Posts Tagged ‘The Lusitania Murders’

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.

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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.

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Here’s an interview with yrs truly.

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

M.A.C.

What, Me Retro?

Tuesday, November 24th, 2015

I was watching the pilot of the Cinemax QUARRY with my wife, son and daughter-in-law (don’t tell HBO), and Barb turned to me when the character the Broker first entered and nudged me and smiled and said: “You did that.”

Well, I did, but a long, long time ago. About 43 years. At the Writers Workshop in Iowa City, where the instructor didn’t like the opening chapters I’d written very much, and most of the class wasn’t wild about it either.

At 67, I suddenly find myself aware of how very long I’ve been doing this, and am gratified that suddenly a lot of what I’d thought to be ephemeral works of mine are turning back up in print, and getting on the radar of a new generation or two of readers. Some of what I’ve written has almost by definition been ephemeral – specifically the movie novelizations and TV tie-in’s – though SAVING PRIVATE RYAN remains in print and a publisher is seeking permission from DreamWorks to do a hardcover edition.

But almost everything else with my byline is available again or soon will be, much of it from Thomas & Mercer, but also such boutique publishers as Perfect Crime, Speaking Volumes and Brash Books.

For these weekly updates, I routinely do a Google search to see what reviews and such have popped up on the Net, for me to provide links here. More and more I am surprised to find write-ups about older books of mine. It’s almost jarring, because often the reviewers are more familiar with the work than I now am.

Of course, the new Hard Case Crime editions of the first five Quarry novels have sparked interest, and in particular QUARRY (the first novel) has received some gratifying attention. Here’s one such write-up.

And here’s another.

And one more.

Fairly regularly, somebody comes along and praises either the entire “Disaster Series” or singles out one of the books in particular, like this piece that focuses on THE LUSITANIA MURDERS.

So many of these reviews of older work of mine just seem to appear out of the blue, like this look at the Eliot Ness novel BULLET PROOF.

But nothing could prepare me for this article specifically focusing on the musical side of my years on the planet, discussing both the Daybreakers and Crusin’.

Here, dealing with a somewhat more recent novel, is a nice review of the Jack and Maggie Starr mystery, STRIP FOR MURDER.

Coming full circle, the just published FATE OF THE UNION is pulling in some nice reviews, like this lovely one from Bill Crider, a writer I much admire.

Finally, my pal Ed Gorman brought in Ben Boulden of Gravetapping to review FATE OF THE UNION on Ed’s terrific blog, also a positive review.

M.A.C.

Nate Heller’s A Big Deal

Tuesday, May 12th, 2015
Triple Play

The latest Kindle “Big Deal” sale runs through May 28. Of the 500 books selected, an impressive number are Nathan Heller titles:

True Detective
True Crime
The Million-Dollar Wound
Neon Mirage
Stolen Away
Carnal Hours
Blood and Thunder
Damned in Paradise
Flying Blind
Majic Man
Angel in Black
Chicago Confidential
Chicago Lightning: The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories
Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook

If you’ve never read a Nathan Heller novel, then…well, first of all, how the hell did you wind up here? But let’s say you drifted in looking for some other Max Allan Collins. I guess I’d suggest starting with the first written/published novel, TRUE DETECTIVE, although chronologically the later STOLEN AWAY and DAMNED IN PARADISE come before it. Another possibility for newbies (my God, what a horrible word) would be the short story collection, CHICAGO LIGHTNING, or the novella one, TRIPLE PLAY. The latter has the added value of the lovely Barbara Collins appearing on the cover.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch….

I continue work on THE BIG SHOWDOWN. I should wrap up the novel this week, although the process of re-reading, checking for continuity goofs, doing minor rewriting, and assembling the manuscript itself will take me into next week.

If this turns into a full-blown series – I’ve committed to three – the new book may be more indicative of where subsequent ones will go. LEGEND is something of a crime novel set in western terms; but SHOWDOWN is a mystery, with the protagonist operating as a detective. I don’t know how my editor will react, but my feeling is that with Spillane and Collins as the byline, readers should expect a genre-cross between hard-shooting western and noir mystery.

Response to THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK has been very good. Check out Tom McNulty’s fine review here.

And here’s another great one. Wow, you people are smart.

This may be the biggest LEGEND rave yet.

Of course, CALEB YORK isn’t the only Spillane/Collins title out there right now. There’s KILL ME, DARLING…which Mystery Maven says is the best of the Mike Hammer series!

Here’s some unexpected coverage for THE LUSITANIA MURDERS.

Finally, here’s some Cinemax News including QUARRY.

M.A.C.

Royal Reviews for KING OF THE WEEDS

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

Majestic reviews have been pouring in for the new Mike Hammer, KING OF THE WEEDS (I’ll share some of them below).

Barb and I drove to St. Louis for Mother’s Day weekend with son Nate and his bride Abby (see pic taken on Sunday at the Wildflower restaurant, site of their wedding in 2012). On the way there and back, we listened to Stacy Keach’s reading of KING OF THE WEEDS.

Mothers Day 2014

It’s impossible for me to overstate what a thrill it is for me to hear Stacy read these Spillane/Collins collaborations. He’s done an incredible job on all of them, but perhaps because of the vaguely melancholy nature of this tale of an older Hammer, he brought something very special to it.

The book itself was a tricky and challenging one, because Mickey had taken several passes at it, combining chapters from one draft into another. There are three major plot elements – the mob billions from BLACK ALLEY, the mysterious deaths of police officers by seeming accident, and the release of a man convicted of a notorious series of slayings forty years ago (Pat Chambers’ first major arrest). In various versions, Mickey would abandon one or more of these elements, and I determined – in part to use as much of his work as possible – to make all three weave together in a credible and interesting manner. I actually put off the writing of KING OF THE WEEDS till last among the major manuscripts, because I knew it would be a bear, and I feared it might be the weakest of the six. But I feel it turned out very well indeed – thanks in large part to the genius of Mickey Spillane – and reviewers and readers are agreeing, a number singling it out as the best of all six.

I was asked to write about the process of collaborating with the late great author by the first-rate UK site, Crimetime. Check out my article here.

Before we move on to the KING OF THE WEEDS reviews, I need to share a surprisingly tardy but extremely good review of THE WRONG QUARRY from Publisher’s Weekly this week:

Collins’s 10th noir featuring John Quarry (after 2010’s Quarry’s Ex) is easily his best—a sharp-edged thriller with more than one logical but surprising twist. Quarry used to work as a hit man on assignments arranged for him by a middleman known as the Broker, but that work ended when Quarry had to take him out. Making use of the Broker’s records, he has begun a new phase in his killing career. He identifies the targets of other hit men, and then, for a price, offers to take them out on behalf of the intended victims. And, for an extra fee, Quarry removes the threat entirely by killing the person who ordered the hit. The early 1980s find Quarry doing exactly that in the “Little Vacationland” of Stockwell, Mo. He learns that the local dance instructor, Roger Vale, is to be killed because he’s suspected of murdering a teenage girl, and offers to save his life, for a price. The lean prose, brisk pacing, and clever plotting are a winning combination.

Back to KING OF THE WEEDS. The October Country site has this fine review from a first-time Hammer reader.

The Book Reporter has these nice things to say about KING OF THE WEEDS.

My pal Ed Gorman, one of my generation’s best mystery writers, wrote this brief but fun salute to KING OF THE WEEDS.

You’ll have to scroll down to see it, but Comic Book Resources has good things to say about Mike Hammer’s latest at their site.

The UK’s Bookbag reviews the previous Mike Hammer, COMPLEX 90, a very good review of the “I’m-Embarrassed-But-I-Really-Like-This” school.

Here’s a nice review of the under-seen, under-reviewed FROM THE FILES OF…MIKE HAMMER collection from Hermes Press. I love this book but it’s expensive, so relatively few have seen it (like the McFarland MICKEY SPILLANE ON SCREEN). The reviewer gives nice props to Ed Robbins, but underplays Mickey’s own participation in the strip. Mickey co-plotted all of it and wrote the first two of three Sunday page continuities himself.

Now here’s a peculiar one but gratifying. Despite a painfully politically correct swipe at Mickey Spillane, this reviewer for the Daily Kos has interesting and nice things to say about (ready for this?) THE LUSITANIA MURDERS. Yes, the day KING OF THE WEEDS was published, and a week after ANTIQUES CON came out, the Daily Kos reviewed a book of mine from twelve years ago. But the reviewer likes it, so I’m fine with that.

M.A.C.