Fate of the Union Approaches

October 27th, 2015 by Max Allan Collins
Fate of the Union

FATE OF THE UNION, the second Reeder and Rogers political thriller, will be published November 10. But I have ten advance copies available to the first ten readers who ask for one, on the condition that they post a review at Amazon and/or elsewhere. (If you are a blogger and have a regular review column, let me know and I’ll see that you get a copy from Thomas & Mercer.) The only other condition is that this is for USA residents only – postage overseas and even to Canada has gotten prohibitive.

Request a copy by e-mailing me at . Be sure to include your snail-mail address!

Some of you may not have read the first Reeder and Rogers novel, SUPREME JUSTICE, but if you like anything of mine, you’ll likely enjoy this series. SUPREME JUSTICE, ironically not read by as many of my regular readers as other titles of recent years, is among my bestselling books ever – nearly 300,000 copies are out there. The majority of those readers have come to SUPREME JUSTICE on Kindle.

As I’ve mentioned here before, Matthew Clemens gets cover billing this time, though truth be told he deserved it last time, as well (and on the previous Thomas & Mercer thriller, WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER). I’ve made no secret about the fact that Matt has worked with me on almost two dozen novels, mostly TV tie-ins (CSI, BONES, DARK ANGEL, CRIMINAL MINDS). For the record, I’ve done all the movie novelizations (dreaded term) myself.

Since I’ve moved away from doing tie-in work, I took Matt along for the Amazon thrillers because our collaboration is a comfortable and I think outstanding one. We did two thrillers at Kensington – where Matt shared co-author billing – that have done very well, building sales over the years, particularly on Kindle, due to the success of the Thomas & Mercer-pubbed thrillers. Those books are YOU CAN’T STOP ME and NO ONE WILL HEAR YOU. We also have written many short stories together – almost always with Matt sharing byline – and gathered some of them into a book called MY LOLITA COMPLEX (2006), which has become something of a high-ticket item, though the title story is available from Amazon on Kindle for a mere pittance.

Back to FATE OF THE UNION. Joe Reeder is an ex-Secret Service agent who has his roots in my IN THE LINE OF FIRE novelization and BOMBSHELL by Barb and me (now available under our shared “Barbara Allan” byline), both of which starred tough Secret Service agents. He is partnered with a young FBI agent, Patti Rogers, who is not his love interest. The books are tough and violent, and have been somewhat controversial.
Though I thought I was hitting the ball right down the center in SUPREME JUSTICE, some conservative readers (I should say “readers,” since some seemed to be posting bad reviews at Amazon without actually reading the book) disliked the novel, apparently because Joe Reeder is a Democrat. The book deals with the assassinations of Supreme Court Justices by a bad guy who wants to reconfigure the court into a more leftist manner – how that makes the book anti-conservative is bewildering to me.

Despite the efforts of some politically motivated “readers,” SUPREME JUSTICE has a four-star rating at Amazon, and an astonishing 3440 reviews (last time I checked).

FATE OF THE UNION deals with a multi-millionaire (perhaps billionaire) who decides to run for the presidency; there is an assassination attempt in the midst a string of what appear to be serial killings. The theme is the destructiveness of extremism, no matter what the politics behind it.

This past week Matt was interviewed by a Crimespree reviewer and he deals very effectively and frankly with how our collaboration works. Read it here.

While we’re at it, here’s a fun piece about how and why I quit as writer of the BATMAN comic book.

The same folks revealed why the DICK TRACY novelization doesn’t reveal the bad guy’s identity until the 6th printing.

Finally, here is a really nice article – smart and lengthy – about MS. TREE and her place in the history of crime comics.

M.A.C.

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One Response to “Fate of the Union Approaches”

  1. Dan Luft says:

    That dang Humphrey Bogart movie ruined the ending of The Maltese Falcon for me before I read the book.