The Big Bundle « Friends/Family/Fans of Max Allan Collins

A Shameless Excursion Into Self-Promotion

Tuesday, May 17th, 2022

A reminder: today is the publication date of Stand Up and Die! (the new collection of Mickey Spillane’s novellas and short stories from Rough Edges Press, edited by me and with a Mike Hammer short story co-written by Mickey and me).

The new crime/horror novel, The Menace, by Mickey Spillane and me is $3.99 on Kindle at Amazon.

Trade Paperback:

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The Menace just came out and is, as may already know, developed by me from an unproduced Mickey Spillane screenplay. If you’re not a horror fan, don’t be put off: it’s fundamentally a crime novel. It’s rather short – though not, as some have described a novella (it’s 40,000-words), but two additional Spillane pieces are included as a bonus at the back – the previously unpublished original version of his comic tale, “The Duke Alexander,” and a rare true-crime article.

For you physical media types (like me), the handsome trade paperback edition is just $9.99 at Amazon right now.

This update exists as a place for me to share views on pop culture, talk about what’s going on with me (and my wife Barb) personally and professionally. Part of that is letting you know about sales going on at Amazon (and elsewhere). There are several worth making you aware of going on right now.

On sale is Supreme Justice, the first of the political-thriller trilogy Matt Clemens and I wrote about Joe Reeder and Patti Rogers. Sales have stayed strong since its publication in 2014 – I believe it’s sold something like 150,000 copies, and the two sequels (Fate of the Union and Executive Order have done very well, too. Something like 350,000 copies of the Reeder and Rogers trilogy have been sold. Supreme Justice on Kindle is just $1.99 (till the end of the month).

Supreme Justice – the trade paper edition is $14.95 – has generated renewed interest because the plot concerns an attempt to rearrange the Supreme Court’s political slant by killing conservative members. It’s set in the near future, after the court overturns Roe V. Wade – again, it was published in 2014.

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My eco-thriller, Midnight Haul, is also on sale on Kindle for $1.99.

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This leads me into what will undoubtedly be a self-serving discussion – a shameless one at that – hoping to convince you to try novels of mine that you may have avoided. Things that may have been out of your comfort zone. Like Supreme Justice, for example.

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I have talked here more than once about the reasons why I sometimes work outside of the Quarry, Nolan, Nate Heller and Mike Hammer noir-ish area. The truth is I have readers who follow one or two of those series, but avoid the others. The Quarry and Nolan novels are books in the 50,000 to 60,000-word range and are fast and (I hope) fun reads. The Mike Hammer novels, also in that word-length range, are overlooked by some of my readers because those readers are not Spillane fans or simply don’t care for books that continue a series created by someone else. Similarly, some Spillane fans don’t try these continuation novels, even though the books all have Spillane content (some a good deal of Spillane content), because Mickey himself did not write every word. The fact that Mickey engaged me to complete his unfinished material does not convince these stubborn souls. Kill Me If You Can, celebrating the 75th anniversary of Mike Hammer’s first appearance in 1947’s I, the Jury, is a novel developed from an unproduced Spillane teleplay, and it looks at the period between Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) and The Girl Hunters (1962), when Velda goes missing. It’s Mike at his most psychotic. Pre-order it through the links on the left.

That the Caleb York novels are westerns discourages some readers, who prefer crime/mystery, and that the first novel of the six is a novelization of an unproduced Mickey Spillane screenplay does not sway them. I think they’re missing out.

And of course the cozy Antiques mysteries written by Barb and me are not the hardboiled fare many of my readers enjoy, though the humor and murder content are high. I get that this approach isn’t for everybody, but will point out that the Trash ‘n’ Treasures mysteries are the series of mine with the most entries. The new one will be out in October and can be pre-ordered through the links below.

Hardcover:

Some fans of my hardboiled books avoid the Nate Heller novels, which run in the 75,000-word to 150,000-word range, their lengths off-putting to at least a few readers. The true crime basis of the novels also discourages some Quarry/Nolan fans. The Big Bundle, coming out Dec. 6 (and available for pre-order now), will be the first Hard Case Crime publication of a Heller, and I think Quarry and Nolan fans who haven’t tried the series before will find themselves at home.

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Now I don’t expect any of you – except the hardier souls among you – to buy, read and like everything I put out. Over the last ten years or so, I have increased my already prolific output considerably. I understand that you have only so many hours available to devote to your reading pleasure, and that (however misguidedly) you have other authors you like to read who aren’t me.

So why do I write so much? My standard answer for that is, “If I don’t, they don’t send money to my house.” And that flip response is true enough. But I have also been aware of the ticking clock of mortality and realize that once I am dead, my output will slow considerably. You readers who outlive me will probably have plenty of my stuff to catch up on. That’s fine. It’s as close to living forever as I’ll come.

And I feel I stay fresh by not writing just one thing. I shudder to think if Quarry had taken off in the mid-‘70s and that what I would be doing right now is writing book #45 in the series.

What I’d like to do with the rest of this ridiculously self-serving column is ask you to read – to buy, actually, and then read – a few of my recent books that you may have skipped. I’ve already mentioned The Menace, which some might pass on because (a) it appears to be horror, and/or (b) it doesn’t feature Mike Hammer. I can only say that Mickey came up with a good story and I developed it into a good novel that I’m very proud of.

Here are a couple of others you may have overlooked.

Fancy Anders Goes to War is a novella available on Kindle but also has a handsome little trade paperback with a wonderful Fay Dalton cover (and interior illos). It’s a private eye story with a new heroine who has much in common with Ms. Tree but is also her own girl (it’s a ‘40s story so I can call her that, and anyway she’s young). The research is Heller level. It’s the first of three such novellas from Neo-Text. I just loved writing it (and its two follow-ups, the second of which will be out before long). On Kindle it’s 2.99 and the paperback is only $6.99.

The audio of Fancy Anders Goes to War from SkyBoat is outstanding, virtually a movie for the ears.

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Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It are two books that have suffered a handful of bad reviews and a wealth of good ones that haven’t overcome that handful. This was my attempt to do something along the lines of an American version of Nordic noir. The detectives are a young woman police chief and her retired homicide cop father in Galena, Illinois (I had the cooperation of the town’s police chief, female). I like these books a lot but they didn’t do as well as previous Thomas & Mercer titles. Girl Can’t Help It touches heavily on my rock ‘n’ experience. If you like my work at all, give these a try. They are $4.99 each on Kindle and $10.93 and $12.83 respectively as trade paperbacks.

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Finally, one of my favorites among all of my novels: The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton, written with SCTV’s Dave Thomas. Two things seem to get in the way of my regular readership trying this one: the science-fiction aspect, and the assumption that it’s a comedy. Where to begin? This novel is as much a crime story as s-f, with an older male Black cop and a young female Gen Z partner struggling to find out who shot smalltime thief Jimmy Leighton, who is in the hospital in a coma. Meanwhile, Jimmy, who accidentally triggered a quantum experiment in the basement lab he broke into, is careening from one lifetime to another. The chapters alternate between the cops working on the crime and Jimmy’s journeying.

As for the book being mistaken for a yuk fest, my co-writer Dave Thomas was a writer and producer on the TV series Bones and Blacklist. So there.

Some have characterized Jimmy’s adventures in terms of the old Quantum Leap TV series. While there is some similarity, there’s a major difference. Dave and I, who wrote this book together during the Covid lockdown (lots of phone calls and Zoom get-togethers), wanted to avoid the notion that our traveler would find himself a jet pilot, or on a Broadway stage, or in the middle of doing brain surgery. Jimmy is encountering different lives of his – the different paths he might have taken – possible lives, not unlikely ones.

For me – and for Dave, too – this is a novel that has more to do with Groundhog Day or A Christmas Carol than Quantum Leap. And the science-fiction aspect – Dave takes his quantum science very seriously – is like the history in Nate Heller. It’s important, and it strives to be right; but it’s not the story. If you trust me at all, know that in my opinion The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton is one of the best books in my catalogue.

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Finally, for those of you who – like me – stubbornly insist on prowling actual bookstores, you must accept the fact that most of these books almost certainly will not be found in the world of brick-and-mortar. Supreme Justice and its two sequels, and the two Girl novels with Krista Larson and her dad, are mostly available at Amazon (physical copies at Barnes & Noble and others, but Kindle is Amazon). So is The Menace. Neo-Text books – Fancy Anders Goes to War and The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton – are Amazon.

* * *

Speaking of Supreme Justice, it has made another list of the best legal thrillers.

And here’s a great review of Tough Tender, the Hard Case Crime two-fer of Hard Cash and Scratch Fever with Nolan and Jon.

M.A.C.

Tags: Antiques Liquidation, Deals, Executive Order, Fate of the Union, Girl Can't Help It, Girl Most Likely, Kill Me If You Can, Krista and Keith Larson, Mickey Spillane, Midnight Haul, Nate Heller, New Releases, Reeder and Rogers, Stand Up and Die!, Supreme Justice, The Big Bundle, The Menace, Trash 'n' Treasures
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 13 Comments »

Perdition Years Later, Proofing Copy-Edits & New Spillane

Tuesday, March 29th, 2022

As you may know, the Antiques books – the current one, Antiques Carry On is out now in trade paperback – are now published by Severn, based in the UK but also distributed here (and of course Mike Hammer’s publisher, Titan, is in England as well). So perhaps that explains the photo of a satisfied reader that we received, courtesy of our friend, Gene Eugene.

* * *

Screening of Road to Perdition last week at the Figge art museum in Davenport was fun – it was nicely attended by a somewhat captive audience of Scott Community College students who’d been assigned the graphic novel, among others whose arms had not been twisted to attend.

There was a hitch that took it from the auditorium to the lobby, where the presentation was not ideal but it served the purpose. Matt Clemens and Barb and I took questions after, and I talked too much. Apologies to one and all on that score.

I hadn’t seen Road to Perdition since the Blu-ray came out in 2010 – twelve years! I was struck that my reaction to everything I liked about the film on first seeing it and everything I hadn’t liked (big and small and in between) remained exactly the same. I still wish I’d had a crack at the dialogue, some of which I find stilted, and that the ending were mine – that Jack Lemmon hadn’t died and left the narration (obviously written for an adult looking back on his life, as in the graphic novel) to young Tyler Hoechlin, the book’s real ending scrapped for a Hollywood one.

But I still love the thing. It has such a nice mood, and it picks up on so many visuals from the book (Richard Piers Rayner, God bless you), and stays mostly true to my story. I was after a combination of big city gangster film and rural outlaw movie, and the filmmakers got that. The Paul Newman/Daniel Craig father-and-son relationship is handled better than I did. The cast remains amazing, and I still feel like I’ve won the lottery. And the speech in the church basement is beautifully written.

Over the weekend, Barb and I watched the new 4-K remastering of the three Godfather movies, and how much influence the first Godfather had on the Perdition film was incredibly obvious – in a good way. Several critics at the time called Perdition the best mob film since The Godfather and Godfather 2, and I don’t disagree.

One of my few career regrets is that we never got Road to Purgatory made. My buddy Phil Dingeldein and I worked mightily to get that done. I still have a script for it that I’m proud of…and which I hold the rights to.

If anybody’s interested, now’s the time. Hoechlin has grown up in a super fashion, and Stanley Tucci can be found in a kitchen somewhere. (We killed everybody else.)

* * *

Things in publishing have two speeds: slooooooooow, and effing fast.

I just delivered The Big Bundle to editor Charles Ardai at Hard Case Crime last week, and he had it copy-edited and back to me by the weekend. Charles is incredibly fast, and has a terrific eye. He is respectful of what I write but calls ‘em as he sees ‘em, which is to my benefit. Amazingly, the book has been put to bed but for my eventually proofing the final copy-set copy.

On the other hand, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction took quite a while to get to me from the editors at Mysterious Press (which is more typical). They have been gracious about giving me the time I need, but I will be tackling the job this week, which should be sufficient. A non-fiction book is a more demanding thing, at this stage, but I will face all kinds of fact-checking questions.

I dread the copy-editing stage, as I’ve made clear here many times. About one out of three times at bat, I get saddled with a copy editor who appoints him- or herself my collaborator, and not the person preparing the text for typesetting. I have been rewritten more times that the Holy Bible, and I take it just a little worse than God.

But this goes with the territory.

I also proofed the type-set version of The Menace, the crime/horror novel by Mickey Spillane and me, coming from Wolfpack’s Rough Edges Press. It’s a book developed by me from an unproduced film script Mickey wrote probably in the early 1980s. He had Stephen King on the brain, I think, seeing that King was developing into the kind of celebrity bestselling author that he (Mickey) had been.

In addition I read the galleys of Mickey’s The Shrinking Island (introduced by yours truly), which collects the three young adult adventure novels he wrote in the ‘70s. The title story has never been published before. It comes out soon – April 7 – and if you’re an adult Spillane fan, it’ll make a grinning kid out of you.

The first of the three Larry and Josh adventures, The Day the Sea Rolled Back, was a big influence on The Goonies. I was at Mickey’s house when he got a call from Steven Spielberg (not sure whether it was Spielberg himself or one of his “people”), inquiring about the availability of The Day the Sea Rolled Back for the screen. Mickey told whoever it was that he wasn’t interested in dealing with anybody in Hollywood except Jay Bernstein (his Mike Hammer TV producer). And before long came…The Goonies.

The other YA yarn is The Ship That Never Was. Check out this new collection. The cover, which I’m including here, is (obviously) a stunner.

Trade Paperback:

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Mystery Tribune lists its favorite Irish mob movies and Road to Perdition is included (no mention of the book’s author, though – who was that again?).

Syfy rates the top best eleven R-rated movies based on comic books and suggests that Road to Perdition may be the best one.

Here’s a great Bookgasm review of The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton.

And another great Bookgasm review of Fancy Anders Goes to War.

M.A.C.

Tags: Antiques Carry On, Mickey Spillane, Nate Heller, Reviews, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, The Big Bundle, The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton, Trash 'n' Treasures
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 3 Comments »

A Late Announcement and Heller Behind the Scenes

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022

This announcement is criminally late, and will serve only to inform potential attendees in the Iowa-Illinois Quad Cities area. How criminally late? The event takes place the evening of the day this update is posted.

I will be appearing at a screening of Road to Perdition at the Figge Art Museum, doing a post-film Q and A joined by my frequent collaborators, Barbara Collins and Matthew V. Clemens.

Here are the details as reported by Tristan Tapscott at QuadCities.com:

‘Road to Perdition’ Screening and Author Panel
March 22 at The Figge

Scott Community College, with the generosity of the Figge Art Museum, will host a screening of the award-winning film, Road to Perdition (2002), starring Tom Hanks on March 22, 2022, at the Figge Art Museum, 225 W. 2nd Street, in Davenport. The film screening will begin at 4 p.m. with the author question and answer panel to follow.

Following the film will be an author question and answer panel with Max Allan Collins, author of the graphic novel, Barbara Collins, critically acclaimed author and short story writer, and Matthew Clemens, author and frequent collaborator of Max Allan Collins.

This event is free and open to the public.

Road to Perdition by Max Allan Collins has been selected as the Great Scott Read 2021-2022. The graphic novel and text versions of Road to Perdition are being used by Scott Community College instructors in the classroom. Copies of the book and graphic novel are available to check out from the Scott Community College Library.

For general information, please call 563-441-4150. For venue information, please call 563-326-7804.

Okay, why such a late announcement? Two reasons – the official date of this event was originally announced at a time Barb, Matt and I had not cleared with our schedules. The correct information about a new date did not get announced until just recently, and that announcement did not fall neatly into when my weekly update/blog appears (each Tuesday morning).

Now, I could have done a special posting earlier last week, but I was caught up in writing the final chapters of the new Nathan Heller novel (for Hard Case Crime), The Big Bundle.

I’m going to talk about that now.

* * *

As I’ve said here before, the Heller novels are my proudest achievement and the series is what I consider my signature work. Quarry, which after Heller is my favorite among my series, has become my signature work in the eyes of some. I don’t resent that at all – I like that two things of mine are viewed with such enthusiasm by readers. And of course Road to Perdition (and its sequels and subsequent graphic novels) is the most famous…though I should note that Road to Perdition was an off-shoot of the Heller saga.

Keeping Heller alive throughout my career has been tricky. The day when a mystery series could keep going at the same publisher over many decades had already ended when True Detective (the first Heller novel) was published in 1983. Spillane, Stout, Hammett, Chandler, Christie, and any number of less household-name authors were able to stay with one publisher and one series for a long, long time. But for some while we have been in a situation where publishers cancel a series – somewhat in the network TV mode – as soon as they deem it to have run its course, i.e., as soon as sales begin to drop at all. Often after one or two of three entries.

Heller has been cancelled and pronounced dead (even by my own agent) more times than Dracula at Hammer Films. I have been encouraged to leave him behind and write something new. Well, writing something new is no problem – I like doing that. But when I have hold of something special, I want to stick with it.

That’s why, when I had the opportunity decades later to pick back up with Quarry, I grabbed the chance. I knew Quarry was among the handful of innovative things I’d done in my career – a first-person hitman “hero” was, in a field that is built on recycling the ideas of others (and your own), something unique. When you have writers as gifted as Lawrence Block and Loren Estleman following your lead, you must be doing something right.

Heller is probably my major contribution to mystery fiction because he went somewhere no private eye had gone before: real crimes, researched as if this author (me) had been preparing to write the definitive non-fiction account of each crime…and with fresh solutions to those crimes. Additionally, he would age and change, would have a father and mother, would marry and produce an offspring, his one-room office would over the years become a coast-to-coast agency, and he would do human things like cry, fart, lie and cheat while not losing his P.I. credentials of having a code and being the best man in his world. I consciously chose to examine the cliches and tropes of the private eye, to find the reality behind them – to take Heller back to when Race Williams, the Continental Op and Sam Spade took the private eye into public consciousness…and when in fact there were real private eyes more or less doing for a few decades the fanciful things fictional private eyes would do for many decades.

But continuing the Heller series over decades has a downside that perhaps publishers anticipated. The novels get less frequently reviewed. New waves of fans ignore the books and don’t even try them. Their cultish status – their historical nature – get them ignored by mystery fandom publications. Reviewers who love the Heller novels and rave about them will forget to include them on their year’s end “best of list,” perhaps because the Hellers are in a sub-genre of their own. Or maybe Heller is just a been-there-done-that for such reviewers.

Keeping him alive meant somehow bamboozling various publishers into picking up a series that another publisher deemed had run its course. I started at St. Martin’s, moved to Bantam, then Dutton, and (after a decade-long break) to Forge. Now, Charels Ardai – who understands the hardboiled field, including its history – has picked up my torch at Hard Case Crime.

What has caught up with me, after all these years, is all these years. By which I mean, I am 74 and doing a Nate Heller book is a bitch. It really is. The joy of writing Quarry or Nolan or Mike Hammer is that a fairly minimal amount of research is involved. Some research is necessary, particularly since all the recent books in those series are set in period. Even though I lived through those eras doesn’t mean I was paying attention. I still have to check things like what songs were popular and what night TV shows were on, and fashions and brand-names, and on and on.

But generally there are great stretches where I can just write – I can just follow one of my protagonists into and through a scene, and dialogue can ensue as well as mayhem and eroticism. That’s when writing fiction is fun – when you have room in the kitchen to cook.

And Google has made much research both possible and easier. For decades, research associate George Hagenauer (who did not participate much in The Big Bundle) and I would both spend hours in libraries and other research-friendly facilities digging out all kinds of things. We both have built voluminous libraries of books and magazines that we have scoured over the years to produce Heller and other historically-themed novels. Google – added to those already assembled personal libraries – has made doing Heller easier.

But not easy.

Let me put it into perspective. Quarry’s Blood was written in three weeks. The Big Bundle took two months of reading/note-taking followed by three months of writing. (I got paid the same for both Blood and Bundle. Not complaining – that’s just the reality.) At my age, the degree of difficulty for doing a Heller is considerable.

I have committed to doing another Heller for Hard Case Crime, Too Many Bullets, which with The Big Bundle will comprise what I will likely call The Kennedy Quintet (Bye Bye, Baby; Target Lancer; and Ask Not being the previous novels in this cycle within the Heller cycle).

I find myself wondering – assuming I’m able to stick around on the planet a while longer – if I have the energy to keep Heller going. I have wanted to do a Watergate novel with him for some time, and have considered a Martin Luther King assassination novel (although in the current climate that may be a bad idea). I had a George Reeves/Superman novel in the research stage, but the film Hollywoodland came out and explored the same subject, so I shelved it; but enough time has passed that I might reconsider. There are several other smaller crimes that might become shorter Heller novels.

Perhaps he will have run his course by the end of Too Many Bullets. Lord knows I don’t want readers to say I’ve written Too Many Hellers. But the practical consideration of the degree of difficulty of these things may decide it for me.

I am picturing this week a page from the manuscript of The Big Bundle. I have circled everything that required me to stop and do research before going on. You will see, I think, what I am up against.

The Big Bundle Manuscript page showing researched text.

And yet I love having written The Big Bundle. Unintentionally, it became – like Skim Deep for Nolan and Quarry’s Blood for Quarry – a meditation on what had come before. Quite accidentally, Heller finds himself in situations that resonate with his past, starting with the case at hand being the kidnapping of a child – summoning both the Lindbergh kidnapping and his own fatherhood. If not a coda to the Heller saga (chronologically it appears before Target Lancer and Ask Not), it is a reconsideration and a revisiting of what has gone before.

None of this is bitching by the way, or if it comes across that way, my apologies. These are just the thoughts that occur to me as, with Barb’s help, I prepare to enter my final corrections into The Big Bundle manuscript and get it sent to Hard Case Crime yet today.

* * *

In a list of favorite Paul Newman films, Connie Wilson includes a nice little write-up of Road to Perdition.

This is a lovely review of Quarry’s Blood, but BEWARE – it includes a MAJOR SPOILER.

And here’s a podcast featuring Brad Schwartz, discussing our Eliot Ness non-fiction tomes. (I passed on participating because I was deep in The Big Bundle.)

M.A.C.

Tags: Appearances, Nate Heller, Quarry, Road to Perdition, The Big Bundle
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 7 Comments »

Rondo Hatton Lives!

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

I wound up sending seven copies of No Time to Spy in the latest book giveaway. They just went out – big honking packages!

Now here’s something I need to call your attention to. Matt Clemens and I have are part of the anthology Turning the Tied, recently nominated for the very cool Rondo Award, “fandom’s only classic horror awards.”

The ballot is here: https://rondoaward.com/rondoaward.com/blog/

We are in Category 12: Best Classic Horror Fiction. If you’re at all a classic horror fan, check out the other categories, too.

Paperback:

Ebook:

Here’s a description of the anthology:

Turning the Tied, edited by Jean Rabe, Robert Greenberger (International Association Media Tie-in Writers, softcover, 453 pages, $19.99). Sherlock, Dracula, Frankenstein all figure in collection of stories by Max Allan Collins, Jonathan Maberry, Stephen D. Sullivan and others.

Back in 2016, Matt and I wrote a Sherlock Holmes short story, “The Adventure of Leonardo’s Smile.” We originally conceived it for a mystery puzzle and it was going to be done by the company that did our other puzzles (CSI, CSI: NEW YORK, NCIS: LOS ANGELES, THE MENTALIST, etc.). It was the last story I wrote before going in for heart surgery and at the time I wondered if it would be my last, period. When the puzzle didn’t happen, our Holmes story didn’t have a home.

And then the IAMTW antho came along and we were chosen as the lead story (among a bunch of really strong ones). I also contributed an afterword as the co-founder (with Lee Goldberg) of the organization.

It’s a wonderful book.

And as Al Capone said, “Vote early, and vote often!”

* * *

I am coming down the pike (as Barb puts it) on the new Heller, The Big Bundle…two chapters to go. With luck I’ll finish this week. That’s iffy, because I always re-read the whole manuscript and do final tweaks and sometime rewrites. So it could bleed into next week. But right now I’m caught up in the writing, so this week is a short update.

I had some very good comments come in last week and, rather than answer them in the comments section, I want to bring a few of ‘em centerstage.

Stephen Borer – a reader who has been with me for decades and is one of the nicest, most supportive fans Barb and I have ever been lucky enough to know – responded to my Chuck Berry stuff last week with this: Speaking of Mr. Berry, Max, could you please repeat your meeting him at an airport story for the newer readers?

Here you go, Stephen:

On the passing of CHUCK BERRY (from March 21, 2017):

I met him at an airport where we shared a gate. He was traveling with a guitar in its case, and appeared to be alone. But it was unmistakably him. As a longtime veteran of rock ‘n’ roll, I had to have a moment. I didn’t ask for an autograph, afraid I might start trouble for him, because a lot of people obviously didn’t recognize him.

“I just want to thank you for starting it all,” I said.

He smiled and said you’re welcome, and we shook hands.

I think I said something about having played rock ‘n’ roll for decades, and he said where he was headed, though I’ve forgotten. He was quiet but friendly.

What I said to him was about right. Little Richard and other black artists of the early rock days really were r & b starting to become rock, and Elvis fell in that category as well. But Chuck Berry, with his guitar-driven rock and his teenage subject matter, was not r & b, but at the very forefront of the new genre. Pure rock ‘n’ roll.

He was playing regularly in his home, St. Louis, until very recently.

Regan MacArthur made this observation:

Confession: I was initially intimidated by the heft of Stolen Away and I think it’s one of the best books in the series. Such a varied and interesting cast of characters. I thought, “Man, this is better than Twin Peaks!” Truly, I was riveted from beginning to end.

That’s great to hear, but I understand the reluctance of some to dive in to such big books. The Hellers do vary in size, however, and a couple – Chicago Lightning (short stories) and Triple Play (three novellas, with my beautiful wife on the cover) – are a way to try Heller out more bite-size. But, really, anybody who likes Quarry, Hammer or Nolan will probably like the Nathan Heller books. They have the same kind of violent action and steamy sex as my shorter noir novels. Because they endeavor to recreate eras, you might flip through and think the text looks at times dense (not in the dumb dense way!), but I like to think of them as rich.

Bruce Jones says:

I’m nearing the end of True Detective, and the insights into your process are fascinating. You’ve been using interesting locations from the start with Heller. The Chicago World’s Fair is beautifully recreated, and the Miami section with Cermak and FDR is a master class in historical crime fiction. I’m looking forward to the rest of the Nitti trilogy.

That’s great to hear, but I’d like to know if you are Bruce Jones the writer, because if you are, I’m a fan. And if you aren’t, that’s what you get for having a common last name like Jones or Smith or Collins.

Bill P is back to ask:

Max, I saw you gave recommendations on an earlier thread about where to start with Quarry. Any similar recommendations for places to start with Nate Heller?

That’s a tricky one to answer, and very similar to the Quarry dilemma. The books are written out of order. The excellent chronology from Bill Slankard will point you to reading the books and stories in chronological order.

But I am of several minds here. I would suggest reading The Frank Nitti Trilogy first: True Detective, True Crime, The Million-Dollar Wound. From an artistic standpoint, reading the books in order of publication follows the arc of my development as a writer…and Heller himself probably benefits from that. I am sure there are continuity goofs – I have been working on this saga since 1981, which is…forty years?

When someone asks me what a good book to try the series out on, I would suggest Carnal Hours and I think Angel in Black and Stolen Away are strong.

From a selfish standpoint, I’d say start with whatever is out there right now – The Big Bundle will be out this year! And supporting that one will get more written.

M.A.C.

Tags: John Sand, Nate Heller, No Time to Spy, The Big Bundle
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 5 Comments »

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