For A KILLING IN COMICS – hopefully the start of a new series – Max Allan Collins gets historical again, this time setting a hardboiled 1940s New York mystery in the dirty business of comic books.

Donny Harrison is an overweight, bald publisher of Americana Comics, home to such superhero hits as Wonder Guy, Batwing and Amazonia. He’s having a gala 50th birthday party in the hotel suite of his mistress when, all of a sudden, he croaks as he’s about to cut the cake, falling on the knife in his hands. By all accounts, Donny appears to have died from a combination of natural causes and a freak accident.

But Jack Starr thinks it’s murder, which a bit of evidence proves. He’s the detective who protects the interests of his late father’s Starr Syndicate, which publishes the comic strips based upon Americana’s costumed properties.

As Jack sees it, Donny had lots of enemies, or at least a lot of people who had good reason to see him dead: his wife, his mistress and his business partner, but also Wonder Guy’s two mild-mannered Jewish creators who are getting screwed out of money, and Batwing’s credit-hogging creator who’s also been balling the mistress. If these creative types at least partly mirror the real lives of Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster and Bob Kane, it’s intentional.

Because I already had read MEN OF TOMORROW, Gerald Jones’ nonfiction account of this era – and the Siegel/Schuster and Kane controversies, specifically – it was fun to read A KILLING OF COMICS with a knowing glance. But it’d be fun even if I hadn’t. This is Collins playing in Collins’ crime-ridden territory. With references to Dick Tracy and Mickey Spillane, the author is working within a world he loves, and it’s hard not to let his enthusiasm rub off.

Starr makes for a great guide, allowing Collins to work in some choice prose laden with a caustic wit, such as when a streetwalker is referred to one “whose charms promised pleasure but boded penicillin.” And there’s plenty of snappy patter between Starr and all the interrogated characters that capture the ’40s pulp flavor.

Coming on the heels of Collins’ higher-profile but underwhelming BLACK HATS, KILLING makes a killing of its own with its simple, straightforward pleasures. Making it even more special are the comic-panel illustrations leading off each chapter; they’re drawn by Collins’ MS. TREE collaborator Terry Beatty. There’s even a six-page, all-comic section that serves as a clue roundup of sorts, just before the murderer’s identity is revealed.

This looks like a job for … you, to spend an afternoon. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins