The First Quarry

✍ Scribed by Collins, Max Allan

• Publisher: Hard Case Crime
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 162 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

From Booklist

Indefatigable genre veteran Collins brought back his hit-man hero Quarry two years ago (The Last Quarry, 2006) after a 30-year hiatus. Now he flashes way back to reveal how Quarry got in the killing business. Naturally, it started in Vietnam, where ne′er-do-well Quarry found something he was good at—killing people; later, after a wrong turn or two back in the States, he hooks up with a broker who runs a murder-for-hire business. Quarry′s first target: a philandering college professor whose latest conquest happens to be the coed daughter of a Chicago mafioso. Rationalizing that the prof is a dead man whether or not Quarry does the deed, our antihero takes the job. Like Lawrence Block in his hit-man series starring the similarly one-named Keller, Collins manages the neat trick of engendering sympathy for a killer by muddying the moral waters: plot complications change the terms of the deal, requiring Quarry to do his killing out of self-preservation rather than cold-blooded commerce. Either way, Collins knows the terrain, mixing pulp-style action with just enough character building to keep us going. Great entertainment from a pro′s pro. --Bill Ott

Review

Violent and volatile and packed with sexualityâ€''¦classic pulp fiction --USA Today

Collins witty, hard boiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud --Entertainment Weekly

As cool as an Eskimo Pie on a hot summer day and as sharp as a Ginsu knife --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel