Review by C.J. Bunce

I’m not sure whether I view the next Max Allan Collins novel as a dessert or a fine main course I am just saving for later.  I feel the same way about getting my hands on a Donald E. Westlake novel I haven’t read yet.  I particularly will be first in line for Collins’ long-time, sometime heroes/sometime anti-heroes in their later years.  But I never really want to get to the end.  Collins has created fleshed out interesting guys with guns who become just as interesting older guys with guns working through and moving past life’s daily challenges as they solve mysteries or simply survive.   He’s done this in the later books for his Nolan and Quarry characters and even his Mike Hammer he shared with Mickey Spillane.  You can’t help finding these guys more accessible with those extra aches and pains, and it will draw you even closer to the characters than in their early stories.  In Collins’ next all-new Quarry novel for Hard Case Crime, Quarry’s Reunion (available for pre-order here at Amazon), Collins celebrates 50 years of his Vietnam vet turned assassin, making Quarry the longest running character in the American crime novel genre yet.  This time Quarry is called back to the Ohio town he was raised in for his 50th class reunion.  It’s everything Quarry could have dreamed of and more.  The book is the second Collins book I’ve reviewed this year following the New Year’s release of The Return of the Maltese Falcon (reviewed here).  You won’t want to pass up either book, two exceptional and different takes on crime fiction.

Old Man Quarry in a class reunion trope?  Like many guys in his late sixties, he’s not eager to go back, although the daily swimmer was once a high school swimming star, making him a popular guy.  Everyone in town is familiar with his Vietnam service… and the fact that he killed the guy his wife cheated with upon his return home.  This journey begins when a woman in her fifties shows up at his home.  Quarry is still living the retirement life up at his home at Sylvan Lake in Minnesota, keeping busy running the lodge and tangent businesses.  But this woman looks a lot like a girl he dated in high school.  Back at his pool she starts coming onto Quarry, then she reveals she was sent there to bring him back to Fair View, not for the reunion but because she needs help.  Someone is trying to kill her.

So upon his return to Fair View, he encounters not one, not two, but three girls from his past.  Could Quarry be dreaming?  I’m a fan of fiction that isn’t science fiction but has plenty of “time travel” like this.  Who doesn’t want to go back and revisit the past–unless the past isn’t all you imagined it to be?  One of my favorite Philip K. Dick novels is his In Milton Lumky Territory (I need to review this book here sometime), where a man falls for an older woman.  She sure seems familiar to him, but he can’t figure out why.  The next thing you know he’s married to his grade school teacher.  It would make a great pairing with Quarry’s Reunion.

Reunited lovers.  Missed opportunities reclaimed.  Bodies drop.  There’s duplicity.  Fists swing.  And the requisite damsels in distress and femmes fatales.  How many bullets leave Quarry’s gun this time around?

One more thing.  In the past year I stumbled on the Max Allan Collins website, a great trove of information and author blog.  Low and behold, Collins responded to my review back in 2023 (found here) of Hard Case Crime’s reprint of the Quarry story Spree in the Mad Money collection in an article called “Rule #1: Never Respond to a Reviewer.”  It’s a great read so stop what you’re doing and go over and check it out.  First, I love Collins’ comments.  It’s a rare opportunity for me–and readers–to see an exchange of sorts between writer and reviewer, and it’s one of those times the Internet can be an awesome thing.  I’m not going to nitpick anything other than to respond that yes, “grime fiction” was not a typo, and I’m glad Collins didn’t take any offense to it.  Although in Quarry’s Reunion, a certain new character named Jenny Means says, “I read some of those books.  They’re kind of…”  Quarry interjects: “Dirty?”  Jenny responds: “Violent.  But, yes, sometimes… the nice word  is “erotic.”  Collins couldn’t say it better himse…

Which brings me to the “meta” element (I hate that word) I’ve discussed before in reviews of Collins’ Quarry novels.  The older Quarry character, after years working for the Broker, became a crime novelist, recounting his in-world, real-life exploits as fiction.  A few characters have been able to spot his identity over the past several novels.  It’s an entire level of fun for the reader to try to guess where novelist Quarry begins and novelist Collins ends (criminal activity aside, of course).  So right up front when (after reading Collins’ response to my article linked above) Quarry describes a woman’s breasts, I can sure see Collins inside Quarry’s head speaking directly to the reader (me?) when he says, “Now if you are frowning because that is sexist, but had no trouble mulling whether I needed to kill her or not, you are even more fucked up than I am.”  Ha!  My reaction was definitely and absolutely one of the best experiences I ever had as reader with an author.  Writing here at borg for a general audience while still drilling down into some genres I love deeper than others (like pulp crime, like British TV, like retro things, like concept art books), I do try to think through the balance for both newbs and diehards of what needs pointing out and what doesn’t, my assumption being anyone reading hard-boiled crime novels already knows there’s going to be crime, but the level of sex scenes varies depending on the writer and character.  Leave it to an actual author to be the one to give me feedback on that point!

I don’t think I’m biased but, frankly, tired of so many stories, series, and movies set in New York City or Los Angeles, his characters traipsing about the Midwest are a breath of fresh air (it’s also not because I, too, hail from Iowa, and met the man once at San Diego Comic-Con, but I think my wife got the better of the deal in our conversation with him–she’s also a mystery author and like Collins has had multiple Edgar Award nods, and she hails from that same writing department at that university in Iowa City).  So if you’re tired of the same old, same old for your next book, you have dozens more Max Allan Collins novels to explore, including his Heller and Nolan novels, plus his Mickey Spillane Mike Hammer 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).  If you’ve only meandered through Quarry stories over the years, just pick one and jump aboard, like The First Quarry, Quarry’s Blood, Killing Quarry, Quarry’s Return or The Last Quarry.  Or this one, which offers some crisply written backstory in the first chapter to get anyone up to speed.  Artist Paul Mann provided the painted cover art for this first edition trade paperback.  Recommended for fans of crime novels, Collins’s writing, the Quarry TV series and novels, anyone looking for a good class reunion plot, grime fiction, or if you’re just up for a great read, pick up Quarry’s Reunion available tomorrow everywhere books are sold, and here at Amazon.