Robert Silverberg is a successful science-fiction and fantasy author. His novellas “Nightwings” and “Born with the Dead” are among five works that gained industry acclaim as Hugo award winners. However, Silverberg cut his teeth on “non-fiction” fantasies and crime noir in his youth. These stories, penned under names like Dan Malcolm and Ray McKensie, were published by zines like “Guilty” and “Trapped”. One of those, the novella length “Blood on the Mink” (1960), was reprinted by Hard Case Crime in 2012 along with the shorts “One Night of Violence” and “Dangerous Doll”.
“Blood on the Mink” is a well-crafted peek at the inner-workings of the Philadelphia syndicate. The book, written in first-person, introduces us to a federal agent who's donned the disguise of Vic Lowney, a successful California mob boss who's traveling to Philly to meet with a mobster named Klaus. Lowney, who's never met Klaus before, has an agenda of infiltrating Klaus' ring and nabbing a counterfeiter. Klaus' agenda is to pitch the counterfeiting idea to Lowney in hopes of selling him the fake currency for a quarter on a dollar. Easy, right?
Things get rather complicated quickly. First, Lowney is approached by a rival New York mobster named Litwhiler. He wants Lowney to cooperate with him and steal the counterfeiter with the promise that he'll sell currency to Lowney at a reduced rate. Further, Lowney is then approached by Klaus' stacked lover with a pitch to kill Klaus, steal the counterfeiter and make a fast break. Lowney, while carefully balancing his government work with pleasure, navigates a series of twists and turns that soon incorporates another rival mobster named Chavez and the counterfeiter's beautiful daughter, Szekely.
With all of these intricate allegiances and deceivers, is the book too dense to enjoy? No. Definitely not. Typically I struggle with a cast this robust with multiple threads. At 157-pages of large font, Silverberg takes it easy on his reader (and himself) by sticking to the facts and creating a brisk, easy read. “Blood on the Mink” shines with just enough action, dialogue and babes. In fact, I liked it so much that I read it in one sitting. While not the literary value of a Keene, Whittington or Brewer, this author sticks to the basics and delivers an excellent crime paperback. Nothing more, nothing less. Recommended.
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Released in 2017, Quarry’s Climax is the 14th novel in the Max Allan Collins series starring the nameless Vietnam veteran hitman code-named Quarry. The chronology of the series is a bit of a morass, but if such things are important to you, this one takes place in 1975 - five years into Quarry’s domestic murder-for-hire career when he was still taking assignments from The Broker.
The paperback begins with Quarry and his sometimes work partner Boyd at the apex of a posh assignment in Las Vegas. This gig serves to reintroduce the reader to the business model within which Quarry works. Oddly, the Las Vegas vignette doesn’t really tie into the plot of the novel at all. Consider it a bonus short story.
The heart of the paperback is a different assignment taking place in Memphis. As most Quarry novels are set in the Midwest (Iowa, usually), the change in scenery is significant and is a bit of a dog whistle to hardcore Quarry fans. You see, Showtime launched a Quarry TV series in 2016 and reset the series in Memphis (sinfully, if you ask me), so my guess is that Collins set the action of Quarry’s Climax in Memphis as a nod to the alternative continuity of the TV show. Some people liked the show. I thought it was awful. It wasn’t renewed for a second season, so that’s that.
Back to the novel. Quarry and Boyd find themselves in Memphis assigned to thwart the killing of a Larry Flint-like a pornographer named Max Climer who owns a strip club and filthy magazine called “Climax.” For personal and economic reasons, The Broker needs Quarry to neutralize an assassination team hired to kill the embattled porn king. However, killing hit men is only a temporary solution to the problem at hand, and Quarry also needs to identify and neutralize the client who is paying good money to see Climer dead.
What we have here is a pretty straightforward mystery novel with Quarry playing the role of detective. Who would want to kill a stalwart defender of the First Amendment testing the bounds of pornographic liberty? Religious kooks? Radical feminists? A business associate? A jilted lover? It’s Quarry’s job to find breaks in the action to receive oral favors from a hard-working stripper earning some extra cash for college - among other great sex scenes. There’s also a pretty cool cameo by the under-appreciated band, Big Star, that I sure appreciated.
As usual, Collins first-person writing is excellent, and Quarry’s Climax fits in nicely within the prolific author’s body of work. I’m thrilled to see that new Quarry books keep coming. This is a series that never seems to get old. Highly recommended.
Quarry’s Choice by Max Allan Collins is a 2015 installment in the hit man series, yet it takes place in 1972. The popular paperbacks have always been unstuck in time, and the reading order doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that you do, in fact, read these books because Quarry is among the best genre series characters ever written.
This one takes place after Vietnam vet Quarry has been accepting assassination assignments from the Broker for about a year. During a standard business meeting in Iowa, a couple of hired killers try to murder the Broker but are foiled by Quarry’s quick action. It’s an exciting opening scene that sets the pace for the remainder of this propulsive installment.
Soon thereafter, the Broker engages Quarry to kill the man behind the assassination attempt - a junior varsity racketeer named Killian in Biloxi’s Dixie Mafia. Killian is in the process of trying to consolidate power, and he views the Broker as a loose end requiring elimination. The ever-resourceful Broker has an inside track to get Quarry a job - in an undercover capacity - as one of Killian’s bodyguards to bide time until Quarry is properly positioned to eliminate this well-protected threat.
In Biloxi, Quarry is assigned a stripper/prostitute, who uses the name Lolita, to be his escort as he learns his way around town. As a writer, Collins is notoriously good at writing fantastically graphic sex scenes, so Lolita’s version of southern hospitality is a welcome addition to this otherwise violent and tense paperback. Beyond the sex scenes, the relationship that develops between Quarry and the whore is one of the most satisfying aspects of the novel and underscores the basic goodness and humanity of our antihero hitman.
Biding his time for an opportunity to take out Killian, Quarry is given assignments from his target to thin the herd of criminal competition in Mississippi, and Quarry must make some tough choices concerning conflicts of interest and the ethics serving two masters. The strip clubs and illegal gambling operations servicing the nearby Air Force base in Biloxi serve as a fascinating cultural study of regional crime.
As you may have figured, Quarry’s Choice is another fantastic and perfectly written novel in this flawless series. It’s short enough that it never drags, and Collins’ writing crackles with good humor and compelling bloodshed. The twists and turns as the book approaches its climax is genuinely surprising. The paperback’s conclusion is gratifying and leaves the reader wanting another helping of Quarry action. Highly recommended.
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“The Girl with the Long Green Heart” was a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original novel by Lawrence Block released in 1965 that was brought back as a Hard Case Crime reprint in 2005 with a new cover by the great Robert McGinnis (although the original cover art was quite fetching). It’s a con-man story in the same vein as “The Sting” and it’s an absolutely terrific read.
Johnny Hayden is a master of the long con with a specialty in land and stock scams. After a stretch in the joint, he’s working in a bowling alley futilely saving his pennies so he can one day break into the hotel business. Johnny receives a visit from a younger, less-experienced fellow grifter named Doug Rance who comes with a proposition for a job. Rance has identified a mark named Wallace Gunderson who is ripe for the picking, but he needs Johnny’s help to make it happen.
Johnny is a great first-person narrator, but it wouldn’t have been much of a story if he declined Rance’s offer and went back to polishing his balls at the bowling alley. Instead, he’s back in the game honing and tweaking Rance’s plan to engage in a little theft by deception. After the initial setup and planning, it’s off to upstate New York to meet the mooch. A good bit of the action also takes place in Toronto, an underused setting in classic crime fiction.
I won’t give too much of the con away here other to say it involves land in Canada that may or may not be of interest to speculators interested in uranium mining. Gunderson is a jackass and a blowhard, so you don’t feel a bit sorry for him as Johnny and Rance work their magic. Rance enlists the help of Gunderson’s secretary, Evelyn, who has her own score to settle with her boss. Evelyn is a scorned woman with larceny in her long green heart and a real looker to boot. She needs to work closely with Johnny to make this scam happen, and, well, you can probably see where this is going.
If you like con-man novels, “The Girl With the Long Green Heart” will be right up your alley. The story’s big twist wasn’t a huge surprise and the conclusion was a bit anti-climactic, but it was a blast to read from beginning to end. It’s another early-career winner from Lawrence Block. Recommended.
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Fans of men’s action-adventure place Max Allan Collins’ Quarry series in the top-tier of the genre along with Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm and Richard Stark’s Parker. The former Vietnam War sniper turned hitman debuted in 1976 and has been a source of great entertainment ever since. The best news is that the author remains alive and well, and he periodically cranks out another 200-page Quarry novel - coupled with outstanding Hard Case Crime cover art - to the delight of genre fans.
Quarry in the Black is the 2017 entry in the series, but the series has always been unstuck in time. This particular story takes place in 1972 when Quarry was still accepting assassination jobs from his original boss, The Broker. The arrangement always made a lot of sense: The Broker deals with the client, and Quarry deals with the victim - sometimes with a passive partner who handles the surveillance, leaving Quarry to manage the kill. Quarry’s favorite partner, the gay-before-it-was-fashionable Boyd, is assigned to work with Quarry on this hit.
This one is a little different. Quarry is offered $25,000 to kill a charismatic black civil rights leader, Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, who is campaigning for George McGovern to beat Richard Nixon in the 1972 U.S. Presidential Election. Quarry rightly recoils from the gig because Reverend Lloyd seems like an unobjectionable fellow - peaceful, anti-war, and espousing a strong anti-drug platform. Despite his chosen profession, Quarry has a decent moral compass and has no desire to become the next James Earl Ray. After The Broker gives Quarry some reason to believe that this Reverend isn’t the next Martin Luther King, he reluctantly takes the gig.
Collins does a fantastic job of capturing the zeitgeist of the post-burglary, pre-resignation, Nixon-Watergate era. He cites the era’s music blasting at Quarry’s every turn making me wish someone would create a classic-rock Quarry in the Black Spotify playlist to be used as a soundtrack while reading this paperback. Moreover, real-life public figures from the era have cameos in the novel, adding to the authentic feel of this retro effort. Collins even gives a nod to current events as Quarry is forced to tangle with a violent white-power group based in the all-Caucasian enclave of Ferguson, Missouri.
The central mystery of this - and most - Quarry stories is the identity and true agenda of the client paying for the hit. The Broker always keep’s the client’s identity from Quarry as a buffer of deniability if a job should go sideways. Inevitably, the full story eventually is revealed, and it usually explains the complications and bumps in the road that Quarry is forced to endure. Like the other novels, Quarry gets laid a few times in deliciously explicit detail, and the first-person narration is predictably hilarious.
There’s really nothing bad to say about Quarry in the Black. It’s another perfect entry in a legendary series. Hopefully, Collins stays energized and continues to come up with new Quarry stories for years to come. Highly recommended.
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Quarry's Ex is an excellent entry in the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins. The series is about an anti-hero murder-for-hire hit man. As with all the novels in the series, the first-person narration is conversational, humorous, and compelling.
There are two kinds of Quarry novels: The first type is where Quarry is hired to kill someone, the second is where Quarry is hired to stop another hitman from killing someone. Both types are equally great. In Quarry's Ex, our hero follows a hitman to the on-location filming of a movie to determine who is about to be killed and prevent the murder from happening. Along the way, he gets entangled with a woman from his past, several Hollywood bozos, and a mobster B-movie financier. There’s plenty of sex and violence along with an actual mystery to be solved.
The books were written in both the 1970s and the 2000s with a large publication gap in the middle of the series. The publication order is not the series order. The series begins and ends respectively, with The First Quarry and The Last Quarry. Beyond that, reading order doesn’t really matter. There is no discernible difference in quality between the 1970s installments and the 2000s. All of them take place in the post-Vietnam 1970s and early 1980’s.
I’ve never read a bad Quarry novel, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Highly recommended for hard-boiled genre fans.
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There are two types of Quarry novels: The first is when hitman Quarry is hired to kill someone and the second are the ones where Quarry tries to kill another hitman to protect a client. The Wrong Quarry, the series' 11th entry, is one of the second variety and perhaps the best of that bunch. It was published as a Hard Case Crime novel in 2014, and is written by Max Allan Collins. Aside from the first novel, readers can enjoy the series in any order.
Quarry finds himself in Missouri stalking a hitman who, in turn, is stalking a gay dance instructor who is suspected of causing the disappearance of a teenage girl. All the humor and sex from other Quarry novels is present in this one, but there is also a compelling mystery involving the identity of the person wanting to kill the dance teacher and the whereabouts of the missing girl.
The characters in this one are vivid and realistic. The female leads are sexy as hell. The plot twists are unexpected and realistic. The scenes of violence are brutal and bloody. This is one of the best of the series and not to be missed.
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