Posts Tagged ‘Trash ‘n’ Treasures’

A “Big” Book Giveaway

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022
The Big Bundle cover
Hardcover:
E-Book: Kobo Google Play
Digital Audiobook:

I had hoped to do a book giveaway with copies of the Spillane bio, but I don’t have enough copies to do so – what I have has to go out to a handful of professional reviewers. Apologies.

But we do have a book giveaway this week – the new Nathan Heller, The Big Bundle, from Hard Case crime. I have ten trade paperbacks of the novel (which will be published initially in hardcover – these are ARC’s, Advance Reader’s Copies).

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

Because the physical copies of the book are tied up at the London docks, the novel won’t go on sale until some time in January. But the e-book is available Dec. 6 and the audio (indeed read by the great Dan John Miller!) is available now. So you should be able to post Amazon reviews as soon as you’ve read the book.

By the way, I received copies of the audio of The Big Bundle a few days ago, so it exists!

Speaking of which, here’s a spiffy review of The Big Bundle from the Considering Stories web site to whet your appetites:

THE CASE OF THE MISSING $300K:
MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ THE BIG BUNDLE
by Daniel Robichaud

When detective-to-the-stars Nathan Heller is called in to consult on the kidnap job in 1953, he’s got a few successes under his belt for work he’s done. The big marks on his record in terms of working kidnapping jobs was the work he did on the Lindbergh Baby case, which history has shown did not end at all well. Still, he’s a fresh set of eyes and ideas for the job, and the person or people who took Robert and Virginia Greenlease’s son Bobby from a boarding school are not exactly criminal masterminds. They snatched the kid just fine but walking the parents and the authorities through the ransom process has been trial after trial, with bumbling, idiocy, and amateurism on the kidnappers side. However, the ransom is the biggest on record so far: $600,000 in cash.

Well, Heller finds himself involved, but not as much as he might’ve wished. The FBI is calling the shots, when the local law is not interfering, and when Nate has the opportunity to wait for the perps and tail them or beat the answers out of them, he’s pulled away in an effort to save the kid’s life. By the novel’s midpoint, that particular mystery is mostly resolved: the fate of the kid is answered, the kidnappers are identified, and the money is recovered. Well, half of the money is recovered. The rest of the cash just vanishes into midair. All of that is historically correct, author Max Allan Collins finding gaps in real history to find a space for his fictional detective’s involvement along with some sly reworking of the facts and involved persons in order to make a satisfying narrative. As Westlake alluded in the opening of his tabloid-themed novel Trust Me On This, the real world seldom relies on plausibility while novelists are constrained by an audience’s suspension of disbelief.

One could consider the book to that point a rather involving work in its own right, but once that case is resolved, Collins really opens up the period and the scope, as parties are interested in figuring out just what happened to the missing cash. Fast forwarding to 1958, we find Senator Robert Kennedy convinced the money has made its way to the Teamsters via gangster connections—his Senate Rackets Committee is trying to find a platform to prosecute the leadership of that union. However, Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa believes the cash ended up in crooked hands. Both of these men want Nate Heller to go looking, and all roads lead him back to Saint Louis where the money disappeared in the first place.

It is there that Nate finds himself once again in crosshairs, people working angles and exploring various lines for locating the missing cash. Some familiar faces might know more than they are letting on, but all of them are interested in getting their own piece of the action, whether that’s a percentage of the missing fortune or a kickback. Will Nate find out what happened to all that boodle, or will he wind up one more victim, his career or even his life laid upon the sacrificial altar of mankind’s greed?

Max Allan Collins has been chronicling the life, times, and career of Nate Heller. The Big Bundle is the eighteenth novel featuring the detective, though he’s also appeared in numerous short stories and novellas. Heller’s adventures kicked off with 1983’s True Detective (which takes place in the 1930s). The books are generally engaging historical thrillers, balancing good research, engaging characters, and twisty mysteries. This eighteenth volume is no exception, either.

In The Big Bundle, we find Heller in his late forties. He’s got enough experience to know how to handle himself, and he’s not as prone to the sorts of leaps that younger folks get up to—but he’s also not so old that he’s completely risk averse. There’s a measured quality to his embrace of trouble that is engaging. Here’s a guy who will still get in over his head, who better understands the stakes as well as his own abilities. It’s the perspective of age that makes this adventure all the more intriguing. In fact, Collins has never shied away from involving Heller in some major historical crimes and situations.

The historical elements in The Big Bundle are big headline stuff from the times, in fact. The details behind the Greenlease Kidnapping and its resolution are easily available to true crime afficionados, and the general beats of the case are unchanged here. Those in the know will not find surprises in the flow of the case itself, but Collins does inject his character into the scenario in unexpected ways. Because Nate Heller has a history with corruption himself, he’s just as often seen as a force of law and order as a tool of the Chicago mob, and this dual reputation gives him access to places and people that normal law enforcement cannot. Collins uses the duality quite nicely here. That he gets to engage with people on both side of the case is quite enjoyable.

The later stuff takes a bit more license with history, using some big events and personalities as well as some created characters. It all rings just true enough that I don’t feel compelled to check a history book, which is how I most enjoy my historical fiction. A lived-in sense of the world, and a quirky perspective on the times are more enjoyable for me than a strict, dry, academic approach to the subject. Fans of James Kestrel’s Five Decembers will find plenty to love in Collins’ playing with history. The Big Bundle is a straight-ahead suspense yarn, a pairing of mysteries nested comfortably in real world events, more or less.

And though it is the eighteenth book in the Heller series, it stands on its own quite well. The first person narration hits on some of the events from past novels but does so without spoiling the secrets and suspense those books contain, inviting us to continue with the Heller series if we like the character here.

And there is plenty to appreciate. Nate Heller is a detective, and therefore a kind of knightly character committed to the resolution of mysteries. He’s not necessarily as righteous as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but he does walk down some mean streets. And given the aforementioned dual reputation, he’s as bound to rub elbows with racketeers or hoods as he is with honest citizens or law enforcement. In fact, Heller is a just character in terms of his understanding of right and wrong, as it applies to the way he operates and leads his life. But he also compartmentalizes this moral code while operating in a tough world.

The Big Bundle is a sprawling epic of mystery and suspense, a private eye story without any dames walking into offices but plenty of big, bad world to challenge our point of view character’s moral compass and detective skills. The book is bound to win new fans to the author’s series character, and one hopes Heller gets a bit of the same treatment as either Collins’ Quarry or Nolan characters, which both saw new releases as well as reissues of the earlier books in slick, new Hard Case Crime editions. The book is a dynamite read.

The Big Bundle is available for pre-order in eBook, hardcover, and audiobook editions from the fine folks at Hard Case Crime. The earlier novels have appeared in affordable eBook, paperback, and audiobook editions along with much of the prolific author’s backlist.

Check out the website here.

I have completed Too Many Bullets, the even newer Nathan Heller novel (out some time next year), and thanks to my indefatigable editor at Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, it’s really completed. Charles is blazingly fast, at least with my books. As almost a practical joke, I sent the novel out on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, saying it was just in time to ruin the long holiday weekend.

Well, Charles had finished his read-through and had all his notes…Friday morning! I spent the day dealing with his notes and fixing typos and such he’d spotted (and I’m pleased, even proud to say he likes the novel a lot). And now, with the ink barely dry…the novel is finished. Really finished.

Charles and I even worked on the backcover copy, which will also appear on the HCC web site.

All that remains is, at some point, a proof-reader to go through it and I’ll have a few questions to answer. Understand that this process can take months. And months. To finish a novel and two days later be doing the corrections and editorially requested tweaks is…astonishing.

Now I feel a little lost. I puttered around Saturday not knowing what to do with myself. This is a common feeling I have when I finish writing a book. I am working my ass off to finish it, then…what am I to do with myself?

I am taking most of December off from novel writing – I will have my draft of Antiques Faux to write come January. But I will be working on the video edit of the Mike Hammer play with Gary Sandy, Encore for Murder. I’ve seen the first act of two from editor Chad Bishop, and I like it. Not sure what to do with it, since it is after all an amateur production…though Gary, a real pro, is at its center; and the local cast seems pretty darn good to me.

As you may recall, this is a radio-style production, scripts in hand, though there is costuming and a big screen for scene-setting slides. We did this professionally, twice, in Owensboro and Clearwater, and I think this one stacks up nicely.

One idea I have is to include it as a bonus feature on the proposed disc of the expanded documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, which is in progress.

* * *

A movie recommendation and a Blu-ray recommendation….

The Menu

The Menu (in theaters now) is an excellent black comedy with a strong cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anna Taylor-Joy (in probably her best post-Queen’s Gambit role). Writer Seth Reiss is a veteran of the Onion and Comedy Bang! Bang!, his co-writer Will Tracy comes from Succession. Those credits make a lot of sense, because The Menu is very funny and very dark. The critics have mostly liked it, but miss the point by focusing on the film as a satire on the foodie culture when it’s much more about class in general.

El Vampiro Negro

From Flicker Alley on Blu-ray comes El Vampiro Negro, another outstanding Eddie Muller discovery, the best yet of the South of the Border noirs he’s dug up (which is saying something). Despite the “Vampiro,” this is not a horror film – rather, amazingly, it’s a remake of Fritz Lang’s seminal crime thriller M (1931), in which Peter Lorre made himself known to the world in all his creepy glory. M is one of the great movies, and it spawned a strong American remake of the same title by director Joseph Losey, a film doomed to be underrated.

What is amazing about El Vampire Negro is that it rivals the original and, in my admittedly skewed view (but one that Muller agrees with), is my favorite of the three versions. It just might be superior to the original. (Muller agrees.)

While Negro has familiar elements from Lang – the whistling by the serial killer of “Hall of the Mountain King,” for instance – it has an entirely new twist by putting women…the mothers of the little girl victims…at the center of the narrative. The main character, nowhere to be seen in M, is a chanteuse (Olga Zubarry) in a seedy nightclub. Madame Zubarry is excellent, alternately recalling young Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Graham. The seeming hero, a pillar of law enforcement, is a bully and a creep (though humanized by his love for his crippled wife). The shadows and Dutch angles are superbly rendered. This is a genuine noir find.

El Vampiro Negro
* * *

Rod Lott, guru of Bookgasm, also has the Flick Attack movie site, where he talks about I, the Jury (1953) and does so intelligently.

M.A.C.

Upcoming Titles, A Recommendation & A Couple Warnings

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022
Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction cover

I have received a handful of ARCs of Spillane – King of Pulp Fiction, the upcoming biography of Mickey by Jim Traylor and me. It’s a thing of beauty! Mysterious Press did an outstanding job with the packaging. I will soon be doing a book giveaway for a few copies (possibly five) of this trade paperback version of what will be available in hardcover on (note new pub date) Feb. 7, 2023.

The new Nate Heller, The Big Bundle, is delayed, a fact that has dismayed some readers. But the book exists and is in fact a December 2022 title…it’s just held up at the UK docks by a strike. It will be available on Dec. 6 on e-book.

Better news for those dying to read something by yours truly – the first Kindle boxed set from Wolfpack of my work, Max Allan Collins Collection Vol. One: Eliot Ness is a Kindle Deal running from Wednesday, November 30 to Wednesday, December 7, 2022. The price will be dropping from $3.99 to $0.99 during that time period. That’s a quarter a book, which is what I used to pay for new paperbacks when I was in junior high. This is all four of the Eliot Ness in Cleveland novels (Nate Heller guests in two of ‘em).

A Big Bundle book giveaway is coming soon, too. Remember, if you get the novel prior to its publication date (some of you received it via NetGalley), your review can’t appear till we hit that date.

I am working now on the final chapters of the next Heller, Too Many Bullets, about the RFK assassination. It’s a big book, on the lines of True Detective, and in a sense it’s the bookend to that first Heller memoir. It’s been very difficult, in part because of my health issues (doing better, thanks) but also because it’s one of the most complicated cases I’ve dealt with. It has required more time compression and composite characters than I usually employ, and I spend a lot of time discussing with Barb what’s fair and what isn’t fair in an historical novel. I’ve been writing those since 1981 and I still wrestle with that question.

Also, there has been replotting, which is not unusual in the final section of a Heller as the need to tighten up the narrative frequently means a sub-plot gets jettisoned, particularly one that doesn’t rear its head till the last hundred pages.

But I’ll tell you what’s really unfair: using Barb as a sounding board when she’s working on her own draft of the next Antiques novel (Antiques Foe).

I am also wrestling with (and I’ve mentioned this before in these updates) how long I should to stay at it with Heller. The degree of difficulty (as I’ve also mentioned before) is tough at this age. Right now I am considering a kind of coda novel (much like Skim Deep for Nolan and Quarry’s Blood for Quarry) that would wrap things up. The Hoffa story still needs a complete telling.

Should I go that direction, and should my health and degree of interest continue on a positive course, I might do an occasional Heller in a somewhat shorter format. Of course, the problem with that is these crimes are always more complex than I think they’re going to be. I thought The Big Bundle would be an ideal lean-and-mean hardboiled PI novel, perfect for Heller’s debut at Hard Case Crime. But the complexities of a real crime like the Greenlease kidnapping tripped me up. On the other hand, the book – probably a third longer than I’d imagined – came out very well. In my view, anyway.

And with Too Many Bullets, I thought the RFK killing would make a kind of envelope around the Hoffa story, maybe a hundred, hundred-fifty pages of material.

Wrong.

* * *

Last week I recorded (with Phil Dingeldein) the commentary of ClassicFlix’s upcoming widescreen release of The Long Wait, based on Mickey Spillane’s 1951 non-Hammer bestseller. I like the commentary better than my I, the Jury one and have been astonished by just how good I think both the film of I, the Jury and The Long Wait are, since I was used to seeing them in cropped, dubby VHS gray-market versions (and because Mickey himself hated them). Widescreen makes all the difference on Long Wait, and Anthony Quinn is a wonderful Spillane hardboiled hero.

I will report here on when the Blu-ray/4K release is scheduled. It won’t be as pricey as I, the Jury because the 3-D factor is absent.

* * *
Millie Bobbie Brown in Enola Holmes 2

Living under a rock as I do, I had somehow missed the fact that the Enola Holmes movies (there are two, one quite recent, both on Netflix) starred the talented Millie Bobbie Brown of Stranger Things. I also got it into my head that these were kid movies. Wrong again!

These are two excellent, quirky Sherlock Holmes movies, with Henry Cavill excellent as the young Holmes, and very tough films despite a light-hearted touch manifested by Enola (Brown, absolutely wonderful) breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience. It’s tricky and charming, and reminiscent – but actually kind of superior – to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies.

Do not miss these.

Here’s one you can miss: Lou. A lesser Netflix flick, it stars the excellent Allison Janney and starts fairly well, but devolves into ridiculous plot twists and makes a bait-and-switch out of the entire movie.

Also, I have made it clear here that I am a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, particularly starting with Inglorious Bastards – prior to that, the self-conscious references to his favorite films were too on the nose for my taste, although I revisited them after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (a masterpiece) and had less trouble.

I don’t usually criticize other writers, but after trying to read his new book I am convinced Tarantino needs to stick to film, where he colors wildly but within the lines.

His Cinema Speculation is opinionated blather about ‘70s and ‘80s films that reminds us that Tarantino once worked at a video store. This is absolutely the kind of stuff a motormouth, know-it-all video clerk used to put us through when we were just trying to rent the damn movie.

* * *

This is a re-edit of an interview I gave to the Des Moines Register back in 2016 (I think). It’s not bad.

And here you can see a much younger me (and Chet Gould and Rick Fletcher) on the occasion of Dick Tracy’s 50th birthday.

M.A.C.

Give Me a Little Sugar (Creek), Baby

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022
Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek cover
Hardcover: Indiebound Amazon Books-A-Million (BAM) Barnes & Noble (B&N) Powell's
Paperback (New Release!): Indiebound Bookshop.org Amazon Books-A-Million (BAM) Barnes & Noble (B&N) Powell's
E-Book: Amazon Google Play Kobo iTunes
Digital Audiobook: Libro.fm Amazon Google Play Kobo Chirp

This week features a book giveaway of the mass market edition of Shoot-out at Sugar Creek, which looks to be the final Caleb York novel.

[All copies have now been claimed. Thank you! –Nate]

I hate having to hang up my Stetson and shootin’ iron, but Kensington has not requested another in the series, and one of the few other publishers of westerns, Five Star, is shutting down its corral. That leaves Wolfpack, but my sales there don’t yet justify doing more novels for those fine folks (not sarcasm – Mike and Jake Bray and my old buddy Paul Bishop are tops).

Anyway, as I’ve indicated here recently, I am slowing down by choice and necessity. Part of it is health concerns and just the reality of growing older (more about this later), some of it is shrinking markets for my work, and another concern is not wanting to work so damn hard.

My somewhat decreased output will be in line with what most writers would consider their normal output, and the trickle (as compared to a deluge) of M.A.C. books will not be readily apparent, as several completed things are coming up yet this year and next. The Big Bundle, the new Heller, is out in December from Hard Case Crime. Two more Fancy Anders novellas will be coming out from NeoText, who are also doing the Barbara/Max collaboration, Cutout, also a novella and a damn good one.

And I am just past the half-way point on Too Many Bullets, the Nate Heller taking on the Robert Kennedy assassination. I have in mind one further Heller, finally dealing head-on with Jimmy Hoffa (and RFK), which I hope to convince Hard Case Crime to let me do next year.

That is likely to wrap up the Heller saga, although one never knows. This cycle of three RFK-related novels (The Big Bundle, Too Many Bullets and the untitled Hoffa book) will be chronologically the last. I consider the Heller saga to be my best work, but they are exceptionally hard to do. My longtime researcher George Hagenauer has not been involved with the more recent books, except peripherally, which obviously puts the research on my shoulders.

My intention (and this is obviously subject to change) is to finish up this Heller/RFK cycle and then return to a few Quarry novels. If the Nolan movie happens, he and Jon could return…but only in the event of that movie happening (the series has been optioned by Lionsgate).

On the Mike Hammer front, I have signed to do the final two for Titan. A few fragments remain that might become short stories; but closing out the Hammer series is another indication that I am winding down.

And next on my docket is my draft of Antiques Foe (Barb is working on her draft now).

Let me assure the handful of you who care that as long as I have my marbles I will be writing prose fiction. I may do one last Perdition novel, for example, and I have a Neo-Text project that will include novellas about Audie Murphy and John Wayne as well as an unlikely third American hero.

The third act nature of what I’m up to has reflected itself in the recent work. Quarry in Quarry’s Blood finds our boy an old man now, of 70 or so; and the next one I do is likely to be a follow-up with him again in that age range. Nate Heller in Too Many Bullets (and to a degree in The Big Bundle) is an older guy who gets involved in cases that resonate with his past – i.e., the similarity of Zangara in True Detective and Sirhan Sirhan in Too Many Bullets.

Speaking of The Big Bundle, stay tuned for a book giveaway – I have some ARCs that will be available in a week or two.

* * *

A number of you have been kind enough – though I’ve discouraged you not to – to write me both in the comments here and in private e-mails with your concern and best wishes for my A-fib adventures. Everyone has my blessing to skip the rest of this section of the update as I deal with what happened since last week’s entry.

I was scheduled to have the cardioversion procedure at Trinity in Rock Island on Thursday (Oct. 20). But I had a couple of bad days and really bad nights early last week, and Barb insisted on Tuesday morning that I call my heart doc’s nurse, first thing, and let her know what my symptoms were. (For the record, extreme shortness of breath, wheezing, and an inability to sleep unless I sat in a chair and leaned forward. This was very much like what I experienced before going in for heart surgery in 2016).

Anyway, the nurse told me (in forceful but less colorful terms) to get my ass up to the emergency room in Rock Island at the heart center. We were convinced I’d get an EKG, some meds, and be told to report back on Thursday as planned. But, no – the efficient staff got me right in, and in an astonishingly short four hours, I had the cardioversion procedure and was heading home (Barb at the wheel).

The doctor was female (not my usual cardiologist, though he was consulted by her several times) as were most of the techs, and their kindness, good humor and efficiency gave me hope for the human race. (Not a lot of hope, but hope.) I was extremely impressed, and gobsmacked by having my problem addressed so quickly and well.

I am still in recovery mode. I still have the same symptoms, but dialed back considerably. This may be a side effect of some heavy medication I am still on that was part of getting me ready for the procedure.

Okay, I understand this is not the exciting stuff I reported in 2016, when after my heart surgery I ran naked down the hospital corridor thinking murder was afoot in the Columbo episode I was hallucinating (note to self: continue to avoid Ambien).

But it will have to do.

And thank you all for your concern. I can only say that my biggest concern during all this was dying before I finished the Heller.

* * *

A few quick words about movies and TV that Barb and I have enjoyed (or not enjoyed).

See How They Run, a British mystery centered around Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, is strangely flat, conveying a sense of everybody being all dressed up with no where to go. It is perhaps the only Sam Rockwell performance (he’s inexplicably cast as a British detective) I’ve seen that underwhelms. A while back someone wrote in saying how they cringed when I called something “painfully diverse” in its casting. Well, I’m saying it again about this one. Agatha Christie’s archeologist husband Sir Max Mallowan is portrayed by a Black actor, and a producer is planning to leave his wife and marry his Black secretary. In the early 1950s. It’s very possible that younger viewers will have no problem with either, but for those of us who have been on the planet a while, the historical inaccuracy of that is a big stumbling block.

We walked out of Amsterdam, despite its stellar cast (so stellar as to be distracting and even annoying). It’s apparently a comedy, but plays like a bad imitation of Wes Anderson. You will come out humming the art direction. (Fun fact: the historical event it centers upon is the one from the 3-part pilot of City of Angels, “The November Plan.”)

Barb did not see Halloween Ends, which is streaming on Peacock (and is in theaters). I did. It’s surprisingly good, making an effort to do something different and not just pile up the gory kills. After an initial Michael Myers attack, the next hour is…wait for it…story. Jamie Lee Curtis pulls it all together.

Confess, Fletch is a good little comic mystery with John Hamm fine as Gregory Mcdonald’s celebrated anti-hero. It reminded me of going to the movies in the ‘70s and ‘80s and seeing something small but entertaining.

Did I already mention Bullet Train here? It’s a ride.

* * *

Here’s a nice interview with Andy Rausch, who is writing a biography about someone or other.

Deadly Beloved And Other Stories cover

Here’s where you can get Deadly Beloved and Other Stories. It’s not my Ms. Tree novel of that title, but a collection of Johnny Craig stories from the EC comics that corrupted so many youths (including mine).

A nice little write-up here celebrates Conrad Hall’s posthumous Road to Perdition Academy Award.

Check out the classic “Theme from Ms. Tree” right here.

Finally, have a gander at this terrific review of the Blu-ray of I, the Jury.

M.A.C.

M.A.C. Collection From Wolfpack & A Spillane Rave

Tuesday, October 18th, 2022

Another short update, I’m afraid.

My medical issues are coming to a head and I will be trying to deal with them this week. Good thoughts and crossed fingers are appreciated.

Here is the appearance by Barb and me on the Paula Sands Show recently, promoting Antiques Liquidation.

The first in a new series of e-book boxed sets from Wolfpack is available now – The Max Allan Collins Collection, Volume One: Eliot Ness. Works out to less than a buck a book!


E-Book:

There will be five e-book boxed sets in the overall Max Allan Collins Collection, plus a Mickey Spillane collection.

Come Spy With Me is set for a $.99 Kindle Countdown Deal Oct 19th – 25th.


E-Book:

The first review of the Spillane bio by Jim Traylor and me has just appeared, and it’s strong, despite being from the meanest, toughest reviewing service in the world: Kirkus.

SPILLANE King of Pulp Fiction
Author: Max Allan Collins
Author: James L. Traylor

Review Issue Date: November 15, 2022
Online Publish Date: October 20, 2022
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Pages: 400
Price ( Hardcover ): $26.95
Publication Date: January 10, 2023
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-1-61316-379-5
Section: NonFiction

A full-dress biography of the most polarizing practitioner of 20th-century crime fiction.

As Collins and Traylor note, nearly everyone deplored the sex and violence of Mickey Spillane’s (1918-2006) midcentury novels about private eye Mike Hammer—though that didn’t stop the millions of readers who catapulted him to the top of bestseller lists and kept him there. Delving into Spillane’s roots, the authors examine the evolution of comic-book hero Mike Lancer into Mike Hammer, cite contemporaneous reviewers who talked up or trash-talked Hammer’s adventures, and explore Spillane’s multimedia activities during the 10 years (1952-1962) of Hammer’s absence from the printed page. (Why the long silence? Collins and Traylor believe Spillane was waiting for his disadvantageous contract with film producer Victor Saville to expire). Warning in their opening chapter of spoilers ahead, the authors proceed to summarize the mysteries and solutions of all Hammer’s early novels. They’re at their best when mapping the Spillane metaverse, which includes novels, stories, articles, comic strips, radio broadcasts, TV programs, and movies, and weakest in their uncritical praise of their subject as a plotter, stylist, Jehovah’s Witness, and human being (a verdict his first two wives might have contested). “Mickey encouraged our best efforts, all the while sharing his humanity, generosity, and down-to-earth nature,” they write. “This book reflects not just our love for his work, but for the man, with thanks for his encouragement and friendship.” Spillane’s appealing directness provides an endless stream of anecdotes. The authors conclude with a formidable array of appendices, ranging from an autobiographical fragment that takes Spillane from birth to age 14 to an essay on “Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane” to a brace of bibliographies and an account of some of their own extensive dealings with the author when he was alive and the work Collins has continued to complete since his death.

Fans who’ve been waiting for a life of Spillane will gobble this up.

A decent review of the new volume in the Titan archival Ms. Tree collections comes from the Slings and Arrows site.

M.A.C.