Max Allan Collins's Blog

Why I Am Troubled

As I’ve stated, I try to stay out of politics here.

And I don’t think what I’m about to discuss violates that, at least not exactly. I’ve seen people from the left and the right speaking out about the Jimmy Kimmel situation.

Look, anybody can get fired. When you work for somebody, and they don’t like the work you’re doing, they have no obligation to put up with you. I’ve been fired. I was fired when I wrote the Dick Tracy strip largely because the editor (not the editor who hired me but his replacement) did not like my work and did not like me, and also because the Tribune Syndicate wanted to save money by using a staffer and not a freelancer.

That was unfair, obviously, but I always knew that could happen. I had a five-year contract that was renewed for another five years twice. It was a good run and a good paycheck.

So in that sense, what happened to Jimmy Kimmel is not a freedom of speech issue. ABC hired him, ABC can fire him (or suspend him or whatever). What is dangerous – what is wrong – is the way the FCC muscled ABC into getting rid of Kimmel. The FCC – backed by taxpayer money, which is to say you and me – was pursuing a political agenda. With ABC and Disney trying to get the FCC to approve a merger (that breaks the FCC’s rules), the actions of the FCC are strictly straight out of the Mafia playbook – it’s the protection racket, in a sense, and it’s authoritarianism adjacent (at least). “You can do it the easy way or the hard way,” a thug says.

Anyone working in the world of media can now be punished for having the wrong opinion. This potentially can extend beyond talk show hosts to the newsrooms and then to movies and books and even comic books.

I am not someone who watched Jimmy Kimmel. When Letterman retired, I decided I had better things to do than watch the ephemera that was late night talk shows. I might prefer to read or watch something else (an old movie maybe or even a new one) or work or even go to bed. I appear to have gotten older and now run out of steam sooner.

But this is troubling. It goes beyond Democrat and Republican into American. And other than to speak up – while I can – I don’t know what the hell to do about it beyond cancel Disney Plus, which I have.

The only other thing available to me is speaking out here. If I’ve offended anybody, I welcome them to object in the comments. But first I’ll remind them that the First Amendment allows us all to have our opinions, smart or stupid, in agreement or disagreement.

For now.

M.A.C.

NOTE: The above was written before the Kimmel situation changed (somewhat).

Let’s ask George Carlin what his opinion is:

The Writing Life

A box arrived from the UK with a few advance copies of our new Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery, Antiques Round-Up. When I say “our,” of course, I mean Barb and my latest novel in the now long-running series.

I have watched, I guess it’s been for decades now, Barb developing into a terrific writer. She was good out of the gate, and like most of us, her improvements are somewhat incremental and don’t make themselves clear until some time has passed and those improvements have accumulated.

I know I still think I’m improving as a fiction writer even at this late date. I’ve been writing long enough to have no doubt lost my fast ball here and there, but certain craft things have improved. Or at least I’m still trying to have them improved.

Barb and I have different approaches. She is slow-and-steady wins the race. Even now, I may not spend more than two months writing a novel (depends on the novel of course), but she spends most of her writing year on one book in the series. Fiction writing is a love/hate affair, but I have always loved it more than hated, and often Barb seems to be the other way around. She always talks about the current book being the last one she’s willing to do, while I’m always looking for more books to write, as if as long as I have a book contract, that God or the Grim Reaper or whatever will wait for me to finish the current novel.

If there’s a point to this ramble, it’s how proud I am of the way Barb has risen to a truly professional level, and this latest book – which will be published a couple of weeks from now – is evidence of that.

We were published for years by Kensington, but our current home is Severn House, a UK publisher that puts a lot of their emphasis on the United States market. But we do hear from readers who dropped away at the point Kensington stopped publishing us, largely because – thus far – the series has been tricky to find in Barnes and Noble, and BAM and other of the surviving brick-and-mortar book stores.

Some of these readers don’t even know the series is continuing, and when they find out it is, want to know where they can get back onboard. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the Severn House books in hardcover and e-book; and all of them eventually become available from those sellers in handsome trade paperback editions.

We have had a lot of Hollywood interest in the Antiques novels – specifically for TV – over the last fifteen years. It’s gotten very close – very – but as yet no cigar. That’s why we made an Antiques movie ourselves, Death By Fruitcake, with Paula Sands (legendary Midwestern broadcaster) as Vivian Borne and Alisabeth Von Presley (Midwest pop superstar) as Brandy Borne. We’re proud of our little movie – I scripted it from a Barbara Allan novella (Antiques Fruitcake) and Barb co-produced and served as production manager.

This past week Chad Bishop, our co-producer (and Director of Photography and Editor) and I began dealing with the “deliverables” (the things a distributor requires) for Twin Engines Global. This ranges from getting trailers and the film itself to them and making closed-captioning happen and taking lawyer meetings about getting an LLC put together and a hundred other things.

Certainly easier to just write a damn book. It was however a fun, hard, unforgettable experience, shooting and editing it and all, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Meanwhile, I am almost half-way through the new Quarry novel, Quarry’s Reunion, which will be the 50th anniversary book in a series that I thought Berkley Books had killed 49 years ago…but thankfully Hard Case Crime unexpectedly resuscitated it in 2006 with the help of filmmaker Jeffrey Goodman, who made a short film from my script (A Matter of Principal) and a film version of The Last Quarry (The Last Lullaby). Fans also helped keep it alive.

I mentioned that fiction writing is a love/hate affair. Though she seldom grouses, I know Barb finds writing difficult. Funny thing is, after all this time, so do I.

I will spend a full day writing two or three pages of description and set-up for a chapter, or an hour on one paragraph; fortunately for me, the rest goes a lot faster, and dialogue scenes fly, as they need to when readers encounter them. Most of my novels are mysteries, obviously, and I re-plot them constantly as I go. Quarry’s Reunion had five or six preliminary overview outlines, and I’m on the fifth or six chapter breakdown now.

Part of this is my approach being half planning, half improvisation. I try to know enough about the story I am about to tell without mounting my horse and riding in all directions. So I know major things – like who-dun-it and why. Then I come up with a plan, a road map, a structure, that may be twenty pages long. But I try to keep it loose enough to make discoveries as I go. This has me revising the plan, changing and tweaking the trip I’m taking, as I go.

Here’s another difference between writers. Though we come up with the “Barbara Allan” basic ideas together, Barb rarely asks me for an opinion or plot help or anything while she’s writing her draft. I’m willing to help, and often offer – but I have too many ideas, too many ways to solve a problem, to do anything but frustrate her, throw her off-track. So except in cases of emergencies, I keep tabs on what she’s doing on her draft, but don’t interfere. And when I do my draft, she gets out of my way. She does read my chapters as I go, so can catch anything I’m doing that will upset the plot applecart.

I mentioned above that I sometimes spend a day on a few scene-setting opening paragraphs, or an hour or more on a transitional paragraph between breaks within a chapter. And in recent years – due, I’m afraid, to all the media around us dumbing everybody down – I get some (not a lot) of readers and reviewers complaining about what they see as needless description. I will defend that only with this: I have to see a scene in my mind before I write it; and in description – yes, even clothing – I am writing about character as much as anything.

Still, as I said to Barb the other day, “It’s frustrating to spend so much time on the stuff some readers skip.”

Here’s where you can pre-order Antiques Round-Up; it’s out on Oct. 7. It’s likely also available via the Net at anywhere else you like to buy your books.

Hardcover:
E-Book: * * *

Here’s a review of The Two Jakes 4-K Blu-ray (from Kino Lorber) that is a comprehensive look at the film and the disc, and includes the commentary by Heath Holland and myself about the film. You have to scroll down to read that, but the whole review (my opinion is higher than the reviewer’s of the film itself, but the review is thoughtful and fair, even when I don’t entirely agree with it).

This a new bio of me at a Dick Tracy Wiki site. Looks extensive, though I admit not reading it yet.

M.A.C.

Another Film Fest Award and…A Tricky One

I wasn’t able to attend the Iowa Independent Film Awards, as I’m still in recuperation mode. I’m disappointed I couldn’t be there Saturday for our screening. But Death by Fruitcake did well just the same.

* * *

This is a tricky one for me, because I try to stay away from politics here. And my wife Barb, wisely, reminds me that people don’t come to this update/blog for such things. It’s difficult to restrain myself, sometimes; but mostly I do.

Let me say at the outset that I feel a need to let you know how events of the day have impacted my plans for the next Nate Heller novel. That’s what makes this germane, because I have mentioned, even discussed, that prospective novel several times. I’ve even presented it as my last Heller novel, and one I’ve in some respects been leading up to.

Now I may not write it at all, and you – those of you who are generous enough to follow my work – have a right to know why this book has been (at least) shelved for now or (at worst) never will get written. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it basically means I’m considering two more Heller novels, not just one.

Also, I’m not fishing for a conversation or exchange of opinions here. Few facts are immutable, but this one is: no one ever won an argument on Facebook (or other Social Media); no one ever changed anybody’s mind on those platforms. I’m not going to try to. How you think, what you believe, is not my business.

Here’s how this transpired.

I was watching TV and saw Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and wondered if he had, if not damaged, the Kennedy name, brought it into a kind of doubt. He strikes me as a crank, and a dangerous one; some smart people disagree, but enough people share that view – that as Secretary of Health and Human Services he is a threat to health and human services – that the Robert F. Kennedy name is not something I dare, at the moment, hang a Heller on. It may already have hurt Too Many Bullets, my Heller RFK assassination novel.

I don’t do this lightly. I first asked Barb if she agreed that this was a bad time to embark on an RFK novel (the theme was to be RFK/Hoffa, as my previous Kennedy-oriented novels have more than hinted at). She immediately agreed and said, “Write something else.” I called my editor, Charles Ardai, at Hard Case Crime and asked if he thought I should do a different, non-Kennedy novel instead of the one we’d been planning (and that I was contracted to deliver). He was thrilled I was setting that subject aside (for now anyway). I asked my longtime researcher, George Hagenaur, what he thought. He, too, said it was a bad time to do a Kennedy book.

So. I am instead going to write a Watergate novel, which was already one of two Heller novels I was considering doing, for quite a while now. It seems like a good time to deal with a cover-up.

* * *

This article celebrates the marriage of Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart 75 years ago. You’ll have to scroll down to get to the meat of it, but it’s a nice piece.

Speaking of anniversaries, next year (2026) will mark Quarry’s 50th anniversary. The Broker, the first book’s title imposed on me (it’s now titled correctly as Quarry) went on sale in 1976. I had actually started it at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop in 1972 and finished it in 1973; but the anniversary is of the publication, not when I completed it.

Here is an audio review of The Wrong Quarry. A very nice one at that, and for one of my favorite novels in the series.

This will lead you to the wonderful blog, The Stilleto Gumshoe, where several Mickey Spillane articles appear and one of them is for Spillane, the bio by Jim Traylor and me. Good Spillane/Hammer/Velda stuff in general, but the bio review is a honey.

M.A.C.

Death by Fruitcake in Your Future

Our film, shot one year ago here in Iowa, now has a distributor! After carefully considering four options, we have signed with a distributor, Twin Engines Global.

Alisabeth Von Presley and Paula Sands

What does this mean? Starting soon – a date TBD – you will have the opportunity to enjoy Death by Fruitcake on one or more streaming services. This will be the transactional stage, which means you pay to view it. After a number of months, it will move to streamers where you can watch free, but usually with commercials.

Alisabeth, Keith Porter, Paula

If you’re a fan of the books in the Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures mysteries that Barb and I write (as “Barbara Allan,” you really won’t want to miss this. And I think any of you, who follow my work, will enjoy it as well. It’s a low-budget production, of course, funded largely by ourselves; but you likely enjoy seeing the amateur sleuth antics of mother and daughter Vivian and Brandy Borne brought to life.

We will keep you alerted as to when it becomes available on a streaming service (possibly more than one) as soon as we know.

Max and Nate Collins on set

I’m also pleased to announce that Twin Engines Global will be releasing physical media – a DVD – and I will provide ordering and availability info when I have it.

I love indie filmmaking and Death By Fruitcake represents my tenth production, starting with Mommy and Mommy’s Day, continuing on through Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market, Shades of Noir, Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life, my two documentaries (V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop and Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane), and more recently Encore for Murder and Blue Christmas.

Filmmaking is definitely a sideline for me, at least as a writer/director. I’ve had several of my scripts produced beyond this – The Expert and recently Cap City. And I was lucky enough to land a bigtime, eventually Academy Award-winning production of Road to Perdition, as well as one season of an HBO series based on Quarry.

But I am definitely a regional director, usually operating on what would best be described as micro-budgets (the Mommy movies sported budgets that we solid for the video store era, where they saw considerable success). I am grateful to those of you who follow my novel-writing career with the support you’ve shown for these efforts.

And remember – what would the coming holiday season be without a slice of fruitcake!

On set
On set with Rene Mauck, Chad Bishop, Alsabeth Von Presley, Jeremy Ferguson, Kim Furness, Max Allan Collins* * *

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation Pt. 3

Consider this a coda to last week’s post about my living through a hallucination-filled hospital stay, post-ablation surgery. This follow-up will not include me thinking I was trying to expose and then contain a murderer. Nothing so fun. I will make this brief, just to bring you up to date.

I returned home from my hospital stay on Thursday the 21 of this month (August). I was worn out from the mental gymnastics my brain put me through, but generally feeling okay. But over the next three days my energy declined to where I thought I might pass out any second.

Barb and I had our doctor’s nurse check my vitals. The nurse found my blood pressure to be dangerously low. We contacted my cardiologist’s office, where I was encouraged to wait two hours and have my vitals checked again. This led to another alarming result and we (Barb and I) were sent to the Muscatine ER, where after a bunch of tests I was returned by ambulance to the Rock Island Heart Center, where I’d been recently discharged.

That night and the next day were comfortable but concerning – my blood pressure was all over the place. Two great nurses, Paige and Jemma, kept my spirits up. Finally, on the third morning of my stay, my cardiologist gave me several options, the most appealing of which was getting a pacemaker.

There’s a certain irony here. Back in my Crusin’ days, I would often introduce “Ferry ‘Cross the Mercy” or “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” by saying, “Little-known fact – today, Gerry and the Pacemakers all have pacemakers!”

This amuses me less now.

As anyone who knows us will tell you, the best thing about Max Allan Collins is his wife Barbara. She stayed with me in my hospital room (which this time I didn’t imagine was a terrible hotel room or a holding cell for a serial killer) for the two nights I was there. Barb is the best partner anybody ever had.

The procedure went swiftly and well, and I was discharged on August 30. I have some discomfort and still don’t exactly have my zip – but I wrote this, didn’t I? With one arm in a sling?

No doubt God or fate or just the ticking clock will eventually defeat me. But for now I’m winning.

I will be back writing the new Quarry tomorrow – Labor Day. Aren’t you supposed to labor then?

M.A.C.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation Pt. 2

Our unusually busy summer – San Diego Comic Con, Star City Film Festival at Waukon, Iowa, and the screening of Cap City at the Last Picture House in Davenport – had us scheduling a needed hospital visit until after all of that was over. I was going in for an ablation to deal with my atrial fibrillation; I’d had this procedure before, a couple of years ago, and it hadn’t taken, i.e., my a-fib had returned.

While I’ve had a number of cardioversions – where they jump-start you like an old Buick – these had proved short-term fixes. They’re also fairly routine, while an ablation is a more serious prospect. Still, ablation is generally an out-patient procedure.

With Barb at the wheel, we set out from Muscatine around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, August 18, for the Rock Island Trinity Heart Center, where I’d had my open-heart surgery back in 2016. I was feeling quite comfortable about returning there, although the radio gave us a hit parade of songs with the word “heart” in them (“Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart”) or were otherwise ironically off-putting (“I’m Gonna Live Till I Die!”).

We arrived at 9 a.m., knowing we’d likely have a long wait – the ablation was scheduled for 12:45 p.m. – and the preliminaries were fairly typical, although the nurses had trouble getting the necessary two I.V.’s going, and by the time they did, both my arms were in pin-cushion mode. By 5 p.m. I was awake and normal in a recovery room, but my incision was still bleeding, which meant I’d be kept in overnight for observation.

Around 6 p.m. I was moved to the adjacent, older Trinity Rock Island Hospital, to a room Barb recalls was small and less than ideal. Here is where our memories begin to differ. I thought I was in a fairly spacious hotel or motel room. I recall several nurses being introduced to me and assuring me I was in good hands. One was a male nurse, a friendly young man named Joe, who would look in on me periodically.

At some point during the night, probably around midnight, Joe informed me that I needed a procedure involving a catheter, because I hadn’t yet passed urine. I wanted nothing to do with that, and wanted to wait till the next day to talk to my heart doctor about the prospect. Joe was insistent – though always kind and compassionate – that I was in danger if I didn’t have this procedure more or less immediately.

I refused to cooperate until Joe had spoken with Barb on the phone. (She had headed back to Muscatine around 8 p.m. thinking all was well.) Barb told me to go through with the procedure and I reluctantly said yes to it. What followed was more painful than I could ever have imagined, but Joe was professional and gentle, considering.

I spoke with Barb around 2 a.m. and reported that I felt fine; in fact, very good. She was relieved and told me she’d see me in a few hours. But when she arrived at around 7 a.m., she found me agitated and confused, thinking the hospital room was my office – I remember none of this.

A noon release was already scheduled for me and Barb expedited that, thinking I’d do better at home in my normal surroundings.

But back home my condition grew worse. I was confused and behaving oddly, erratically – I cupped my hand under a faucet but didn’t turn the water on, then raised my dry cupped hand to my mouth and “drank” twice; when I went into the bathroom to shave, my electric razor was still packed away and I instead covered half of my face with soap and went dripping to Barb for approval of my efforts. None of this do I remember.

Nate’s wife Abby came over to observe my weird behavior and soon was on the phone with her brother, a nurse in Chicago, who said I should be taken to the ER immediately – I might have had a stroke.

By six p.m. I was at the Muscatine ER, taken there by Barb and Nate; I was immediately given a CAT scan (this I vaguely remember) and given blood tests. While the CAT scan looked okay, the blood work indicated I had a urinary tract infection (UTI) and walking pneumonia. An antibiotic was administered through my I.V. All of this took about six hours, during which time my family suffered far more than I did.

The ER doctor said I needed to go back to Rock Island Trinity to get an MRI because Muscatine did not have the necessary machine. To jump the queue, I needed to arrive by ambulance. This took a while to arrange, and to secure a room for me back at Trinity.

Here is where my memory, in its very unreliable state, kicks in. I am strapped to a gurney and loaded into the ambulance. In the darkness beyond, which I could view through the open rear ambulance doors, I saw a huge neighborhood enveloped in that darkness, lights on porches and elsewhere here and there like a thousand fireflies. I could see Barb and Nate and others on the steps in front of our house, as if it were a tall building and they were up several flights, watching me go.

The ambulance ride went on forever. I sensed the EMTs seated on either side of me, but mostly it was flashing lights and highway and rough ride. Barb was not with me (she had stayed behind to catch a few hours of sleep after the ordeal).

Next thing I knew I was being shown into a bizarre hotel room by a surly, eye-rolling masked female nurse. I complained bitterly – where was the bed? There was no bed! The eye-rolling, disgusted nurse gestured to her right and there indeed was a small cot in front of a curtained closet. I threw the curtain back and a strange bathroom awaited: two toilet bowls back to back; no shower or tub or sink.

The rest of this hotel room was no better and no less weird. Nowhere for clothes or possessions other than a long shelf under a big window. The TV was up high on the far wall and a chalkboard or something took up much of the rest of that wall.

I demanded to speak to the management. I was ignored. I demanded to be allowed to call Barb. That too was ignored. Finally I was agitated enough for someone in responsibility to be summoned. A management group appeared on the other side of a window and at first refused my request to use the phone. Finally they relented, but I had difficulty dialing on the phone they provided. I may have gotten through to Barb, finally, at which time I may have said, “This is the worst hotel room you ever booked for us!”

Now I began to demand to speak to the top person at this hotel, whoever that was. I was told a request for that had been put in, and the top person would be around to see me. I paced, waiting for that person to show up. A TV monitor was rolled in on the other side of the glass and on the screen a pleasant middle-aged woman did her best to calm me down. She announced she could not come to see me because she was in Nashville at a business conference.

I was furious. I’d been told I’d have a personal visit from the top executive at this hotel or whatever it was. I was starting feel like a prisoner.

I may have slept for a while. My next memory is being in a different room, a darkened room with wood-paneled walls, and several big windows onto the outer area, windows that were covered in narrow blinds. I now was being watched – held prisoner by – a nurse, but one who was not surly and was quite nice. I played up to her. Made friends.

A party was going on in the room beyond the blinds. Somehow I knew a murderer was present at the party and I wanted to expose him. But the nice nurse would not let me leave the room. I began to look between the blades of the blinds to see what was happening. It was a Christmas party, down at the far end of the room. I shouted to them but no one heard.

A man and woman, in Christmas attire, were making out by a pillar at the nearer end of the room; they didn’t respond to my cries either. Other partygoers were coming from around the corner and walking down to the party, all in festive garb. I became increasingly frustrated because some of the partygoers had moved closer to me, and were right on the other side of the glass, but still couldn’t hear me. I begged my nice nurse/jailer, watching me from a chair, to let me join the party – finally she let me lean out of the door, but it didn’t do any good. Nobody acknowledged me.

After a time the party wound down and partygoers, down at the other end of the room, departed. Someone, I’m not sure who, told me (as I remember) that the murderer had been identified and I was supposed to keep him busy. Back in the hotel room, I met the murderer, a pleasant blocky man – the janitor at the facility, I understood – who wore a medical mask.

I asked him, “Are you here to kill me?”

He did not respond. He was silently watching me, and I went into a clever speech in which I told him I was worth more to him alive. I wrote mystery novels and knew all sorts of ways to help him in his criminal pursuits. We should throw in together! He stood at the window looking out wordlessly. Finally he nodded.

Success!

At some point I came to understand that a hit team had been hired to assassinate this dangerous individual. They would show up sometime today in a harmless guise – a medical team, room cleaning staff, food delivery, etc. – and take him out. I was not told when or by whom, to make sure I didn’t give this effort away.

Barb arrived around 6 a.m. on Wednesday after my long manic night. She found a medical security man named Dana waiting (my partner-in-crime “murderer”) and found me confused, agitated, my speech disjointed and words slurring. I have no memory of this.

Around 10 a.m. I was taken for an MRI, with Barb along to assist with me as needed. The MRI revealed a possible small stroke, but not when it happened – likely was years before; the neurologist was not concerned and felt my confused state was due to the urinary tract infection.

My next memory is a tall, medically-masked apparent doctor who was giving me eye signals about the need for me to keep a watchful eye on the murderer I was tasked to contain. I thought this “doctor” might really be the in-disguise tall waiter who made us sundaes back in Davenport at Lagomarcino’s.

Barb and the minder chatted and talked, and I occasionally joined in. It was all very friendly now and I was utterly unaware of how disjointed my conversation was and how unintelligible my words often were.

At some point I took Barb aside and said I thought we should call the assassin team off – Dana was just too nice. She assured me she’d already taken care of that.

Later I found myself sitting in the front row of a theater with Barb seated behind me and one seat over. I was asked to answer some questions, for what reason I did not know. The woman interrogating was polite but patronizing, and her associate was a young woman who kept jumping up and down as if she had to go to the bathroom.

The patronizing woman would ask and I would answer, growing increasingly defensive. Barb took the woman into the hall and told her that the outrageous claims I was making – writing Dick Tracy, having a Tom Hanks movie made from one of my books – were all real. That everything I was saying was real, just coming out in jumbled order.

The woman (a speech therapist, I have since learned) handed me a sheet of paper and asked me read the sentences printed there. The first thing I did (because I now knew this was a “gotcha” situation) was point out grammatical errors in the sentences she provided. This seemed to startle her.

Later, I overheard Barb talking with Dana about her apparent plans to fly to Japan (actually, they were discussing a Japanese manga she was reading). I immediately felt she was about to abandon me. She was resting in a reclining chair while I was in the adjacent (hospital) bed. I sent a loving look her way. Nothing. I sent a scowl her way. Nothing.

I sat up and scrambled closer to her and pointed at her and said, “We need to talk – alone!”

Now, unbeknownst to me, Dana was not allowed to leave. I needed constant supervision. But Barb convinced him to step into the hall, where he watched through the cracked door.

Barb loomed over me and got her face right into mine. “I’m your wife of fifty-seven years and I love you. I would never hurt you.” My memory right now is filled with her wonderful face, tensed though it was with frustration and fear.

“You’re not going to Japan?” I asked.

“No. And we are not in a hotel room. We are in Rock Island at the hospital.”

I asked, “How can I trust you?”

She said, “Through shared experiences.”

She proceeded, with Perry Mason-like skill, to ask me questions. Did I remember going to San Diego and the comic con? The horrible hotel room at the Marriott? Yes. Did I remember driving to Waukon for the film festival? And getting stranded there? Yes. Do you really think I’m going to leave you here and fly to Japan? …No.

This cross-examination went on for some time, as she used my own logic to return me to something approaching sanity. I became more coherent. If I offered up a rush of words, unintelligibly fast, she would ask me to repeat what I’d said but slowly, a word at a time. Then the words would be clear. I began to see my surroundings as they were – for example a grotesque robot was merely a medical monitor on a stand, its haunting face – the creature from Alien affixed with a wide oval mouth – a soap dispenser.

When Dana was replaced by a young high school girl, Barb – though way overdue for a break – stayed with me through the night. I was much better, but…

…I now thought I was in a half-way house, in a much larger room with a kitchen beyond. Sometimes it was in Muscatine, at the Art Museum, other times in a sunken living room in Hollywood, where two imaginary actresses were hoping to get some roles to help pay for these nice new surroundings.

Somehow by Thursday morning I was aware I was in a hospital room. My appetite had returned and my trips to the bathroom were steadier. Various doctors visited and were pleased with my recovery. I was released from the hospital and Barb took me home.

Back in Muscatine, Nate and Abby – and our two grandkids, Sam and Lucy – brought us dinner. I was a little rocky, but so glad to be home.

Am I fully recovered? I would say so. But to me the oddest thing is that all of my memories – even now that I know what had really gone on – are rooted in the false locations that my mind conjured up.

Well, what would you expect from the creator of Quarry?

M.A.C.

Cap City on the Big Screen

We had what was, I believe, the first public screening of Cap City, aka Mickey Spillane’s Cap City, at the Last Picture House in Davenport as part of the Quad Cities Alternating Currents arts festival. This happened on Saturday evening, August 16.

It wasn’t a full house – this festival is enormous with an unimaginable amount of stuff going on – but the third-of-a-house we had really seemed to like it, and the Q and A session I did after was smart and fun. Seeing Cap City on a big screen, with full sound, was a revelation – I had only seen it at home on my 55″ TV. But a huge screen and booming sound – in a dark room with a bunch of others – was a wholly different experience. For one thing, nuances in the performances of our large cast were revealed. And it looked great, with its black-and-white noir style and somewhat cinema verité shooting approach.

Though this isn’t the final “locked” version, it is only shy a couple of requests I made to director David Wexler, which he will make. The final version will go out on the festival circuit later this year.

Max and Barb with uber-fans Mike and Jackie White, who drove three hours to attend the Cap City screening.

The story of Cap City goes back half a dozen years, at least, when David approached me about licensing (and attaching me as screenwriter to) the novella “A Bullet for Satisfaction.” This was the fairly ancient novella begun by Mickey Spillane, found by me in Mickey’s files, and completed/revised by me for inclusion in The Last Stand. That novel was Mickey’s last completed work, but it fell a little short of what was needed for a book. I did not feel this final novel required me jumping on as a collaborator, but I did edit it, and finished/polished “A Bullet for Satisfaction” as the opening salvo of the book.

David thought the novella was a perfect distillation of Mickey’s noirish approach. I came aboard as a co-producer and delivered a script in 2020. It got a considerable amount of interest, but by (I think) 2022 David asked me if I’d be willing to rewrite the script’s protagonist from a tough male cop to a just-as-tough female. With my Ms. Tree history, I was fine with that, since we had interest from several credible actresses in doing Cap City if the female was the lead. It would also put some spin on that a more traditional male lead would have brought.

As is often case, we had considerable brushes with a green light for the project, which was designed to be a $3 million indie. It would have involved locations including the murder scene (a hotel suite), various government buildings, a bookstore, a bar, the protagonist’s apartment, a boathouse, a small yacht and assorted others. It was ambitious for the budget, but very doable. Both David and I have a lot of experience with working on a budget for an indie film.

Last year David called and was sad to say it seemed like it was time to move on. He just couldn’t find the budget. I had recently completed Blue Christmas, which had also been written for multiple locations but which I had turned into a one-set production, getting it made as opposed to being just an un-produced script in my desk drawer. I suggested to David that we use that approach – I would so a rewrite that took place entirely at the hotel suite where the murder went down, and have the suspects brought to the detective at the scene for questioning.

David loved the idea, and I wrote the script and he got the necessary funding, and had just the right actress for Roz, Erica Munez of HBO’s Long Gone By, and a big cast of East Coast actors with more credits than you could shake a stick at.

Here’s where it gets fun.

David calls me and wants me on set for the shoot. But I can’t, because the Day One of the Cap City shoot is also Day One of the Death by Fruitcake shoot, which I am directing.

And so it was that I had two movies shooting simultaneously. That’s a bizarre first but a fun one.

Look for Cap City at the film festivals and, soon after, streaming.

On the Death by Fruitcake front, it looks like we’ll be making a distribution deal later this week.

M.A.C.

Cap City in the Quad Cities

This just in!

CAP CITY with special guest Max Allan Collins at The Last Picture House
The Last Picture House
Saturday, Aug 16
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Admission: FREE!

CAP CITY, a neo-noir crime thriller, is set to enter the festival circuit later in 2025. Written by Max Allan Collins (ROAD TO PERDITION; Cinemax’s QUARRY) and directed by David Wexler (KILLING THEM SOFTLY; MTV’S COLLEGE LIFE), it stars Erica Munoz (HBO’S LONG GONE BY). Adapted by Collins and Wexler from a novella by legendary Mike Hammer creator Mickey Spillane and Collins, the film largely takes place in a hotel suite where the mayor of a corrupt eastern city has been murdered. The cast includes numerous familiar faces from the East Coast acting scene, including director Wexler himself. Shot in black-and-white in the film noir tradition.

This, the first public screening of CAP CITY, is part of alternating Current, an annual art, film, music, and comedy festival held in the Quad Cities, including Davenport, Iowa, from August 14-17, 2025. The festival transforms downtown areas into a vibrant hub with over 200 performances and events across more than 40 venues. It celebrates the creative culture of the Quad Cities, featuring a mix of local and national artists.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

You may have noticed that the last two updates were rather shy of text – mostly pictures of what went on for the last several weeks. I am here to correct that.

The San Diego Comic-Con was, as they say, “the best of times, the worst of times.” Our son Nathan brought his entire family (wife Abby and our two grandkids, Sam and Lucy), which made the trip special. They were in a different wing of the Marriott Marquis, and to some degree operated on their own separate track. Nate attended all three of my panels, and the whole brood attended the other two.

Let’s start with the “best.” I was an Invited Guest, which brought with it various perks, including getting our hotel room paid for and a meal allowance. I was assigned three panels. I had my doubts about the first panel, hosted by San Diego’s Mysterious Galaxy book store; it included moderator Betty Ramirez, Arvind Ethan David, Delilah S. Dawson, Adam Cesare, Ted Van Alst Jr., and of course yrs truly. When I read about it, the panel seemed like a bunch of writers tossed together who didn’t have much in common. One of those panels that cons avail themselves of to make sure all the invited guests got at least one panel.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It was an extremely lively affair, and you can watch it right here:

The other two panels had me interviewed first by Robert Meyer Burnett, director of True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak; and second by Andrew Sumner of Titan Books. Both Rob and Andrew are pals of mine and both interviews were a pleasure. Both men are knowledgeable about my work, and took different approaches, which meant the two panels taken together covered just about everything.

I did several signings, two official convention ones and one each with publishers Titan and First Comics. All of these were gratifying because fans (or customers, as Mickey Spillane used to put it) had brought all sorts of stuff for me to sign. It’s fascinating to me to see which of my properties an individual reader will gravitate toward – this was everything from Batman and Wild Dog to Road to Perdition and Nathan Heller, with some Quarry thrown in for good measure.

Lovely people to connect with, but kind of melancholy for me, as this is almost certainly my last San Diego con.

Which us to the “worst” part. I have some mobility issues that cause me no problems on familiar turf, but the crowd congestion and the long walks between panel rooms had me using my cane (a replica of Gene Barry’s on Bat Masterson, a TV show boomers will recall). It was tiring and frustrating, and the convention floor was jammed at all times. Even crowded, this used to be heaven to me – I could find all sorts of things to tempt me, including original art and physical media (Blu-rays and DVDs). Barb and I put together a game plan to get me to just the booths I wanted, for either buying goodies or talking to a publisher’s rep. This worked well, and I picked up wonderful stuff at the Hermes booth and Fantagraphics, but was unsuccessful connecting with anyone in editorial at the DC booth.

Turned out there was almost zero physical media, and the original art had skyrocketed in price. Art that would have cost in fairly recent years a few hundred dollars were now in the high thousands. No longer a game I can afford to suit up for.

But – despite an awful amenities-impoverished hotel room, which I am glad not to have paid for – it was a pleasure being with my family in such a beautiful place on the ocean. Unfortunately, the town had jacked up its already onerous prices to take advantage of con-goers – for example, a key restaurant at the hotel had dropped its lunch menus and served dinner all day instead. What had seemed a generous meal allotment was laughable compared to the Southern California prices.

Our usual trip to Ghirardelli’s in the Gaslight Quarter was a nightmare – packed streets made it nearly impossible to get for hot fudge Sundaes, and an unwillingess of Uber and Lyft to pick us up after had our family squeezing into a pedal cab and taking a breakneck ride back to the hotel – only to be charged $300 for the privilege, thanks to rates hidden below the legs of seated customers. Truly a nightmarish experience, and Ghirardelli’s itself was a horror – stuffed with people, uncleared tables and a single uni-sex bathroom.

Among the more comical joys of the trip was the adventure Barb and I had with a scooter she’d rented, anticipating my mobility problems. We practiced in the hotel hallway and she got pretty good, and so did I, but the thing ran too fast, unless hitting people like bowling pins was the goal. She tried it in a typical crowd and quickly we turned back, with Barb admitting defeat (a rarity on her part). But by the time we took our scooter over to Seaport Village, where a beautiful view and strolling tourists and an array of restaurants awaited, we had both mastered the speed problem with our trusty scooter. I eventually did most of the driving, but Barb was better at it.

Other joys included running into old friends, like Leonard Maltin and his family; and my inability to connect with DC editorial was cured when the very editor I wanted to speak to (about a possible Perdition collection) recognized me at the Marriott breakfast buffet ($40 bucks per and a limit of 19 minutes to have “all you could eat”).

When we made it home, after the usual airline delays, little Muscatine, Iowa, looked incredibly good to us, and Barb declared this our last trip by air, and to anywhere even by car that was more than a day trip or perhaps an overnight stay.

Nonetheless, we were only home a few days before heading to the Star City Film Festival, held in Waukon, Iowa, a little gem of a town (Muscatine is a metropolis by way of comparison) near the Minnesota border. Waukon looks to be a more or less straight line above us, as the crow flies, but Google Maps foretold a trip that would take three hours and change. Not bad. All paths to Waukon seemed to require making this turn and that, and going from one highway to another, with hardly any four-lanes in the mix.

I am a hopeless navigator, but I worked hard and, initially, quite successfully from three pages of Google Map instructions. Barb (the driver) and I were chipper and laughing and talking about what a great adventure this was. Then we found ourselves on a gravel road. Shit! Thank you, Google Maps! (Please don’t ask me why we didn’t use GPS.)

Our little car began to sputter on the last leg of what was turning into a four-hour trip, albeit through some lovely country, towering green and rocky walls, a lot like our trips to Galena. We barely rolled into Waukon just in time for a luncheon of the filmmakers hosted by fest chair Dr. Katie O’Regan at the pleasantly unpretentious Uptown Grill.

The luncheon was a blast, and Barb charmed everybody with her funny tales of woe as production manager on our modest movies. The food was great in a funky joint that included a bar with a Western saloon in its soul, an unpretentious dining room and a party room, where the filmmakers got together.

When the luncheon was over, Barb and I headed to the motel, a reservation having been made for us. The car sputtered badly and we managed to get off the street and into the parking lot of the Pladsen Chevrolet car dealership before our vehicle died a coughing death. But we were lucky in our bad luck…we had come to a stop about ten yards from the Chevrolet service department. We had a possible repair in sight.

Also in sight was the dealership’s next-door neighbor — our motel! See what I mean about lucky? We abandoned our buggy and schlepped our suitcases over to Boarders, which proved to be a very nice motel with a North-woodsy theme. Little did we know this would be our new home for several days….

As for the film festival, on Saturday evening we caught two features and several shorts, plus had our screening of Death By Fruitcake. The final film of the day, The Empty Church, a feature, was shown – after a terrific picnic-style dinner of barbecue brisket, sweet corn and baby potatoes – at the intimate theater behind Katie O’Regan’s home. A double-wide metal shed had been transformed into an intimate theater, with stage and screen and three rows of seating. Delightful.

Sunday morning the festival wrapped up auspiciously for us with our Best Feature win, and a “cold” table read by three terrific Chicago actors and Katie herself of about thirty pages of my Dying in the Post-war World screenplay. I mentioned this last week, and this cast knocked it out of the park.

When the car dealership opened on Monday, we were treated well – friendly and sympathetically. They would get right to fixing our car. Sweet! It was nerve-racking, wondering what the cost would be, both in time and dollars. More than once we wandered the dealership lot looking at cars that actually worked, wondering if it was time to buy a new one and was that even practical this far from home?

As our third day at Boarders began, we were relieved to be close enough to the downtown (about two blocks of it, modest but charming and fairly complete) to take our meals at a variety of restaurants, none of whose prices were of the San Diego pocket-picking variety: a breakfast joint, a Chinese restaurant, a Mexican place, a steakhouse. A phone call late Monday from the nice dealership guy told us a part had to be ordered and with luck would arrive by noon tomorrow.

It did, and – taking on the drive back a longer route but incredibly scenic – we were home by Tuesday evening. Once again, Muscatine looked very good to us. Barb affirmed that she was never leaving the house again, but this proved to be more of a threat and less than a promise.

Thus ended two weeks in our life that, reflecting, seem like two months. Oddly, we kind of enjoyed all of it – except the San Diego prices.

* * *

The film version of Road to Perdition continues to gain latterday attention.

And here.

Check out this review from In Love With Books:

Two Volumes, One Relentless Journey
Before Road to Perdition was an Oscar-winning film, it existed as a graphic novel noir masterpiece — a blend of sharp storytelling and unforgettable illustration that redefined the crime genre on the page.

Vol. 1 — Road to Perdition
Written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, this is where the journey begins. In Depression-era America, Michael O’Sullivan is both a loving father and a feared mob enforcer. When betrayal shatters his world, he and his son hit the road — a path of vengeance, loyalty, and love, drawn with Rayner’s painstaking, cinematic detail.

Vol. 2 — Road to Perdition: On the Road
The saga continues with Collins’ razor-sharp prose, now paired with the dynamic artistry of José Luis García-López and Josef Rubinstein. Their bold lines and dramatic shadows give new energy to O’Sullivan’s odyssey, as father and son navigate drifters, criminals, and unexpected allies — each step pulling them closer to their destiny.

Why these books are unforgettable:

• Noir storytelling steeped in history and moral complexity.
• Vol. 1’s haunting realism by Richard Piers Rayner.
•Vol. 2’s cinematic action by José Luis García-López & Josef Rubinstein.
•A father-son tale that’s as tender as it is brutal.

Some roads are drawn in ink…others in blood. This one is both.

* * *

Read Leonard Maltin on the new Blu-ray of the forgotten first Wyatt Earp western, Law and Order, which features a commentary by my pal Heath Holland and me.

M.A.C.

Death By Fruitcake Wins Best Feature

I am delighted to say our film Death By Fruitcake won Best Feature Film at the Star City Film Festival at Waukon, Iowa. The film was screened July 31 through August 2 with other entries at the Waukon High School and some entries were shown, and the awards presented (on August 3), at the Three Dolphins Theater, an intime venue on Dr. Regan’s property in Waukon, a lovely small town in a scenic setting that reminded us of Galena, Illinois, one of our favorite places (and setting of my novels Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It— coincidentally I signed a copy of the latter for one of the attendees).

The filmmakers present were a friendly and supportive bunch, but a smallish (twenty or so?) of the 44 entries, some of which represented a world-wide range of filmmaker ranging from Thailand to Iraq and Ukraine.

A highlight for me was a reading on Sunday before the awards of a section of Dying in the Postwar World by three talented actors from Chicago who had films in the festival. It was a cold table read and they did an incredible job.

Next week I’ll finally get around to a more lengthy report of our experiences at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Dr. Katie Regan, director of the Star City Film Festival, (left) with Barbara Allan
(l to r) Dr. Katie O’Regan, screen directions; Paul Kendall (Heller); Kelly Combs (Peg Heller and other female characters), Alan Blake (Sam Flood and other male characters).
Dr. Katie O’Regan and M.A.C.

M.A.C.

San Diego Comic-Con 2025 Teaser

Leave Them in Suspense panel with moderator Betty Ramirez, Arvind Ethan David, Delilah S. Dawson, Adam Cesare, Ted Van Alst Jr., M.A.C.
Spotlight on Max Allan Collins panel with Robert Meyer Burnett, M.A.C.
Max Allan Collins: A Titan at Hard Case Crime: From Ms. Tree to Nolan to Heller to Spade & Hammer panel with Andrew Sumner, M.A.C.

More Comic-Con photos and wrap-up to come next week!