Of the three Quarry novels Hard Case Crime has published thus far, Max Allan Collins’ QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE is my least favorite, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t all kinds of awesome. Pick up any of them and you’re guaranteed a read that is fast, loose and start-to-finish “love it.”
Taking place between THE FIRST QUARRY and THE LAST QUARRY — more specifically, in the mid-1980s — the book finds hitman Quarry embarking on a new career path. Instead of just offing people for money, he’s getting revenge on his former employer by finding out who’s marked for death, then approaching those victims-to-be, informing them of the situation, and offering to off the guy who’s going to off them. It’s a living.
The latest buyer of Quarry’s services is Richard Cornell, who runs an illegal casino in a converted warehouse in a two-bit town. When first approached by Quarry, Cornell thinks he’s being shaken down: “You sound like Mario Puzo suffering from the D.T.s. What kind of fantasy is this?”
Not long after Quarry fills Dick in on his credentials — including sniper duty in Vietnam, which he compares to playing GALAGA — the casino owner agrees, and our antihero goes to work. And does he ever! There’s easy sex with a couple of women (Quarry seems to have a breast obsession, not that I mind) and violence (including a goon’s rather gruesome encounter with the business end of a motorboat) all around.
Quarry comes chiseled from the pulps’ tough-guy template of the past, where the men aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty … or gory: “It was a good swing. The butt crushed bone like crisp fresh celery snapping and sank in deep enough to bring back blood and brains.”
No one — and I mean no one — does this better today than Collins. He makes it all look effortless, because his words sing from the page, but to achieve flow like that requires expert skill. Lord knows he’s written enough of these by now — but not too many — to be certified an expert.
Highly recommended. Duh. —Rod Lott
“She brought me almost to climax and I swear I was cross-eyed when she took me by the hand like mommy leading baby, assuming baby had his trousers around his ankles, and all but shoved me onto the bed, where she climbed on top of me and took my dick up into a warm, tight place and ground her hips into me and ground them some more and I watched hypnotized by the swaying fruit of those breasts, reaching my mouth out to grab at them, like a child on a merry-go-round going for the brass ring, and when she came, she came so hard her eyes rolled back in her head. I came so hard my eyes uncrossed.”
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BABY BLUE RIP-OFF by Max Allan Collins
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• BYLINE: MICKEY SPILLANE edited by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers Jr.
• DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR by Max Allan Collins
• DICK TRACY: THE SECRET FILES edited by Max Allan Collins and Martin H. Greenberg
• THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND by Max Allan Collins
• G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA by Max Allan Collins
• THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS 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
• RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins
• TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins
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