiction by today’s politically correct attitudes. The reviewer better not read the first chapter of Farewell, My Lovely.

M.A.C.

Mike Hammer, John Shaft & James M. Cain

Tuesday, July 12th, 2022
Kill Me If You Can Audiobook cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Google Play Kobo
Audiobook: Google Play Audiobook Store

Coming in August, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, is Kill Me If You Can, the 75th anniversary Mike Hammer novel (Hammer debuted in I, the Jury in 1947). It includes five Spillane/Collins short stories, two of which are Mike Hammer, both significant additions to the canon.

Kill Me If You Can will also appear on audio, read by the great Stefan Rudnicki, who for the past several Hammer novels has performed the impossible task of stepping in after Stacy Keach. The five short stories are included.

I have now done the commentary for the ClassicFlix Blu-ray 4K/3-D release of the 1953 I, the Jury. I think it went well, although I can’t compete with the likes of Tim Lucas and Tom Weaver (much less Eddie Muller) in their Blu-ray commentaries. Lucas and Weaver and Muller are always extremely well-prepared and organized, while I just watch what’s on the screen and blather on about all the useless information I’ve gathered and opinions I’ve formed over the years. I worked with my pal and partner Phil Dingeldein on this one – he shares credit but no blame. The Blu-ray comes out in early December.

Phil and I are preparing to shoot new material for an expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (1999) documentary as well as introductory material for the Brian Keith/Blake Edwards written-directed 1954 Mike Hammer pilot, which will be a bonus feature on the I, the Jury disc.

We are in the early stages of mounting an amateur stage production of Encore for Murder and are hoping to entice Gary Sandy to come to Muscatine, Iowa, to again play Mike Hammer. A few years ago, Gary starred as Mike in pro productions of Encore in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Clearwater, Florida. The play is performed in the style of a ‘40s radio show. Much more to follow, but the date to save is September 17.

A reminder – the Kindle editions of the two books in my Krista and Keith Larson series, Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It, are on sale this month – right now through July 31. You can buy them as a pair for $1.98, or 99-cents each.

They are not on sale, but both Girl novels are also available on audio, read by my other favorite Collins narrator, Dan John Miller. [The Girl audiobooks are only $1.99 each if you own the eBooks. –Nate]

* * *

If you swing by here now and then – or, God help you, on a regular basis – you will have noticed I seldom review books but frequently talk about movies and TV – of late, streaming mini-series more than anything. This week is no exception.

But first let me explain that I am indeed still reading books. Right now I am swimming in them, preparing to write Too Many Bullets, the RFK Heller novel that will cover both Jimmy Hoffa and Sirhan Sirhan. I am dizzy from it and driving Barb nuts with my ever-shifting notions about how I will approach this thing.

The degree of difficulty may make this the final Nate Heller novel, or at least one of such size and sweep. I can imagine doing shorter ones, more the length of a Quarry or Caleb York, which if Heller’s home remains Hard Case Crime makes sense. But the upcoming The Big Bundle was meant to be a “short” Heller and it ran over 400 pages in manuscript. As we say in the funnies, Sigh.

During intense research phases, little recreational reading happens. My brain wants something less proactive than reading, hence film and TV. I do read before bed and chip away at books. And my ambition is to read the entire Tarzan series by Burroughs and dig seriously into the complete Race Williams stories by Carroll John Daly and also the Zorro stories by Johnston McCulley. I read most of Burroughs’ Tarzan novels as a kid, but only recently have the complete Race Williams and Zorro stories been collected in book form.

Also on my reading list are books on Anthony Mann’s crime films, the handful of Willam March-penned novels I haven’t got to, a few remaining items by F. Hugh Herbert (creator of Corliss Archer), and autobiographies of Mel Brooks, Chuck Berry and Brian Cox. I’m also salivating to read Hell’s Half Acre about Kate Bender, one of my favorite true crimes of the Lizzie Borden era.

Am I alone in noticing that time is the enemy?

On the streaming front, Barb and I greatly enjoyed The Dropout, the jaw-dropping story of Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-exam scam. Stranger Things wrapped up in excruciatingly self-indulgent over-stuffed style – the Duffer brothers have got to stop writing teen romance! – but the horror aspects remained strong. And Star Trek: Stranger Worlds ended its season boldly going, and we continue to consider it the best post-Shatner/Nimoy/Kelley iteration.

Of course I am a hopeless addict of physical media, and snapped up two great Criterion 4K Blu-rays on their current Barnes & Noble 50% off sale – Shaft (1971) and Double Indemnity (1944).

Shaft is one of my favorite private eye films and it shows what might have been done with a Mike Hammer film had it been shot on gritty NYC locations (the 1982 I, the Jury remake comes close). Richard Roundtree is the most charismatic screen private eye since Bogart, and the Issac Hayes score ties with Mancini’s Peter Gunn for best P.I. theme. It’s really a pretty standard private eye yarn and very much on the Mike Hammer template – Shaft has a Homicide detective pal who scolds and yet uses him, and there’s a regular girl friend who the detective cheats on without a twinge, the violence is shocking and the P.I. is almost supernaturally tough, though he gets beat up before the end. Standard. But the Black twist on everything, those stark NYC locations, the pulsing soul score, the magnetic Roundtree…changes everything.

The movie looks great, sounds better, and the bonus features go on forever, though none of the experts mention Mike Hammer (the original hardcover novel had presented Shaft as the Black Mike Hammer) with no sense of the debt to Spillane on display here. There’s lots of feminist blather from a Black perspective, apologizing and rationalizing for what if this were a Hammer film would be labeled misogyny. But there’s a lot of good bonus material just the same, with Roundtree and Gordon Parks interviewed and much more. That includes the snappy quick sequel, Shaft’s Big Score (1972), on Blu-ray; it lacks the grit of the first film but has an incredible if absurd climax. Sadly M.I.A. is the underrated Shaft in Africa (1973). And if I’d have been in charge I’d have cherry-picked an example of the short-lived Shaft TV series, the episodes of which were movie length.

Double Indemnity blu ray cover

James M. Cain was one of the four writers who (sixty years ago) inspired me to go down the hardboiled path (the others being Hammett, Chandler and Spillane). Double Indemnity is generally considered the best of the screen versions, and was Cain’s own favorite. I could build a case for The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) because it really does have a love story at its twisted heart. Double Indemnity, wonderful though it is, is cold at the center. Ironically (intentionally), the real love story is between Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff and Edgar G. Robinson’s Barton Keyes, the insurance investigator who leads Neff and Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrich to their well-deserved fates.

It’s a great film, with Raymond Chandler’s crackling dialogue staying just to one side of self-parody; then there’s the prison-stripe window-blinds cinematography of John Sietz and march-to-doom direction of Billy Wilder. As Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon did with the private eye novel, Double Indemnity seems to invent, define and perfect the post-war film noir. Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith do right by the film in their terrific bonus-feature discussion (accomplished by editing together craftily two sides of a chat shot in separate locations).

I disagree with them on only one thing: they describe both Neff and Phyllis as sociopaths. I think Double Indemnity is a dance between a guy who’s been getting away with things and a woman who’s been getting away with murder. There’s a throwaway line very early on where MacMurray mentions having sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door; this is code for the traveling salesman who is on the make for available housewives. He sizes Stanwyck up as one of those, with no idea how in over his head he is. He’s a regular guy with a sleazy streak who gets pulled into a murder plot because (a) he’s hot for the dame, and (b) he’s always dreamed of putting one over on the insurance company he works for. Stanwyck, on the other hand, has immediately sized him up as a horndog who is a perfect candidate for the inside-man accomplice she needs.

Muller and Smith discuss the difference between Cain’s novel dialogue and Chandler’s film dialogue, and are again on the money; but they don’t share the key anecdote in full.

Here’s what Cain himself said in that regard: “When they were making Double Indemnity in Hollywood, Billy Wilder complained that Raymond Chandler was throwing away my nice, terse dialogue; he got some student actors in from the Paramount school, coached them up, to let Chandler hear what it would be like if he would only put exactly what was in the book in his screenplay. To Wilder’s utter astonishment, it sounded like holy hell. Chandler explained to Wilder what the trouble was that Cain’s dialogue is written to the eye. That ragged right-hand margin that is so exciting and wonderful to look at can’t be recited by actors. Chandler said, ‘Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dialogue it with the same spirit Cain has in the book but not the identical words.’ Wilder still didn’t believe him. They got me over there, purportedly to discuss something else, but the real reason was that Wilder hoped I would contradict Chandler, and somehow explain what had evaporated. But, of course, I bore Chandler out….”

* * *

Lots of lists of the best Film Noirs have popped up lately, but this one is solid, and does a fine job discussing Kiss Me Deadly. And, of course, Double Indemnity is on it.

M.A.C.

Noir Alley and Dynamite Gift Ideas

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

The experience of being a guest on Noir Alley with Eddie Muller was a very gratifying one. Eddie was generous in his praise of my work and supposed history-of-mystery acumen, and we had a blast talking over ZOOM. The reality of TCM’s needs meant our conversation was drastically (but well) cut/edited. We did a second intro and outro for another favorite of mine, Born to Kill. It airs sometime early next year – you’ll read about when right here.

Some of you may have missed this screening of Kiss Me Deadly, which Eddie and I introduced and, afterward, discussed. But you probably either own a copy of that movie or have seen it more than once (if you a regular reader of these updates).

So here are the intro and outro of the Noir Alley presentation of Kiss Me Deadly.

While we’re in a noir-ish mood, take a gander at this cool promo for the Johnny Dynamite collection that Terry Beatty and I edited. It’s a wonderful book and a things of beauty. Check this video out for proof.

This segues me into Gift Guide mode again. I hope that you diehard fans of my work will consider giving the Nate Heller novel Do No Harm, the Mike Hammer entry Masquerade for Murder, the Ms. Tree collection Skeleton in the Closet, the debut of John Sand in Come Spy With Me, and the new Nolan (due out any second now) Skim Deep as under-the-tree gifts and stocking stuffers. These can all be purchased from the various on-line and (usually) brick-and-mortar sources, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It’s a good way to utilize a gift card, too.

But if Johnny Dynamite is on your shopping list, I want to suggest a specific seller. Bud Plant has been a friend of mine for many years – I bought Underground Comics from him mail-order going back to the late ‘60s. For years he had a huge booth at San Diego Con, where I often spent the bulk of whatever disposable cash I’d set aside for that event.

Bud has a terrific on-line store that specializes in comics and illustration, and other popular culture. He has many lovely books – like, for example, Johnny Dynamite – that would make excellent gifts for those you love, including yourself. If you buy Johnny Dynamite, he has it at a good price; Ms. Tree: Skeleton in the Closet is there, too.

Take a look around here.

https://www.budsartbooks.com

Last week I mentioned that Mike at Just for the Hell of it Video – who specializes in obscure B-movies otherwise unavailable – has Mickey Spillane’s The Delta Factor. Well, he has a lot more and it’s all listed on-line here.

Among other goodies Mike has are Elmore Leonard’s Cat Chaser, Alistair MacLean’s Bear Island and Fear Is the Key, Mongo’s Back in Town, and oddball Bond imitations like The 2nd Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World. J4HI is gray market, offering public domain or out-of-print material, and the quality is good of its kind. Particularly strong, though, is the packaging – DVDs in nice cases with colorful, well-designed art.

If you decide to order from Mike, put “Max Collins sent me!” in the message box during check-out and he will include a free DVD of an OOP trailer compilation. Any size order placed until the end of this year would qualify.

Finally, a recommendation for something worth watching that can be found on Blu-ray from Kino or on several streaming services – Babylon Berlin. This is period crime drama from a novel (whose author cites Road to Perdition as an influence) and it’s set in 1929, with all the turbulent politics of Germany as the backdrop against the solving of mysteries and crimes. It’s beautifully shot, staged, art-directed, and acted – kind of Cabaret Meets Chinatown. I have seen the first two seasons and, so far, it just gets better and better as it goes along.

It’s the show that HBO’s Perry Mason thinks it is.

I hope you had a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Now stay indoors, would you? Buy a book and read it or something.

M.A.C.