The Mallory character solved a few more murder mysteries before the weight of his improbability crushed us both. But there was kind of a half-assed logic to a mystery writer getting involved in mysteries. Worked for Jessica Fletcher (and still does for her ghost writer, Donald Bain), and I even later wrote a series of novels about real-life famous mystery writers who got involved in murder investigations.
Quarry, however, I had left in a real jam. So when I was asked to do more novels about him (notice I never have any artistic misgivings about writing sequels to novels that were conceived as one-shots), I realized the next book would essentially have to be devoted to getting him out of that jam.
Also, since Quarry’s agent in the murder business, the Broker, was deceased, I needed a new conduit for Quarry to have further jobs. I came up with the notion of the Broker’s list, which fueled a number of the later novels, and added the interesting resonance of Quarry tracking other killers like himself. Sort of surrogate suicide.
My original title for this novel was Hit List, which in 1975 was a fresh idea. Once again, the publisher changed my title without consulting me (they had published Quarry as The Broker), and the novel appeared in 1976 as The Broker’s Wife. I despised that title (still do) because it gives away a major plot point. The “spoiler alert” should have appeared on the cover. Anyway, when Foul Play Press, in the mid-’80s, republished the first four Quarry novels, I changed the title to Quarry’s List. And so it remains.
The pattern of using Quarry’s name in the titles seems to have stuck, and the new entries in the series published by Hard Case Crime in recent years have followed it. The new books have generated interest in the old ones, and I am grateful to John Boland and Perfect Crime for bringing them back to print.
Max Allan Collins
August 2010
About the Author
Max Allan Collins, who created the graphic novel on which the Oscar-winning film Road to Perdition was based, has been writing hard-boiled mysteries since his college days in the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Besides the books about killer-for-hire Quarry, he has written a popular series of historical mysteries featuring Nate Heller and many, many other novels. At last count, Collins’s books and short stories have been nominated for fifteen Shamus awards by the Private Eye Writers of America, winning for two Heller novels, True Detective and Stolen Away. He lives in Muscatine, Iowa with his wife, Barbara Collins, with whom he has collaborated on several novels and numerous short stories. The photo above shows Max in 1971, when he created Quarry.
Tough . . . Sexy . . . Back in print!
QUARRY NOVELS by MAX ALLAN COLLINS
With new Afterwords by the Author
QUARRY
$14.95 (ISBN: 978-1-935797-01-2)
QUARRY’S LIST
$13.95 (ISBN: 978-1-935797-02-9)
QUARRY’S DEAL
$13.95 (ISBN: 978-1-935797-03-6)
QUARRY’S CUT
$13.95 (ISBN: 978-1-935797-04-3)
QUARRY’S VOTE
$14.95 (ISBN: 978-1-935797-05-0)
Available at book stores, on-line retailers
and at PerfectCrimeBooks.com.
They don’t come harder-boiled than Quarry.
Quarry's List Page 13