Posts Tagged ‘Spillane’

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I Celebrate My Birthday By Giving You Such a Deal

Tuesday, February 26th, 2019

Perhaps to celebrate my birthday day next week (March 3rd), Amazon is putting on sale almost all of my novels under their Thomas & Mercer imprint…for 99 cents each! It’s part of their Mystery, Thriller and Suspense Fiction book deals and runs throughout March, starting this Friday.

This includes all but the most recent Nathan Heller novels (the historical P.I. series that I consider my best work); here’s the list:

Chicago Confidential (2002)
Angel in Black (2001)
Majic Man (1999)
Flying Blind (1998)
Damned in Paradise (1996)
Blood and Thunder (1995)
Carnal Hours (1994)
Stolen Away (1991)
Neon Mirage (1988)
The Million-Dollar Wound (1986)
True Crime (1984)
True Detective (1983)

Also included in the Magical Max Allan Collins Birthday Sale is the entire run of Mallory novels:

Nice Weekend for a Murder (1986)
A Shroud for Aquarius (1985)
Kill Your Darlings (1984)
No Cure for Death (1983)
The Baby Blue Rip-Off (1982)

Also the “disaster” series:

The War of the Worlds Murder (2005)
The London Blitz Murders (2004)
The Lusitania Murders (2002)
The Pearl Harbor Murders (2001)
The Hindenburg Murders (2000)
The Titanic Murders (1999)

Plus these:

Executive Order (2017)
What Doesn’t Kill Her (2013)
Midnight Haul (1986)

So if you were wondering what you should get me for my 71st birthday, I am far too selfless to want anything at all. Instead, why don’t you treat yourself to some under-a-buck books by me? It’s possible I will give any royalties to charity.

I mean, it’s possible.

* * *

Here’s a gallery of photos from the Mob Museum in Las Vegas on Feb. 16 when my Scarface and the Untouchable co-author, A. Brad Schwartz, interviewed me before a nice audience about Road to Perdition and Nate Heller, specifically the Vegas-centric Neon Mirage.






* * *

The announcement of Titan bringing out volumes collecting the complete Ms. Tree got a lot of play on the Internet and even in the print world, via The Hollywood Reporter (their story here).

It’s gratifying that – especially in the comics world – Ms. Tree artist/co-creator Terry Beatty and I received so much cyber-ink on this announcement. I stopped counting at a dozen write-ups! As John Huston as Noah Cross says in Chinatown, “Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

There does seem to be some confusion about what exactly this first volume is – is it a re-launch with new material? Is it a “best of”?

No, it’s the complete run, although (at my request) we are starting at the end, with the ten graphic novellas we did for DC Comics in the early ‘90s. Five of them are collected in this first book to make up a graphic novel called One Mean Mother. (My preferred title – Drop Dead, Handsome – was overruled.)

* * *

Scroll down to see a brief but nice review of Killing Town from Steve Steinbock in The Jury Box in EQMM.

Here’s another brief bit from a reader who indicates we’ll be hearing more from her about Quarry and me.

This is a review of Girl Most Likely from a blogger, and it’s essentially good review, but I hate it. The reviewer quotes from an advance copy, which clearly advises against quoting since it’s not the final text, and blames me for the insertion (by an editor) of a “#” (hashtag) in a “MeToo” mention in dialogue. I had already asked the hashtag to be removed. (And I wrote the reviewer complaining about this breach and he did not post my comment.) His general tone is patronizing, and he has no understanding of the use of clothing description for characterization purposes. He complains that a plot avenue isn’t resolved when it is. He says the killer’s identity comes out of left field when another reviewer accused me of making it too overly obvious (as we say in the comics, “Sigh”).

A much better review is scheduled to appear in the next issue of Booklist, which I’ll share next week.

Finally, guess what film based on a graphic novel is on a “best gangster movies of all time” list?

M.A.C.

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Your New Year’s Resolution

Tuesday, January 8th, 2019

Here’s a sad story with which almost any professional writer can identify, as something like it has undoubtedly happened to every one of us.

At the last San Diego con, several personnel from Titan waved me over at breakfast to meet the man from Barnes & Noble who buys graphic novels for the chain. He was a big fan – clearly thrilled to meet me. I was the Beatles and he was Eddie Deezen in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. I sat and we chatted and I told him about the upcoming graphic novels from Titan, Quarry’s War and Mike Hammer: The Night I Died. He couldn’t wait!

Cut to recently when I looked at Barnes & Noble’s graphic novel sections in Davenport, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa; and various Chicago B & N’s. Not a copy of either graphic novel was available at any of them.

Hey! I know! They had all sold out!

Or not.

A smaller sad story is the lousy one- and two-star Amazon reviews for both graphic novels from buyers who are angry that they accidentally bought a comic book. One of these reviewers hates graphic novels and considers them the downfall of literacy in America. Yes, these are idiotic cranks, but neither graphic novel has received enough reviews to weather such boneheaded ones (Quarry’s War does benefit from reviews some of you fine humans have contributed). The Mike Hammer has only one review – a two-star bummer from the aforementioned graphic novel hater.

So.

Here is your New Year’s Resolution. If you have already read either of these – whether in the four comic books collected in each graphic novel, or by way of the graphic novel itself – you will ASAP write a brief Amazon review, unless you have already done so. I do not specify that these reviews have to be raves. But I do request that you not post a review complaining that a graphic novel turned out to be (shudder! horrors!) a graphic novel.

Or…if you haven’t bought either book, and are not among those who despise the comics form, please acquire these gems (unbiased opinion). Maybe you’ll find them at a Barnes & Noble. But don’t count on it. B & N will have it on-line, as Amazon does. I have spotted Quarry’s War at a Books-a-Million, but not Mike Hammer yet. Maybe you have gift cards you haven’t used yet – what are you waiting for?

Okay, I’m whining again. Sorry. But judging by the stealth existence of these two graphic novels, the writer of Road to Perdition…which is on many “best graphic novels of all time” lists…won’t ever get to write a graphic novel again.



In the meantime, let me remind you what’s coming out in the first half of this year, with not a graphic novel in sight. I apologize there’s so much of mine to read, but (a) I can’t control dates of publication, and (b) if I don’t write, nobody sends money to my house.

Here is what is coming up.


Paperback:
E-Book: Amazon Google Play Nook Kobo iTunes

USS Powderkeg is a trade paperback (and e-book) from Brash Books on February 1st. This is the revised edition of the novel Red Sky in Morning, with the penname “Patrick Culhane” banished to the cornfield in favor of my actual byline (Max Allan Collins, remember?). I am very excited about this, and so very grateful to Brash to putting my preferred title on the book and, of course, my preferred byline. It’s a personal novel to me, based as it is (in part) on my late father’s experiences in the Navy in World War Two as one of a handful of white officers on an ammunition ship manned by black sailors.


Paperback:
E-Book: Amazon Google Play Nook Kobo iTunes

The Goliath Bone by Mickey Spillane and me will receive a mass market paperback, in the Titan format, in late February.


Hardcover:
E-Book: Amazon Google Play Nook Kobo
Audiobook: Kobo

Murder, My Love by Mickey and me is the new Mike Hammer hardcover from Titan, out in mid-March. Published simultaneously on audio from Skyboat Media, available from Audible. This is the first Hammer written solely by me, but from a Spillane synopsis.


Paperback:
E-Book: Amazon
MP3 CD: Amazon Audio CD: Amazon

Girl Most Likely is a trade paperback and e-book from Thomas and Mercer, out on April 1, no fooling. This I’m particularly excited about because it’s a thriller that charts new territory for me – I would call it an American take on nordic noir. More about this closer to pub date.

Toward the end of May comes Last Stage to Hell Junction, the new Caleb York western from Kensington, a hardcover. It’s bylined Spillane/Collins, but it’s a Collins novel using characters and situations created by Spillane.

Toward the end of April comes Antiques Ravin’ by Barbara Allan, again from Kensington. Barb and her husband wrote it. Very funny and a darker mystery than you’ll encounter in most cozys. Of course, Jon Breen says we’re a subversive cozy series.

Then in early June comes the trade paperback of Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago by A. Brad Schwartz and me. This is a major work (thanks to Brad) and I’m proud to be its co-author.

So, really, forget all these other writers you usually follow. You have priorities. You have work to do.

For those who need their pump primed – and you know how painful that can be – we’ll have a book giveaway before too long.

* * *

Oh, and Happy New Year, everybody!

We had a lovely holiday with son Nate, daughter-in-law Abby, and grandkids Sam (3 yrs) and Lucy (3 mths). Sam and his grandfather watched a lot of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse on Blu-ray. And for those wondering, yes, I did receive a Christmas card from Paul Reubens/Pee-Wee this year. That made it an official Christmas, particularly since both Scrooge with Sim and the original Miracle on 34th Street were watched as well.

* * *

Here’s the first review of Girl Most Likely.

And the Stiletto Gumshoe includes Murder, My Love among the books to read in the winter of 2019. Great site.

M.A.C.

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Max Allan Ruins Everything

Tuesday, January 1st, 2019

I am about to recommend something you are probably already familiar with; but here goes….

Netflix recently added a sampling of the truTV series Adam Ruins Everything to its roster, and it looked interesting enough for me to try it…and now I am hooked. When I ran through the Netflix batch, I immediately bought the various seasons of the show on Amazon Prime and have watched all but a few episodes.

Adam Ruins Everything is the brainchild of stand-up comic Adam Conover, and (in the words of Wikipedia), “The series aims to debunk misconceptions that pervade U.S. society.” It spins off from Conover’s CollegeHumor web series, which I haven’t seen (yet). But it’s a lot more, being as much a comedy show as an educational one.

Adam Conover portrays himself as an overly helpful nerd, a smarty-pants who doesn’t understand why people don’t love him for correcting them. It’s a funny concept which Conover pulls off fearlessly, surrounding himself with some of the best comedic talent around, including veterans of Mr. Show and Reno 911. Recurring characters and story arcs are threaded through, as well.

Conover and his series skewer historical misconceptions, false beliefs fueled by corporate misinformation, urban legends and just plain stupidity. And, uniquely, sources are posted on-screen, and experts on the various subjects often appear in the context of the imaginative episodes. Though I discovered the well-made, entertaining show just a week ago, Conover and his research staff have already changed my behavior. I have sworn off vitamin supplements and Tylenol PM, for example.

He isn’t always right, and to his credit a later episode focuses on some of his mistakes. (When I say “he,” I refer not to the actual Conover but his television character.) For example, the episode about the real Wild West dismisses Wyatt Earp as a nobody con man who tried to peddle the untrue story of his life to Hollywood, implying he wasn’t a gunfighting heroic lawman at all.

Earp, of course, was a controversial figure, but he was famous during his day and well after, surviving several harrowing gunfights, including the O.K. Corral one (which happened in a vacant lot near the corral), which was even covered as news in the New York Times. The show is at its weakest when it accepts its experts at face value.

The Collins/Schwartz Scarface and the Untouchable, for example, debunks the debunkers who falsely represented Eliot Ness and his career. But I fear if Ness came up in a future episode, the research staff would accept the conventional (and wrong) wisdom about the Untouchables and the IRS investigators. Like the anti-Ness writers, many of the anti-Earp writers posthumously attacked the lawman-gambler-prospector because of the exaggerations of a book published after his death, leading to inflated TV fame.

For me, the the anti-conspiracy theory episode is unfortunate on a show that routinely exposes government and/or corporate conspiracies. It conflates the risible “moon landing was fake” theory with the Kennedy assassination. While my Nathan Heller novels have their fanciful aspects, the extensive research I’ve done (often with the help of George Hagenauer) has often shown the official versions of things are false…something Adam Ruins Everything often does.

Let’s not give conspiracy a bad name. Watergate and its cover-up was a conspiracy. The JFK assassination was almost certainly a conspiracy. Robert Mueller is not a guy in a tin-foil hat.

Also, sometimes conspiracies are not really conspiracies at all. Let me tell you about it! The railroading of Bruno Hauptmann for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping was nothing engineered, rather a bunch of cops backing each other up, plus some reporters manufacturing evidence, all filtered through a general hatred of Germans post-World War One. These folks didn’t get together in a room and conspire. They just had mutual views/assumptions of who did the crime.

For the record, when I write a Nathan Heller novel, I go in with an open mind. For JFK, the most outrageous thing I could have done was come to the conclusion that Oswald was the Lone Gunman. For Lindbergh, I’d have been swimming against the tide if I said Hauptmann was guilty; but if that’s where my research led, so be it. When I wrote the Roswell novel, Majic Man, I went in ready to report whatever I came away believing – including the existence of aliens. But my research indicated something else was going on.

With Do No Harm, the Sam Sheppard murder case novel that will be out in a year or so, I had no opinion about who did it…and did not decide till well into the work – not only the research period but the writing one.

So Adam Ruins Everything isn’t perfect. But it’s funny and informative, and – most important – it gets you thinking. It even got me thinking! Also, you need to stop using sleep aids and vitamin supplements.

* * *

I will admit to being disappointed on two fronts by various end-of-the-year “best of” lists.

Both The Last Stand and Killing Town, the final Spillane solo novel and the collaborative first Mike Hammer novel (begun in 1945 by Mickey and completed by me last year), have been pretty much roundly ignored…despite fairly stellar reviews.

One nice exception is this selection of Killing Town as the Best Retro Read of the Year, here.

More disappointing is how Scarface and the Untouchable by A. Brad Schwartz and myself has been overlooked, again despite stellar reviews. The book is a completely new approach to Eliot Ness and his contribution to the downfall of Capone, and the previously unnoticed collaboration between the government and Capone’s fellow mobsters to put the Big Fellow away. I fear the length of the book has scared away reviewers. And I am now officially nervous that we’ll be overlooked by the Edgars.

(But a nice exception is this gift guide from the Entertainment Report.)

If you haven’t tracked down the Titan graphic novel edition of Mike Hammer in The Night I Died, this good review might convince you.

By the way, I signed ten copies of The Night I Died for vj books, available here.

Here’s a nice advance look at Girl Most Likely from Col’s Criminal Library.

This is a mediocre review, but at least it’s a review, of the Quarry graphic novel, Quarry’s War. The reviewer complains about the alternating pages that intersperse the Vietnam war sequence with Quarry during his hitman years, considering what I’m proudest of about the work “annoying.” He complains that Quarry doesn’t open up enough about himself. Sigh.

On the other hand, both Quarry’s War and The Night I Died get nice mentions in this wrap-up of comics in 2018.

This is my first post of 2019, by the way, written in 2018. Happy New Year to all of you.

M.A.C.

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An “Antiques” Stocking Stuffer and the Walmart Big Time

Tuesday, December 11th, 2018

Yes, here I am with another selfless suggestion for something you might give to your loved ones or yourself at Yuletide.


Amazon Indiebound Books A Million Barnes and Noble

Antiques Ho-Ho-Homicides collects, for the first time, the three e-book novellas Barb and I did over the last five years. It’s a paperback (hence a perfect stocking stuffer), and I know some collectors out there prefer hardcovers, but “Barbara Allan” is thrilled that these stories are finally gathered in a real book.

If you are one of the hold-outs who like my stuff but can’t bring yourself to cross the cozy divide, Antiques Ho-Ho-Homicides is an inexpensive way to see Brandy and her mother Vivian in action. A sampler, if you will, and much tastier than those Whitman samplers some people insist upon giving you at Christmas.

I’ve discussed this before, but I still get questions about how Barb and I work together on the Antiques books, and how we stay married doing them. One aspect is that my office is on one floor and Barb’s is on another. But basically it’s this: Barb writes the first draft, and I write the final draft.

The less basic explanation is that Barb is the lead writer. Although I have more experience, and have been doing this longer, the books reflect her sensibilities and storytelling skills. We plot them together, but I stay out of the way while Barb prepares her draft. Sometimes we’ve described that as a rough draft, but really it’s not. Barb polishes each chapter thoroughly and, after at least six months of work, she gives me a perfectly readable and well-crafted novel that happens to be fifty or sixty pages shorter than what our contract requires.

My job is to further polish, and expand, and do lots of jokes. Barb has already done plenty of humor at this stage, but then I add more, with the result being that these novels are damn funny. Barb is wonderful about staying out of my way (as I’ve stayed out of hers, unless asked for input, during her creation of the initial draft). She claims to be so sick of the book at this point that she doesn’t care what I do to it.

This is not true.

She cares a lot, and will ask me why I’ve cut or changed something, and – when I tell her – will either agree or explain why (for plot or character reasons) (these are female point-of-view first-person novels) I need to restore what she originally wrote. Which I do.

The only time we’ve squabbled is when I’ve gotten crabby because I’m overworked. She will not tolerate snippiness. And I’ve been known on rare occasions (somewhat rare) (tiny bit rare) to be snippy, so there you go.

Consider Antiques Ho-Ho-Homicides our Christmas gift to you, except for the part where you have to pay for it.

Kensington publishes the Antiques novels, and also the Caleb York westerns. The accompanying photo will demonstrate that these Spillane/Collins westerns have hit the big time: we are in the Muscatine, Iowa, Walmart with The Bloody Spur! In fact, the Walmart chain bought a whole bunch of copies, and you can buy your copy at your local temple to the memory of Sam Walton.

The Antiques books haven’t made it into Walmart and probably won’t – the chain is very narrow about the kind of books they buy…mostly it’s romances, romantic westerns and westerns, plus a few bestsellers. Not a cozy in sight – not even an hilarious one like Antiques Ho-Ho-Homicides. How do they expect to stay in business?

Speaking of Antiques, here is a terrific review of Ho-Ho-Homicides at King River Life Magazine, which will give you a good idea of what to expect, including discussions of each novella.

Okay, now what you’re wondering is…what can I give Max Allan Collins for Christmas? I will be facetious and serious at the same time: you could write reviews (however brief) for my novels at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your own blogs and whatever site you deem appropriate. There is a real reason why you might want to consider doing this, if you want new work from me.

The books I write – Mike Hammer, Quarry, Antiques – are seldom reviewed by the mainstream (including lots of Internet reviewers). I do not have the cachet or sales punch of a Lehane or Connelly, who are always reviewed. I am largely ignored, even by people who love my work, in “Best of” lists at the end of the year. This is a bit of a head-scratcher, but it’s a reality. Even the widely, glowingly reviewed non-fiction book Scarface and the Untouchable: The Battle for Chicago isn’t turning up on such lists.

I probably write too much. That keeps work that, if other people did it, would be taken more seriously. I am not whining or complaining (well, I guess I am) but I do understand that even readers who follow my work can’t always keep up with me.

Here’s the deal. If I don’t write, publishers do not send money to my house. That’s one thing. The other is that I am 70, have had some harrowing health issues (that I seem to have either overcome or am handling well) and realize that I don’t have forever to tell my stories.

And I have a lot more stories I want to tell.

Actually, I do not work as hard as I used to. Over the years, most Heller chapters were written in a day (25 to 30 double-spaced pages). I was a boy wonder till I got old. I slowed down starting with Better Dead. In general, my work load now is ten finished pages, six days a week. (Sometimes only five days.) It’s no different than with people with a “real” job – they work five or six days a week, and nobody applauds them, or tries to talk them out of it.

As I’ve mentioned, I have friends who have done these sort of interventions to get me to retire and get Barb and me to go take a cruise with other aging couples. I would rather write. Barb and I treat ourselves well and have a great time together, and don’t feel the need for a lot of travel to do that. She is a beautiful woman and lovely company, and is the one thing in my life that is worth hating me over.

She and I are watching one Christmas movie or television episode per evening right now. I may write about this soon. But I will say this – Holiday Inn is a wonderful movie, and White Christmas sort of stinks. Maybe my son Nathan is right: Die Hard is a better Christmas movie than White Christmas.

* * *

Here six great books (available inexpensively) are recommended, and one of them is True Detective (and I’m pleased and grateful, but it’s not “Allen,” okay?).

Shots looks at upcoming Titan titles, including the new Hammer, Murder, My Love.

The Strand magazine is on the stands now, with the key Spillane “Mike Hammer” short story, “Tonight, My Love.”

We’ve linked to this review before, but this time it’s attached to the mass market paperback of The Bloody Spur, out right now.

Finally, here’s a lovely write-up on the three Jack and Maggie Starr mysteries.

M.A.C.

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