Cut Me In-The Collins/Crews/Collins/McBain Connection

      As I've mentioned here before I was never able to finish writing a novel until my good friend Max Allan Collins allowed to read his books in manuscript.  Seeing them in typescript was a less intimidating way of trying to comprehend what made them work. I filled most of a notebook with my observations and scenes that I'd Xeroxed.
     This was back in the very early 80s. Around that time I also happened to read a piece by the late Harry Crews about how, in order to comprehend a novel for himself, he read a Graham Greene book and then outlined it not only by storyline but by how many characters were in it, what purpose they served, theme, scenes that worked particularly well, etc. I'd done the same thing with (Al) Max's books but not in such an organized fashioned.
     Enter Collins number two.
     I was at a large library used book sale one September afternoon during this same period and found a mint condition copy of a hardcover mystery novel titled CUT ME IN by one Hunt Collins.       
    Now as I reader of science fiction from 1952 or thereabouts I recognized the name immediately. (I was no dummy; wasn't I in the Cosmic Space Club along with two guys named Bill Crider and Roger Ebert?) Ed McBain/Evan Hunter was Hunt Collins. I bought the book and gave it the Crews treatment.  I outlined the hell out of it.
    Enter McBain. Or rather, enter Charles Ardai and Hard Case Publishing.    


 Cut Me In -- Ed McBain










    Yep, it's now where it belongs. With a great
 Robert McGinnis cover and under the name that became even more famous than Evan Hunter.
   Essentially, it's a work novel. Josh Blake 
is a literary agent who works for an agency 
that bears resemblance to the late 
unlamented and notorious Scott 
Meredith Agency (yes, the one where 
Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake 
and Barry Malzberg Salzburg all 
worked at--see Mystery Scene website 
for some of Block's memories).
    The agency stuff is a lot of fun and the 
story is pure 50s. Who knew there 
were so many fabulous willing babes and 
so many potential killers as Blake 
discovers following the murder of hishis partner in the place?
    I enjoyed the hell out of it not 
because it's a masterpiece but because 
it is one of those books that remind me 
of where so many writers of my generation, 
certainly me, came from. And the `50s 
ambience if just right.
     For one thing those Jack Webb 
"Dragnet" dialogue patterns that Hunter 
was to make his own are here on full display. 
And Blake is such a solid take on the 
post-war hardboiled heroes. He is a 
lot like the protagonists of such 
novels as THE MAN IN THE 
GREY FLANNEL SUIT--troubled, 
uncertain, angry. Except of course 
the Madison Avenue men didn't 
run about solving murders. They were too
busy playing Mad Men. 
    You'll enjoy this novel as 
much as I did.