Posts Tagged ‘The Last Quarry’

A Quarry Discussion Plus a Book Giveaway!

Tuesday, April 1st, 2025

It’s book giveaway time, with the new trade paperback edition from Hard Case Crime of The Last Quarry on offer to the first ten of you who ask for it.

As usual, if you’re interested, you write me directly at macphilms@hotmail.com. If you receive a copy, you agree to write a review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble, and/or your own (or someone else’s) blog. If you hate the book, you’re relieved of this obligation. Mixed reviews are fine, and only mildly resented. USA only, due to postal restrictions. Be sure to include your snail-mail address.

This trade paperback includes two of the four Quarry short stories as in-the-back-of-the-book bonuses: “Guest Services” and “Quarry’s Luck.” The other two short stories, “A Matter of Principal” and the fourth (the name of which escapes me – it appeared in The Strand) [“Quarry’s Gamble”, The Strand #52 — Nate] were swallowed up in the novels for use in The Last Quarry and Quarry’s Climax respectively.

The cover of this new book is particularly handsome. It’s by the great Robert McGinnis, one of the premiere paperback cover artists of the golden age of noir paperback originals and the guy who did some of the most iconic James Bond movie posters. I’ve told the story frequently, but I’ll go into it briefly here for you newer comers.

When Charles Ardai started up Hard Case Crime, I was one of the authors he approached (most of the others were dead, so it was their estates Charles approached). He did a reprint (in one volume) of the first two Nolan novels (Bait Money and Blood Money) called Two for the Money. He came back for more reprints and I said I’d rather do an original, even if it was just for reprint-level money. I believe he at first wanted a new Nolan, but I preferred doing a Quarry, the character having always been one of my favorites, and the series one I thought should have lasted and received more recognition.

The final negotiating point between Charles and me was my saying essentially, “I’ll do the novel if you get me a McGinnis cover.” And I’ll be damned if he didn’t.

At this point I’d written one more Quarry novel (Primary Target, aka Quarry’s Vote) in the wake of the initial Nate Heller success, and a nifty little Quarry short film that was burning up the festival circuit. I used that film in an anthology of my other short films as well as the Spillane documentary; this was called Shades of Noir, and the original paperback of The Last Quarry was sort of the movie tie-in to that boxed set of DVD’s.

Quarry was inspired by three things – well, two people and one thing. The thing was the Parker series by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) that I loved then and love now; and Nolan was my direct take on Parker, humanizing him with a young sidekick. But I always thought there was a cop-out nature to that series, and my own – Parker was a thief and when he was forced to kill somebody, that somebody was another bad guy. Same was pretty much true of Nolan. It occurred to me nobody had really done this kind of novel – a “crook book” where the heroic protagonist (okay, anti-heroic) was a hitman. I wanted the reader to have to deal with the point of view character being, unapologetically, a hired killer.

I did not have a series in mind but did leave the door open for a follow-up novel or two. (Nolan had not been conceived as a series either, and even died in the original draft of Bait Money.)

The two people impacting the creation of Quarry were Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in the European Theater in World War Two, and later a movie star, mostly in westerns. I’d read enough about him to know he had been traumatized – had PTSD, though nobody was calling it that yet – which I found interesting. A normal kid who became a cold-blooded killer (of the enemy, but that counts).

The other inspiration was Jon McRae, a high school pal of mine who went on to several very bloody tours in Vietnam. Unlike some friends of mine, he came home recognizably his eccentric self, but he was nonetheless clearly traumatized by what were then still ongoing experiences. To give you the idea, he was the machine gunner in the tail of a rescue ‘copter.

Stir my Mickey Spillane obsession into the mix, and my admiration for “Richard Stark,” and you have Quarry. I was approached by Berkley Books to do three more novels about him and snapped up the chance. The subsequent three novels were increasingly violent and black humor-tinged. I was, frankly, worried about the direction they were taking – not the four books I’d done, but what the fifth book might be, and any future ones. I feared I’d gone down a road of having to top myself with some terrible thing Quarry did toward the end of a given novel – the basic idea having been to lure the reader into accepting Quarry as a narrator and even identifying with him, then getting slammed with something awful he does, and making readers question their own ease in going along with Quarry, to accept him as a “hero.”

That became no problem when Berkley Books asked for no further Quarry entries.

Over the years, however, I had more mail about Quarry than any other character of mine (pre-Heller). That, and my feeling that Quarry was an original creation, served poorly by the original publisher, made the series an itch that called out for scratching.

So when Charles gave me the opportunity to write The Last Quarry, an opportunity to answer whatever-happened-to-Quarry and wrap up the series, I grabbed it. When the book became a surprise success, both in terms of sales and reviews, this old war horse didn’t have to hear the bell ring twice. I was off and running with The First Quarry and my series of novels about the missing years in the character’s life between already written books.

Series have a way of knowing when they are either over or evolving, and Quarry is no exception. Almost from the start, the concept of Quarry evolved into him using the list of his dead Broker (murdered by Quarry) to approach targeted victims and taking out assassins…a kind of prolonged metaphorical self-suicide…which eclipsed the hitman aspect. Some of the flashback books depict Quarry in his hitman years, but the initial novel (The Broker aka Quarry) is essentially his last job before his transition to the “list” approach.

Killing Quarry emerged from somewhere in my subconscious to conclude the “list” cycle. The next book, Quarry’s Blood, in part returned to hitman days and then mostly was about Quarry at a much older age – essentially mine, maybe a couple of years younger – and I found that interesting enough to pick that up again in the more recent Quarry’s Return.

Now I will soon be embarking on Quarry’s Reunion, which will almost certainly be another of the Quarry-in-old-age novels. I had promised a while back that any further novels would revert to the “list” days, most likely; but if you’re expecting consistency from me, it’s only to be found in my ability to write readable books.

I realize much of what I’ve just shared is already known to some of you – maybe many of you – but it seemed like returning to the evolution of this series was appropriate with a Last Quarry book giveaway.

Here’s another story you may have already heard from me. I was so thrilled with McGinnis cover to The Last Quarry that I coaxed the artist’s phone number out of Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai. I called Bob McGinnis and told him what a career high it was for me to have a cover by him on a novel of mine. I was undoubtedly effusive and he took my fannish enthusiasm with grace. Then he asked me if I’d like the original art of the cover. That threw me, because I was next expecting him to offer it to me at a price I could not afford.

But I could afford it, all right. All he wanted was my address to send me the art.

It hangs near my desk now, an incredible reminder of how lucky I’ve been to have this career of mine, getting everything I ever wanted out of it (except getting rich). I have four other original covers from Quarry novels on my walls, by various artists, and all of those I did find a way to buy. One I particularly like, The Wrong Quarry painted by Tyler Jacobson, hangs near my desk, as well. Not all the covers (and I like them all) for Quarry novels have depicted him. But the ones that do that also match the image in my mind’s eye are the McGinnis and Jacobson ones.

When I’m asked who my favorite is among the heroes (and heroines) of my various book and comics series, it always comes down to Quarry and Nate Heller. Don’t ask me to choose between them, because they are both me.

* * *

Here is a particularly good YouTube video about the film version of Road to Perdition, provided to me by Terry Beatty himself.

* * *

Here is info and pre-ordering for Law and Order, the 1932 Wyatt Earp movie starring Walter Huston and Harry Carey derived from the hard-to-find 1930 W.R. Burnett novel. This has the commentary by me and the great Heath Holland of Cereal at Midnight, a recording I mentioned last week that I was about to do.

It’s a terrific movie. Don’t miss it.

* * *

I also teased last week about working on a screenplay. I can’t (or anyway won’t) give any details, but I’ve just completed my first Nathan Heller feature film screenplay, which will tie in with True Noir, the ten-episode audio adaptation of True Detective written by me and directed by Robert Meyer Burnett. The producers include Mike Bawden, Phil Dingeldein and Christine Sheaks.

This screenplay is not an adaptation of True Detective, however – it’s from another published work in the series. It’s a speculative effort but one that I think has a good shot at paying off. The only previous Heller screenplay I wrote was the pilot episode for FX of a Stolen Away mini-series that never happened (I did, however, get paid).

Speaking of True Noir, the last two episodes will be dropping soon. Then you can order it all at once. The almost five-hour production, starring Michael Rosenbaum as Nate Heller, will eventually be available on Blu-ray. A Blu-ray of an audio? Yes! This production with its incredible cast (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32507868/) will be on a disc that will also have all ten episodes of my History Behind the Mystery series (one per episode of the audio production) and a lengthy interview with me by Rob Burnett. A book of my ten scripts will also be available around the same time.

If this audio production is successful, our next productions of True Noir movies-for-the-mind will be the other two books in the Frank Nitti Trilogy, True Crime and The Million-Dollar Wound.

You can help make that happen, if you haven’t already, by going to truenoir.co and buying the entire ten-episode series for a modest $29.95.

Eventually there will be a soundtrack CD available of the excellent Alexander Bornstein score.

* * *

You may have already seen this nice little article about Ms. Tree, but it’s worth another look, anyway, particularly in the wake of the recent publication of the sixth and final volume of the archival series from Titan, Ms. Tree: Fallen Tree.

* * *

The Quarry movie, The Last Lullaby, is available on YouTube now. Tom Sizemore is “Price” (aka Quarry). I wrote the first drafts of the script and did a final punch-up, but another writer wrote a draft, too…so it’s not pure Quarry, but it’s pretty good.

M.A.C.

Quarry! Spillane! John Sand! True Noir!

Tuesday, February 18th, 2025

It’s been some time since we did a book giveaway, so let’s make up for that lost time with the new trade paperback edition of The Last Quarry.

Back in the early days of Hard Case Crime, their books were published in the old-fashioned mass-market paperback form. When HCC moved to Titan as their home publisher, the format was changed to a somewhat larger trade edition. The Last Quarry was intended to conclude a series that was pretty much defunct after its four mid-‘70s books at Berkley and one book at Foul Play Press.

As I’ve reported here before, The Last Quarry was an unexpected success (I am always surprised when something of mine moves from cult favorite to actual success). This initiated a still in-progress revival of the series including an award-winning short film (“A Matter of Principal”), a feature I co-wrote (The Last Lullaby, from The Last Quarry), and a one-season Cinemax TV series, as well as many more series entries plus a graphic novel.

This has now led to new trade-size editions of The First Quarry (September 2025), Quarry in the Middle (pub date as yet unannounced), and The Last Quarry (April 2025). The latter book will include two short stories, “Guest Services” and “Quarry’s Luck” (previously collected in Quarry’s Greatest Hits, the only Quarry volume not reprinted by HCC). This new edition of The Last Quarry also has an essay by me charting the development of Quarry, including his unexpected revival. And what a Robert McGinnis cover it has!

And what of the giveaway? The deal is this: you agree to write an Amazon and or Barnes & Noble review in exchange for the receipt of a copy; you are released from this obligation if you don’t like the book. You have to wait till the pub date to do an Amazon review (Barnes & Noble reviews are also fine). Ten copies are available. USA only.

[All copies have been claimed. Thank you for your support! –Nate]

These do go fast.

Now, there are all kinds of flavors of Amazon-type reviews. Some are a sentence or two or three, and some are actual mini-essays. If you do something on The Last Quarry of the latter nature, you can send it to me (and Amazon!) and I’ll share it here.

I am hopeful we’ll have another book giveaway here very soon, if I can lay hands on some extra advance copies of the final Mike Hammer novel, Baby, It’s Murder, which comes out March 4, the day after my 77th birthday.

Is it really the last Mike Hammer novel? Truthfully, I have a couple of brief openings by Mickey that may become short stories, or even novels, if the much-promised Mike Hammer movie happens. I would also probably go after the movie novelization of that, again…if it happens. I also have a Mike Danger novel that Mickey did a complete draft of, which I hope to revise into a Hammer one. Due to the science fiction nature of the Danger novel, it was not included in the batch of titles from Titan that complete the official canon.

I also have a science-fiction/horror-tinged complete screenplay Mickey did, which I could turn into a novel, and would frankly like to do so. Unfortunately, the horror novel The Menace (from another unproduced Spillane screenplay) that I wrote for Wolfpack hasn’t earned enough sales to command a follow-up.

Speaking of Wolfpack, all three of the John Sand novels that Matt Clemens and I wrote, including our short story collection Murderlized (which includes a John Sand short story), are on sale as an e-book collection of all four books for a mere 99-cents.

I feel the John Sand novels are among my least known and least read books, and hope any of you who have been on the fence about them take advantage of this incredible price. For the uninitiated, John Sand (in the world of these novels, set in the ‘60s) is the real-life spy who Ian Fleming based James Bond upon. I think this represents some of the best Collins/Clemens collaborations. Matt, of course, was the co-author of all my CSI novels.

Buy the John Sand collection on e-book right here.

And while we’re at it, here is a link to the three Spillane titles I did for Wolfpack. These are Mickey’s final YA novel (edited and introduced by me), The Shrinking Island; Stand Up and Die (a Collins-edited collection of Spillane novellas, including a Mike Hammer I co-wrote); and the aforementioned The Menace, co-written by me from an unproduced Spillane screenplay.


Paperback:
E-Book:

E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
* * *

Listen (and that’s the operative word here), I could not be prouder of True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, my ten-episode immersive-audio adaptation of the first Nate Heller novel, True Detective. Director Robert Meyer Burnett has done an incredible job with an incredible cast. Michael Rosenbaum makes an ideal Nate Heller. The seventh episode has either just dropped or is about to.

With my longtime crony Phil Dingeldein behind the camera, we have been doing a series of video commentaries about each episode.

Please don’t watch these till you’ve signed on for the audio series at truenoir.co. If you’ve read True Detective you can probably understand what I’m talking about. But you should really listen to each episode of True Noir, then check in with the appropriate one of these after each one. Nonetheless, here are episodes three, four, and five.

Chapter Three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncwysQ3kIDY

Chapter Four:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKvSPEOd4J0

Chapter Five:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plz_PAPPqac

M.A.C.

Happy Anniversary – Everybody!

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2021
Suspense His and Hers cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Indiebound Purchase Link Amazon Purchase Link Books-A-Million Purchase Link Barnes & Noble Purchase Link

We hope to have advance copies of Suspense – His & Hers before too long. The pub date is September 8. Wolfpack has done another outstanding job on the cover of this collection, a companion piece to Murder – His & Hers, also published by Wolfpack (originally published by Five Star).

These two His & Hers collections are unusual in that they gather individual stories by Barb and me, as well as collaborative ones. I feel my best individual short story I’ve ever written is in Suspense (“Amazing Grace”) and a collaborative one that is primarily by Barb (“What’s the Matter With Harley Quinn?”) is a particularly strong example of her work. These are both recent stories and reflect how personal experience impacts our writing. Also included are two Quarry short stories and the Edgar-nominated Ms. Tree prose tale, “Louise,” by me. Several “best of the year” stories by Barb are included.

“Amazing Grace” was suggested by my great grandparents’ Golden party. It was particularly significant in real life, and I had told Barb about it several times (my great grandfather, with all the family gathered at a big anniversary party, announced she was divorcing my great grandfather, a sweet tippler who deserved the boot). When I got the assignment to write a story involving an anniversary for an MWA collection, Barb reminded me of this true event and I was off and running.

“What’s the Matter With Harley Quinn?” derives from Barb’s experiences at the most recent San Diego Comic Con we were able to attend when she spent two days trying to get collectible pins for our (very much grown) son Nathan, who did not attend the con that year. Not a comics fan herself, Barb was thrown into a rather wild and wooly lion’s den and, typically, she came out bloody but unbowed, and with a story in mind. If Alfred Hitchcock Presents will still on, her stories would be a staple there. Our friend the late Ed Gorman frequently compared her work to Roald Dahl’s.

Our Antiques Carry On is out right now, and I hope you’ll look for it. Frankly, we haven’t seen it (a hardcover) in a Barnes & Noble or BAM! yet, the only bookstores we’ve been to in post-Covid. The book is very handsome and (I say with zero modesty) funny as hell, as well as a good mystery, so your support is encouraged. We have a new publisher, the British house Severn, and they packaged the book very well indeed. But the future of Brandy and Vivian Bourne is in your hands.

Speaking of bookstores, a friend of the family sent in this lovely display from Powell’s Books in Portland:

Powell's Books M.A.C. display.

I have completed the 75th anniversary Mike Hammer novel, Kill Me If You Can, which will have five bonus Spillane/Collins short stories that include two Hammer tales. It’s going to be a special book, just one of a number of things I’m working on to make Mike Hammer’s anniversary (yes, this is an anniversary-themed update) special. The anniversary in question is the first appearance of the detective in I, the Jury (1947).

I should say first published appearance, because as those of you who have really been paying attention know…the first appearance of the character, as Mike Lancer, was in a Green Hornet comic book (#10, December 1942) and the character was first developed by Mickey as Mike Danger as a comic project that did not come to fruition, and in an unfinished novel that became the Spillane/Collins collaboration, Killing Town.

Kill Me If You Can is based on mid-‘50s material Mickey wrote with radio and later TV in mind, and gave me the opportunity to deal with the younger, psychotic Hammer in a more direct way than ever before. Basically it bridges Kiss Me, Deadly and The Girl Hunters (the film of which is on several streaming services right now, by the way).

Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander in The Last Lullaby

The Last Lullaby, based on the Quarry novel The Last Quarry with a screenplay co-written by me, is streaming in HD on Amazon Prime right now, included with your Prime membership (if you have one, of course). [And $2.99 to rent / $6.99 to buy if you don’t have Prime.–Nate] It’s a good film and is probably more in line with the novels than the Cinemax series was, though Quarry is called “Price” because I didn’t want to grant sequel rights.

M.A.C. holding a copy of To Live and Spy in Berlin at his desk

Finished copies of the trade paperback edition of To Live and Spy in Berlin by Matt Clemens and me were sent out to the winners of the most current book giveaway. It’s a thing of beauty, and that wonderful essay Jeff Pierce wrote about the series in January Magazine has sparked real interest.

And now the estimable Ron Fortier has written the following rave review, which I will (still immodest) share with you:

TO LIVE AND SPY IN BERLIN
By Max Allan Collins with Matthew V. Clemens
Wolfpack Publishing 221 pgs

With this third installment of the John Sand series, Collins and Clemens put forth a proposition many past mystery writers have tackled; can marriage still be romantic and sexy? Following the events that were detailed in “Come Spy With Me” and “Live Fast, Spy Hard,” former British Agent John Sand and his Texas Oil Heiress wife, Stacey, have together joined the new international spy organization called GUILE created by U.S. President John Kennedy and run by former British Spy Chief Sir Lord Malcolm Marbury; known affectionately as Double M.

As we rejoin the Sands, the major issue between them is whether or not Stacey becoming an operative was a good idea or not. A series of lethal encounters with a team of professional assassins has John rethinking his decision. At the same time certain intelligence comes to the surface that former Nazis who escaped capture at the end of World War II may be active in Berlin, after having disappeared for several decades in certain South American countries. Bomb making uranium has been stolen and the likelihood of these renegade Nazis creating their own atomic bomb is a threat that cannot be ignored.

As in the first two entries, Collins and Clemens cleverly work in actual historical settings throughout the thriller, weaving their fiction skillfully around real people and the volatile political atmosphere of the early 1960s. Yet despite this outer layer of narrative, it is the relationship between John and Stacey that is truly captivating. It was impossible not to recall other literary and cinematic spouses from the past. From Nick and Nora Charles, to televisions Hart to Hart and McMillan & Wife, married duos sharing outlandish adventures worked remarkably well in the past and they are very much the pedigree of this thrill-a-minute new series.

As always, Collins and Clemens offer up a whole lot more than any back cover blurb can properly define. This series is brilliant in all its many aspects. If you’re a spy junkie like us, its time you met the Sands.

Ron does entertaining and informative reviews regularly at his Pulp Fiction Reviews blog.

And if you’re not a regular reader of J. Kingston Pierce’s Rap Sheet, you should be. There’s a mention of my stuff in this incredibly packed installment of his informative Bullet Points.

M.A.C.

Wolfs and Cats, Living Together, Sunday Fun, and a 5-Day Script

Tuesday, October 6th, 2020
Too Many Tomcats, Wolfpack Cover
Ebook: Amazon Purchase Link

All of the copies in last week’s book giveaway of Murderlized and Murder – His and Hers have been shipped. I unexpectedly received more copies of Murderlized that allowed me to send ten copies out, not just five.

Now we have another Wolfpack release, thus far only available on Kindle, but a physical book will be along soon. It’s Barb’s Too Many Tomcats, an anthology of her stories for the various Cat Crimes collections; I wrote the intro and co-wrote a couple of stories.

Do not be dissuaded by the title and subject – these are dark tales, very much in the Roald Dahl/Alfred Hitchcock Presents vein. While Barb does not (exactly) dislike cats, she is fact allergic to them. The cats in these stories, among other things, tend to be evil, murder victims, and/or dead. It’s a wonderful collection, reflecting many of the tales having been chosen for the Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories anthologies edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, two great men both sadly gone.

* * *

I am pleased to announce that the project that SCTV’s Dave Thomas and I are in the process of writing has found a home.

Much more about that later.

* * *

For those of you not sick to death of me (which does not include my wife) (or myself for that matter), I did a ZOOM interview with S-F/Fantasy & Mystery author Russ Colchamiro. Russ is a fine, fun interviewer and we talked about things that haven’t made it into my zillion other interviews.

Russ is one of the Crazy 8 Press group of genre writers, which includes (among other excellent scribes) my old pals Peter David, Glenn Hauman, Robert Greenberger and Paul Kupperberg.

Check out the talk between Russ and me right here:

* * *

Although this update/blog appears on Tuesday morning, I often write them the Sunday night before. That’s the case this week.

You may recall I’ve written about a handful of very carefully orchestrated outings that Barb and I have undertaken (an unfortunate word in a pandemic), getting carry out meals to eat in the car or at a park, and slipping into a bookstore or some other retails outlet at an off-time when few if any other customers can be spied. And, of course, only stores where you have to wear a mask to enter, even if you aren’t robbing the joint.

Doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but the three times we’ve gone out on such outings have been lovely – it felt like the old days, way-way-way back in February of this year, when only our president and Bob Woodward knew the truth about Covad-19.

We had our day planned – another Quad Cities trip. We would again go Portillo’s, a wonderful drive-in restaurant, and then Barb would slip into the Van Maur department store at North Park Mall in Davenport while I would do the same at the Barnes & Noble, for perhaps half an hour. We timed it to arrive at Portillo’s around 10:45 a.m. and the mall at 11:30 (when it opened). We planned it with a precision that Nolan and Jon (if you’re reading this you really should know who that is) would envy.

Then we got up this morning and read the Quad City Times Sunday edition. It told of the 500 cases of Covid logged in the QC’s this week, mostly Iowa side of the river. It also mentioned that Iowa is number four among Covid hot spots in the nation.

And we stayed home.

And you know what? It wasn’t bad. We spent some time together in the morning (none of your business), I got us breakfast at Hardee’s (Mickey Spillane ate their biscuits every day), prepared the living room for carpet cleaning early this coming week (I will be upstairs and the cleaners will be downstairs) (in masks), and I finished up cleaning my office to prepare for beginning a new project tomorrow. Barb and I spent the evening watching three episodes of the British crime show New Tricks, which we have been bingeing. We ate hot dogs that were damn near Portillo’s-worthy.

Of course we also had to watch the president of the United States take a motorcade to nowhere to wave at his fans. Your tax dollars at work.

No, I’m not going to get political, because I have too many friends and business associates who are not just Republicans but support the president. Their privilege, and I don’t want to alienate any of my readers, either.

But just between us, the inside of my head is exploding, twenty-four hours a day.

* * *

I had a wild week, reminiscent of my pre-heart surgery younger days. With another deadline looming, I nonetheless agreed to write a first-draft screenplay for a movie based on “A Bullet for Satisfaction,” a non-Mike Hammer crime novella written by Mickey Spillane and yours truly. (It appeared as a sort of short subject before the main attraction in The Last Stand, the 100th anniversary Spillane novel.)

Basically I had to turn out twenty pages of finished script a day (“first draft” merely means the first version of a script, not something loose or sloppy or haphazard). The novella is a gloriously crazed collection of noir tropes, which attracted an established, Hard Case Crime-loving indie filmmaker to the material. My job was to assemble a bunch of short, fun, off-the-wall scenes into a more coherent whole, combining them, and making them play believably, mining a plot out of the mineral content, without losing what attracted the filmmaker in the first place.

I had a wonderful time. I just loved doing it.

Will it go anywhere? You never know. We have not signed a deal yet, but I had a window in which to work, so I grabbed it – if the project falls through, I’ll wind up with a screenplay, so no harm, no foul. If it goes forward, I am not carrying the ball – I am not the director, who will be doing a second draft from my first. Doesn’t bother me – he’s the director, and it’s his movie. Having talked to him at length, I liked what I heard, and we seem to be on the same page.

But this is the movies, and you never know. My version of The Last Lullaby – my script was faithfully novelized by me into The Last Quarry – was used by a young director to raise the money. I was the Road to Perdition guy, remember? Then a producer came aboard with his own writer and my screenplay was rewritten by someone I’ve never met. After that, I was able to do a polish, but I still wish my initial version had been shot.

On the other hand, despite certain problems with it, The Last Lullaby is still a damn good crime movie and probably a more accurate rendition of Quarry than the Cinemax series (though technically the main character is not Quarry – he’s “Price,” a name I think was appropriate).

Anyway, it’s the movies. I love the damn things, and I love my excursions into screenwriting.

But there’s a reason why you write novels.

They are yours.

* * *

A reminder that this coming Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, A. Brad Schwartz and I will be appearing via ZOOM at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas to talk about Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher. You don’t have to go to Vegas to participate, either.

And here’s a great review of the paperback edition of The Big Bang, only the second of the Spillane/Collins collaborative Mike Hammer novels.

M.A.C.