There’s a lot of things I love about the Hard Case Crime series. Their covers are amazingly cool. The club is reasonably priced (about $6.00 a month). About every quarter they have sweet sales, where they mark down books to a buck or two (just got in 13 books for $21). And, with the exception of maybe one or two books, I have enjoyed everything I’ve read from the catalogue.
But one of the things I like most about the HCC series is it introduces me to authors I may not have heard of (or have seen their work without realizing it). Like Max Allan Collins. I’ll get back to this in a minute.
Due to just being busy as hell, it’s the first HCC book I’ve read in a while. As I was reading it, I was painfully aware that I’ve been away from the pulp for entirely too long (and realized, with glee, while I haven’t read any in a while it also means I have a pretty big back log I can plow through).
The First Quarry is actually the second “Quarry” book in the catalogue, the first being The Last Quarry. Fortunately for me, First is the prequel to Last, and I have not had a chance to read the latter, yet. So that works out pretty good.
It’s 1970, and Quarry, a paid-for-hire assassin, sits in an abandoned house watching the occupant of the home across the street, waiting for an opportunity to close the contract.
As the title, The First Quarry, suggests, this is Quarry’s first job for The Broker, a man who found Quarry through unknown means, and offered him a position in his company. The Broker negotitiates the contracts, and his employees, men like Quarry, fulfill those contracts. A sniper in Vietnam, Quarry came home from the war only to find his wife with another man and…let’s just say he took care of business. Since then, Quarry didn’t really have anything going on in life until The Broker showed up. An opportunity presented itself, and he took it.
Because nothing is ever easy in a pulp novel, this is no simple job. So many things complicate this seemingly simple hit, it no longer becomes a case of “What can go wrong, will,” but “Yeah, shit’s just gonna go wrong, whether it can or can’t.” But a credit goes to author Collins’ skill, because everything that goes wrong is feasible, and it all comes together in a believable way in the end.
The First Quarry is written in first person narrative, but it is also a diary of sorts, as Quarry addresses the reader (think TV’s “Dexter”). It works extemely well because Quarry (via Collins) is very matter-of-fact with a witty, dry sense of humor. It works extremely well, and a solid introduction to Max Allan Collins for me.
Now, as I mentioned, I like how the HCC catalogue introduces me to authors I’ve read before, authors I’ve never heard of and authors whose works I’ve seen, but wasn’t aware of who they were. Well, Collins is the author of The Road to Perdition (you know, the movie that Tom Hanks is actually enjoyable in?). I didn’t realize this until I hit Collins’ website and noticed that on his bibliography. Completely fitting considering how much I enjoyed the movie’s noir style — and I still need to pick up that graphic novel.
The Fist Quarry is yet another solid entry in the Hard Case Crime catalogue. I can’t wait to read The Last Quarry.
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