If you’re scratching your head at that title, you probably have never seen the last great movie Chevy Chase ever did: FLETCH.
This week, I’m tackling part of the FLETCH series, which numbered 11 books. It’s one that can be kind of frustrating to a new reader, because the first three actually take place in the middle of the run. It’s been many years since I’d read about that reporter with a penchant for fake names, so I decided to dive back in. (And by the way, it’s Underwood in the book.)
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I would like to thank Perfect Crime Books for doing a solid: reissuing Max Allan Collins’ very hard-to-find Quarry novels. I’ve covered one before, the then-out-of-print QUARRY’S LIST, but now that the books are back in print, it’s time to cover the other three that comprised the original four in the series (the fifth, QUARRY’S VOTE, didn’t come out until 10 years later).
QUARRY by Max Allan Collins — From 1976, the first book sets the stage perfectly for the character Quarry. You know full well in the opening chapter what kind of man he is, watching him come upon his prey in an airport: a man dressed as a priest. In the restroom, the man pleads for his life, but Quarry has one thing on his mind: recover a package and then take care of this sniveling victim.
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I’m back in the reading saddle, so to speak, with this column. I’ve been slacking in tackling my TBR pile, so let’s kick things off with three troublemakers, be they the main character in a foreign import, or a comic strip spy who seems to never to get a day off.
THE GOODBYE KISS by Massimo Carlotto — A while back, I read a great collection of Italian crime short stories called CRIMINI, where one author’s work really stood head and shoulders above all others. I figured it was finally time to track down one of Carlotto’s full novels. The best comparison that can be made to this 2000 work is that it comes off as an even darker Jim Thompson. It makes the Lou Ford character in THE KILLER INSIDE ME look like a Boy Scout.
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This week is all about those hip private eyes, two of which have been covered before and define cool, while the third one really fits the title of this column to a T. So let’s get settled in for some good-old-fashioned detecting with plenty of dames and a little kitty litter.
DEATH HAS THREE LIVES by Brett Halliday — When Mike Shayne puts his foot into it, to put it nicely, he really puts his foot into it. Case in point: Mike turns up to his secretary’s apartment, which is about to become ground zero to a major shit storm. First, Lucy Hamilton, Mike’s secretary, is hiding an ex in her bedroom who was just shot. And Mike has no idea.
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