Review by C.J. Bunce
Pretty soon we’ll be 50 years since author Max Allan Collins published his novel Quarry’s Deal in 1976. Last year here at borg we reviewed his most recent, the 17th novel in the Quarry series, Quarry’s Return, chronicling the senior–but hardly less active–years of the Vietnam vet whose return from the service wasn’t at all what he expected, and the subject of a Cinemax television series (reviewed here at borg in 2019). The great thing about Collins’ crime fiction? Readers have so many ways to get their fix, including his Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer novels, his Heller and Nolan novels, and at least four other book series and standalone novels, the most popular being his Road to Perdition (browse our reviews of several here). Hard Case Crime has returned to one of its many novels that helped keep Quarry growing into a major series, re-issuing the fifth novel in the series, The Last Quarry, available at Amazon now here, and originally released for the 30th anniversary of the character. Of course, every new Quarry novel seems like it’s the last, but it’s more fun reading each as a standalone. Fans of Collins won’t be disappointed in this one.
Whereas Quarry’s Return was one version of the end, The Last Quarry makes a good finale, too. This is the infamous crime noir “one last job” trope at work, finding Quarry still living the retirement life up at his home at Sylvan Lake in Minnesota. One night he decides he needs to get a snack and heads to the local all-night gas stop where he notices a large man buying a package of tampons.
As readers will find in an extensive Collins afterword, the 2006 novel is an expansion of a short story Collins wrote based on actually being in this position many years ago. What was that guy up to anyway? In the novel, Collins’ retired hitman can’t let it go. It helps that Quarry recognizes the man as one of a pair of hired guns who fought him many years ago.
Who is Quarry at his core? Of course he is a tough guy on the surface, another Chuck Norris type or someone to be played by Bronson or McQueen. But inside he’s a marshmallow, as he demonstrates over and over in these stories (also on the chauvinist side, which comes with the pulp noir crime genre). Having empathy makes him likeable, no matter his other flaws. How else would we have our protagonist in this kind of series, a man who came home from serving in Vietnam only to find his wife cheating on him?
Here Quarry decides to rescue a young woman kidnapped by the duo, only to turn around and make the woman’s father pay him the ransom. So he’s not altogether “good.” But when that man hires him for his last job, does he take it or leave it?
He takes the job because he’s bored, but then he meets the target: a beautiful–and very nice–young woman. Then he learns the circumstances behind the hit are even more disturbing: it’s a hit on the man’s own daughter.
If you’re new to the genre but are enjoying the TV series Duster, this book (and the entire series) makes a good entry point to crime noir.
And if you’ve only meandered through Quarry stories over the years, just pick one and jump aboard, like Quarry’s Blood, Killing Quarry, or Quarry’s Return. Or this one. Artist Robert McGinnis provided the painted cover art. Recommended for fans of crime novels, Collins’s writing, the Quarry TV series and novels, and anyone looking for a good read, pick up The Last Quarry now everywhere books are sold, and here at Amazon.
