Posts Tagged ‘The Consummata’

Let’s Kick True Noir in the Starter and Another Recognition Plus the End of Mike Hammer!

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024

The Kickstarter for True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak is live right now.

It’s important, if you’re a devoted reader of mine – a Nate Heller fan – that you participate in some way.

What differs about this effort is that when the Kickstarter time is up (less than two months from now) the final product will be ready to deliver to you, immediately. Some of the physical media versions will take longer to produce, but if you are buying a download, you will not face the usual (and sometimes interminable) Kickstarter wait to receive it.

I have written this adaptation of True Detective, the first Nate Heller novel (Private Eye Writers of America “Best Novel” Shamus, 1984) myself – a 350-page script that will be ten thirty-to-thirty-five minutes each. Much of it has already been recorded. Our casting director/co-producer Christine Sheaks has assembled an incredible cast. And I’ve been able to attend many of the impressive recording sessions via Zoom.

We have two key roles we haven’t announced the actors for as yet – Heller himself and Frank Nitti. Watch this space, and the Kickstarter page, and you’ll know soon.

Anyone who has enjoyed (or is right now in the process of enjoying) the Nathan Heller novels will be…what’s the most evocative, graceful term?…a pig in shit listening to this ten-part adaptation.

I try not to do a hard sell here. We’re friends in this space and I don’t want my friends battered with that kind of thing. But this is key, in my opinion, to my legacy as a crime/mystery author and to Heller’s ability to thrive in the popular culture. I wish I had Jerry Lewis to plead my case and wind up singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

But Jerry is dead, and I’m 76.

So if you’re a fan – and I know you’re out there, I can hear you aging – contribute to this Kickstarter effort. And tell others about it, please. How serious about this am I? Well, the next Nate Heller novel – One-Way Ride – will be the last. And Heller’s future thereafter will be tied up with how well True Noir does. The plan is for three or four more audio adaptations of various novels (probably, next, The Million-Dollar Wound) and three seasons of live action thereafter. I will do all the scripts myself. This is an ambitious plan but doable…with your support.

In other words, if enough of you guys and gals (that phrase alone dates me, doesn’t it?) step up, NATE HELLER LIVES.

If you stop by here regularly, you know that I am about to direct Death by Fruitcake, an adaptation of the Antiques series, a micro production Barb and I are funding ourselves. For Blue Christmas, we ran a Kickstarter. For Death by Fruitcake, we plundered our savings to make our film because I don’t want to get in the way of this Kickstarter for True Noir.

True Noir in a weird way is a co-Hollywood/Iowa production. Our gifted director, Robert Meyer Burnett, is operating out of California. The executive producer, Mike Bawden, is in the Iowa/Illinois Quad Cities. And I of course have written that 350-page adaptation here in Muscatine, Iowa.

Also key is my longtime collaborator and pal Phil Dingeldein of dphilms in Moline, Illinois, who has been recording behind-the-scenes and promo footage from the very beginning. You’ll be seeing of some his work for the project right here soon.

The team is a strong one and I’m proud to be part of it. Again, forgive the hard sell. Just try to picture me looking up at you with big Margaret Keane eyes.

If you are going to the San Diego Comic Con, Rob and Mike and a bunch of the cast members will have a panel THIS WEEK on Thursday July 25 at 5:30 p.m., Room 6A. I am not attending because the travel, and the crowds and difficulty of attending this event (at which I was long a regular attendee – Seduction of the Innocent, anyone?), make it impossible for me to take part in what is a major part of the launch by Imagination Connoisseurs Unlimited, Rob and Mike’s company. Also, I began fulltime pre-production Fruitcake yesterday (Monday July 22…less than a month out of first day of shoot!).

I am incredibly frustrated that I can’t be at the con panel, but Phil Dingeldein and I recorded a greeting video that will welcome attendees to this key event. If you are going to the con this year, don’t miss this panel.

A poster announcing the event will be given to the first 1000 attendees (well, 999…I asked Rob to save me one). You saw this image a few weeks ago, but here it is again – it’s a banger, as they say.

True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks poster

This project is the big one.

Be part of it…and you’ll never walk alone.

* * *

Normally I would lead with this (but the Kickstarter trumps…pardon the expression…all else):

I am pleased and frankly proud that I’m receiving the 2024 Strand Critics Life Achievement Award.

My statement about this recognition, given by the Strand magazine to the media, is here:

“This is a lovely honor from the last magazine of its kind, much as I am part of a passing pulp breed,” said Collins. “My heroes included Chester Gould, Mickey Spillane, and Donald E. Westlake, later my mentors and friends. My love of movies culminated in the filming of my Road to Perdition. Nathan Heller, Quarry, and Ms. Tree are evidence of my love for detective fiction, much as the Antiques books written with my wife Barbara are of my love for her. I am lucky and blessed to make my living telling elaborate lies about humans at their best and worst.”
M.A.C. holding copies of Skim Deep and Bait Money
* * *

I have completed – and sent to my editor Andrew Sumner at Titan Books – the final Mike Hammer novel, the fifteenth collaborative entry by Mickey Spillane and me on that series (sixteen, if we count the short story collection, A Long Time Dead). That collaboration is posthumous on Mickey’s part, with me (at his request in the last week of his life), taking on the responsibility of completing his unfinished works, primarily Mike Hammer novels.

The novel, with a wraparound that takes place at a cemetery bracketing an early ‘70s yarn, is entitled Baby, It’s Murder, the resonance of which will become clear when you read the book. Despite the bulk of the novel taking place around 1973 (coincidentally the start of my professional writing career), it serves well, I think, as a concluding Hammer novel. You’ll see what I mean if…when…you read it.

The Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Legacy Project has been a joy and a challenge. I’ve done a few non-Hammer collaborations, too – The Menace for Wolfpack from an unproduced Spillane horror screenplay and completing three novels, Dead Street, The Consummata and The Last Stand (the latter an edit job) all for the great Hard Case Crime.

I do have a few things left that I hope to do – another unproduced Spillane screenplay that could become a novel, two or three Hammer short stories from fragments, and most important, the Mike Danger novel Mickey wrote the first draft of, one of his last works. It’s likely that I’ll convert it into a Mike Hammer novel, but its science-fiction elements make finding the right publisher tricky.

Also, if Skydance actually makes the Mike Hammer movie it secured rights to do, I might offer to do the novelization, and perhaps get a new Hammer novel out there as well. For example, I have yet to novelize the radio-style play, Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder (seen on the VCI blu-ray of the revised, expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and as a standalone DVD with Gary Sandy as Hammer) and that’s a possibility.

My position has been – and I immodestly think it separates me from other “continuation” novelists of series, like those picking up after Robert B. Parker, for example – is that all of these books are stories Mickey set out to write. Every one of the Spillane/Collins-bylined books have real Spillane content. The only exception are the Caleb York novels – the first one, The Saga of Caleb York, reflects his unproduced screenplay (written for his pal John Wayne!), and the subsequent five are by me, utilizing his characters and some plot threads left by the screenplay.

The fifteen additional Hammer novels, and the short story collection, reflect the belief and enthusiasm of a handful of publishers…

Otto Penzler, who first published The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang and Kiss Her Goodbye, as well as the collection A Long Time Dead and the Collins/Spillane critical biography, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction.

Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung and Andrew Sumner at Titan Books, who picked up reprint rights on the first three Spillane/Collins Hammer novels and published the next eleven novels. (Charles Ardai at Hardcase Crime stepped up for non-Hammer novels.)

These are people in publishing with a sense of history, with a grasp on the importance of Mickey Spillane in a pantheon of private eye writers that includes Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

My sincere gratitude goes out to them all.

M.A.C.

Eliot Ness, Quarry, Writing Series Characters and More

Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

My YouTube appearances with Heath Holland at his Cereal at Midnight continue, with what I think is the best so far: a discussion of Eliot Ness on screen, kicked off by the current Blu-ray edition of The Scarface Mob from Eureka.

Also on the YouTube front, Robert Meyer Burnett, on his Robservations and Let’s Get Physical Media, continues to provide updates on his audio “movie for the ears” adaptation of my novel True Detective. It’s called True Noir: The Casebooks of Nathan Heller, and I am writing the scripts myself. I have delivered the first seven of ten of what will be a fully immersive audio presentation directed by Rob, with an incredible Hollywood cast, and will run at least five hours.

Todd Stashwick of Picard and Twelve Monkeys (and much else) makes a terrific Nate Heller. If this project resonates with the public, look for three more Heller novels to become movies for the mind, all adapted by Heller’s creator himself.

You know – me.

* * *

Paperback Warrior posted the cover of the upcoming (it’s a fall release from Hard Case Crime) Quarry’s Return. That was a post on X, which I guess is what they’re calling Twitter now. It’s from Elon Musk, who named a ship after Ms. Tree, then didn’t follow up on his people asking to license the name from Terry Beatty and me. Somehow I’m reminded of the penny-pinching kazillionaires in classic Li’l Abner by Al Capp.

Quarry's Return

But since this cover image is floating around out there, I thought I should share it, though we’re a few months away from the novel’s release. I didn’t expect to be writing another novel about Quarry in his (ahem) later years; but sequels have a way of worming into my brain as if I were a Presidential candidate and then percolating there (that’s what we writer folks call a mixed metaphor).

Now I have a notion for yet another “old Quarry” story that is wormily percolating, and we’ll see. I had thought that The Last Quarry would be the last Quarry; but then a whole slew (past tense of “slay”) of ‘em followed, filling in the blanks of his life and varied career. Then came Quarry’s Blood, which was really designed to be the last, only when it was warmly received for a book about a cold-blooded killer, I changed my mind (again). And now here’s Quarry’s Return, with Quarry again a geriatric retired hitman kicking younger ass.

It isn’t that I was planning to retire the character. I figured I might do the occasional younger Quarry novel while I am still above ground. I am never anxious to retire a character completely, in my imagination anyway. It wasn’t hard at all to bring Nolan and Jon back in Skim Deep something like forty years later. I knocked on their door and they promptly answered, not much the worse for wear.

I think the reason why I’ve stayed with my series characters is that good ones don’t come along that often. The only one I’ve really consciously retired is Mallory, because there really isn’t a premise there to generate more novels, and anyway he’s essentially me and that bores my ass off.

But I will never understand mystery and suspense writers who do a new character each and every time. Most of these scribes, well, many of them are simply hanging a new name on the old character. Also, I am too aware of how unsuccessful some incredible writers have been, trying to create a second series character. You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying very close attention, that I like Mickey Spillane – the man and his writing. But what’s your favorite Spillane series character after Mike Hammer? And Velda and Pat Chambers don’t count. (Velda could carry a novel, and some would say she carried a whole comic book series under a separate name. Hint: Ms. Tree. But can you imagine the sheer snooze factor of a Pat Chambers novel?)

So with apologies to you Tiger Mann fans, Mike Hammer can’t be created twice. Edgar Rice Burroughs came close by writing John Carter of Mars, but that character was no Tarzan (and Carson of Venus wasn’t even Carter). Going back to Mickey, his second greatest series protagonist was Morgan the Raider (The Delta Factor); but I had to finish the only other book that character generated (The Consummata) from a few chapters in Mickey’s files.

Barb, a while back (in the throes of writing an Antiques novel and enduring the suffering that process creates in my talented wife), started talking about ending that series, fed up with the difficulties of generating more stories about Vivian and Brandy Borne. I insisted that she stick with it (not that my insistence carried any particular weight) because the Borne girls are fabulous fictional creations, in my unhumble opinion. They live and breathe on the page, and act of their own volition, as all great series characters do.

Here’s the thing: Rex Stout was a genius. His Nero Wolfe books are among the most readable and re-readable novels of any kind ever written. No other two fictional characters live and breathe like Wolfe and Archie. They are as good as fiction gets in the world of the creation of mystery genre recurring characters. Holmes and Watson never breathed as fully, and before Nero and Archie, they were the top.

And yet Rex Stout’s publisher kept after him to create another series. And of course he was a smashing success with his other incredibly famous character, Tecumseh Fox. Right? Right? Okay, how about Alphabet Hicks? There’s a banger of a character! Or how about giving Inspector Cramer a mystery of his own? Or that famous female PI, Dol Bonner?

Nope. One of the few true geniuses of mystery fiction, Rex Stout, stunk up the place with these more contrived creations. So I’m of the opinion that when a mystery writer stumbles upon a character that resonates with the public, said mystery writer should give the public what they want.

Are there dangers? Yes, artistic ones. For example, what if I’d been hugely successful right out of the gate with Nolan, who was after all an homage to Don Westlake’s Parker (“homage,” as we all know, is French for “rip-off”). I might still be writing nothing but Nolan books. I’d have written, say, 40 or 50 Nolan and Jon novels…selling millions…and writing nothing else.

Writers do need to flex their talents. That’s why Robert B. Parker wrote westerns on the side and did his own unsuccessful Dol Bonner-type female private eye novel. So it’s risky, sticking with one series. I do think, with the Antiques books, you have two interacting characters – like Archie and Wolfe – who provide a kind of engine for the story beyond the plot machinations.

Mickey wrote about Mike Hammer throughout his sporadic career. Early on he came to feel he’d characterized Hammer so fully, there wasn’t anything else to say. He compensated by writing Tiger Mann and some standalones, though he drifted back to what was essentially the same protagonist under various names. What kept him artistically sane (not a word used much in relation to Mike Hammer, I grant you) was his decision to make Hammer always reflect where he, Mickey Spillane, was in his life. He allowed Hammer to grow somewhat older (not realistically so, but older) and to allow this indomitable character to have frailties – Hammer went on a seven-year drunk; he was, in several novels (including some I completed) recovering from wounds or otherwise physically impaired. This reflected Spillane’s own advancing years, and the on-and-off nature of his writing career.

Look, every mystery writer – every writer – has to do this his or her own way. I am only suggesting that for me it’s been an interesting, rewarding ride, following my characters through their advancing years (and mine). That was true of Nate Heller in the current Too Many Bullets. It was true of Nolan and Jon in Skim Deep. And Quarry in Quarry’s Blood and Quarry’s Return. And if I ever return to Ms. Tree, you can bet your ass she’ll be in menopause.

* * *

Speaking of Ms. Tree, Terry and I are working on the sixth and final Titan volume of the collected Ms. Tree, which gathers almost everything he and I did with the character and her supporting cast (no The P.I.s, though). She had an impressive dozen-year comics run (1981 – 1993) and represents one of the most gratifying collaborations I’ve ever enjoyed. Terry Beatty and I, I am glad to say, will always be thought of by many comics fans as a team.

Right now Terry is working on helping put together (much as he has on the Titan volumes of collected Ms. Tree) our Dark Horse Johnny Dynamite graphic novel, Underworld, in an improved publication that will happen later this year.

It’s an enduring frustration to me that we both worked on Batman but never together. And that we both did syndicated comic strips (Dick Tracy and Rex Morgan respectively), but not as a team. He’s still doing Rex Morgan, but he doesn’t need me – he writes it himself. I like to think he had a good teacher.

As for Dick Tracy, the VCI Blu-ray collection of the four RKO Tracy feature films – with two new commentaries by me and lots of bonus features – will be out in early August.

Getting back to Ms. Tree, here’s Comic Book Treasury’s best crime comics write-up (it invokes Road to Perdition, but lists Ms. Tree).

And speaking of Collins/Beatty, here’s a look at Wild Dog at Tvtropes. It says: “The series was writted by Max Allan Collins with art by Terry Beatty.” I don’t know who “writted” this otherwise nice piece.

M.A.C.

The Big Showdown

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016

[Nate here:] Before we get to M.A.C.’s pre-written blog update, I have a quick update on M.A.C. Dad’s recovery has been going great (aside from the food, but they got the important things right, at least!) and he should be on his way home today. Here’s a picture from this weekend:

– – – – – –

The Big Showdown

Hardcover:
E-Book:

THE BIG SHOWDOWN, second of the Caleb York westerns – there will be at least three – will be published April 26.

This is the first time I’ve published a novel where I share a byline with Mickey Spillane despite there being no Spillane content. As regular readers of these updates (and my novels) know, I have been completing Mike Hammer manuscripts (and a few other novels) that were unfinished in Mickey’s files. He specifically directed his wife Jane and me to do so.

But also in the files were three unproduced screenplays. Two are noir horror pieces that I hope to find a home for, but one was THE SAGA OF CALLI YORK, a screenplay written for John Wayne. I took Mickey’s script and essentially novelized it (could I hate that term more?); I changed “Calli” to “Caleb,” which Calli was short for, though I never use that nickname in the novels, and “Saga” to “Legend,” because the latter term plays better for the narrative at hand.

The trouble was, my terrific editor at Kensington, Michaela Hamilton, wanted at least three books. Rather than leave Caleb hanging (so to speak), I said yes…then for many months drove my wife Barb crazy as I speculated on what to do with the other two novels.

Mickey’s backstory indicated York was a famous detective for Western Union, and I considered doing prequels to THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK, possibly focusing on real desperados. But it was Barb who rode to the rescue (sorry), suggesting that instead I write a sequel (possibly a series of them) utilizing the setting, characters and conflicts Mickey had created – taking Mickey’s story and letting it really play out. That made it feel more proper to share byline with him.

“Stay in his world,” Barb advised.

So that’s what I did. I had a blast writing it and have already plotted the third, again playing off of what Mickey wrote. Again, I tried to do a western in the Hollywood tradition of Randolph Scott, Joel McRea and Audie Murphy, but with the violence ratcheted up a notch.

I just read the galley proofs and liked it a lot. You may, also.

M.A.C.

[Nate here for the review round-up:]

A nice review for Murder Never Knocks showed up from across the pond on Crimetime, originally posted on Irresistible Target. (“one of the best of the Max and Mickey Mike Hammers.”)

Halifax’s (The) Chronicle Herald gave Kill Me, Darling a much appreciated mention in a recommended reading list for winter vacation, which is apparently a thing. (“Not just a great Mike Hammer novel; a great crime novel, without qualification.“)

The Open Book Society posted a flat-out rave for Quarry’s List. (“The plot is Mickey Spillane and Mario Puzo balled into one and spit out faster than the gout of flame from a jet engine.“) It’s been fun seeing the earlier Quarrys get some nice attention lately, especially since I’ve been reading them again, too, for the first time since pulling them out of my father’s basement library when I was younger than I should admit here.

J. Kingston Pierce’s Killer Covers blog gave a shout-out to The Consummata. Definitely click that link (here it is again) because he features some supremely cool covers there.

The X-Files anthology, Trust No One, got a nice review from the Lawrence Public Library blog, with Max’s short story “The House on Hickory Hill” garnering a special recommendation. (“[Trust No One] brings new life into an area that bookish fans of the program have sorely missed.“)

N.A.C.

San Diego Comic-Con & Hammer Interview

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015
It's in the Book French Edition

As it happens, Barb and I won’t be able to go the Comic-Con this year. So the listings that have me hosting the Scribe awards, doing a signing, and having a Quarry panel are now all inaccurate. Likely I’ll be there next year, but this time, no. My pal Jonathan Maberry will be hosting the Scribes for me.

I have two nominations: Best Novel, KING OF THE WEEDS; and Best Short Story, “It’s in the Book.” Both are Spillane/Collins collaborations.

Coincidentally, a French publisher (Ombres Noires) is translating “It’s in the Book” for their own edition (it’s available in English only in a small book, as well, published by Otto Penzler). They asked me to do an interview, which they will include in the small book, in French of course.

I thought you might like to see it in English.

Interview with Max Allan Collins
It’s in the Book

You wrote the end of a story by Mickey Spillane, who passed away in 2006. You were friends, how did you two meet?

As a young teenager, I idolized Mickey and wrote him dozens of fan letters. He never responded until I published my first novel, BAIT MONEY, in 1973, and sent him a copy, He wrote me a warm, lengthy letter of welcome to the community of professional writers.

Over the years I have been a defender of Spillane, who remains controversial in the United States. Because of that, I was asked in 1981 to be the liaison between Mickey and the Bouchercon mystery convention in Milwaukee, where he was a guest of honor. We immediately hit it off and I began to visit him at his home in South Carolina once or twice a year.

How did you come to complete his manuscripts?

On my various visits to Mickey’s home, he would send partially completed manuscripts home with me. He said this was just because he thought I’d be interested, but on one occasion he said, “Maybe we can do something with these someday.” He was referring to two partial Hammer novels, THE BIG BANG and COMPLEX 90. We had begun to collaborate on projects – a number of noir anthologies of his work and the work of others, a science-fiction comic book called MIKE DANGER, and a biographical documentary I wrote and directed, “Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane.”

When Mickey became ill, with a particularly virulent strain of cancer, we stayed in close touch by phone. He was working desperately to finish what he described as the last Mike Hammer, THE GOLIATH BONE. Shortly before his death, he called and said he didn’t think he’d be able to finish it. And he asked me to do it for him, if that proved necessary. I of course said yes.

Around the same time, Mickey told his wife Jane to gather all his unfinished material and give it to me – “Max will know what to do.” No greater honor could be paid me. There were six major Hammer manuscripts, often with notes, and another half dozen shorter Hammer novels in progress. There were also short openings for novels, running from six to ten pages, that I thought would make good short stories. “It’s in the Book” is one of those.

You wrote several stories from his manuscripts. What did you like in this one in particular?

It had a beautifully written opening, with two cops coming to see Hammer in his office, to take him to see a U.S. Senator for some mysterious, important job. Mickey’s manuscript ended before that job was fully described by the client, and that enabled me to use the missing ledger that made the story a bibliographic mystery. You see, editor Otto Penzler had requested that specific kind of story.

What sort of shape did the manuscript have – was it just a few lines, a structure, several chapters?

It was basically that opening, right up to where Hammer meets with the senator. I thought it was a lovely, traditional opening for a private eye story.

It must be a very special experience, and a challenge, to finish a story more than 20 years later. Did you try in any way to modernize the style, the story, or anything – or did you try to remain faithful to Spillane’s style?

I’ve done seven Hammer novels now, and the unfinished Spillane manuscripts spanned his entire career – from 1947 to the month he died. I always try to determine when Mickey was writing the story, and then I immerse myself in material that he wrote around that same time, so I can catch the flavor and capture Hammer at that specific time. Hammer is a much changing character, and a story conceived by Mickey in the ‘50s is vastly different from one written in, says, the 1980s. I don’t try too overtly to mimic Mickey’s style — it’s collaboration, not pastiche. I concentrate on getting Mike Hammer right. It’s a matter of character.

I am a very traditional, Old School mystery writer, so this comes naturally to me.

Did he influence you in your writing, or help you in your own work?

Mickey was a huge influence on me. The key writers for me were Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Thompson and Westlake. These are very different writers in their approaches, and I think having such variant influences has worked well for me. Mickey never really gave me any writing advice – I was already a pro when our friendship developed. But he was supportive and provided blurbs for many of my book covers.

What is it that makes the character of Mike Hammer so special, compared to other popular characters?

Hammer had an enormous impact on popular culture worldwide, well beyond the private eye genre. James Bond is a version of Hammer, for example. Prior to Hammer, detectives did not display the emotions – love, hate, fear – that Spillane gave his hero. Hammer was the first avenger of modern fiction, a hero who used the methods of the villain to triumph over that villain. In addition, Hammer as a combat veteran brought a traumatic backstory to the detective, much imitated since. Finally, Hammer slept with women, unashamedly. While Sam Spade had sex with his femme fatale, just about no detective since had done so. Chandler said disparaging things about Mickey, but after the success of the Mike Hammer books, Marlowe began having an active sex life.

Say what you will about Mickey, but he was the most influential mystery writer of the 20th century…and the bestselling, with the possible exception of Christie.

How did you come up with the idea of this ending?

That idea jumped to mind at the outset. I knew it was a good one. Mickey loved surprise endings, and this was right up his alley.

Are you yourself interested in rare books and first editions?

I am. I have a good collection with many signed books – all the writers I mentioned above, and more. I have a very strong Rex Stout collection, for instance.

What do you enjoy most about writing short novels?

I’m not a short story writer by inclination. I’m very much a novelist. But I’ve grown to like the form. It’s nice to have a project that lasts a week and not several months. My wife, Barbara Collins, is an excellent short story writer.

Who are the authors that inspire you today? Why?

I read very little contemporary fiction. I don’t care to be influenced by trends, and anyway my reading time is taken up largely by research for my historical thrillers. I continue to read and re-read the greats – again, Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Spillane and so on.

Do you read French thrillers?

I’m very traditional on that front, as well – Boileau-Narcejac. Jean Pierre Melville is one of my favorite film directors.

* * *

Speaking of Spillane/Collins collaborations, here’s a look at THE CONSUMMATA at Detectives Without Borders.

The same site followed up quickly with a piece speculating about the Spillane/Collins collaboration process. You’ll see a lengthy comment from me explaining that process in some depth.

Here is a lovely, gracious review of SPREE by one of our great noir writers, Ed Gorman.

M.A.C.