Posts Tagged ‘Quarry’

Completing the 50th Anniversary Quarry Novel

Tuesday, October 14th, 2025

The past week was a tough writing one. Two days of writing that wrapped up a complex plot better than I could ever have hoped. This left me in an almost celebratory state, because I finished Quarry’s Reunion, the 50th anniversary Quarry novel (the first book in the series, Quarry – originally titled The Broker – was published in 1976).

Quarry's Reunion cover painting by Paul Mann
Art (copyright 2025) by Paul Mann for the cover of QUARRY’S REUNION, to be published in late 2026.

I had wrestled with the plot, which is an unusual one for Quarry as it’s a more traditional murder mystery than a crime novel, and has lots of moving parts, more Christie than Spillane. Right now I don’t know how my editor and agent will react to a change of pace like this; but I can really only write the novel that wants to be written. This one, appropriately given the 50th anniversary aspect, delves into Quarry’s past in a way I never have before.

The story that presented itself to me was almost something out of Grace Metalious. If that reference doesn’t mean anything to you, or even if it does, I’ll just say she was the underrated author of Peyton Place, one of the best-selling (and most scandalous) novels of the ‘50s and early ‘60s. I had to develop a whole cast, even generations thereof, the residents of a town in Ohio about the same size of my own smallish Muscatine, Iowa. I literally (not figuratively) wrote half a dozen breakdowns of the characters and their relationships, both familial and romantic, detailing a trust fund that would be the engine of the mystery, i.e., who would/could benefit financially from the death of a character or two.

These cast breakdowns and plot notions were very complicated, and my writer wife Barb suffered through each of them, telling me what worked and didn’t.

Further complicating matters, I began the book – did several chapters – before going into the hospital for an ablation procedure to deal with my a-fib. This turned into a nightmarish month of emergency room visits, ambulance rides, and three hospital stays, the middle one of which found me hallucinating about where I was and whether or not I was investigating a murder.

I wrote about this here before.

I bring it up, because it’s not normal for me to return to a book I began and plotted before having surgery and hallucinations. Kind of hard to just get back in.

But pretty much that’s what I did, although the intricacies of this plot with its Peyton Place-type sexual and criminal shenanigans found me having to re-plot every chapter or two. I often say that fiction writing consists of solving problems of your own creation.

So after I finished the book, having read it and made my revisions (minor as usual), I was pleased that it seemed, as Larry David would say, pretty, pretty good.

I work in WordPerfect and have to convert a manuscript to Word for submission to my editor. This inevitably has some hick-ups, some glitchy travails for Barb – who enters my corrections and the more minor revisions – and me. That makes this inevitable day of getting the book in shape to send always a stressful one.

But we got it out that door, sent to both my editor and my agent.

Whew!

Great to have that over!

I slept soundly and well that night, content that all was right in the world, except for our political situation of course, and then, at 4:44 a.m., I sat up in bed, horribly wide awake.

Somewhere in my brain, while I slumbered, the realization formed that I’d made a mistake in the novel, a really, really big one, with ramifications that would echo through the entire novel.

I got up and tried to solve the problem, resolve the issues it created. I sat in my recliner downstairs with a notebook in my lap and wrote down ideas, timeline shifts, anything I could come up with that wouldn’t damage a book I really liked as it was…but definitely required fixing. How to do that without a page one rewrite?

Barb noticed some lights were on downstairs and came down from the master bedroom to see what was up – had they been left on? Certainly her husband couldn’t be up at 5:45 a.m.!

But he was.

And never gladder to see my lovely bride.

I told her of my massive screw-up, and Barb – who reads my books in progress, chapter by chapter – admitted she hadn’t noticed the goof either. (By the way, I have no intention of sharing with you what that goof was. This piece is as close to an admission as you’ll get.)

We batted ideas around. We each came up with solutions, but none of them were easy or even practical fixes. As you might imagine, this went on for a while. I can only say I was grateful – felt blessed – to have a writer for a wife who could help me in a situation like this.

Finally we came up with something, something that would be manuscript-wide but mostly cosmetic, not disrupting the narrative and its flow.

I did not go back to bed. (I had already, by the way, sent my editor and agent e-mails telling them to dump the previous version of the book I’d sent them. A new version would be along soon.) I went back to the keyboard.

I’m not sure, but I think I worked up till about 4 p.m., with a short lunch break, and sent to my editor and agent the revised version. Then I took a long, long nap.

The next day I was worthless, as you might imagine, tired as hell and unsteady; but relieved. So very relieved.

Thank you, Barbie.

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This good interview with me by the great Andrew Sumner of Titan, at the San Diego Comic Con, is right here:

M.A.C.

Hey Kids! It’s Book Giveaway Time

Tuesday, September 30th, 2025

We’ve not had a book giveaway here at the Update for some time, and I’m about to remedy that.

Last year Hard Case Crime reissued The Last Quarry in trade paperback form (with some bonus material in back, two of the three Quarry short stories from the ‘80s). Now HCC is taking the same trade paperback approach with The First Quarry (minus the bonus short stories).

What makes these reissues notable?

Well, the first three Quarry novels Hard Case Crime published (The Last Quarry, The First Quarry and Quarry in the Middle) appeared in the smaller original mass-market paperback size. This is for all of you who like to shelve your titles together – whether you are OCD or just particular – and would prefer your row of Quarry novels be all of the same format/size. Now you we no longer have to suffer with the indignity of the first three novels not lining up perfectly with the rest! Even the first four novels, as originally published by Berkley Books, were originally in mass market size. The fifth, Primary Target, re-titled Quarry’s Vote at HCC, was in hardcover and then a mass-market-sized paperback. All five are now HCC trade paperbacks.

I believe, though I am not absolutely certain, that Quarry in the Middle will also receive a trade paperback edition from Hard Case Crime, next year.

So, even if you have the original edition of The First Quarry, you are welcome to participate in this book giveaway. It works like this: e-mail me requesting the book at macphilms@hotmail.com. Even if you’ve won a title in a previous giveaway of mine, you must include your snail-mail address. Though no strings are attached, it would be nice if you’d review the book at the Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble sites, or your own blog, if you have one. The offer is open to US residents only, due to shipping costs.

[All copies have been claimed! Thank you for your support. –Nate]



I’ve talked about this before, but just in case you didn’t hear it from me, on an Update or otherwise, here’s why The Last Quarry was not the last Quarry, and why The First Quarry is not the first Quarry.

When Hard Case Crime got started, editor Charles Ardai approached me about reprinting Blood Money, the second book in my Nolan series (the first being Bait Money). I requested he collect both books in one volume, asking for no extra money, as I thought it awkward to start with the sequel to a long-out-of-print book, which Bait Money was at the time. He agreed and you can now get those books together as Two for the Money.

The Nolans did well enough for Charles to request I do another in the series. I said I’d prefer to do a Quarry novel. The series had something of a cult following (of course, as Donald E. Westlake said, a cult author is seven readers short of making a living) and I’d always felt the character should have put me on the map, which it hadn’t. The series was in fact dropped by Berkley Books after those first four entries.

But I’d recently made (with director Jeffrey Goodman) a short film about Quarry, based on my short story “A Matter of Principal.” The film did well at festivals and was warmly received when screened at a Bouchercon.

For this reason, and my own affection for the character, I wrote The Last Quarry for HCC, telling Charles I was thrilled to be able to wrap the series up (as the title suggests). I’d also been promised a Robert McGinnis cover, which I got. (And I should note that The Last Quarry was based on my screenplay of the eventual film called The Last Lullaby. The final film differs somewhat from my novelization.)

Then the damnedest thing happened: The Last Quarry was a success, garnering good sales and terrific reviews.

CUT TO: Charles and I are standing in a buffet line at a subsequent Bouchercon when he says, “It’s too bad you ended the series with The Last Quarry.” And I say, “Why don’t I write The First Quarry?”

Thus began a long series of Quarry novels (I’m working on Quarry’s Reunion, the thirteenth for Hard Case Crime), novels that have earned several Shamus nominations from the Private Eye Writers of America and two Edgar noms from the MWA. And there was a one-season of a QUARRY TV series from HBO/Cinemax, focusing on Quarry’s origin.

Not bad for a busted mid-‘70s paperback series.

Most of the new novels have me exploring the premise of Quarry using the late Broker’s list to track assassins to their next target, and offering a service to that target: stopping the hit by killing the assassins and discovering who bought the kill contract. This is what was set up in Quarry’s List, the second of the original four novels.

Some of these subsequent novels, like The First Quarry, tell of contracts Quarry carried out prior to – it gets confusing now – the events of the first Quarry novel (originally published as The Broker, currently carrying my preferred title, Quarry). Among these contract-killer novels are Quarry’s Choice and Quarry in the Black.

Another sub-set in the series are the “old man” Quarry novels, where the character is roughly my age Quarry’s Blood, Quarry’s Return).

I run into potential readers wanting to know what order to read the books in. I always say, I didn’t write them in order, so why read them that way? I would prefer to point such readers to two particular favorites of mine, Quarry’s Choice and The Wrong Quarry.

Is there a difference between the first four (Quarry, Quarry’s List, Quarry’s Deal and Quarry’s Cut) and subsequent entries, including the one I’m working on now?

Yes. There is more humor – dark humor, but more – in the later books.

One reason I didn’t try to take the series elsewhere, when Berkley dropped it, was my feeling that each novel had to top the last in extreme violence. Why did I feel that way? It’s not because I’m a sadistic nincompoop. It’s because, structurally, the early books are about showing Quarry in the first chapter or so doing something terrible, then in subsequent chapters (the bulk of the book) getting the reader to kind of forget that and come to like Quarry and view him as a reasonable guy (and a point-of-view character you could take the ride with). Then, at the end, faced with a situation that an actual normal human would otherwise deal with, Quarry again does something terrible.

All of this grew out of my desire to, in my way, top the great Richard Stark (Don Westlake) Parker novels. I had already written the first five Nolan novels, which were frankly imitative of the Parker series. I instead wanted to show readers (like me) of “crook books” with protagonists who worked the left-hand side of the street just what kind of “heroes” we (me) were identifying with.

The Parker novels were heist yarns told in third-person, giving readers some distance between them and the criminal events. I decided to do, instead of a professional thief, a hired killer, and tell the stories in the first person – put the reader inside Quarry’s head, and ultimately confront readers with just who it’d been they were rooting for.

To some degree, this approach is inherent in the later Quarry novels, yes, but the dark humor (I think) leavens the often nasty events of the narratives. That frees me from sense that I need to top the last book with some truly awful thing that Quarry does at the finish (although even then, in the Mike Hammer tradition, he is removing a bad guy or two or three).

The original novel – The Broker AKA Quarry – has this ambivalence built in. In that novel – never intended to launch a series – hired killer Quarry, to save his own ass, must solve the murder he committed.

Now Quarry’s 50th anniversary is just ahead (2026). I’ll try not to disappoint with Quarry’s Return.

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Here is a list from Collider of the 20 best comic book movies. Guess what’s number two?

M.A.C.

The Writing Life

Tuesday, September 16th, 2025

A box arrived from the UK with a few advance copies of our new Antiques/Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery, Antiques Round-Up. When I say “our,” of course, I mean Barb and my latest novel in the now long-running series.

Barbara Allan and Antiques Round-Up

I have watched, I guess it’s been for decades now, Barb developing into a terrific writer. She was good out of the gate, and like most of us, her improvements are somewhat incremental and don’t make themselves clear until some time has passed and those improvements have accumulated.

I know I still think I’m improving as a fiction writer even at this late date. I’ve been writing long enough to have no doubt lost my fast ball here and there, but certain craft things have improved. Or at least I’m still trying to have them improved.

Barb and I have different approaches. She is slow-and-steady wins the race. Even now, I may not spend more than two months writing a novel (depends on the novel of course), but she spends most of her writing year on one book in the series. Fiction writing is a love/hate affair, but I have always loved it more than hated, and often Barb seems to be the other way around. She always talks about the current book being the last one she’s willing to do, while I’m always looking for more books to write, as if as long as I have a book contract, that God or the Grim Reaper or whatever will wait for me to finish the current novel.

If there’s a point to this ramble, it’s how proud I am of the way Barb has risen to a truly professional level, and this latest book – which will be published a couple of weeks from now – is evidence of that.

We were published for years by Kensington, but our current home is Severn House, a UK publisher that puts a lot of their emphasis on the United States market. But we do hear from readers who dropped away at the point Kensington stopped publishing us, largely because – thus far – the series has been tricky to find in Barnes and Noble, and BAM and other of the surviving brick-and-mortar book stores.

Some of these readers don’t even know the series is continuing, and when they find out it is, want to know where they can get back onboard. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the Severn House books in hardcover and e-book; and all of them eventually become available from those sellers in handsome trade paperback editions.

We have had a lot of Hollywood interest in the Antiques novels – specifically for TV – over the last fifteen years. It’s gotten very close – very – but as yet no cigar. That’s why we made an Antiques movie ourselves, Death By Fruitcake, with Paula Sands (legendary Midwestern broadcaster) as Vivian Borne and Alisabeth Von Presley (Midwest pop superstar) as Brandy Borne. We’re proud of our little movie – I scripted it from a Barbara Allan novella (Antiques Fruitcake) and Barb co-produced and served as production manager.

This past week Chad Bishop, our co-producer (and Director of Photography and Editor) and I began dealing with the “deliverables” (the things a distributor requires) for Twin Engines Global. This ranges from getting trailers and the film itself to them and making closed-captioning happen and taking lawyer meetings about getting an LLC put together and a hundred other things.

Certainly easier to just write a damn book. It was however a fun, hard, unforgettable experience, shooting and editing it and all, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Meanwhile, I am almost half-way through the new Quarry novel, Quarry’s Reunion, which will be the 50th anniversary book in a series that I thought Berkley Books had killed 49 years ago…but thankfully Hard Case Crime unexpectedly resuscitated it in 2006 with the help of filmmaker Jeffrey Goodman, who made a short film from my script (A Matter of Principal) and a film version of The Last Quarry (The Last Lullaby). Fans also helped keep it alive.

I mentioned that fiction writing is a love/hate affair. Though she seldom grouses, I know Barb finds writing difficult. Funny thing is, after all this time, so do I.

I will spend a full day writing two or three pages of description and set-up for a chapter, or an hour on one paragraph; fortunately for me, the rest goes a lot faster, and dialogue scenes fly, as they need to when readers encounter them. Most of my novels are mysteries, obviously, and I re-plot them constantly as I go. Quarry’s Reunion had five or six preliminary overview outlines, and I’m on the fifth or six chapter breakdown now.

Part of this is my approach being half planning, half improvisation. I try to know enough about the story I am about to tell without mounting my horse and riding in all directions. So I know major things – like who-dun-it and why. Then I come up with a plan, a road map, a structure, that may be twenty pages long. But I try to keep it loose enough to make discoveries as I go. This has me revising the plan, changing and tweaking the trip I’m taking, as I go.

Here’s another difference between writers. Though we come up with the “Barbara Allan” basic ideas together, Barb rarely asks me for an opinion or plot help or anything while she’s writing her draft. I’m willing to help, and often offer – but I have too many ideas, too many ways to solve a problem, to do anything but frustrate her, throw her off-track. So except in cases of emergencies, I keep tabs on what she’s doing on her draft, but don’t interfere. And when I do my draft, she gets out of my way. She does read my chapters as I go, so can catch anything I’m doing that will upset the plot applecart.

I mentioned above that I sometimes spend a day on a few scene-setting opening paragraphs, or an hour or more on a transitional paragraph between breaks within a chapter. And in recent years – due, I’m afraid, to all the media around us dumbing everybody down – I get some (not a lot) of readers and reviewers complaining about what they see as needless description. I will defend that only with this: I have to see a scene in my mind before I write it; and in description – yes, even clothing – I am writing about character as much as anything.

Still, as I said to Barb the other day, “It’s frustrating to spend so much time on the stuff some readers skip.”

Here’s where you can pre-order Antiques Round-Up; it’s out on Oct. 7. It’s likely also available via the Net at anywhere else you like to buy your books.


Hardcover:
E-Book: Nook Kobo Google PLay
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Here’s a review of The Two Jakes 4-K Blu-ray (from Kino Lorber) that is a comprehensive look at the film and the disc, and includes the commentary by Heath Holland and myself about the film. You have to scroll down to read that, but the whole review (my opinion is higher than the reviewer’s of the film itself, but the review is thoughtful and fair, even when I don’t entirely agree with it).

The Two Jakes poster excerpt

This a new bio of me at a Dick Tracy Wiki site. Looks extensive, though I admit not reading it yet.

M.A.C.

Another Film Fest Award and…A Tricky One

Tuesday, September 9th, 2025

I wasn’t able to attend the Iowa Independent Film Awards, as I’m still in recuperation mode. I’m disappointed I couldn’t be there Saturday for our screening. But Death by Fruitcake did well just the same.

Death by Fruitcake IIFA award
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This is a tricky one for me, because I try to stay away from politics here. And my wife Barb, wisely, reminds me that people don’t come to this update/blog for such things. It’s difficult to restrain myself, sometimes; but mostly I do.

Let me say at the outset that I feel a need to let you know how events of the day have impacted my plans for the next Nate Heller novel. That’s what makes this germane, because I have mentioned, even discussed, that prospective novel several times. I’ve even presented it as my last Heller novel, and one I’ve in some respects been leading up to.

Now I may not write it at all, and you – those of you who are generous enough to follow my work – have a right to know why this book has been (at least) shelved for now or (at worst) never will get written. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that it basically means I’m considering two more Heller novels, not just one.

Also, I’m not fishing for a conversation or exchange of opinions here. Few facts are immutable, but this one is: no one ever won an argument on Facebook (or other Social Media); no one ever changed anybody’s mind on those platforms. I’m not going to try to. How you think, what you believe, is not my business.

Here’s how this transpired.

I was watching TV and saw Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and wondered if he had, if not damaged, the Kennedy name, brought it into a kind of doubt. He strikes me as a crank, and a dangerous one; some smart people disagree, but enough people share that view – that as Secretary of Health and Human Services he is a threat to health and human services – that the Robert F. Kennedy name is not something I dare, at the moment, hang a Heller on. It may already have hurt Too Many Bullets, my Heller RFK assassination novel.

I don’t do this lightly. I first asked Barb if she agreed that this was a bad time to embark on an RFK novel (the theme was to be RFK/Hoffa, as my previous Kennedy-oriented novels have more than hinted at). She immediately agreed and said, “Write something else.” I called my editor, Charles Ardai, at Hard Case Crime and asked if he thought I should do a different, non-Kennedy novel instead of the one we’d been planning (and that I was contracted to deliver). He was thrilled I was setting that subject aside (for now anyway). I asked my longtime researcher, George Hagenaur, what he thought. He, too, said it was a bad time to do a Kennedy book.

So. I am instead going to write a Watergate novel, which was already one of two Heller novels I was considering doing, for quite a while now. It seems like a good time to deal with a cover-up.

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This article celebrates the marriage of Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart 75 years ago. You’ll have to scroll down to get to the meat of it, but it’s a nice piece.

Speaking of anniversaries, next year (2026) will mark Quarry’s 50th anniversary. The Broker, the first book’s title imposed on me (it’s now titled correctly as Quarry) went on sale in 1976. I had actually started it at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop in 1972 and finished it in 1973; but the anniversary is of the publication, not when I completed it.

Here is an audio review of The Wrong Quarry. A very nice one at that, and for one of my favorite novels in the series.

This will lead you to the wonderful blog, The Stilleto Gumshoe, where several Mickey Spillane articles appear and one of them is for Spillane, the bio by Jim Traylor and me. Good Spillane/Hammer/Velda stuff in general, but the bio review is a honey.

M.A.C.