Max Allan Collins's Blog, page 15

Breaking: Encore for Murder Postponed

The Friday, March 31 film premiere of Encore for Murder has been postponed due to inclement weather. The new date has tentatively been set for May 5, but we’ll make a proper post when we have more confirmed.

Book Giveaway & The Writing Life 2023

We have ten copies to give away of the lovely new Hardcase Crime release, Mad Money, a combo of two Nolan novels, Spree and Mourn the Living. Spree is considered by many the best of the Nolan books, and Mourn the Living – his first appearance, written when I was but a lad of 19 or so – has never appeared as a mainstream paperback before.

We also have ten copies of Fancy Anders For the Boys. This is the second of the three Fancy Anders novellas. Fancy is a private eye working in Hollywood during World War Two; in this novella, she has gone undercover at the Hollywood Canteen on a murder investigation.

[All copies have been claimed! Thank you for your support, and see you next time! –Nate]

Trade Paperback:
E-Book:
Digital Audiobook:
Audiobook (MP3 on CD):
Audiobook (CD):
E-Book:
Trade Paperback:
Digital Audiobook:

This is the last of the Hardcase Crime series of Nolan reprints (plus the new Skim Deep) and they have done an incredible job. Thank you, editor Charles Ardai.

Fancy Anders For the Boys is not available in stores. It was published as an e-book by Neo-Text and this is a (quite nice) Print-on-Demand. The Fay Dalton illos are in color on the e-book, and in black-and-white in the trade paperback.

For those of you within driving distance, here’ a reminder that Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder – the filmed version of our live Golden Age Radio production – will be presented this Friday (March 31) at the Muscatine Community College Black Box Theater. See the end of this update for details.

The night before is the Legends event in Muscatine, with Muscatine Community College honoring me. For those desperate for something to do this coming Thursday evening, here’s the details one last time.

* * *

If you’re not a superstar, even if you’ve had some successes and are moderately well-known, making a living as a writer of fiction has never been a picnic. Usually you have a choice between finding a day job and taking on work-for-hire that rarely includes royalties, much less artistic fulfillment.

If you’re somewhat up the literary ladder, that day job is going to be as a “creative writing” teacher at a college or university. But I recall vividly that the University of Iowa Writers Workshop – where I matriculated (and you know how painful that is) – turned down Donald E. Westlake’s application to teach there. The current well-intentioned TV series Lucky Hank, with the great Bob Odenkirk, shows what a soulless draining existence that life can be for a real writer.

But you really have only those two choices, unless you can marry a woman of wealth, and that’s the one attribute my wife did not bring along for the ride. The work-for-hire I’ve done means I’ve written several shelves of books that do not generate any income for me in my dotage.

For me the price has been to work hard – to be prolific – and the return has been both positive (I have indeed made a living) and negative (I am not taken seriously – I “crank books out,” you see). As I’ve reported here before, my first agent – of only two in a career that began in the late 1960s – took me on with the caveat that (as a writer of hardboiled fiction) I was “a blacksmith in an automotive age.” What the fuck am I now?

My markets have shrunk as a generation or two find me repellently politically incorrect and later ones are thoughtlessly dying out. I lost a major market apparently because a sarcastic throwaway joke in public was misinterpreted – perhaps humorlessly or worse willfully – as being my actual opinion. My dream job – a being able to complete Mickey Spillane’s unfinished novels – has largely been realized in a world where the Best-Selling Mystery Writer of the Twentieth Century elicits, “Never heard of him,” from a couple of generations.

It’s an uphill battle but (to mix metaphors) I am in the second half of my last act, so it’ll be over soon. All I have to do is hang on and, hopefully, feather my nest and add to my legacy.

Here’s an example of why I characterize the battle as uphill: a recent visit to the Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I have probably done a dozen book signings there (often in tandem with Barb, for our Antiques books) over the years. None during or after the Covid lockdown, but we’re not talking ancient history here. We also shop there probably once a month. This visit, like any writer, I checked my presence on the shelves…specifically, to see if my two recently published books were in stock – Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction (the biography written with James L. Traylor) and The Big Bundle (the new Nathan Heller novel).

Both books have been glowingly and widely reviewed, including starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, the top trade magazine in the book field.

Neither was in stock. Spillane was in the system, but hadn’t been ordered. The Big Bundle did not seem to exist. Not in the computer, anyway. In fairness, I have seen copies of both books in other Barnes & Noble stores, including Davenport and Iowa City. But the book buyer at Cedar Rapids did not choose to even enter us in their computer base.

This is disheartening but it is the life of a writer if your name isn’t Stephen King or Harlan Coben. Now plenty of writers who aren’t named King or Coben have books in that Cedar Rapids bookstore. But few of them will be able to maintain that presence and are doomed to day jobs, possibly teaching others on college campuses how to join a profession that will never enable them eat regularly.

This is a problem that has been there throughout my entire career, but it is worse now. It is in part created by publishers and editors who do not nurture their authors, fail to promote them, fail to allow them to build a name and an audience. It is in part created by a lack of bookstores whose staffs are “book people,” who love and hand-sell books. This problem is acerbated by Amazon and other on-line booksellers who offer books cheaper, but who also tend to push a bestseller list that is preordained.

Nothing much can be done about this, but those of you who love books and prize authors can help by spreading the word about what you’ve read and liked (loved) on your blogs and by posting reviews (however brief) on Amazon and other sites.

I am able to keep going because of you. Yes, Don Westlake said, “A cult writer is seven readers short of the writer making a living,” but your support is what has kept me in the game all these years. And when I say, “Thank you,” I mean it from the bottom of my heart…even if I use a cliche to express it.

* * *

Not to put too fine a point on it, I hated John Wick 4.

Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, it would appear I’m in the minority. Most reviewers like it, most viewers like it. Even love it. So, once again, I’m out of step and probably just plain wrong.

Certainly the movie is well-made. Visually it is often – even consistently – stunning. The art direction is staggeringly beautiful. The action scenes are mind-bogglingly well-staged. The movie begins with a rousing action scene right out of the gate, capped off by a shock; and the movie has a very satisfying ending, both that of the climax and then another of the movie itself. It owes much to Mickey Spillane but I doubt many of those involved even know who Mickey was. But, like a Spillane novel, the film embraces revenge and harsh violence, begins and ends well…and of course Mickey once said, “Nobody reads a novel to get to the middle.”

And yet I hated it. Was almost glazed-over bored.

Start with Keanu Reeves, whose performance has me scratching my head. Is he a brilliant minimalist screen actor? Or just a charismatic lummox? His dialogue mostly consists of one word – “Yeah” – which he somehow turns into three syllables. He performs his martial arts stunts well, even if co-star Donnie Yen outshines him, and performs the John Woo-style shoot ‘em up stuff admirably. And he is the only actor in the piece (including Yen, who is essentially playing Zatoichi) who doesn’t ham it up.

But the dialogue is terrible – Dick and Jane rewriting the Marquis De Sade. The supporting actors caress the words they speak as if it’s Shakespeare, or maybe it’s that they are being paid ten grand a word, and are savoring that. Certainly Ian McShane and Laurence Fishbourne are almost giddy in their over-the-top performances, as if they can see the coins stacking up with every lousy line. The Asian actors alone seem to find the right tone. Bewilderingly bad is putty-faced Bill Skarsgård, so good as the evil clown in the It movies, coming across here like the young Matthew Broderick playing a James Bond villain.

That may be the best way to watch John Wick 4 – imagine Keanu is playing Ted from the Bill and Ted movies and Skarsgård is Ferris Bueller.

I liked the first John Wick (did they steal the “they shouldn’t have killed my dog?” bit from Hard Cash?). I have no memory of John Wick 2, but I think I liked it well enough. I remember thinking they had at least edged up on going too far with the action scenes in John Wick 3. Now in John Wick 4, the action scenes – well-staged but going on forever – become mind-numbing and uninvolving. This is the fantasy of a school shooter the night before the big day.

John Woo’s heroic bloodshed was wrapped up in a Douglas Sirk-style melodrama. What Mickey had was an avenger with a point to his crusade. John Wick just kills a whole lot of people and then…well, you’re going to see it anyway, aren’t you?

* * *

The Max Allan Collins Film Festival (in which throughout my birthday month I subject my wife to my favorite movies) continues with only two entries this time.

10. Phantom of the Paradise. Brian DePalma’s greatest film and a movie that wrestles with Vertigo, Chinatown and Kiss Me Deadly for the top spot in my Favorite Films list. Terry Beatty and I used to go to great lengths to see Phantom in theaters in those pre-VCR days. Hard for me to talk about this one because I love it so much – every actor, not just William Finley and Paul Williams and Jessica Harper, but also Gerrit Graham and George Memmoli and Archie Hahn (and the rest of the Juicy Fruits). I’ve sometimes had difficulty convincing people who dismiss Williams as an easy listening artist (which at times he was, but a brilliant one) that his score is the definitive rock opera. A unique blend of horror and satire, Phantom is a movie unlike any other even as it invokes everything from Psycho to The Cabinet of Caligari, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to Faust…and, well, The Phantom of the Opera.

11. Vertigo. Why am I as messed up as I am? Is it that I began reading reprints of the most violent era of Dick Tracy when I was six? That my mother read me Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs around the same time? Possibly. But also I was ten years old when I first saw Vertigo. You can only see Vertigo for the first time once. But the glory of it is you get to watch it for second time once, as well, and for me anyway that began a series of viewings that always reveal new depths and nuances. Look, it’s an outrageous plot. Like the best of Spillane, it’s a fever dream, but one that poses as a romantic one, when at its tragic heart it’s the story of a detective who can’t stop himself from detecting and a woman who can’t stop pretending to be the woman she (SPOILER ALERT) conspired to help kill. This – like Phantom of the Paradise – works on me every time. Every damn time I get caught up in it. Don’t tell me the story is preposterous because I don’t care. It’s melodrama, which is pretty much the only kind of story I am interested in and that moves me. It’s easy to get caught up in Stewart’s performance, which begins with him as his genial screen self and gradually, then dramatically, devolves into a dangerous obsessive. Instead, next time you watch it, take your eyes off Stewart and pay attention to how layered Novak’s performance is.

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Here’s an article on Irish comic book characters, and Michael O’Sullivan of Road to Perdition is in first place!

Here is a positive and even erudite review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction.

Another positive Spillane bio review is here (after the Harper Lee one!).

* * *

Film Premiere Press Release

Max Allan Collins, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, has returned to independent filmmaking in his native Muscatine, Iowa, turning the stage production of his radio play Encore for Murder into a new film.

Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder was professionally shot during its one-time-only stage performance in Sept 2022. Premiere of the film is Friday, March 31, 2023 at 7:00 pm at Muscatine Community College Black Box Theatre in Muscatine, Iowa. Admittance is free. Collins wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition on which the Academy Award-winning film was based, as well as the New York Times best-selling novel version of Saving Private Ryan. His Quarry mystery novels became a recent HBO Cinemax series and he has continued the famous Mike Hammer PI series working from the late author’s unfinished materials. Encore for Murder will be included on an upcoming Blu-ray release from VCI Home Entertainment as a bonus film with Collins’ documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane. Spillane is widely considered the “king of pulp fiction” and became America’s best-selling post-WW II writer. The audience at the March 31 screening will be the first to see and hear about the newest venture Blue Christmas, written and directed by Collins and shot entirely in Muscatine, working with editor Chad Bishop and director of photography Phillip W. Dingeldein of dphilms in the Quad Cities. Collins and Dingeldein worked together on the Muscatine-lensed film Mommy (seen on Lifetime TV).

Encore for Murder was originally produced as a Fundraiser for the Muscatine Art Center. Actor Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinnati fame, who appeared as Mike Hammer in productions of Encore for Murder in Kentucky and Florida, reprised his acclaimed performance in the Iowa production. Dingeldein and Chad Bishop filmed the event, staged as a Golden Age of Radio production with scripts in hand but in costume, with an on-stage sound effects table, music and a big screen presentation of scene-setting slides.

Audience Q & A will be available after the film and news about Blue Christmas.

M.A.C.

Encore for Encore

The poster pictured here will give notice to anyone within driving distance of Muscatine, Iowa, the information needed to attend the theatrical premiere of the filmed version of Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder starring Gary Sandy as Mike Hammer.

It’s a Golden Age Radio presentation, the actors with scripts (sometimes) in hand, the costuming limited, the sound effects produced on stage (often to comic effect) with a foley table manned by the editor of the feature, Chad Bishop. The cast, other than Mr. Sandy, is local, though these are experienced theatrical veterans, many of whom have appeared in independent films. This production of Encore was presented only once, last September, as a benefit for the Muscatine Art Center.

We did record two dress rehearsals, and some footage from those was edited in (sometimes just the audio used), and what was a two-act play was edited into one continuous 90-minute production.

My goal was to produce a substantial bonus feature for a home video release (Blu-ray for sure and possibly DVD) of the expanded Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane documentary from 1999. My collaborator Phil Dingeldein shot and edited (and I wrote) enough new material to bring Mickey’s story up to the present, and expand the running time from 47 minutes to about an hour. (The Criterion special edit, for their disc of Kiss Me Deadly, runs about half an hour.) Though taking the doc up to 61 minutes made releasing it on its own a possibility, I felt adding Encore for Murder as an Added Value bonus would enhance the package. I also was proud of what we accomplished on what was essentially no budget (and some free help from Phil and dphilms, and Chad Bishop and Muscatine Community College). Even Gary Sandy donated his considerable services.

Gary, as you may know, played Hammer in Golden Age of Radio-style productions of Encore for Murder in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Clearwater, Florida. Encore was nominated in its original, somewhat longer incarnation for an Audie (Best Original Work) in 2011 with Stacy Keach and a full cast doing it for Blackstone Audio. We won Best Script in 2012 at the International Mystery Writers’ Festival in Owensboro, and in 2018 did a rather more elaborate production at the Ruth Eckard Hall’s Murray Theater in Clearwater, Florida.

The Muscatine production held its own in comparison, utilizing the approach of the Clearwater show, which included a large screen with scene-setting slides, costumes and music. The music we used came from Chris Christensen’s score for Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane and Stan Purdy’s 1954 music for Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Story.

The big news is that VCI Entertainment – who brought the Mommy double feature out on Blu-ray not long ago – will be distributing both the new version of the documentary and Encore for Murder (on one Blu-ray) and taking them out individually to the streaming services.

If you are considering coming to Muscatine for this event, we would recommend the Merrill Hotel, a lovely new facility right on the Mississippi.

* * *

The Max Allan Collins Film Festival that is screening my home (no guests invited) continues throughout my birthday month of March.

5. Murder He Says. This 1945 hillbilly take on The Old Dark House sub-genre is the best comedy Bob Hope never made…but Fred MacMurray did. Helen Walker (of the original and superior version of Nightmare Alley) is wonderful here as is Marjorie Main, very much a sociopathic Ma Kettle. In town police is.

6. Waiting for Guffman. The funniest of Chris Guest’s semi-improvised mockumentaries showcases SCTV superstars Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, although everyone here is great….Christopher Guest, Parker Posey and Fred Willard tying for MVP. The Blu-ray has much more of local musical Red, White and Blaine, with numbers apparently cut not just for timing purposes but because they are too good.

7. Harvey. One of James Stewart’s three greatest performances (It’s a Wonderful Life and Vertigo being the others). He’s often been called a little too young for the role of Elwood P. Dowd but it works to the advantage of the film, as he comes across less a drunk (much less) and more a sweet person who stepped away from harsh reality into pleasant fantasy. On the other hand, the movie does not shy away from indicating that Harvey really exists and and how are you, Mr. Wilson?

8. Game Night. This 2018 film is the newest in my film festival so far, but it’s a gem. Hilarious with every performance spot on, and Jason Bateman at his very best. Jesse Plemons as the cop next door almost steals the picture anyway.

9. Leprechaun. Everything else this time around is a comedy, right? But then so is Leprechaun, and the special features documentary reveals that a second director/writer came in and did the really bloody gore stuff, which doesn’t harm this vastly underrated film much at all, because its absurdity fits right in. Did you expect us to watch anything else on St. Patrick’s Day? I just wish the sequels had stayed consistent with the original. We met Warrick Davis and he’s a great, great guy.

* * *

This terrific review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction includes an interview with me. A follow-up will soon cover Jim Traylor’s interview on our well-received book.

Wolfpack has the Eliot Ness “Cleveland quartet” at a reasonable price.

An interesting review of the Yoe Books Johnny Dynamite collection, edited and with contributions by Terry Beatty and me, is here.

If you missed it, here’s the info on the Muscatine Community College “Legends” tribute to, yeah, well, me. It takes place on March 30 (a Thursday evening) and the Encore for Murder screening is March 31.

Tickets here. They’re expensive but go to the college.

Trailers from Hell takes a long look at the current Blu-ray release of Mickey Spillane’s The Long Wait, with a commentary by me.

The Trailers from Hell essay is interesting if pretty patronizing, but trust me – The Long Wait is a terrific Spillane noir. Read about it (and order it) here.

For a look at a Long Wait clip, take a gander at this.

And yes, this time it’s Collider telling us about ten movies from comic books that you didn’t know yada yada yada. But, hey – we’re in fourth position.

M.A.C.

Fancy Anders and the Beck/Woods Boys

E-Book:
Trade Paperback:
Digital Audiobook:
Audio CD:

Fancy Anders For the Boys – the second of the three Fancy Anders novellas – is out now, available in trade paperback, e-book and on audio. Each has its advantages – the trade is an actual physical book (yay!) while the e-book includes the Fay Dalton illustrations in full color, whereas the trade paperback has black-and-white versions (the cover is obviously in color). The audio is fabulous – Barb and I have been listening to it in the car, and Skyboat has again done an exceptional job featuring sound effects, music and a wonderful Gabrielle De Cour narration. Having a skilled female narrator reading Fancy is just perfect.

Here’s where you can get the trade paperback, the e-book, and audio.

I really love these novellas, and hope one day to collect them in an oversize hardcover edition with all the Fay Dalton illos in full color…but for now this is how they exist (and will exist – we have one more to go). I intended this project to be a full-length mystery novel that would first appear as three standalone novellas (much as Dashiell Hammett did in The Dain Curse). I wrote all three during the Covid lockdown and the length of time between publication of each book reflects the time it takes Fay Dalton to do these great illustrations. Worth the wait!

A lot of love and research went into these, which were inspired to some degree by a desire to do an American variation on the Australian “Phryne Fisher” mysteries (the TV series – I’ve never read the novels). Ms. Tree began similarly, as an attempt to be the “answer” to the UK’s Modesty Blaise. Fancy is sort of a younger version of Michael Tree, definitely sharing some storytelling DNA; but she is definitely her own specific character, a spoiled rich girl with a spine. But I also have long wanted to do something that really drew upon my love for Golden Age Hollywood, and Los Angeles during World War II attracts me as a particularly rich period to write about.

In the first Fancy Anders novella, Fancy Anders Goes to War, she goes undercover at an aircraft plant as a war worker, a rivetter; in this one, she is undercover as a hostess at the Hollywood Canteen among Bette Davis and other Hollywood stars.

We only have three Amazon reviews so far, two of which are glowing, the other being rather puzzling in its negativity. After saying how great the first novella was, the reviewer complains about how short this one is – actually, it’s exactly the same length as the first book – and the reviewer complaints that Fancy manages to always be in the right place at the right time. Okay, I would suggest two things: first, any detective in a mystery who is in the wrong place at the right time isn’t going to accomplish much of anything; and just about all of the action takes place at the Hollywood Canteen, where Fancy is working undercover. Of course she’s in the right place at the right time.

Anyway, if you read (or listen to) Fancy Anders For the Boys, your Amazon review will be appreciated, unless you hate it. And Fancy Anders Goes to War is still very much available here, in trade paperback, e-book and on audio (another elaborate Skyboat production).

* * *

Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the two young filmmakers who started making films at age 11 in their native Quad Cities, made it big by writing the smash hit A Quiet Place. They have since done a terrific little horror picture, Haunt, and now have a new science-fiction thriller, 65, hitting theaters – starring Adam Driver, no less.

These are two very nice and obviously talented guys and deserve their success. Barb and I, with my filmmaking associate Phil Dingeldein and his wife Shelley, were invited by the Woods and Beck team to attend a screening of 65 on March 11 in Davenport. They were kind enough to single Phil and me out, in the audience, as having been inspirations to them. Again, these are nice guys.

The really good part is how terrific their new film is. I’ve seen it get a few bad reviews and I frankly don’t understand it, unless petty jealousy is in play (and it frequently is). It’s an exciting ride with a great heart and I don’t know what more you can ask from a movie that already is giving you space ships and dinosaurs.

Barb and I have walked out on the last two movies we attended – both the new Antman movie (and we both like Paul Rudd) and Guy Ritchie’s latest film (and we both like Ritchie) after a painful half hour of each. 65 is 90 minutes that held us every one of those minutes.

* * *

Speaking of movies, March is my birthday month and here at the Collins abode we are commemorating it with a Max Allan Collins Film Festival, which is not a festival of Max Allan Collins films, but rather his (my) favorites. Here are the presentations thus far:

1. Chinatown. Probably the greatest private eye film ever made, not even excluding Kiss Me Deadly and The Maltese Falcon.

2. The Two Jakes. The criminally underappreciated sequel to Chinatown. Looks like it’s getting some reappraisals lately.

3. Here Comes Mr. Jordan. A fantasy film I’ve loved since childhood, featuring Robert Montgomery’s greatest performance.

4. American Graffitti. The film that gave me the idea to do a ‘50s/’60s nostalgia band, which became the you-can’t-kill-it-with-a-stick Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Association inductees, Crusin’. We saw this easily ten times in the theater, pre-home video.

More to come.

* * *

Here’s a short but sweet review from The Saturday Evening Post:

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. This is the definitive biography of the incredibly popular creator of the Mike Hammer novels. Collins knew Spillane and has taken over the writing of the novels, so he knows his subject well.

Here, speaking to Paul Davis, is the late great Elmore Leonard on Mickey Spillane.

And here is Paul Davis on Mickey and the Collins/Traylor biography on Spillane.

M.A.C.

Girl for Sale, A Legend in His Own Mind & Two Sad Passings

Girl Can’t Help It will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, now through 3/31/2023. It’s $2.49 during the promotion period. Executive Order will be available during the same promotional period for $2.99.

If you haven’t read Girl Can’t Help It yet, please consider taking advantage of this offer. It’s the only novel of mine at Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer that hasn’t “earned out,” which stalled any further entries in the series (and they haven’t wanted anything from me since, despite my selling something like a million books!).

Executive Order is the third novel in the Reeder and Rogers Trilogy by Matt Clemens and me, and like the other books in the series it was spookily prescient. You don’t have to have read the first two to jump onboard.

E-Book:
* * *

I have been chosen as a Muscatine Community College “Legend,” which involves an event that includes a dinner and various things and stuff, coming up on March 30 (a Thursday evening).

This information rather pointedly doesn’t mention the price – a hefty $75 – but that’s because it’s a fundraiser for the college. It’s another of these really nice honors – like the MWA Grandmaster – that has a bittersweet tinge, because it implies to the recipient that maybe you’ve been at this long enough and should look for a porch with a rocking chair.

More info on the event is here.

And on the following evening, March 31, we will be presenting the “movie” version of Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder at Muscatine Community College’s black box theater (this will definitely not cost seventy-five bucks). “Movie” is in quotes because it was edited together from multiple camera footage of last September’s live presentation of the Golden Age Radio-style play starring Gary Sandy. More on this on next week’s update!

Muscatine Community College played a big role in my life. My father taught music there (and at the high school) and one of my key mentors, Keith Larson, taught at MCC for many years. Keith was a farmer and a poet and a dryly funny man with a gift for language – I’ve written about him here and elsewhere before.

In attending Muscatine Community College, I made the decision to turn down a couple of football scholarships (I’ve have been killed) and a Creative Writing scholarship at Iowa Wesleyan (where I’d won several high-school writing awards), and also not to follow many of my fellow high school classmates to the University of Iowa. I had my band the Daybreakers going and wanted to stick with that, so I chose MCC instead. Also, I wasn’t really ready to leave home yet. As an only child, I had a good gig going with my parents. I just wasn’t ready for a future away from what I knew, having no idea that I would in two years be getting married to the lovely Barbara Mull.

Muscatine Community College turned out to be both an excellent school – another mentor came into my life, Jack Lockridge, a tough ex-Marine with a warm heart – and the place where Barb and I sickened our fellow classmates with our obvious hallway affection for each other. Barb and I had been friends for years, but it blossomed into something that has lasted since the Fall of 1966. Seems to have taken.

I taught Freshman English and Literature at MCC for the first five years after graduating from the University of Iowa (and the Writers Workshop). Actually, there was overlap – my last semester at the Workshop coincided with my first semester of teaching at MCC.

So this honor is particularly sweet, and apt.

Speaking of Barb, she and I celebrated my 75th birthday (March 3rd) with an overnight stay in Galena, Illinois, a favorite getaway spot of ours, and the site of my novels Girl Most Likely and Girl Can’t Help It.

We ate at several of our favorite restaurants, including Vinnie Vanucchi’s on my birthday and, the next morning, the best breakfast restaurant in the Midwest, Otto’s Place. That’s the pic I’ve included here.

The trip was about 75% great, and Barb was 100% wonderful throughout. But 25% of it reminded me why nowadays we seldom go anywhere that requires an overnight stay. For one thing, I have endeavored to make our house a great place not to have to leave – for example, the entertainment options – including my ridiculously huge library of laserdiscs, DVDs and Blu-rays, not to mention the CDs and books – are considerable. My late pal, actor Michael Cornelison, used to say he wanted to take all of his vacations at our house (he did once, too!).

Among the frustrations of our overnight stay at the Irish Cottage Inn (where we have visited many times – not really a cottage but a three-story resort-type hotel) was the TV choices – movies available were all twenty-bucks-a-pop On Demand stuff, much of which we had free at home (or “free,” i.e., were already paying for it). Previously the hotel had included HBO and other such movie channels.

We splurged on a room with a Jacuzzi and a separate bedroom (I believe you rich folks call that a “suite”) and discovered, much too late, that the Irish Cottage no longer supplied amenities like shampoo, conditioner, and a soap dispenser in the shower, instead providing one small bar of soap. Two tubs, two sinks, and one sliver of soap.

I discussed this, in a non-hysterical way, on check-out with a bearded youth who politely reminded me that “one bar of bathroom soap” was provided and I could have come down to the desk for more soap if need be. I wish I had, naked and wringing wet.

The getaway managed to be pleasant and well worth taking, but it was something of a reminder that the post-Covid world is one where restaurants and hotels have seized upon the excuse to dispense with many of the extras their patrons had come to expect.

My apologies for this update dissolving like a sliver of soap into a YELP! Review. Some of this is old age, and the indignities thereof. That I am expected to have a host of Apps (a term I despise almost as much as “dropped”) and endure being paged at restaurants via text (I do not text, not being a 16-year-old high school girl). Was it just last week that my wife warned me not to become Harlan Ellison? In other words, a curmudgeon?

What I am wrestling with, more than anything, is how to pace myself at this age. I wanted to complete the new Mike Hammer, Dig Two Graves, before we went on this getaway. Going on a trip with a chapter or two waiting to be written would make me nuts (nuttier). Also, the book needs to get into the hands of my editor at Titan, the great Andrew Sumner, who has been incredibly patient with me. When I see the cover on line and realize people are already ordering a book I have not yet finished writing, I get nervous.

I set myself a goal commensurate with the young me’s abilities, and wrote the novel in a blistering three weeks. That, I figured, would allow me to enjoy myself unburdened on our getaway. But I did not factor in small things like mental and physical exhaustion. In Galena, where a lot of walking is required, I ran out of steam fairly quickly, which was followed by the fun and games at the hotel, described above. (I spared you the hotel-room saga of my laptop insisting I run updates and then requiring me to enter a password I did not have.)

I share this with you, in part, because some of you have in the past gone to book signings in Chicago and other distant locales, and seen Barb and me at Bouchercons and San Diego Comic Cons, fairly regularly. These trips are either over or are going to be incredibly infrequent. We are pulling in and slowing down. (Me slowing down is still faster than most.)

Please know that I hate this. Getting away is good for the soul. I enjoy spending time with readers and my fellow creative types, authors, cartoonists, and filmmakers. I am exploring ways to do more right here in this smaller world, including some fairly ambitious things, like a return to filmmaking – we are seriously considering finally shooting Blue Christmas. But doing it right here in smalltown Muscatine, where I can go home at the end of the day to my bed and my happy little domicile and my preternaturally beautiful wife.

And when I say I wrote Dig Two Graves in three weeks, I must admit I’m not really finished – ahead is re-reading the book by way of a hard-copy manuscript, seeking typos, inconsistencies and sections that need tweaking. So how long did it take me start to finish? Call it a month.

I have no opinion about how long writing a novel should take. Dig Two Graves is relatively short – 50,000 words or so. Barb takes much longer on her drafts – six months at least. There is no rule. For me, I like to stay burrowed in, living in the novel, to give it consistency of tone and vision (so does Barb, it’s just a longer process for her). I like each book to have its own feel. To be a different place I visit.

So that much visiting, that much travel, I intend to keep taking.

* * *

The first-rate, troubled actor Tom Sizemore has passed away. He played Quarry (re-named “Price”) in The Last Lullaby, and made a terrific older version of the character. Amid the sadness, I was delighted to hear that Sizemore had considered The Last Lullaby one of his favorite projects, and Price/Quarry one of his favorite roles.

This Quarry/Price name change business had to do with my displeasure with the director, Jeffrey Goodman, having brought in a second writer on the script. I wanted to make sure no sequel could follow. My script, right when I was momentarily hot as the creator of Road to Perdition, was what was used to raise the money. My novel, The Last Quarry, was a novelization of that script and will show you what I had in mind.

The changes weren’t radical and The Last Lullaby is a movie I am happy with (if disappointed it wasn’t my version, of course). I could have pulled the plug on the production when my script was rewritten without my knowledge, but we negotiated and I got a better pay day out of it, plus was able to give copious notes on the rewrite (which the director mostly followed). So I feel grateful that the movie exists and that Sizemore made such a great Quarry. He really is closer to my concept than the Cinemax version, where the actor (otherwise fine) ignored the wry humor that is such a part of my Quarry.

I never met Sizemore, and was not on set for the shooting of a script co-written by me and someone else I never met. But I am saddened by his passing, and only hope his fine work on screen in The Last Lullaby and in a lot of other films overshadows in years to come his tabloid misadventures.

Here is info on where to stream The Last Lullaby.

It’s available here on DVD for a mere $7.99.

* * *

I want also to note, sorrowfully, the passing of my friend Bill Mumy’s musical partner, Robert Haimer, the other half of the brilliant Barnes & Barnes.

Here’s what Bill had to say on Facebook:

I’m so sad to share the news that Robert Haimer, my friend since childhood and musical partner in Barnes & Barnes passed away this morning after a long illness. Robert was a one of a kind artist and person. Our relationship was based on harmony as was our music. Sometimes there was dissonance and silence and sometimes we made a mighty raucous roar together. I will miss making that unique “Barnes” music very much. Robert made many people happy with his talent and his humor. “Fish Heads,” our biggest hit, came from the mind of Robert Haimer. As with a lot of our catalogue, I just helped him fill in the blanks. I’m feeling stunned and somewhat shattered right now. My love to his wife Faithe, his sons Wynn and Ian, his brother Brian and all who knew and loved him. Robert’s music lives on. Enjoy it. yeah

M.A.C.

The Rules for Writers, Fans & Editors – You’re Welcome

Let’s start with this terrific review in the Washington Post of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction:

Is Mickey Spillane now a neglected author? In the early 1950s, his immensely popular novels about private eye Mike Hammer were called sadistic and pornographic revenge fantasies, fever dreams of violence accelerating to “slam-bang” — Spillane’s adjective — surprise endings. No one who’s read “I, the Jury” (1947) will ever forget its final sentence, innocent-seeming but immensely shocking in context: “It was easy.”

In my early teens I raced through all the Spillane paperbacks I could unearth, so I quickly devoured “Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction” (Mysterious Press), by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. With no-nonsense concision, it describes Spillane’s early career in comics, his jump into writing novels, the adaptation of his work into movies (most notably the noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly”), the various Mike Hammer TV shows and the later spy thrillers about Tiger Mann. The authors also discuss Spillane’s personal life, his three marriages and — paradoxical as it may seem — this tough-guy writer’s membership in the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

There’s only one caution I would make to a prospective reader of “Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction.” It’s forthrightly full of spoilers, so that Collins and Traylor can trace the connections among the early novels as Mike Hammer works through some formidable residual guilt. This openness about Spillane’s plots may have been unavoidable, but if I were about to begin “Vengeance Is Mine” (1950) or “The Long Wait” (1951) for the first time, I’d rather not know their tricky secrets.

Hardcover:
E-Book:
Digital Audiobook: Audiobook Excerpt:
* * *

Last week, in a fit of petty panic, I disliked another writer’s work in public. I thought I was just being frank and knowingly exposing my frailties and frustrations; but I broke a rule. Writing fiction is hard. Writing fiction for a living is harder. Just typing a book-length manuscript is arduous.

So I shouldn’t criticize any other fiction writer in public. Not ever. And it’s rare that I do, and I was in fact reacting in frustration (and, later in the same post, expressing embarrassment at having done so) about a biography of that writer, a book I felt would impinge upon the chances of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction getting an Edgar nomination.

Let’s start there. The Edgars, all awards in the mystery fiction firmament (all entertainment/arts awards, actually), are a will o’ the wisp thing. The MWA committees are comprised of members – publishing mystery writers – whose collective tastes will shift as the membership of these committees changes from year to year. So one committee can nominate a recent Ness non-fiction book without previous committees nominating either of the two (I feel definitive, groundbreaking) Ness books written by Brad Schwartz and me not long ago. At the same time, I can write Nate Heller books that are honored by the Private Eye Writers of America and other mystery writer organizations and never get an Edgar nomination for any of them. And then, out of nowhere, Quarry’s Blood can receive an Edgar nomination. I’d call it a crap shoot, but I think it goes well beyond that.

So even thinking about the ramifications of the publication of another mystery-writer biography, as far as Edgar and other award nominations for Spillane are concerned, is an absurd waste of time. It wouldn’t surprise me if neither book got a nomination. Or both did. Or one.

As I’ve said here before, nominations and award wins are good for the ego – a fairly fleeting feeling – but are most valuable as a marketing tool. I do my best to chart the good, bad and in between of reviews without taking any of it seriously beyond whether a review provides what’s called a “pull quote” (a blurb taken from a review, sometimes the only good thing said about a book in that review). That’s how “The best reason to show why Max Allan Collins must never be published again” becomes “The best…Max Allan Collins must…be published again.”

I stopped formally reviewing books and movies a long time ago. I felt with novels that it was unfair to the writer – the great Tony Hillerman wrote a bad review of an early Heller novel and it struck me as what they now call “punching down.” And I knew Tony a little from playing poker with him at Bouchercons, and it hurt me that a writer of his stature would pan my stuff, particularly since we were at least friendly acquaintances. Frankly, it still stings.

I stopped reviewing books because it seems like a chef reviewing somebody else’s restaurant – it’s an obvious conflict of interest. It’s lacking in grace, whether you’re a big writer panning an up-and-comer, or an up-and-comer attacking a big writer. When I made my first independent film (Mommy, 1995), I learned how hard it was to make a movie, and the difficulties the process entailed. I think Mommy is a good little movie, but I also know that it’s difficult to make even a bad movie. I truly hope Gene Siskel has been sentenced to Purgatory until he is able to make a movie as good as Ed Wood’s worst.

So I stopped writing movie reviews (I was the first regular Mystery Scene film critic) with the exception of a column in a now-defunct magazine devoted to Asian genre films, largely because I am such a movie buff I couldn’t help myself. Also, somehow I didn’t think I was threatening Hong Kong and Japanese filmmakers with my opinions.

Then these updates/blog entries came along and I drifted back into expressing my opinions about movies and TV. Not every time, but now and then. I try to limit myself to movies and TV I like, but I often slip. Early on these updates were more strictly just me hawking my wares, and my son Nathan said I needed to include other content – which led to “sort of” reviewing again and definitely sharing my personal thoughts about the craft and the business of writing.

My role model for this was my late friend Harlan Ellison, whose personal intros to short stories and columns in his collections really revealed the Man Behind the Curtain. My wife Barb, however, after the last few updates, said pointedly, “Careful you don’t become Harlan Ellison.” Harlan was a notoriously opinionated and combative writer and by the end of his life was viewed as something of a curmudgeon.

I defended myself by reminding Barb that at (nearly) 75 I had a right to be a curmudgeon; but she did not accept that argument.

Okay, then, James Ellroy. I have nothing against him personally, and we used to run into each other now and then and
always were friendly. He was unfailingly gracious to me. I was working the historical noir side of the street before him (not by much, but I was) and it’s probably natural that I would resent and even be jealous of his commercial and critical success.

That I don’t care for his approach is irrelevant. What I don’t like about it is something I don’t care to discuss, as it gets into that reviewing area. For a writer of fiction to be truly envious of another writer of fiction requires the former to be willing to trade books with the latter. I would not trade Angel in Black for The Black Dahlia no matter how much more money and acclaim it might bring me – writers have nothing but their own work to justify their presence on the planet.

So why does Ellroy remain something of a a thorn in my side? I’m sure I’m not even a gnat annoying his field of vision. It’s the fans. The readers. Some of you out there. So it occurs to me that it’s time to put down some rules, and we’ll start with the fans.

RULES FOR FANS (IN PERSON AND IN CORRESPONDENCE)

1. Do not tell a writer that he or she is one of your two favorite authors and then announce who the other author is. Particularly don’t go on and on about that other author. (I have heard that James Ellroy is someone’s other favorite writer countless times – probably because, again, we both work the historical noir side of the street.)

2. Do not tell a writer that you want to be a writer, too, and particularly don’t send that writer your manuscript or even request sending it. You are supposed to be interested in the writer you admire, not vice versa. And most writers have been told by their attorneys not to read other people’s unpublished work because of potential accusations of plagiarism.

3. Ask first before sending a book to be signed and, when you’re given the go-ahead, provide a self-addressed postage-attached envelope.

4. Do not share with the writer which books he or she wrote that you considered the weakest. In particular, don’t praise early books at the expense of later ones.

RULES FOR EDITORS

1. Do not take authors out for lunch on their visits to New York or at mystery conventions and tell them about other authors on your list you think are really great. More specifically, don’t tell a writer that a manuscript that just came in by, for example, James Ellroy is really, really terrific.

2. Do not take offense when you present something as a “suggestion” and the author doesn’t take it. If it’s really a change you feel needs to be made, be forthright about it. I would much rather have an editor insist on changes than just decide to stop working with me because I didn’t follow what he or she requested. Home work assignment: look up meaning of “suggestion.”

3. Inform the copy editor that line editing is your job and that the copy editor has not been hired to be a co-author.

RULES FOR WRITERS

1. Don’t review the books of other writers.

2. Don’t bitch about a movie ruining your book if you cashed the check.

3. Be patient with readers who may be nervous meeting you and think you are important in some way.

4. Understand that you are not important in any way, and that it’s a privilege to lie for a living.

The above are not complete lists, and don’t deal with things like writers making deadlines and editors returning calls.

* * *

So, of course, here’s some quick reviews.

Out on Blu-ray from 88 Films, Magnificent Warriors features a very young Michelle Yeoh – decades before Everything Everywhere All At Once – displaying her incredible martial arts skills and a charming, casually charismatic appeal. This has several of the greatest action sequences ever filmed, truly jaw-dropping stuff. Be prepared for the Chinese not to like the Japanese very much.

Marlowe with Liam Neeson from director/co-writer Neil Jordan is an abysmal misfire of a Phillip Marlowe movie, from a continuation novel (not Chandler). It’s shot in Ireland and Spain and is the worst approximation of Los Angeles in the Chinatown era I’ve ever seen, not surprising because it’s the worst period private eye movie I’ve ever seen. Neeson (who actually says “I’m getting too old for this” at the close of an awkward action scene) is adequate but everyone else hams it. Scenes end before they begin, incoherence poses as art, and dialogue approximates neither Chandler nor recognizable human speech. I went home and re-watched a 1947 Marlowe movie, The Brasher Doubloon (from The High Window) with George Mongomery as a mustached Marlowe. I always thought this one was lousy, and now it looks not bad at all. And James Garner’s Marlowe movie is starting to look like a minor masterpiece.

Party Down, the Hollywood catering comedy from various Veronica Mars talent, is back on Starz after a brief thirteen-year hiatus. I’ve seen one episode and it’s already clearly the best show on television, painfully hilarious, with Ken Marino, Adam Scott and Jane Lynch standouts, though Martin Starr steals the show as a cynic who sees everyone else’s frailties except his own (he’s a sci-fi geek who once wrote an epic novel on a roll of toilet paper).

No, wait, Poker Face is the best show on television. Barb and I almost bailed after the first episode’s wrap-up seemed to promise a Columbo Meets the Fugitive premise for the series, with Natasha Lyonne having a superpower of sorts in her ability to detect lying. Nate nudged us to keep trying, and while it’s clearly a tribute to Peter Falk’s great detective, The Fugitive aspect is played down, and the lying shtick well-handled. Tons of great stars stop by to take the ride. Wanna see Nick Nolte playing a Ray Harryhausen type? You’re in luck! Episode eight.

* * *

Here’s an interesting take on my first Batman issue (!). Check out my comment as well.

Scroll down for some more nice Rap Sheet coverage of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction.

Guess what Collider thinks is one of the ten best Prohibition era gangsters movies.

M.A.C.

Spillane Bio Positive Praise & My Bad Attitudes

Wonderful reviews are still coming in for Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by Jim Traylor and me. We’ll start with this one, from the first-rate Shelf Awareness site:

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
by James L Traylor and Max Allan Collins

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006), one of the top-selling pulp mystery writers, gets his first-ever biography with Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction, a splendid, intimate and well-researched achievement by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor. The two have previously co-written books about Spillane, and Collins (

Scarface and the Untouchable, with A. Brad Schwartz) co-authored/completed more than a dozen Spillane novels that were discovered and published posthumously. But this is the first full-length biography about the prolific author. For years, Spillane said he didn’t want anyone writing his biography because he was going to write it himself. This book contains Spillane’s entire autobiographical output–all 11 pages. (It ends in the middle of a sentence.)

Spillane gained national attention in 1947 when

I, the Jury, his debut novel, introduced his violent private-eye-as-avenging-hero, Mike Hammer. The hardcover sold respectably, but the paperback sales were amazing. One book dealer reported selling 25,000 copies in one day. More Hammer novels were released from 1950-52 (including his only New York Times bestseller, Kiss Me, Deadly, and Vengeance Is Mine!, notable because it saves its surprise ending until the very last word). And then there was a decade of publishing silence. Collins and Traylor, polished writers and expert researchers, not only discover why Spillane refused to publish for a decade but also uncover his pseudonyms.

The two authors are strong and persuasive advocates of Spillane’s novels. Few readers will be able to resist sampling Spillane’s work after reading this engaging and definitive biography of the surprisingly affable tough-guy writer. –Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Here’s the review in context at the Shelf Awareness site:
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/sar-issue.html?issue=1161#m21157

I admit I was frustrated when I saw J. Kingston Pierce give a lot of space in the Rap Sheet to a new James Ellroy bio, a book that will likely knock Jim Traylor and me out of Edgar competition thanks to the brigade of “Demon Dog” acolytes. While I don’t generally criticize (in public) other writers in the genre, I have not hidden my contempt for the subject of this bio, or anyway his fiction; the very title of the bio (Love Me Fierce in Danger) announces the silly tin-ear pseudo noir poetry of this self-professed master.

I don’t say this to court an argument – this is my opinion and I’m unlikely to be swayed from it. I am also aware that a lot of smart people (probably a good number who are smarter than me) disagree with my harsh assessment of a writer I consider a fraud. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. But I’m counting on posterity to see through the Emperor’s lack of clothes.

No, I mention this because it demonstrates a battle I’m having with myself to focus on what’s important (my family, my health, my work) and not get caught up in my tendency toward petty resentment. My initial reaction to seeing Jeff Pierce give so much space to this particular competitor of mine was a knee-jerk one – a combination of what-am-I-chopped-liver? and childish annoyance.

Then the next day, there Jeff was at January magazine saying wonderful things about Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction. It made me feel like a fool, and I am exposing myself as one in sharing this reaction with you. But I’ll also share what Jeff (whose Rap Sheet is the definitive mystery fiction web column) had to say about Spillane:

Crime Fiction: Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor

February 16, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce.

“The chewing gum of American literature” is how crime novelist Mickey Spillane described his books, which typically blended eye-for-an-eye justice with risqué innuendos and granite-chinned philosophizing (“Too many times naked women and death walked side by side”). And boy, did readers eat up his fiction, making his first Mike Hammer private-eye yarn, 1947’s

I, the Jury, into a best-seller that spawned a dozen sequels and turned its protagonist into a radio, film, and TV fixture. Spillane developed his own media persona along the way, part-Hammer (he portrayed his Gotham gumshoe in a 1963 film, The Girl Hunters) and part-ham (he spoofed himself in a succession of Miller Lite beer commercials). In this enlightening biography, fellow writers Collins (his friend and posthumous collaborator) and Traylor make the most of their extraordinary access to Spillane’s personal archives, delivering incisive perspectives on his comic-book years, his multiple marriages, his pugnaciousness and wont to embellish the facts of his life, his surprising conversion by Jehovah’s Witnesses, his vexation with Hollywood, and his eventual recognition by peers who’d earlier condemned him as “a vulgar pulpmeister.” This book’s paramount success, though, is in casting Spillane as a trendsetting stylist, who recognized early the value of paperback publication and helped shape late-20th-century detective fiction.

Here is the January Magazine post in all its glory: https://januarymagazine.com/wp/crime-fiction-spillane-king-of-pulp-fiction-by-max-allan-collins-and-james-l-traylor/

I made one minor correction here – the original review puts I, the Jury’s publication at 1945, but it’s 1947. We are still in the 75th anniversary year of Mike Hammer’s first appearance.

I am and have always been very competitive, and that feeds pettiness and resentment, which isn’t entirely bad in the first two acts of a writer’s life. But in the third act the focus ought to focus onto just the work itself – what you are able to accomplish in the time you have left.

But old habits are hard to shake. So last week when I was approached via e-mail by a bookshop owner (a dying breed unfortunately) about a possible signing, I had certain knee-jerk reactions. First, this bookshop proprietor is a sweet guy and has always been a supporter of my work (and Barb’s). When we stopped doing signings for other people, we kept doing his. Nonetheless, I experienced certain irritations. In particular, I can’t remember once in a number of decades when this very nice man ever said anything positive about my (our) work. And he always took me aside to tell me with great enthusiasm about some mystery writer (some writer who wasn’t me) he had recently discovered.

If I were a mature, grounded individual – a state I aspire to but haven’t yet reached – I would interpret this behavior in a positive way. This individual probably thought his liking for my (our) work was obvious – after all, he was booking us back into his shop for signings regularly. He looked at me as someone interested in mystery fiction and wanted to share his enthusiasm for new discoveries in the genre.

Nothing wrong with that.

But again, a part of me responded: what am I, chopped liver? And I had said, numerous times in presentations at his shop, that I did not read current mystery writers for a multitude of reasons (which I’ve discussed here at length).

Last week he e-mailed me about doing a signing. Barb and I have not, obviously, done any signings in recent years. First came the open-heart surgery in 2016 and 2017, and then Covid. And, of course, we are both approaching age 75. (This appearance would require a four-hour drive one-way and an overnight stay, at our expense of course.) But we had already discussed that this particular bookshop was a place we wouldn’t mind signing at again, maybe one last time…but at least one last time.

The shop owner’s invitation to do a signing included a strong suggestion that we “share the stage” with another writer, who was also from Iowa and who was a big fan of mine and had met me a number of times. Okay – only I don’t remember meeting him (doesn’t mean I haven’t) but I have read a number of interviews and articles with and about him, and my name (probably the best known writer in the state of Iowa) (not a huge distinction) never came up. This was accompanied by praise for this writer from the bookshop owner and one of his customers, who had recently discovered this other Iowa author.

I stewed about this for several days, feeling insulted. (Exactly the kind of behavior I am trying to shake.) When I responded to the e-mail, I did my best to stay positive and friendly. But I did take a hard pass on “sharing the stage” with a fellow Iowan author.

The bookshop owner – an incredibly nice man – has not responded to my e-mail, probably astounded by my attitude.

I guess I have a prickly side. Or maybe just a prick side. But I am generally friendly and jokey and it surprises people when I recoil at stuff like this. I wrote here about how offended another (ex-)bookshop owner was that I didn’t express gratitude for being sent a laundry list of errors in The Big Bundle I’d supposedly made (and some I had, but a good number weren’t errors at all).

Last week I discussed how I didn’t consider teaching to involve “heavy lifting,” after which I got scolded (rightly) for diminishing the tough role of teachers. But I thought I’d been clear that I was talking about my own teaching experience – how I’d been able to fake it and just use my gift of gab to get by. That it had not been my finest hour. To me, teaching is – or should be – a calling. At West Junior High, Terry Beatty’s father fueled my love for reading. At Muscatine High School, Mr. Robinson encouraged me to write (and a teacher I despised, Miss Fogerty, taught me everything I know about grammar and usage, God bless her). At Muscatine Community College, Keith Larson – farmer poet – taught me to love the sound of words, and Jack Lockridge – tattooed ex-Marine history teacher – turned me from an Ayn Rand conservative into a left-of-center Democrat in one session. At the University of Iowa, in the Writers Workshop, Richard Yates encouraged me to layer more and more reality onto my melodrama, and got me my first agent.

These were great people. I was not their equal. Barely their peer. There was never any heavier lifting done than what these teachers did with the raw clay of my desire to tell stories.

On the other hand, I will not censor myself here (my son Nate is in charge of that). I present my thoughts and, to some degree, my opinions here, unfiltered and unvarnished.

* * *

The new version of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (my 1999 documentary) is complete. It used to run 47 minutes and now is 61 minutes. We’ll be delivering it to VCI Home Video, along with the 90-minute Encore for Murder program (as bonus content) next week.

Here’s a reminder that Supreme Justice will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, now through 2/28/2023, offered at 2.99 USD during the promotion period.

M.A.C.

Chain Book Stores, Indie Movies and Avoiding Real Work

Hardcover:
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Digital Audiobook:
Hardcover:
E-Book:
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Both The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction are now out and available, but I don’t seem to be getting much shelf space for either from the likes of Barnes & Noble and BAM! This despite starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist, and a very, very widely distributed positive review circulated by the AP. You don’t get much better press than this.

But our surviving book chains determine what they’re going to order by past sales of the author. Which does me no favors. I remain a cult author (yes, I’ll remind you that Don Westlake told me, “A cult author is seven readers short of making a living”) and these stellar reviews have arrived long after B & N and others have put in their orders.

So what is my point? If you see Bundle and/or Spillane at one of the chains, and buy it, tell the register jockey (and perhaps the help desk) that you are purchasing the last copy in the store of this very well-reviewed book. It may inspire them to order more.

What else can I do for Max Allan Collins today (a question I’m sure you ask yourself upon early rising, right after your exercise regimen)? If you won a book giveaway for either title, be sure to read the book soon and get a review in. If you are an unlucky soul who merely ponied up the dough for one of these titles at Amazon (or anywhere, really), post a review at Amazon and elsewhere if you’re truly dedicated to the cause of keeping me in business.

It is extremely undignified for me to beg, but I have never been particularly dignified. I wrote the song “Psychedlic Siren,” for Pete’s sake. But don’t think I’m complaining (though of course I am) because I am well aware of how blessed I am to have been able to avoid real work for over fifty years by telling elaborate lies known as novels and comics and film scripts. To play working man I have to reach back into bussing tables in high school and sacking groceries in college.

I don’t consider teaching “real work.” There’s not much heavy lifting in teaching, beyond lifting the aspirations of, in my case, high school graduates who hadn’t quite learned to read yet and were now in community college wondering why it’s a struggle.

I don’t mean to dis community colleges, because I believe in them wholeheartedly and think going to the first two years of a four-year college is akin to setting your future earnings on fire, till that pesky student loan is paid off, anyway (which should only take a few decades). I am back at Muscatine Community College right now, working on a project (the Blue Christmas one) and am about to be feted as an MCC Legend (“feted” not “fetid”). I may have already mentioned this here, but I’m going to get a dinner and everything. My band was asked to play for it, but I stop short of honoring myself. That much dignity, shabby as it may be, I do have.

I want to thank all of you out there in Mystery-Fiction-Land who have responded so beautifully to these two new books – The Big Bundle and Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, that is. Also to Kill Me If You Can, the 75th anniversary Mike Hammer novel (post reviews please!).

My partner in cinematic crime, Phil Dingeldein, and I are putting the finishing touches on the 75th anniversary expanded edition of Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, my 1999 documentary. It’s jumping from 47 minutes to 61 minutes. We are in serious talks with Robert Blair at VCI Home Entertainment to bring it out on Blu-ray and DVD, and to include the film Chad Bishop and I put together of the Encore for Murder play we mounted last September. Gary Sandy has okayed its release, and it’s possible it will go out to the streaming services for their consideration. We’ve also entered the Iowa Motion Pictures Awards and the Cedar Rapids Film Festival, though we don’t know if we’re nominated for anything yet.

There’s a strong possibility we’ll be presenting Encore for Murder (the “movie”) on Friday, March 31, at Muscatine Community College. That would be the day after the Legends dinner. More later on that subject, but for those of you close enough to get to Muscatine, pencil in that date. It’ll be shown on a big screen in MCC’s “black box” theater.

Putting together Encore for Murder as a video presentation got my filmic juices flowing again (which I admit sounds kind of disgusting). Several of my fiction markets have fallen by the wayside – neither Thomas & Mercer nor Kensington seem even vaguely interested in me at this point, for example – so I find myself drawn back into indie film. I like the idea of low-budget (even micro-budget) filmmaking. Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market and Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life had cash budgets under $15,000 each (though if I’d paid myself and Phil had taken any pay, and any number of other volunteers hadn’t gone along on the rides, we’d have skyrocketed to maybe $30,000 each).

Even the Mommy movies were under half a million – Mommy’s Day was under $200,000. Again, several of the key participants did not draw upon that budget.

What happened was the ten years I worked on indie films had me alternately learning the craft (on the job training) and then – after my producer stole all our Mommy 1 & 2 money – figuring how to operate on a micro-budget. This was followed by a lengthy attempt to get the sequel to Road to Perdition made. I wanted to direct my script of Road to Purgatory and we came very close a number of times. But it always fell through.

Now, at my advancing age, I know doing a big project is probably too challenging – too hard on me physically, post-heart surgery and stroke, and Barb had forbidden me going down that road, preferring me alive to dead (no accounting for taste). But working on a low-budget feature – despite the stresses even that level of filmmaking can bring – is more a doable proposition. The support I’m getting from Muscatine Community College had made all of that more manageable. Or it looks that way at this stage.

If indeed we get to make Blue Christmas – which we intend to – I will report the journey here.

And don’t you hate when people talk about their “journeys”?

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We’re starting to put material together for seeking grant money and investors for Blue Christmas. Here’s the Demo Real put together by Chad Bishop.

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I did a fun interview with the very smart Terrance Gelenter, who is based in Paris. And this is about as close to visiting the City of Lights as I’m likely to get in the near future….

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Here is a Ted Hertel (wonderful guy) on The Big Bundle in the February 2023 print issue of Deadly Pleasures:

“One of the finest historical crime novel series being published today” Deadly Pleasures (Rating: A)
The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime, $22.99, December 2022) Rating: A

In 1953 six-year-old Bobby Greenlease is kidnapped. His wealthy parents call on the services of private investigator Nathan Heller, who had represented them in another matter some years earlier. Robert Greenlease insists on having the kidnapping of his son handled on his terms with as little interference from the FBI and police as possible. The kidnappers pick up the ransom, as scheduled, but Bobby is not returned. The kidnappers, however, assure the family that he’ll be back, safe and sound, within twenty-four additional hours. But then half of the $600,000 ransom disappears and things take a turn for the worse. Five years later Heller is called back to try to find the missing money. But Washington politics, Bobby Kennedy, and Jimmy Hoffa all manage to get tangled up with Heller’s efforts to help Greenlease once again.

All of the Heller novels are based in solid fact, thoroughly researched, with details of the characters and their eventual fates detailed at the conclusion of the story. Of course the real-life kidnapping of Bobby Greenlease is nowhere near as well-known as the 1932 abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby. Heller had investigated that crime, as well, in Max Allan Collins’ Stolen Away (1992). In spite of the outcome of that case, he is once again entrusted with finding and returning a missing child to his parents.

Collins is a master (actually an MWA Grand Master!) at finding a plausible method of inserting his long-running fictional detective into the events of the day. He does this by using actual places, events and real people such as Kennedy, Hoffa, Chuck Berry, and Drew Pearson to add authenticity to the narrative. In doing so Collins immerses the reader in the 1950s’ era lifestyle. What’s even more remarkable is that he’s been doing this for forty years, since his 1983 debut Heller novel, True Detective.

If you’ve never read a Heller novel, don’t be discouraged by the fact that this is the eighteenth book (plus a number of short stories) in the series. The chronicles are not published in any specific order, moving around in time from the days of Capone and Nitti to Monroe and the Kennedys. But this one, the first from Hard Case Crime, is as good a place to jump in as any other. Then you’ll want to go back to the 1920s and start with that first one in what is one of the finest historical crime novel series being published today.

Ted makes an excellent point. I find that many mystery fans, who – like me – have a certain amount of OCD in their souls, are prone to wanting to read a series in chronological order.

I’ve touched on this here in the past, and I’m about to touch on it again. First of all, only the first four Hellers are in chronological order (and have done Hellers set within the parameters of certain books…Damned in Paradise, for example, takes place within the structure of Stolen Away). Second, if you only read my back list, then you risk putting me out of business.

If you have never read a Nathan Heller, start right now with The Big Bundle. You are big boys and big girls – you can handle coming in late. I keep things very clear for newcomers. No whipsaw effect in your brain is imminent. Imagine you are getting this advice from the guy in those Progressive commercials who is counseling new home owners who are in danger of becoming their parents….

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Here is a dual interview with my co-author Jim Traylor and me about Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction. A shorter, somewhat different version appeared in Publisher’s Weekly.

The same web site, Bookreporter.com, also gives Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction a lovely review, right here.

M.A.C.

Bundle and Spillane Reviews – And Audio!

For those of you who have never tried one of the three Reeder and Rogers political thrillers, written by Matt Clemens and me, the first of the trilogy – Supreme Justice – will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, starting 2/1/2023 and running through 2/28/2023. It will be available at $2.99 during the promotion period.

This is one of my bestselling books (the trilogy has sold in the hundreds of thousands) and a novel readers mention to me all the time. But readers of Nate Heller, Quarry and Mike Hammer sometimes skip these books. I think those readers would enjoy them.

Here’s another good review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, although the reviewer questions whether I should be writing about Mickey since the Mick and I were friends. Apparently having an inside track is a bad thing….

The very smart and articulate Ed Catto has written a honey of a Big Bundle review at the Pop Culture Squad site. I will immodestly share it with you now:

The Big Bundle
By Max Allan Collins

It’s so good to start the year off with another Nate Heller thriller. Like so many in this series, this mystery is brilliant. It’s hard to believe, but about 35 years ago I stumbled across Max Allan Collins’ first story featuring Heller. I had enjoyed the Ms. Tree strip, written by Collins and illustrated by Terry Beatty and Collins’ Batman adventures (although not everyone did.)

Nate Heller is a fictional detective, a hero yet a flawed person full of many regrets, who typically gets involved with the biggest cases and personalities in the last 50 years. Collins has written stories where Heller gets involved with the gangsters who ‘created’ Las Vegas, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Marilyn Monroe’s death, Huey Long’s assassination and more. And just when you think Collins has exhausted all the good stuff, the next novel comes roaring back.

The latest historical adventure, The Big Bundle, has a lot of roar in it. This one focuses on the Greenlease kidnapping in the 50s. I didn’t know anything about this one, and I don’t know much about St. Louis’s history, despite visiting the city a couple of times. My trips there were nothing like Heller’s, though. He gets into it all in a way that turns what you thought was going to be a casual read into a “I can’t put this down” book.

These Heller books are meticulously researched with juicy details. I found myself pausing to run down little rabbit holes along the way. For example, Heller rides the historical landmark Angel’s Flight. It was described in such a way that I had to learn more about this narrow gauge funicular railway. When I’m reading, I usually like to leave my cellphone in the other room, but with this Heller mystery, I had to keep it handy for additional research. Collins tends to introduce me to so many fascinating places, events and people.

As a writer, Collins always finds innovative ways to describe people and settings. This is a crime thriller to be sure, but I often pause at the clever descriptions. For example.

The hero walks into a diner and Collins gives the reader something to think about and to remember: ”The bedraggled adults in booths and at tables were like predictions of how the town’s teens would turn out.”

Or earlier in the novel, as Heller meets a key character: “In his mid-thirties, my host was of average height and weight with a squared-off head and a rounded jaw, his forehead so high it was like his features had slipped down too far on his oval face.”

After reading a novel like this, my pal Mike Gold used to always make the joke “If you only read one Max Allan Collins novel this month, make it this one.” The gag still holds up and it’s truer than ever.

The only way I could get a better review is to write it myself…although actually I’m pretty hard on myself. If you want to read Ed’s review in context, go here.

While I’m wallowing in a self-congratulatory stew, here’s the fine Mystery Scene review (in its final newsstand issue – damnit!) of The Big Bundle:

The Big Bundle
Hard Case Crime, January 2023, $25.95
by Max Allan Collins

Opening in October 1953, Max Allan Collins’ 18th Nathan Heller adventure finds the middle-aged detective in Kansas City, consulting on a kidnapping, this time involving Bobby Greenlease, the 6-year-old son of multimillionaire auto dealer Robert Cosgrove Greenlease, Sr. Although Heller works with both the local police and the FBI, the case ends tragically, with the death of the child and half of the ransom money seemingly vanished.

Collins then fast forwards to August 1958, as Heller covertly investigates what happened to the missing ransom, at the behest of both Jimmy Hoffa and Robert F. Kennedy, who want to uncover the sordid truth about the tainted money.

Simply put, if you’ve enjoyed this series thus far, you’ll find plenty to like about Collins’ latest fictional foray, as, like previous installments, the story expertly interweaves fact and fiction in an entertaining and winning manner. If you’re new to the series, this is a great place to start, as it finds Collins at the top of his considerable game.

The author’s crisp writing and canny plotting, supplemented by his thorough and revealing research, are on ample display from start to finish. It’s an impressive piece of work, especially when you consider that this MWA Grandmaster, who has been at it for close to half a century now, doesn’t falter once.

Now let me give The Big Bundle my own good review – no, not my writing, but the reading Dan John Miller brings to narrating the book on the Recorded Books audio of the novel. On various car rides, Barb and I have been listening to it (we’re deep into the second of two sections) and are blown away by how much Dan “gets it.” He has read every Heller on audio to date, and he’s really become the voice of Nathan Heller. As I’ve said before, I don’t really feel like a Heller exists until I hear Dan John Miller read it.

Dan John Miller

Another great narrator who deserves kudos is Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat, who has taken over the unenviable task of stepping into Stacy Keach’s shoes in reading the Mike Hammer novels. He is also Quarry these days, and Skyboat’s Gabrielle de Cuir has just completed reading Fancy Anders for the Boys. Stefan and Gabrielle’s production of Fancy Anders Goes Hollywood is wonderful – with sound effects and music – so I expect great things.

Stefan Rudnicki
Gabrielle de Cuir

And speaking of Fancy Anders, you can now pre-order the second book (as a trade paperback, e-book and audio), right here. Fancy Anders For the Boys finds her working undercover on a murder case at the movie star-flung Hollywood Canteen.

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Two documentaries, streaming right now, are worth your time, particularly if you’re interested in the history of pop and rock music.

Joan Jett

The Joan Jett documentary, Bad Reputation (2018), looks at the phenomenal rocker whose story is a fascinating bumpy ride, starting with the Runaways and continuing up to her Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction. The tough road any rock artist trods is even tougher for women, and the sacrifices a road warrior takes on personally are a constant undercurrent. Excellent doc. It’s on Hulu and Prime Video, among others (and in some theaters).

Dionne Warwick

HBO Max is perhaps best known right now for what it’s dropping (and not as in new programming “dropping,” but in the where-the-hell’s-the-content sense). But right now they have an excellent Dionne Warwick documentary – Don’t Make Me Over – which is a loving but unflinching look at this amazing artist. What became readily apparent to me was how Warwick coming together with the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David was one of the most fortunate collaborations in the history of popular music – that neither the singer nor the songwriters would not likely have had the enormous pop cultural impact without each other. Like Joan Jett, Warwick is a strong, opinionated woman who used her position in the music industry to do good things for humanity…and never in a self-serving manner. I found this documentary extremely moving and highly recommend it.

M.A.C.

Spillane Giveaway, Bundle Sex & Errors, and Good Reviews!

Yes, it’s another book giveaway!

This time it’s Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction by James Traylor and me (published by Mysterious Press). I have ten copies available – eight hardcovers and two trade paperback-style Advance Reading Copies. [All copies have been claimed. Thank you!–Nate]

Is it worth reading?

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal thinks:

Mickey Spillane, in the role of his creation Mike Hammer, on the set of “The Girl Hunters” (1963) with co-star Shirley Eaton.
PHOTO: POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES ‘Spillane’ Review: He Nailed Mike Hammer
By Michael Saler

Mickey Spillane knew how to make crime pay, and he transformed the American publishing industry in the process. Between 1947 and 1952, his first six novels featuring private investigator Mike Hammer, a sadist with a heart of gold, sold millions of copies in paperback—bringing legitimacy to the fledgling format. Spillane’s global sales now exceed 200 million.

His recipe for success appeared simple. Mix racy innuendo (“She was oozing out of a bikini suit like toothpaste out of a tube”) with graphic violence (“I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone”); season with stereotypes and vivid prose; knead these raw materials into a propulsive plot pitting good versus evil. Et voilà: “The chewing gum of American literature,” as Spillane cheerfully admitted. Many critics of the time, repelled by his vigilantism and sensationalism, condemned his books as nasty, poor, brutish and not short enough. Others found that Hammer’s sincere conviction exerted a powerful spell.

Noir fans know a lot about Mike Hammer, but who was Mickey Spillane? Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor are Spillane experts who have championed the author’s works since the early 1980s. Mr. Collins, a noted crime writer, also collaborated with Spillane and has been completing drafts left by Spillane upon his death in 2006. The biographers concede their partisanship but avow they have been “hard-nosed” about their hard-boiled subject. “Spillane” is an engaging, capacious and largely celebratory account, presenting the writer, his works and their multimedia adaptations as worthy of serious consideration.

Spillane was born in 1918, the only child of a Catholic father and Protestant mother. Religion would play a significant role in his life: He became a Baptist, like his first wife Mary Ann, whom he married in 1945; in 1951 he converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. His biographers suggest that Hammer’s Old Testament, “eye-for-an-eye” justice is partly beholden to Spillane’s religious outlook. As a youth, however, Spillane may not have been devout; he loved adventure and crime fiction and claimed to have published short stories under pseudonyms soon after graduating high school. He left college after two years to join the nascent comic-book industry in New York City, honing his skills by scripting early adventures of Captain America and other crime fighters.

Spillane spent World War II stateside as a flight instructor. His biographers believe he suffered “survivor’s guilt,” which may have contributed to the macho postures he shared with Hammer. After the war he also came to loathe cities and their immoral, high-rise-residing “cliff-dwellers.” Needing money to build a house in the country, Spillane transformed an unsold comic story about “Mike Danger” into “I, the Jury” (1947), which introduced Mike Hammer as a traumatized combat veteran who relishes dispatching killers by employing their own methods. The book sold modestly in hardcover but proved a sensation in paperback, appealing especially to veterans accustomed to reading comics and “Armed Services” softcover editions during the war. Paperbacks had hitherto consisted of reprints; Spillane’s sales convinced publishers to issue original works—a sea change in the industry.

The authors find that the early Hammer novels portray a conflicted protagonist remaking his moral compass. In “One Lonely Night” (1951), Hammer searches for his own identity alongside that of the murderer. He concludes that God has fashioned him as a monster for the greater good: “I was the evil that opposed other evil, leaving the good and the meek . . . to live and inherit the earth!”

After reaching unprecedented popularity by 1952, Spillane ceased writing novels for a decade. Previous commentators assumed he was occupied with, and perhaps inhibited by, his new religion. But the authors suggest that his silence owed as much to his wealth and the distracting hobbies it permitted; he had also sold the film rights to his hero and was biding his time, waiting to reclaim them.

When Spillane returned to writing novels in 1962, with “The Girl Hunters,” his narratives were more polished but lacked the manic energy of earlier works. By this time, both Spillane and Hammer had become pop-culture touchstones. The author would portray Hammer in the 1963 film version of “The Girl Hunters,” and subsequently blurred the line between himself and his hero. Spillane divorced in 1962, marrying again in 1964. His second wife, Sherri, was half his age, a model who played the “doll” alongside Spillane’s public appearances as “the living embodiment” of Hammer. Spillane even assumed the Hammer persona for Miller Lite Beer commercials, a campaign that continued from the 1970s through the 1990s. The genial Spillane and the grim Hammer became coterminous in the public mind, leaching certain dark undercurrents from the fictional character.

“Spillane” emphasizes the gentler side of its subject, only fleetingly considering the charming writer’s crueller opinions and actions. Yet Mr. Collins does recall a frightening instance he witnessed in 1992. Spillane’s home had been burgled and the author, gesticulating with his fists, “told me vividly what he’d like to do to the thieves.” Then the squall subsided. “But I’m not like that anymore. I don’t do that now.”

The biography concludes on such grace notes. After an acrimonious divorce from Sherri, Spillane married for a final time, doting on his wife Jane and her two daughters. He continued to write bestsellers in multiple genres and attained literary honors, including a belated “Grand Master” award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1995. In language consonant with Spillane’s themes, author Donald E. Westlake saw this as “redemption” for a writer long considered a “pariah” among his peers.

Mr. Saler is a professor at the University of California, Davis.

Hardcover:
E-Book: * * *

Here is a lovely and insightful Big Bundle review from borg’s C.J. Bunce (that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few quibbles).

Author Max Allan Collins doesn’t let up and neither does his A-1 Private Detective Agency hero Nathan Heller. His client list is one-of-a-kind, including the likes of Clarence Darrow, Amelia Earhart, and Dashiell Hammett. After 17 novels and three collections of short stories, Heller, the “P.I. to the stars” is back in The Big Bundle, an all-new 1950s crime story from Hard Case Crime, available for pre-order now here at Amazon. The first of two historical crime novels from Collins tying in a fictionalized version of Robert F. Kennedy, the story brings together again that classic 1950s triangle: RFK’s Congressional racketeering committee efforts, Jimmy Hoffa’s role in the labor movement and his questionable cohorts, and the antics of low-and mid-level members of the Mafia. But that’s really only the background for a real-life kidnapping that took place in Kansas City in 1953, and Heller, once handpicked by Lindbergh to find the villains in the case of his own missing son, is brought into another similar, gut-wrenching case. His first client was Al Capone. Frank Nitti was his father figure. His best friend was Eliot Ness. But that’s in the past when Nate Heller’s next story begins.
Collins and his well-dressed hero are in prime form–this is one of those Collins novels that one-ups his own famous Road to Perdition, blending in some nasty villains straight out of Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn. His expert storytelling investigates whether or not bad guys have a code, and how much they’ll stick to that code when big money is at stake. Heller comes across bad cops, cops that are just bad at being cops, street thugs, minor and major mobsters, organized labor leaders, politicians, and just plain evil people with no soul. They all say the same thing: “I’d never touch that kind of blood money.” So who is lying and who is telling the truth?

The real-life facts are on the record, but if you believe an event 70 years ago can remotely be a spoiler to talk about, move along and come back after you’ve read the novel, but just note that the story isn’t the reason to read the novel–it’s Collins’ storytelling.

Keeping with his four-decade-long series, Heller sounds like a real person, but he’s not. Heller is Collins’ fictional private detective who has clients of every ilk, but notably each novel features Heller’s exploits with a famous celebrity or historical event–Heller this time has many clients, often with conflicting agendas. In

The Big Bundle that includes RFK, Hoffa, and Kansas City multi-millionaire Robert Greenlease, Sr. It’s Greenlease whose six-year-old son Bobby was walked out of a Catholic school by a woman pretending to be his aunt, never to be seen again, as part of an infamous, nationally-reported kidnapping in 1953. A drug-addicted and alcoholic couple from St. Joseph, Missouri–a “Bonnie and Carl,” Bonnie Heady and Carl Hall–were sent to the gas chamber for their crimes, Heady notably as only the third woman ever killed by the federal government, following Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt and the convicted spy Ethel Rosenberg.

Greenlease, a wealthy Cadillac dealer, paid $600,000 to the kidnappers, the largest ransom ever paid at the time. Only $288,000 of the ransom was recovered by authorities. Collins breaks the story into what reads like two separate books. The first covers Heller as one of the shadowy figures that was brought in (as happened in real life) to help sleuth out the kidnappers and hopefully save the boy in time. The second follows Heller as he’s tapped by multiple factions to leverage his underworld relationships–many via characters introduced by Collins in his previous twenty-plus stories.

Collins makes a good effort upfront and in an afterword to make it clear how the events have been altered for storytelling purposes. Heller is an interesting storytelling device, a bit of a time traveler that didn’t exist that is thrust into these historical events as our tour guide. It works, but Heller’s voice may strike fans of Collins’ other voices, like Mike Hammer (who he shares with Mickey Spillane), Quarry, and Nolan, as the furthest away in style and manner. Without reading his past exploits it’s not clear why Heller can afford to be so confident. He strides into situations where others are getting killed for doing much less, and yet he walks out clean–like a protagonist in a slasher film.

The Big Bundle is a noir crime novel, so Collins splices in his dark hero getting a piece of the physical action, like getting beat-up by thugs, and also with the femme fatale/good-bad girl types, including a few sex scenes that seem a little too steamy for a plot about a real-life child kidnapping. But that may just be a matter of personal taste.

Collins’ use of real people gives this novel a cinematic feel in the vein of Oliver Stone, especially his

JFK, and David Mamet’s Hoffa. The story shuffles back and forth from the real and fictional somewhat better than in the recent movie based on real facts, Amsterdam. Readers who are fans of The Untouchables will find the setting familiar, and St. Louis and Kansas City is a great undertapped (and the real-life) 1950s venue for a major work like this. Collins’ exhaustive research into the nooks and crannies of every bar, diner, and seedy hotel is evident. The approach reminded me at times of former Kansas City Star reporter Giles Fowler’s non-fiction work Deaths on Pleasant Street. It also plays out like another D.B. Cooper rabbit hole for federal investigators.

Paul Mann creates a very good spin on Heller as he might have been portrayed by Robert Lansing for his painted cover art.

The Big Bundle should land as a major work for Collins, and that’s saying a lot for someone who is so prolific. It’s prime for a movie, complete with a dozen odd characters to be filled by your favorite character actors. This is a must for all noir crime readers, fans of Collins and his detective Heller (especially his 1991 novel Stolen Away), 20th century crime stories found in the movie The Changeling and in the books In Cold Blood, Union Station, and A Bloody Business. Pre-order The Big Bundle in hardcover now in its first-ever publication here at Amazon, scheduled for arrival next Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
Hardcover:
E-Book:
Digital Audiobook:

You could hardly dream of a better review than this, and seldom have I seen Heller analyzed better. Here’s where I take slight issue. (In addition to disliking David Mamet’s work and walking out of Amsterdam.)

This very generous reviewer expresses that now standard modern-day complaint about “steamy sex scenes.” The current attitude toward sexual content in tough mysteries is something I understand but don’t tolerate. I grew up reading books that were supposed to be racy and then the sex scenes always petered out (excuse the expression). During my college years, when I developed as a writer, the creative atmosphere was impacted by the sexual revolution – pubic hair in Playboy, Deep Throat playing at respectable theaters, soft-core sex scenes in mainstream movies. The idea of heterosexual men objecting to sexual content still bewilders me. When Heller and Hammer and Quarry (who are men of their time) notice the physicality of a woman, they are admiring them, not objectifying them, though admittedly sizing them up; and if men today tell you they do not notice a woman’s pretty face or shapely form, they are either lying or nuts.

In The Big Bundle, a real-life prostitute figures. In part one she tries to seduce Heller, who sends her packing, as he is depressed as hell about this kidnapping (he has a six-year-old son himself). Five years later, he does succumb in a very character-driven sex scene that to me isn’t terribly sexy.

There was very little sexual fun-and-games-type content in the previous Heller, Do No Harm, because neither Heller nor I were comfortable, due to the sex-crime aspect of the murder.

This reviewer rightly says, “It’s a matter of taste,” and I agree. But what in art isn’t?

Heller is indeed a device, a window through which to look at these crimes and mysteries. I try to make Heller as real as I can, and frankly think he’s far more real than most fictional private eyes, despite the historical baggage I make him lug around. When he gets the shit beat out of him, he bleeds and has to recover. He’s been known to fart. One well-known private eye writer criticized me for having Heller take a bribe; another for Heller using a condom. Part of what I was up to with Nate Heller was to make him, on some level, a real guy – which is why he starts out sleeping in his office and works his way up to a coast-to-coast operation. Which is why he marries (more than once) and has a son he loves very much.

In the first Heller, True Detective (1983), I set out to have my detective break every one of Raymond Chandler’s “Down These Mean Streets” rules. And Heller did that very thing, including deflowering a virgin.

I in no way mean to beat up on this reviewer, who did a splendid job; he actually understands what I’m up against, and I am very grateful for a writer this perceptive taking a look at my work. And a good critic, like this one, can see things, perceive things, in fiction writers’ work that the they might well miss, being too close to the material to detect the not necessarily obvious.

I have been accused, properly I think, accurately I’m afraid, of being thin-skinned. Just this week a longtime Heller reader, and a former bookshop proprietor, wrote a lengthy e-mail and sent it to me and to my editor/publisher about some errors in The Big Bundle.

Now, if you’re a regular reader of mine you may recall that in my bibliographic afterword I always state: “Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, some liberties have been taken with the facts, and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, mitigated by the limitations of conflicting source material.”

I responded to this reader in a manner that I think was polite and even friendly, answering each of the reader’s points individually. About half of them had to do with a small town that is mentioned but does not figure in the narrative in a major way. Another cited error was a possible numerical typo, but the rest I just didn’t agree with – for example, the FBI couldn’t know a state line had been crossed until they captured the perps and knew that those perps had in fact crossed a state line.

This reader grew up in the area where the book is set, and of course I did not grow up in the twenty-plus areas where Heller’s novels and short stories take place. From my point of view, this individual was lording it over me for not knowing things he did, as a local resident (as opposed to my book and Internet research).

I don’t think my irritation was obvious in my response, although I would have preferred he would have written me and not ratted me out to my editor/publisher. His response was lengthy and indignant, letting me know he was no longer a fan and would get rid of all my books in his collection, now that he had discovered that he couldn’t trust the details in my books.

As it happens, I dug deeper into the “errors” – about half of them I still do not consider errors. But I learned, after some effort, that there were two small towns, in Missouri and Kansas respectively, that shared the same name. That’s where the confusion came from, and my letter-writer didn’t seem to know that, either…or at least didn’t make that clear. The numerical address that he pointed out to me turned up in two ways in my research, and I have corrected that – and the small-town confusion – for the paperback edition. It shouldn’t cause you any problems reading the hardcover edition. This is minor stuff, but I still like to have it correct.

Look. I know readers just want to be helpful, in pointing our errors, and they are in fact being helpful when they do. I have made corrections in subsequent editions any number of times. But acting like you found a prize in the Cracker Jacks or being gleefully superior about it does not make you popular with the writer. In this case, the writer of the e-mail probably spent at most an hour on his missive, and likely much less. I spent six months writing The Big Bundle. It’s only natural I am irritated when someone seems to play “Gotcha” with me.

One of the reviewers I respected most, and who was a big supporter of mine – Jon Breen, for years the regular reviewer at EQMM – always gave Heller great reviews, if necessarily brief because he was writing a column, not a single review. Yet he always found time and space to list one or two things I got wrong.

Like I said, I am probably overly guilty of being thin-skinned. In reality, I try not to believe reviews – whether good, bad or in between – and only look at them from the aspect of whether they will help sell books or not (obviously, the bad reviews are not helpful sales tools!). I wish I had a better attitude about this, but it’s doubtful I will change.

The critic who is toughest on me is me. That’s why if you point out an error in a book of mine, I react negatively, even emotionally. Because I am mad at myself for making a mistake. I hate getting the history wrong (unknowingly – sometimes, of course, I “adjust” it for the sake of a story).

Two things I would ask the likes of my ex-reader/former bookseller error spotter: try to remember that my books are fiction; and that I am human.

* * *

Here’s a You Tube video about one reader’s Top Ten books written by me.

The Big Bundle is one of ten new books Crime Reads recommends.

CBR says Road to Perdition is one of the most faithful comic book movies.

Here’s a terrific review of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction from the great Ron Fortier.

Finally, this excellent video review of the graphic novel, Road to Perdition.

M.A.C.