Max Allan Collins's Blog, page 77

Antiques Finish

We finished and sent out ANTIQUES CHOP this week. The book was essentially complete by Tuesday afternoon, but we spent two more days reading and tweaking it. When you work on a book over time (Barb was on it a year, I was immersed in it for over a month), you get lots of little things wrong – everything from character description to plot points – and it's necessary to make the end result not just satisfying, but consistent.

The final read-through is – except for plotting sessions – the only time Barb and I work on a book in the same room (my office). I read and mark up pages, and she enters them into the computer files, first checking to see if my changes/corrections/tweaks make sense to her. This tends to be a somewhat frantic but very much fun aspect of a book, particularly with the ANTIQUES series, because we wind up reading the funny stuff out-loud to each other, and laughing and laughing.

That's because part of what we do in these books is try to top each other with funny stuff. It's disturbing how easily it is for me to fall into the character of Brandy Borne's eccentric diva mother, Vivian. Because the story involves two ax murders, the humor is at times darker than usual, which of course was fine by me.

Late this coming month (that would be April), ANTIQUES DISPOSAL will be out. I'll share a few thoughts about that when the time comes.

In the meantime, I now face my usual post-project project: cleaning my office. At the beginning of a book, my work space is pristine; by book's end, it's a disaster site.

April will be spent on smaller projects – a Mike Hammer short story, a collaborative short story with Matt Clemens, another Fangoria Dreadtime Stories radio play, another DICK TRACY introduction. Also, finishing touches are being put on a new hardcover MIKE HAMMER comic strip collection for Hermes Press.

This is that "no rest for the wicked" you hear so much about.

M.A.C.

True Crime Kindle Sale (April)

I'm still over in Japan, so this will be a quick announcement.

Through the end of April, the second Nathan Heller novel, True Crime, is on sale for $1.99 on the Kindle store.

The entire backlist of Nathan Heller books is available on the Kindle store, and many of them also steals for under five dollars each. (True Detective, for example, is only $3.60 and a terrific place to start.) Paperback, audio CD, and MP3 editions are also for sale. I'm in the middle of listening to the audiobook of True Crime, and I can highly recommend Dan John Miller's version of Heller.

Also, please remember to leave a user review, especially if you like it!

Shareable link: http://http://amzn.to/HGisVd

Sayonara for now!

Antiques Chop Talk

Right now I am in the home stretch of my draft of ANTIQUES CHOP, the seventh "Trash 'n' Treasures" mystery that Barb and I have collaborated upon. I should finish this week (and I better, because April 1st is the deadline) (no fooling). Nate suggested that, while I'm in the midst of it, I provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the process.

Barb and I begin with a succession of business lunches where we first come up with the basic concept, and usually tie it to a title. The pattern of the titles are to have the word ANTIQUES followed by a punning word, and we have a list of these (continually growing). This time the title ANTIQUES CHOP sparked the premise (sometimes it's the other way around), leading to the mystery revolving around an ax murder, an unusually gruesome crime for a supposed "cozy."

We often look at "antique" crimes, which is to say crimes that occurred decades ago but are having latter-day ramifications. So I suggested we make an unsolved Lizzie Border-esque ax murder the centerpiece of the story, and wrote a faux entry about the crime for a non-existent true-crime encyclopedia. From there Barb and I began the back-and-forth process of coming up with a fairly detailed plot. We have to turn in a sample chapter and brief synopsis to our editor at Kensington (and get approval), so we have to have a firm idea of where we're going before Barb gets started on her draft.

Barb works on that draft for probably six months, although that six months may stretch out to an entire year, because she isn't always working on it – summers tend to be busy and that keeps her away from the work. Last year, for example, we went on a west coast book tour, plus there's comic con and other distractions.

As Barb writes, I stay out of her way unless she has a problem or a concern about what she's up to. Sometimes we discuss a plot point, and oftentimes we discuss it if she feels she has a need to deviate from the plot as originally conceived. Generally, though, I give her all the space she needs.

When Barb delivers her draft, it's usually about 200 to 225 pages of doubled-spaced copy. My job is to expand and flesh out her draft, providing more dialogue and even more humor and generally apply what I laughingly think of as a more professional gloss. The end result will be 300 to 330 pages. I do my pass in a month or less, working hard and intensely, with Barb editing and suggesting revisions as I go (she reads it, and provides her notes, a chapter at a time). We do a lot of this over business lunches – just yesterday, on what was otherwise a day off, we discussed two plot points that needed shoring up in the chapter I just finished and the one that I will be doing today.

The final step is for me to spend a day or two re-reading the manuscript and marking up a hard copy with revisions, with Barb entering them in the chapter files. Then, common to all writers, we ship it (by e-mail these days) and hold our collective breath, hoping for a delighted response from the editor. On this series, we've been lucky to get that response pretty much every time. Occasionally there are rewrites, as on ANTIQUES MAUL where the editor felt the murder occurred too late in the mystery, and we reshaped the book so that it happened virtually on page one and then flashed back.

I said "final step" above, but of course there is much more to do – there will be a copy-edited manuscript to check, and at least one round of galley proofs. We tend to trade off on these assignments, with Barb doing the copy-edited manuscript and me reading the galley proofs. We divide the work that way because (a) I hate the copy-editing stage, since the Moriarty of my career is the Intrusive Copy Editor Who Stalks Me Under Various Names and Guises, and (b) Barb is thoroughly sick of the book by the galley proof stage and is content to leave that step to me.

Do we squabble? Not much. Hardly at all. I may get testy if, as I'm moving forward in my draft, Barb indicates (and she's always right) that I need to go back and make a few fixes in a chapter that I had considered finished. This occurs, on the rare occasion that it does occur, early in the morning before I have had a chance to become fully human. Let's just say, first thing in the morning, I'm more Quarry than Mallory.

So there you go. That's how this particular flavor of sausage is made.

* * *

It's gratifying to note that I received such a warm reaction to my defense of the film JOHN CARTER – which, let's face it, was fairly shrill, since the premise of my piece was that anyone who didn't like the movie was an idiot. Not only did my piece receive more comments than usual, a number of blogs provided links and made favorable comments on my take on this beleaguered film.

I am pleased to say that the early reviews on LADY GO, DIE! are coming in and, so far, are all favorable. The book received a very nice write-up in the often tough Publisher's Weekly.

And there was a very gratifying (and I think perceptive) review from one of my favorite contemporary crime writers, Bill Crider, at his blog (perhaps the best mystery fiction blog out there).

Similarly, Ron Fortier – another strong contemporary scribe – has written a LADY, GO DIE! review that appears at several blogs, including his own Pulp Fiction Reviews.

The Brandywine site continues to work through the Nate Heller backlist, and this time FLYING BLIND is discussed.

QUARRY'S EX has picked up several, slightly belated (favorable) reviews, like this one at Books Are For Squares and this one at Pulp 300.

Here's a thoughtful new look at the film version of ROAD TO PERDITION.

And here's a guy who says he's addicted to my books. I have to wonder if he discovered Nate Heller through the Amazon reprint series, who essentially gave TRUE DETECTIVE away (for under two bucks) for a while there. You know, the drug dealers really had something with their "first one's free" approach.

M.A.C.

John Carter: Idiots Need Not Apply

I'd like to offer a few words about the movie JOHN CARTER – basically, that it's terrific. The reviewers (whether print or blogosphere) who have savaged this film – particularly those who have gleefully pronounced it a fiasco of HEAVEN'S GATE proportions – are…what is the word I'm looking for? Idiots.

Nate and his girl friend Abby – both in their twenties, and Barb and I, neither in our twenties, none of us idiots – loved this film. For anyone who grew up on the Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pixar director Andrew Stanton has conjured almost literally a dream come true – the characters that previously lived only in the shared imagination of author and reader are alive on screen. We encounter strange, fully delineated creatures and cultures, sometimes humorous, other times horrific, in this heartfelt piece of filmmaking. Epic and intimate, JOHN CARTER is faithful to its influential source material, and despite what you've heard, not at all hard to follow…again, unless you're an idiot.

The Western section alone, with Bryan Cranston as a Custer-style general, is as entertaining an action film as I've seen in ages – the introduction of Carter himself, through a series of quickly cut scenes of comically escalating violence, is masterful storytelling. It's true that between action scenes the characters occasionally talk – an outrageous notion, I realize. Some have said that Carter's heroic powers (driven by the variant gravity of Mars) are nothing special – after all, they are basically Superman's…created by Burroughs decades before science-fiction fans Siegel and Shuster, bless 'em, came up with the guy in the red cape.

Overall, JOHN CARTER possesses a haunting quality that combines the desert spectacle of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA with the fantasy romance of TIME AFTER TIME, even as it reminds us that its classic source inspired such pop culture touchstones as FLASH GORDON, STAR WARS and DUNE.

Some have found the unfortunately named Taylor Kitsch a stiff as John Carter. I found him charismatic and compelling, and would let the guy play Nate Heller any day of the week. Lynn Collins, as Princess Dejah Thoris, is a striking, full-bodied woman who is well up to her swashbuckling task; and she could play Ms. Tree any day of the week. Also, I am fine with any movie that has the sense to cast both Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds) and Mark Anthony (James Purefoy) from HBO's Rome in the same epic picture.

I would imagine that most fans of Burroughs (and his Barsoom and Tarzan) will be in this film's pocket the moment they realize that Burroughs himself is a major character. As an author, I am thrilled to see a one-hundred year-old novel becoming the source for a big budget 21st Century film. Do not miss this one. Unless, of course, you're an idiot.

* * *

The first review of LADY GO, DIE! has appeared, and it's a fine one, from that terrific crime writer, Tom Piccirilli.

Thanks to the Amazon reprints and e-books, TRUE DETECTIVE is getting attention all over again.

And Ennis Willie's second Sand two-fer, SAND'S WAR, for which I wrote an introduction, got a swell write-up from the always interesting Bookgasm.

See you next week, probably with an inside look at the writing of the currently in progress ANTIQUES CHOP.

M.A.C.

Sex And Violence

When I set out to write hardboiled mystery novels, very much influenced by Mickey Spillane and the Gold Medal writers, I made sure my work was strong on sex and violence. I still do. Not only are these ingredients key to the noir sensibility, they represent (as I've said numerous times) the big topics: life and death.

And while my historical novels have an element of education/information in them, the primary purpose is to entertain, and usually in the fashion that I established early on – meaning there will be sex and violence.

Over the years this has been commented on occasionally by reviewers, but not really that often – the subject tends to come up in a more general way, i.e., why is there so much sex and violence in noir fiction?

But in the past several years, I have been getting criticized much more often about the sexual component of the books. I don't mean to defend myself here or to complain about those reviews – I am just observing that there seems to be something afoot in the culture, something more staid, even more prudish. I graduated high school in 1966, so the sexual revolution was all around me, reflected in popular culture from underground comix to nudity-flung films.

So what's up lately with this anti-sex scene sentiment? And almost always coming from men. Men who don't want to read about sex. Which strikes me as bewildering. These comments often come from readers who otherwise like the books. Here's an excerpt from an Amazon Review of CARNAL HOURS that is otherwise a rave:

"The author seems determined to inject some short, steamy sex episodes in each book. These are gratuitous and serve no purpose other than to establish the 'ladies man' reputation of Heller, which could be accomplished without the silly detail. I'm not prudish but each time these short episodes struck me as stupid and juvenile."

I might wonder why any reader of book with the word "carnal" in the title would be surprised to find sex scenes in that book. But this Amazon reviewer is joined by a handful of professional reviewers who have lately made similar comments. George Easter, for example, in the fine magazine Deadly Pleasures, made that his sole carp in a very positive review of BYE BYE, BABY.

Again, I mention this because I find it odd, not to complain about it or defend myself. I will say this: anyone who considers the sex scenes in Nathan Heller novels to be mere gratuitous porn isn't really paying attention. I don't believe there is a single Heller sex scene involving my guy with some casual pick-up in a bar or whatever – there are references to such happenings, but they remain off-stage. The sexual encounters are there for characterization reasons, usually to build emotion and establish a closeness, even a love, between Heller and a woman who is crucial to the tale being told, often tragic romances as in TRUE DETECTIVE, TRUE CRIME, THE MILLION-DOLLAR WOUND, FLYING BLIND and BYE BYE, BABY. Some of these are real women, like Amelia Earhart, Sally Rand and Evelyn MacClean Walsh, and this gets me nasty letters at times ("How dare you?"). I had death threats over my depiction of Earhart as bisexual. Here's the thing: Nate Heller didn't have sex with any of these women, because Nate Heller is a fictional character.

My sex scenes do make people uncomfortable at times, and I'm rather proud of that. A mystery writer pal of mine, when TRUE DETECTIVE came out, was offended (perhaps the term is "grossed out") that Heller used condoms and he and the lady in question cleaned up after the act. The sex was too real, apparently. An editor talked me into toning down oral sex passages in ANGEL IN BLACK…between Heller and his wife (oral sex was both characterization and a major clue in that novel).

Anyway, if you guys out there want to skip the sex scenes, fine by me. My generation of guys would more likely have underlined them. If this is progress, count me out.

And isn't it interesting that none of these reviewers have ever complained about the graphic blood-splattering violence in my work?

* * *

We had a very nice review for the upcoming Barbara Allan, ANTIQUES DISPOSAL, in Publisher's Weekly.

Our good friend and that good writer Ron Fortier wrote a lovely review of ANTIQUES DISPOSAL on his fun Pulp Fiction web site.

Brandywine Books posted yet another fine Heller review, this time looking at TRUE DETECTIVE.

The low price ($2) this month of FLYING BLIND on Kindle e-book caught some nice attention here.

Perfect Crime Books has announced their Nolan reprint series, with all the covers posted.

The quirky and entertaining Temple of Schlock reviewed THE CONSUMMATA, and back on my birthday took an eccentric look at QUARRY'S EX.

Nate is heading to Japan for a month on a business vacation. He will still be handling the weekly Updates, but they will likely be a little shorter in the near future. Also, I'm working on ANTIQUES CHOP, which means you may be spared these longer entries until I am finished and Nate returns.

M.A.C.

Flying Blind Kindle Sale (March)

One quick note before this week's update:

Flying Blind is on sale for $1.99 on the Kindle store.

The deal should last through the end of the month, but don't wait!

If you still have other gaps in your collection, be sure to check out the other Nathan Heller books on the Kindle store, as many of them also steals at under five dollars each. Physical copies are also available for the analog-inclined, and Amazon is working on audio CD and MP3 editions as well (my preferred method for the ones that have it; reader Dan John Miller knocks these out of the park).

If you do grab Flying Blind, please take the time to leave a user review, especially if you like it!

Shareable link: http://amzn.to/Av4PcR

And now back to your regularly scheduled update…

When I'm 64

Davy Jones of the Monkees died at 66 the other day. One of the major Monkees fan clubs is based in Muscatine, and my band Crusin' contributed a song ("Little Bit Me, Little Bit You") to a Monkees tribute CD in the early '90s (Bobby Hart did the liner notes). In my first year of college, I loved the Monkees – their albums remain surprisingly strong – and my band (then called the Daybreakers) did tons of their stuff. So the passing of Davy Jones gives me more than twinge of melancholy, not to mention paranoia, since I turned 64 on March 3rd.

On my birthday, I played a band job with the current, very strong Crusin' line-up at a particularly hip venue (a blues club in Bettendorf called the Muddy Waters) and we received a warm welcome to say the least. Rock 'n' roll definitely happened (Crusin' is myself, guitarist Jim Van Winkle, bass player Brian Van Winkle, and drummer Steve Kundel). And we pulled "I'm a Believer" out of our nether regions by way of tribute to Davy. Word got around that it was my birthday, and somebody did the math and figured out I was 64. It's nice that a lot of people seemed to find it tough to believe that I was that age, but nonetheless I am.

One thing I've noticed about other bands who play '60s material (and we play originals and early '70s and other things we feel like) is that they tend to be either sleepy (literally sitting down on the job) or kitschy (going all amateur-night Sha Na Na). On the other hand, our approach remains the same balls-to-the-wall garage band rock we always specialized in, although it gets ballsier when the audience is like the one at the Muddy Waters.

While I physically on occasion do feel like 64 (or older), my attitudes haven't changed much. I'm not going to wear a baseball cap on stage and sit down while I play keyboards. I'm not going to soften my sex and violence (even when an editor requests it) or tone down the dumb jokes or change in any way my approach, other than to improve whenever possible. I'm not slowing down my productivity if for no other reason than time is in fact running out, and I still have stories to tell. I am not going gently into this good night. I am going fucking screaming.

I get a certain amount of shit about living in Iowa – about having stayed in Iowa. This often comes from people who haven't accomplished a fraction of what I have in various facets of show business. I have always lived a fairly low-key life – minimal drinking, no smoking – and remain married to the same beautiful woman after forty-some years. And she is beautiful, and incredibly thoughtful. Who else but Barb would spend the day after my birthday going to a matinee with me called "Project X" (great movie, and if you don't think so, you are 64) (at least) about a shy kid's birthday bash that turns into a neighborhood apocalypse. Barb spent all weekend making sure this birthday (which sucks – you don't even qualify for the senior discount at 64, or your Social Security check) was fun and not traumatic.

Barb, by the way, is the cover girl on the upcoming TRIPLE PLAY, the Nate Heller novella collection coming out in April. I've always thought she looks like Marilyn Monroe, and I submitted a picture of her to Amazon Encore from the early '90s that I thought might work. See for yourself.

* * *

There were several nice mentions of my birthday on the net this past week. Check this one out, if you're a Ms. Tree fan.

A blogger did a piece on Sadie Hawkins Day that lambasted Al Capp, and I responded. That response was named comment of the day.

Nathan Heller and I got some nice local love from a Cedar Rapids writer.

The Raymond Chandler centennial short-story collection got written up, with special mention of my story. I commented, because an assumption had been made about the story, which has appeared with both Marlowe and Nate Heller as its protagonist, that needed correcting.

Here's a nice "desert island" reading list of graphic novels where ROAD TO PERDITION ranks number three.

Another blogger has an interesting take on BYE BYE, BABY, using it as starting point for his own MM research.

This coming week I will be working on ANTIQUES CHOP, Barb having just wrapped up her draft.

M.A.C.

Required Viewing List Part Two

Last week I came up with a list of my favorite sixteen movies, which got some interesting reaction. But that number was ungainly, so I've decided to bring it up to 25 Favorite movies with nine more.

Understand that I'm not listing my take on best movies. This is a personal list. Ed Gorman responded to mine in his blog, saying he liked my choices and then listed his. Every one of Ed's favorites were films I like a lot, yet none were on my favorites list, which I define by how often I want to return to these films. A favorite film is a place you want to revisit, like a cottage on the lake or a restaurant that's worth a fifty-mile drive.

Both Ed and I have been questioned because we have so few foreign films (he has one, DIABOLIQUE) on our lists, and also that so few films are included that were made in the last couple decades. Barb and I go to the movies just about every week, sometimes more than once – I don't know anybody except Leonard Maltin who sees more movies than I do. But the films that resonate for me are Hollywood born, in the mid-20th Century. These films – like the books of Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and Spillane – influenced me. So I celebrate them here.

I also plan to follow up with a favorite director's list. Many of my favorite films are not courtesy of my favorite directors – for example, the Randolph Scott westerns of Budd Boetticher are among my most loved films, but I view them as a body of work. Some of my most loved directors made the list last week – Hitchcock and Joseph H. Lewis, for example – but most did not.

By the way, I did not watch the Academy Awards this year. I almost never do (the year ROAD TO PERDITION was up for a bunch of Oscars was the last time). I watch a movie instead.

For now, here are the rest of my Top 25.

17. THE BAD SEED (1956). This should be no surprise to anyone, since my indie film MOMMY (1995) has been called an unofficial sequel, casting Patty McCormack as a grown-up variation on homicidal child Rhoda Penmark. The novel by William March and the play by Maxwell Anderson are both brilliant works, and director Mervyn Leroy's faithful, gently opened up recreation of the Broadway hit captures all the black humor and dread of both. Leroy often gets criticized for the Hollywood ending, but there is a WIZARD OF OZ-like otherworldly tone to Rhoda walking in the thunder storm in her little raincoat, running her flashlight along a picket fence, on her way to once and for all retrieve the spelling medal (which made the "pen marks" on little Claude Daigle's forehead and hands). The much criticized curtain call, with Nancy Kelly spanking Patty was actually part of the stage play, considered a necessary cooling off after the shock of the original (Rhoda surviving her mother's efforts to kill her). Astonishingly, Nancy Kelly (sister of Bart Maverick, Jack Kelly) never had another movie role, despite her Academy Award nomination and a wonderfully melodramatic performance worthy of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. The new Blu-ray reveals nuances in Patty's performance that reveal her already understanding the difference between stage and film.

18. MARK OF ZORRO (1940). As a kid and even today I am a sucker for swashbuckling movies, and Tyrone Power was the 1940s king of those, the sound-era version of Douglas Fairbanks (literally in this remake). Johnston McCulley's novel is faithfully followed in this, the greatest of all Zorro films, with perhaps the most exciting duel ever put on him as Power faces down evil Basil Rathbone, who could actually fence. Rouben Mamoulian directed this funny, sexy, exciting film with a rousing score by Alfred Newman. One to watch again and again.

19. POINT BLANK (1967). John Boorman's spellbinding pop art, European-influenced take on the Richard Stark "Parker" novels transcends a spotty script to become one of the two most influential crime films of the '60s (BONNIE AND CLYDE is the other). Haunted zombie Lee Marvin walks through this dream-like neo-noir landscape (he's named Walker, after all) exhibiting a quietly sociopathic intensity that makes this almost a horror film.

20. PRETTY POISON (1968). Another dream-like film, this one is heavily influenced by BONNIE AND CLYDE and plays off the Perkins PSYCHO persona as well. Yet it is strikingly original, funny, dark, and disturbing. Tuesday Weld is so fetching and sweetly evil that just about any heterosexual male would do for her the things Perkins does. Why director Noel Black did not enjoy a major career after this is a sad mystery.

21. DAMN YANKEES (1958). Another of that small handful of Broadway musicals brought faithfully to the screen, with stars Ray Walston (his signature performance, despite my wife referring to him as "My Little Martian") and funny, sexy Gwen Verdon doing her famous "Whatever Lola Wants." A great score from the PAJAMA GAME team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (Ross would tragically die young after these two great shows) provides the spine of this terrific Faust story in which a baseball fan learns that he actually loves his wife more than he does the Washington Senators. Tab Hunter is excellent here, despite critical carping, and Walston is just fantastic as Applegate ("I see cannibals a'munchin', a missionary luncheon"). You go to the ball game. I'll stay home and watch this.

22. RIO BRAVO (1959). John Wayne and Howard Hawks answer HIGH NOON in this classic western where the sheriff turns down help from the citizens. Dean Martin turns in his finest performance as the reformed drunk who becomes Wayne's deputy, and Angie Dickinson makes a stunning impression in her first major film role. Even Ricky Nelson seems perfect. My son Nate (normally very perceptive) found this movie corny when I showed it to him a few years ago, in particular Walter Brennan's trademark old geezer performance, but some day he will wise up.

23. DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941). Another dream-like film, and another Faust story. Director William Dieterle's brilliant film, beautifully acted, is a Halloween favorite around the Collins household. The performance by Simone Simon as a ghostly seductress is mesmerizing – again, most men will understand why farmer James Craig casts lovely Anne Shirley aside for her. Craig's trial in front of a jury of the damned (including the likes of Benedict Arnold and Captain Kidd) probably marks the high point of actor Edward Arnold's distinguished career. And Walter Huston is as scary as he is hilarious as Mr. Scratch. Then there's that Bernard Hermann score….

24. BEDAZZLED (1967). Did I mention I'm a fool for Faust films? Director Stanley Donen is most famous as a director of fifties musicals, but here he perfectly captures the mid- '60s in swinging London and along the way provides the only great screen representation of comedy team Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. If you've seen and enjoyed this, you have probably had moments when you've blown the raspberry much as Moore's Stanley does, anxious to trade one reality for another. Each hilarious and dismal attempt by Stanley to come up with a future worth trading his soul for is topped by the next disaster. The score by Moore is a shimmering delight, in particular the pop star sequence, which proves as prescient as PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE.

25. THE PRODUCERS (1968). Do I really have to write anything about this one? How about, "I'm hysterical and I'm wet," or Lee Meredith dancing for Max and Leo, or "Max, he's wearing a dress," or "I have said this is the short fuse, and this is the short fuse"? Let's leave it at this – liking this movie is an example of smartness.

* * *

I'm pleased to report that THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIKE HAMMER VOLUME 3: ENCORE FOR MURDER has been nominated for the Audie in the Best Original Work category. We won last year with THE LITTLE DEATH. This is the full-cast radio "novel" with Stacy Keach and a full cast (including the last major performance by my late friend and collaborator, Mike Cornelison).

More nice things are being said about the new Paul Cain book that Lynn Myers and I edited. I haven't got my copy yet, but you can check out the info here.

And here's a nice ANGEL IN BLACK review.

Finally, here's a way to pick up the unedited, complete versions of my Dreadtime Stories, REINCARNAL and WOLF, full-cast presentations. More to come: A GOOD HEAD ON HIS SHOULDERS and MERCY are in the pipeline. MERCY is a new story (the others are adapted from previously published work of mine).

M.A.C.

The Best American Mysteries 2011 Kindle Daily Deal

Hi everyone,

Today's Amazon Kindle sale features the "Best American" 2011 series, including Harlan Coben and Otto Penzler's THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011 for $1.99, including M.A.C.'s Shamus-nominated Mike Hammer short story "A Long Time Dead." Check it out!

Required Viewing List

As a writer, I often get asked what current books I'm reading, and my answer – part of which is that I read almost no contemporary crime fiction – always frustrates people. But I also mention the long list of classic mystery and crime writers whose work influenced me – Hammett, Chandler, Spillane and half a dozen more – which seems to salve the wound.

In my case, however, movies are as big a part of the mix as prose fiction. Television, too, since I'm part of the first TV generation. Someday I may write about the TV shows that really influenced me (I've often mentioned the private eye craze of the late '50s and its impact on my work) but today I want to be self-indulgent (what a shock) and list my favorite fifteen movies with a few words about each.

The Max Allan Collins Required Viewing List

1. VERTIGO (1958). Hitchcock is my favorite director, but this is more than just my favorite film of his – it's my favorite film period. Few people notice that it's a private eye movie, but ex-cop James Stewart gets hired to investigate an old friend's wife's odd behavior, so that's what it is. VERTIGO is romantic and tragic with two great performances at its center – Stewart is heart-breaking in his cruelty, and Novak has a painful vulnerability. Critics of the time almost always said she was a lousy actress…uh, what were their names again? Oh yeah, the critics are forgotten and she lives forever. Too bad she got in a miff lately about the re-use of the great Bernard Herrmann love theme in the current, wonderful THE ARTIST. The resonance of its use there brought tears to these sentimental eyes. By the way, I am convinced that my very real vertigo was caused by first seeing this movie at a tender age (I was in the fourth grade).

2. KISS ME DEADLY (1955). I've spoken elsewhere about this at length (I hope definitively in the forthcoming MICKEY SPILLANE ON FILM written with Jim Traylor), so I'll be uncharacteristically brief on the subject here. What makes it my second favorite film (and not first) is its lack of heart. The terrible warmth of VERTIGO wins out over KISS ME DEADLY's heartless meltdown. But I have watched no other movie as many times.

3. GUN CRAZY (1949). The greatest of all Bonnie and Clyde movies, which on a list that includes Arthur Penn's classic is really saying something. It captures the tragic violence of a criminal couple in a manner rivaled only by James M. Cain at his best. Two little-known actors, Peggy Cummins and John Dall, give performances for the ages, and my second-favorite director, Joseph H. Lewis, does the same. The outrageous set-piece robberies have never bested nor matched.

4. CHINATOWN (1974). This, more than any novel, established the private eye in the mid-twentieth century as a sub-genre, and is undoubtedly the greatest original private eye film – few of those derived from Hammett, Chandler and Spillane could rival it (probably only MURDER, MY SWEET, THE MALTESE FALCON and KISS ME DEADLY – the Hawks BIG SLEEP is too shambling and confusing an affair for all its attributes). Nicholson's definitive performance as cocky Jake Gittes meets its match in Faye Dunaway's apparent femme fatale and uber-villain John Huston. The script by Robert Towne and score by Jerry Goldsmith set the private eye gold standard. And CHINATOWN is the rare private eye film that, for all Jake's worldly cynicism, has the VERTIGO-like heart and tragedy that the other great private eye movies cited above sorely lack. The sequel, THE TWO JAKES, is much better than its reputation, by the way.

5. PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974). How ironic that that steaming piece of cheese, Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, is so popular, and the great rock 'n' roll PHANTOM remains a cult item. Paul Williams delivers a fantastic performance and a score equal to it, parodying various rock styles and prescient about several fads to come (a Kiss-style group pre-dates Kiss here). Jessica Harper is charismatic and sings hauntingly well, and William Finley is the perfect sad, crippled, demented Phantom. For a long time Brian DePalma was my favorite contemporary director. He's had some bad stumbles over the years, but at his best he's hard to beat. This is the only time, however, that he perfectly merged his comic and melodramatic impulses (well, SISTERS also does it, even more blackly). I also like OBSESSION, which is a wonderful twist on VERTIGO, not the mere rip-off it's often dismissed as.

6. HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (1941). I have loved this movie since childhood and it's one I can watch again and again. Robert Montgomery was never better as the boxer whose soul is plucked too early from his body by an over-eager angel, and gets to earn another shot at the title. It has interesting crime and even noir elements, and the ending makes me tear up just thinking about it. Yes, I tear up at movies a lot. Not so much in real life. The remake, HEAVEN CAN WAIT, is excellent but very much the lesser of the two films.

7. MIRACLE ON 34th STREET (1947). This is a perfect piece of Hollywood filmmaking, funny and touching, and maybe a fantasy…we're never quite sure, which is part of the delight. John Payne might have been a major star had he been given more roles like this, and Maureen O'Hara was never lovelier, at least not in black-and-white. And whatever happened to that delightful kid actor who played her daughter? Natalie something? Then there's Edmund Gwenn, on loan-out from Hitchcock, transforming the oddly disturbing mythic figure of Santa Claus into a flesh-and-blood being. The courtroom scene is among the best ever filmed, and certainly the funniest, and the post-WW 2 location shooting (including the Macy's parade) is a real time-machine ride. The other great Christmas films are Alistair Sim's SCROOGE and Jean Shepherd's A CHRISTMAS STORY. No other films need apply.

8. HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (1967). Why weren't more Broadway musicals transferred to film in a faithful fashion like this one? Robert Morse as J. Pierpont Finch is the most lovable bastard imaginable as he climbs to the top over one worthy body after another. His loveable charm – aided by outrageous mugging (he is essentially Jerry Lewis Goes to Grad School) – merges with a flawless Frank Loesser score in an eye-popping pop-art film by director David Swift (the sight gags were by cartoonist Virgil Partch). No other film captured Morse's boyish charisma, but this single performance will see to it he lives forever. Big props to TV's MAD MEN for including Morse in their cast.

9. MURDER, HE SAYS (1945). Simply the funniest murder crime movie ever made. Fred MacMurray is the census taker embroiled in mysterious backwoods doings ("It's a lit-up dawg!") and his homicidal hostess is Marjorie Main. Lovely Helen Walker (initially doing a cigar-smoking Bonnie Parker turn) is the love interest (she was wonderful in the excellent Tyrone Power noir NIGHTMARE ALLEY as well). "In town police is" indeed. This is finally out on DVD, available at TCM's web site.

10. THE SEARCHERS (1956). When they tell you John Wayne couldn't act, pop this one in the deck. John Ford is at his Monument Valley best here, offering up a revenge drama that deals with the cost. In an era where so much is blunt (said the author of the Quarry novels), the quiet way Ford and his screenwriters lay in back story is a revelation. We know that Wayne and his brother's wife had been lovers, but are never told. Is Natalie Wood his daughter? Is Jeffrey Hunter his son? We are made to wonder, and work it out for ourselves.

11. GROUNDHOG DAY (1993). One of the few truly great traditional Hollywood movies of the last thirty years, and the best film Bill Murray ever made, making it sad that he insists on trying for respectability in precious indie twaddle (how could Wes Anderson begin with RUSHMORE and wind up where he is?). Harold Ramis, that notable SCTV grad, reworks IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE in an imaginative manner that rivals that classic. Comedy and tragedy have seldom been juggled so effectively, nor have the joys and disappointments of living been depicted in such a seemingly offhanded yet devastating way.

12. LI'L ABNER (1959). Another faithfully recorded Broadway hit and a wonderful realization of Al Capp's great comic strip – probably the greatest of all comic strips. Much underrated as a musical (lively, tuneful score by Johnny Mercer and Gene DePaul, fresh off SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS) and as a satire ("What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA"). Plus, it has Stella Stevens, Julie Newmar, Leslie Parrish and dozens of other ravishing starlets of the late 1950s, not that Peter Palmer's wonderful lummox Abner ever notices.

13. THE GREAT RACE (1965). Yes, it's bloated, but this is one of the rare Hollywood big-budget excesses that succeeds. The opening half hour or so is as funny as anything you will ever see ("I'd like to see the Great Leslie try that one!"), and this only re-teaming of SOME LIKE IT HOT's Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis satirizes various genres (the western, the swashbuckler) while launching a massive pie fight and one wonderful sight gag after another. Blake Edwards was an uneven director to be sure, and coming up with a list of five or six terrible films of his wouldn't be tough. But this is the guy who created both Peter Gunn and Inspector Clouseau, so respect must be paid. Blu-ray, please!

14. ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959). Possibly the greatest courtroom drama of all, this one has James Stewart at the top of his mature powers encountering the new breed of young method actor – Ben Gazzara, George C. Scott, Lee Remick – and besting them, barely breaking a sweat (yet they're terrific, too). It's a changing-of-the-guard movie, with Golden Age actors like Eve Arden and Arthur O'Connell rubbing shoulders with Orson Bean and Murray Hamilton, with traditional studio-bound filming traded in for location shooting in smalltown Michigan Shocking and sexy in its day, with an ending Hollywood wouldn't have tried even a year before, the film still makes an impact, as does the Duke Ellington score – did Mancini's PETER GUNN music for Blake Edwards pave the way for that? Otto Preminger is another uneven director, though seldom an uninteresting one, and it all came together for him here. Recently released on Blu-ray by Criterion.

15. EVIL UNDER THE SUN (1982). Bewilderingly underrated, this is probably the greatest Agatha Christie film derived from a novel (from a play, that would be WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION). While the definitive television Poirot is clearly David Suchet, the best of the big-screen Poirots is Peter Ustinov, who is funny and sly and shamelessly scene-stealing here. The all-star cast is as impeccable (Diana Rigg a standout) as the Cole Porter-derived score and the exotic vacation paradise. There are few better ways to while away a Sunday afternoon than watching this one, which is also a very clever, memorable mystery with a solution that is as fair as it is impossible to reach. Absolutely the best Poirot summation-to-the-suspects in any medium.

16. START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970). Let's get this out of the way: this movie is a mess, really something of a shambles. But it is so goddamn funny. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland, doing a Corsican Brothers turn, might have been among the screen's greatest comedy teams, had they ever worked together again. Wilder is at his manic best here, and this is a reminder of how funny he could be at the outset of his slightly disappointing career. I've always felt that YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (worthy of being listed here) was the downfall of both Wilder and Mel Brooks. Together, they were Lennon and McCartney. Apart they were…Lennon and McCartney. Brooks without Wilder's inherent sweetness became strident, and Wilder without Brooks' cynical edge went soft. To see Wilder at his most hysterical in several senses of the word, you need to track down this French revolution farce. Another Wilder obscurity worth tracking down: QUACKSER FORTUNE HAS A COUSIN IN THE BRONX.

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A nice review of BLOOD AND THUNDER has popped up, illustrated with the new Amazon Encore cover. Looks like the Amazon reprints are creating new interest in Nate Heller.

Here's a nice mini-review of the Quarry short story "A Matter of Principal" in the new e-book anthology from Top Suspense, FAVORITE KILLS.

And a really nice write-up about Heller in general and BYE BYE, BABY in particular appears here.

Finally, my buddy Ed Gorman reprinted some of my diatribe about the use of the word "hack" at his great blog, and went on to write his own piece on the subject. Check it out!

M.A.C.