Posts Tagged ‘New Releases’

Dirty Deeds (Sometimes) Done Dirt Cheap

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024
Ms. Tree: Heroine Withdrawal cover
Paperback: Bookshop Purchase Link
E-Book: Google Play

The latest “archive”-style edition of Ms. Tree is available now: Ms. Tree – Heroine Withdrawal. Titan has done a beautiful job with this one (volume #5) and it contains some of Terry Beatty’s best work (and, maybe, mine). These books are a little pricey, but they are beauties and jam-packed. Even if you have a complete run of the original comics, these are worthwhile.

There’s a particularly nice price for the volumes here.

We did, as I mentioned recently, make a number of Best Of lists. But Craig Zablo (bless him) is the first to put two of my novels on his list of year’s best. Check it out here.

My books for Thomas & Mercer are turning up in book promotions (there are e-books one and all, on Amazon).

The War of the Worlds Murder will be promoted via Limited Time Deal in the US marketplace, starting 1/8/2024 and running through 1/14/2024. 1.99 USD during the promotion period. ()

The Lusitania Murders will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, starting 1/1/2024 and running through 1/31/2024. 1.99 USD during the promotion period. ()

Fate of the Union will be promoted via Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle book deals in the US marketplace, starting 1/1/2024 and running through 1/31/2024. 2.99 USD during the promotion period. ()

The best deal of all is from Wolfpack, however: Max Allan Collins Collection, Volume Two: John Sand (John Sand Books #1-#3) for $0.99! ()

Wolfpack has five collections of my novels, and a lot of other titles of mine, including an anthology title, Murderlized, that includes the first story about Secret Agent John Sand. Check them out here.

That page includes some titles by good pals of mine, Steve Mertz and Paul Bishop.

* * *

For those of you following the trajectory of my movie Blue Christmas, here’s a brief report. Editor/producer Chad Bishop and I completed our edit and this Saturday past ran it by our partner in crime, Director of photography Phil Dingeldein. We screened the feature and Phil had a grand total of three notes, and I had one.

Today – the first day of January 2024 – Chad and I made what I think are the final tweaks, reflecting the notes Phil and I had (Chad a few himself, also).

So we have crossed that finish line, with other challenges ahead. Two Iowa theaters are interested in having premiere screenings, and more are likely to come. We should have word soon about distribution (physical media and streaming). We have entered the Iowa Motion Picture Awards and two festivals.

I hope some of you have sampled Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane (75th Anniversary Expanded Edition) on Amazon Prime or VUDU, and the Hammer Golden Age Radio play, Encore for Murder, on those same venues. Both are reasonably priced. And you can get the Blu-ray from Amazon here (right now, at only $20).

But from the distributor, VCI, directly you can get the expanded Spillane documentary for $14.98.

The Blu-ray includes Encore for Murder as a bonus feature. But Encore is also available, stand-alone, as a DVD, here, directly from VCI for only $9.99.

I don’t know how long VCI’s reduced prices are going to last, so if you have an interest in Spillane (and me), now’s the time.

* * *

Here’s an interview with yrs truly.

Finally, here’s a pretty decent review of Ms. Tree – Heroine Withdrawal.

M.A.C.

Two Books for the Price of…Two Books

Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

[This just in: Max Allan Collins will be a guest on Robservations with Robert Meyer Burnett at 8 pm Central on YouTube today, Tuesday Oct. 10. –Nate]

[Last minute update: This link will go directly to the livestream video. –Nate]

* * *

Too Many Bullets, the new Nathan Heller novel, will be published on Oct. 10 (the day this update first appears). The Hard Case Crime release finds Heller witnessing the RFK assassination and then investigating just what it is that his lying eyes saw.

The new novel by Barbara Allan (Barb Collins and her husband, me) will be published November 7. Antiques Foe is the 17th novel in the series! It is funny as hell. By the way, “foe” in the title is a pun on “faux.”

The book giveaways to support Too Many Bullets are over, and we did not get enough author copies of Antiques Foe to spare any. But good news! There’s still a way for you to get copies of both – buy them. Yes, it’s a radical means of acquiring these novels, but it will work.

Too Many Bullets cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook: Kobo Google Play
Antiques Foe cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Nook Kobo iTunes
Digital Audiobook: Nook Kobo
Audiobook MP3 CD:
Audiobook CD:

For reasons I can’t tell you, advance reviews of Too Many Bullets have been scant to non-existent. Usually the Heller novels are widely reviewed by the “trades” (Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal), but so far…nothing.

Antiques Foe has had a couple of strong reviews from the trades. All I can think of is that the postponed publication of The Big Bundle till early this year has had the two Heller novels crashing against each other (but hopefully not burning). Too Many Bullets is a key Heller, an important entry in the saga, and I hope you will buy it, read it, love it, and review it – that’s not asking too much, is it?

If you received a copy in one of the two Too Many Bullets book giveaways, remember you can post a review today (the book has to have been published for Amazon to post any reviews). Not to mention Barnes & Noble and Goodreads and other review sites where it’s also worth posting.

Todd Stashwick
Todd Stashwick

On the Heller front, on Friday, Nov. 8, a talented cast was gathered in Hollywood by Robert Meyer Burnett and his business partner Mike Bawden to record a pilot for the podcast series based on the Heller novels. Headlining as Nate Heller is Todd Stashwick of Picard and 12 Monkeys fame. A Chicago boy, Todd makes an ideal Heller (I’ve heard the podcast session). That he’s a Star Trek fan favorite is an extra boost.

Although it will not be our first full-length production, the pilot is based on the first chapter of Stolen Away.
Much more about this later.

* * *

Daedalus books has two of my Mike Hammer novels in hardcover for $4.98 each, Murder My Love
and Masquerade for Murder.

Here is Ron Fortier’s review of Too Many Bullets (the first that I know of!) from his excellent site, Pulp Fiction Reviews.

TOO MANY BULLETS
By Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime
293 pgs

On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California and pronounced dead the following day. Kennedy, a United States senator and candidate in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, won the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4. He addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Ballroom. After leaving the podium, and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired by Sirhan. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital nearly 25 hours later. His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy’s assassination prompted the Secret Service to protect presidential candidates. In addition, it led to several conspiracy theories. It was the final of four major assassinations in the United States that occurred during the 1060s.”
For the record, we crimped the above from a Wikipedia page not wanting to repeat what most readers already know, or can easily become familiar with via that site or dozens of history books on Kennedy’s life and his death. What concerns Collins is the locale and the tightly packed hallway into the kitchen pantry where the murder took place. Relying on both voluminous research and his own gifted imagination, he pulls the reader into the midst of that chaos when bullets were suddenly fired into the crowed eliciting screams and panic. He sets Nate Heller, an old Kennedy friend, brought in to act as an impromptu bodyguard for the Senator, down into the middle of it all. Tragically the press of supporters stymies Heller’s effort to reach Kennedy and save him.

What few people today recall is that several other people were wounded in the shooting, thankfully none fatal other than Kennedy. They were wounded because of all the bullets that were fired supposedly by the lone gunman. This is the contradiction that confronts Heller days later when attempting to recall the event. He remembers too many bullets. Ultimately he is hired by newspaper journalist Drew Pearson to personally investigate the shooting and determine the truth.

Weaving Heller through an historical landscape, Collins offers up a suspenseful, well laid out narrative that is rife with inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Heller knows a cover up when he runs into it head first; but that’s not enough. He needs to know the who(s) and is ultimately led down a highway that goes nowhere near the place called Justice. “Too Many Bullets” is both sad and thought provoking; a testimony to the one inescapable fact, we live in an imperfect world. So does Nate Heller.

* * *

Barb and I have been essentially in quarantine after catching Covid. We both had a couple of rough days, but the subsequent ones were like a bad cold. I am at Day Ten with Barb a day or so behind me. The doctors said we should quarantine for five days and, after that, go out masked. We have basically stayed quarantined for the full ten days.

I have had to work on the pre-production of Blue Christmas mostly from a distance with producer Chad Bishop carrying the ball. I did go out on Friday, masked up, at Menard’s to help our set design guy, Bill Turner, pick out and order materials, with me providing my checkbook.

We have a table read Monday evening. Who was that masked man? Me.

It’s starting to feel real.

If you wish to contribute, $100 will get you mentioned in the credits of Blue Christmas as a friend of the production. You can get an Associate Producer credit for $500. Send your ill-gotten gains to Max Allan Collins, 301 Fairview Avenue, Muscatine, Iowa 52761. [Or at the IndieGoGo crowdfunding page! –Nate]

M.A.C.

Fancy Anders and the Beck/Woods Boys

Tuesday, March 14th, 2023
Fancy Anders For the Boys cover
E-Book: Amazon Purchase Link
Trade Paperback: Amazon Purchase Link
Digital Audiobook: Amazon Purchase Link
Audio CD: Amazon Purchase Link

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).

* * *
M.A.C. and Phil Dingeldein with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck

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.

Chain Book Stores, Indie Movies and Avoiding Real Work

Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Big Bundle Cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction Cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo
Digital Audiobook: Kobo Libro.fm

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”?

* * *

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.

* * *

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….

* * *

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….

* * *

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.