Crimespree Magazine #56

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Goody, goody gumdrops!” I shouted back.

  I’d forgotten about the whole thing by the time he walked in the living room after dinner carrying one of those brown accordion folders with a built-in elastic band and a button to snap it onto. He stepped between me and the TV, which brought the folder close enough to my nose for me to see shiny white borders peeking out. Even the “Garrulous Gumshoe” could figure out there were photos in that folder. He turned off the TV and waved me toward the coffee table, where he lit a new Pall Mall, forgetting about the one he’d left in an ashtray a few minutes ago. You’d think a man so crazy about safety would keep track of lit cigarettes better, wouldn’t you? He took a puff and exhaled through both nostrils like a cartoon bull about to charge a matador. Then he slowly slipped one photograph out of the folder and plopped it onto the coffee table.

  Since I’d put the carport to-do completely out of my mind, it took me by surprise when I realized what I was looking at. The picture showed the inside of a car, but nothing was where you’d expect it to be. The door was open far enough to break a hinge and the steering wheel was hooked over the back of the driver’s seat. The driver was nowhere to be seen. But in the space under the dashboard, in front of the passenger-side seat, some little boy was curled up tight like a roly-poly bug. I think it was a little boy, anyway. A little boy’s shoe was sticking straight up out of the door well. I couldn’t see the little boy’s face at all, but there was something about the way the top of his head was poking out from under his arm, like he was carrying a football with a cowlick, that turned my stomach.

  I didn’t say anything. I guess the color went out of my face, though, giving my father second thoughts about showing his only child a dead body. He quickly flipped the picture over, jammed it back into the folder, then snorted something about the pictures being a “motivational tool,” to encourage people to drive safer and make their kids ride in the back seat.

  Well, it worked on me, all right. Through dinner, anyway. Most nights when we had spaghetti and meatballs, my mother would accuse my father and me of “wolfing down” our dinner. That night, she asked me if I felt sick or had found the Whitman’s Sampler she hid behind the guest towels.

  Staring at the spaghetti sauce oozing off my fork, I don’t know which I resented more: my father’s spoiling my supper or treating me like that woman on Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond—I can never keep them straight—whose husband tricked her into having shock therapy. She wasn’t really crazy, just bought too many hats and mink stoles to suit him. He got some doctor friends of his to give her electric shock a few times, like Frankenstein’s monster, and she ended up having no more sense than a bowl of Jell-O for a while. It turned out all right, though. She got all her husband’s money after he was struck by lightning on a golf course. I didn’t want my daddy to be struck by lightning, of course. Anyway, he played handball instead of golf.

  Back to TOC

  Catching Up with Max Allan Collins

  By Jon Jordan

  Issue 56

  Back in issue 21 of Crimespree we talked to Max Allan Collins about a project he was undertaking. The project was taking the books that Mickey Spillane had started but not finished and get them into print. Some were more done than others but Al has been working away at it along with writing his own books. We thought we’d check I with Mr. Collins to see how the work is going.

  Jon: We talked about this project at Love Is Murder back in 2007. So now about 7 years later, how far along are you into getting the books finished and to publishers?

  Max: I would say I’ve completed the first, most important phase, which was to complete the manuscripts that are in what I call “substantial” form. In other words, novels that Mickey had written around 100 pages or more of, often with notes on plot and character and sometimes rough drafts of endings. These include the non-Hammer novels DEAD STREET, which I edited and lightly revised, doing the final several chapters, and THE CONSUMMATA, the long-awaited sequel to THE DELTA FACTOR. These were both done for Hard Case Crime.

  The really key manuscripts, however, were the six in-progress Mike Hammer novels, written all around Mickey’s career, from as early as 1947 to the weeks prior to his passing. Since there were only thirteen Hammer novels published during Mickey’s lifetime, and of course Hammer is a major character in the genre, completing these other six was crucial. That was my minimum goal—to get those half dozen Hammer novels out there.

  That phase is finished—KING OF THE WEEDS is the final of those six Hammers.

  Now I am embarking on finishing three less substantial but still significant Hammer manuscripts that range in the 30 to 49 page range. One has quite a few plot notes and a roughed-out ending. Another is a false start on THE GIRL HUNTERS in which Velda goes to Florida, not Russia. The opening pages are identical to THE GIRL HUNTERS, so I’m substituting another opening Mickey wrote but never used. There’s a certain amount of mix and match in this process.

  There’s the possibility of another three beyond that. There’s a non-Hammer manuscript from the ’50s of about 40 pages that’s just dynamite that can be converted, for example.

  A secondary project is completing the shorter Hammer fragments by writing short stories, with an eventual collection in mind. One of these, “So Long, Chief,” was recently Edgar-nominated.

  Jon: Being a fan and friend of Mickey is it kind of hard going through his papers?

  Max: Not at all. He’s very much alive in those papers, which is how I like him.

  Also, it’s a voyage of discovery. There was and is so much material that I couldn’t read everything in detail, so initially some things got set aside because I’d misidentified them. THE GIRL HUNTERS false start, for example—I set that aside at first because I thought it was indeed that novel. LADY, GO DIE!, the 1947 manuscript, appeared to be an early draft of THE TWISTED THING, because of some common character names and the setting, but an eventual closer look revealed an entirely different story. KISS HER GOODBYE was an earlier take on BLACK ALLEY, and again the use of the same names as that novel made me think it would be unusable. But reading it in depth revealed a completely different story, other than the concept of Hammer returning to New York from Florida after recuperating from bullet wounds. I did have to change the mob family’s name, because that name was common to both books.

  Sometimes Mickey would write several versions of first chapters, with no indication of his preference. The rather wonderful first chapter of THE GOLIATH BONE is my melding of three such openings into one.

  I refuse to be intimidated by working with Mickey’s material. It’s unpublished. It was set aside. He told his wife Jane, “Max will know what to do with this stuff.” That gives me his blessing to make the books what they need to be. The nice comments from reviewers that they can’t tell where Mickey leaves off and I begin is for a simple reason: I treat his material as rough draft, and revise and expand. The style ultimately is not mine and not his, but ours…as in any good collaboration.

  I do go to considerable lengths to hit the tone of the period the books were started in. I read the novels Mickey wrote just before and after the unfinished one, to get in the right groove. For LADY, GO DIE!, I read I, THE JURY, MY GUN IS QUICK and THE TWISTED THING. I go through marking up passages with highlighter, like a college student cramming for an exam.

  KING OF THE WEEDS is a direct sequel to BLACK ALLEY, and is the most direct sequel Mickey ever did. So I read BLACK ALLEY over and over, listened to the audio in the car, marked it up like crazy.

  Jon: Do you have any of the books that have been extra fun for you to work on?

  Max: LADY, GO DIE! was perhaps my favorite, because it’s the only one of the substantial unfinished manuscripts that dealt with the young, wild Hammer—it’s a 1947 manuscript. So it’s the Hammer of I, THE JURY. KISS HER GOODBYE was rewarding because it was written in a period where Spillane wasn’t publishing Hammer, and gives a singular look at the character as he approaches middle age. But KING OF THE WEEDS w
as probably the most fun, because it’s a book that Mickey was writing during our friendship—a book he discussed with me many times. He hadn’t written the ending down, but he told it to me, memorably, late one night in one of his offices in his Murrell’s Inlet home. In fact, he described it to me several times, over the years, but that one time was like hearing him tell a story around a campfire.

  Jon: In addition to the Spillane/Collins books you are still doing an awful lot of writing on your own and with Barbara and Mathew Clemmons as well. How do you balance all of this work?

  Max: I work steadily, six days a week. Between books, Barb and I take a brief getaway to St. Louis, to see our son Nate and his wife Abby, or to Des Moines or Chicago, for shopping and food and just not being at home. Already this year I’ve written QUARRY’S CHOICE and THE LEGEND OF CALEB YORK, a western based on a screenplay Mickey wrote for John Wayne in the late ’50s, which never got produced. Right now I’m midway through my draft of ANTIQUES SWAP. Next up will be the Florida Mike Hammer novel, KILL ME, DARLING. And there’s a Heller due by year’s end.

  Matt and I aren’t working on anything right now, but we’ve just done a proposal for two sequels to SUPREME JUSTICE, which Thomas & Mercer is doing in June, a political thriller. The character is named Joe Reeder and he’s a former Secret Service guy turned consultant. We want to do a trilogy that will cover each branch of government. Matt isn’t taking cover credit, but he’s my collaborator and I make no pretense that he isn’t, and he gets a full page acknowledging that at the front of the book. We plot the books together, he does research and a lengthy story treatment, and I wrote a novel from that.

  I enjoy collaborating with Barb and Matt, and Mickey, because the Spillane novels are truly collaborations. But Heller and Quarry are too personal to let anyone else in…though George Hagenauer deserves big thanks for his research help and the brainstorming sessions he participates in.

  Really, the books Barb and I do—the ANTIQUES novels, aka the Trash ’n’ Treasures mysteries, are probably the most popular series I’ve ever been involved with. Barb does a great job and I do my best to help earn my half a byline. Jon Breen says the series is “subversively cozy,” and I like that.

  Back to TOC

  Owen Laukkanen Interview

  By Kate and Dan Malmon

  Issue 56

  Dan (& Kate): Congrats on your latest novel KILL FEE hitting area bookshelves this month! What can fans of Stevens and Windermere expect with this, the third entry in their series?

  Owen Laukkanen: Thanks! KILL FEE finds Stevens and Windermere on the hunt for the sociopathic mastermind behind an online contract killing website. The chase takes them from the streets of Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Miami, Manhattan and Las Vegas, before culminating in an explosive finale in…well, I can’t tell you where.

  Suffice it to say, it’s a fun, fast-paced read (if I do say so myself), and readers who have been following along from the beginning will be treated to a few further wrinkles in the relationship between Stevens and Windermere, as well as another villain with whom they might just end up sympathizing.

  D (&K): THE PROFESIONALS focused on a group of essentially good people who turn to crime due to a revenged job market. CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE centers on what extremes a man will go to when he loses his job. KILL FEE shines a light on the horrors faced by veterans returning from active service, and how they can be exploited. What was it about these real-world issues that spoke to you and demanded to be put in your books? And no, we would hope you haven’t set up a murder-for-hire website like in KILL FEE.

  OL: I hope that nobody’s setting up criminal schemes like those I outline in my books, but if they are, I hope they’ll pay me a royalty. I’m attracted to real-world issues because I like to write about bad guys whose motivations run deeper than simple malevolence. I want criminals who are doing it for reasons I can understand, if not sympathize with.

  D (&K): With THE PROFESSIONALS and CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE, the failures of the American economy seemed like a natural way to send otherwise everyday people over the edge, and to see what they did when they found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

  OL: With KILL FEE, I set out with the idea that I wanted to make a contract killer into something of a sympathetic character, and, moreover, I’d been reading more and more stories about soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the struggles they face adapting to normal, everyday lives, particularly those who are suffering from PTSD.

  It seemed to me that what these veterans are facing is a real problem in our society, with a severe lack of resources and communication about their issues. It was something I wanted to explore, and it happened to make for an interesting wrinkle in the plot as well.

  D (&K): Now that we’ve hit Book Three, how do you balance an on-going series that shows growth and development with easy accessibility for new readers?

  OL: It’s a delicate balance, and something I’m pretty constantly preoccupied with when I’m writing. Most of the time, I just want to be able to refer back to previous books willy-nilly, and my agent tends to reign me in and wipe away all the spoilers, so that new readers will have a reason to pick up the earlier books.

  One of the most rewarding things about writing an on-going series is the opportunity to grow and develop my primary characters. To me, they’re like old friends at this point, and I have to sometimes remind myself that new readers don’t actually know them so well yet. So there’s a lot of tweaking and fine-tuning in the editing stages.

  D (&K): What is a Vancouver resident like you doing setting his crime-ridden stories in our fair city of St. Paul, MN? When you looked at a US map, did you actually point to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and say, “Yes. This is the most crime-y state in the Union. I’ll set my stories THERE.” Because really, our reputation is more for Passive Aggression than straight up Aggression-Aggression.

  OL: If I’d been planning my career as a series writer at all, I would have set the books in Michigan. I grew up in southern Ontario, Canada, very close to Detroit, and I’m rather more familiar with that terrain than I was with Minnesota when I started writing the books.

  As it happened, Stevens and Windermere are based in Minnesota by chance, rather than design; THE PROFESSIONALS featured a group of nomadic kidnappers who happened to find themselves in Minnesota at about the point that I needed a couple of cops to start chasing them. I didn’t intend for those cops to carry a series, but I’m thrilled they’re getting the chance. I’ve discovered I love Minnesota, and whenever I come back for more research or book tours I enjoy myself more. It’s been kind of serendipitous.

  D (&K): How do you do research on a city that you don’t live in or near? Lots of time on Google and Google Maps? Also, don’t you think it’s time that Agent Stevens and his family sat down for dinner over a pan of tater-tot hot dish?

  OL: I think it’s high time that I sat down for a tater-tot hot dish, thank you very much. If Stevens is going to eat it, I’m going to research the hell out of it, first (and I will).

  As far as researching the Twin Cities, I do spend a lot of time on Google and Google Maps. Street View is amazing—with the fourth book in the series, there are a few scenes set in a little farming town in Romania. About three thousand people live there, but the Google camera cars had been, so I was able to take a research expedition from my couch.

  Obviously, there’s no substitution for on-the-ground research, though, and I’ve done a few fact-finding missions to the Twin Cities to make sure I’m catching what Street View doesn’t give me. Fortunately, Stevens and Windermere tend to take cases that send them all over America (funny how that happens), and I like to point them toward locales with which I’m familiar, like Detroit in THE PROFESSIONALS, or Las Vegas in KILL FEE.

  In the spirit of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” and the Bernard Pivot questions asked of every guest, we have our own set of questions we ask of every interviewee.

  D (&K): When did you finally say, “Yeah...I’m gon
na write stuff for a living. And it will be AWESOME.”

  OL: Ha! I mean, I think I was seventeen or eighteen when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I remember reading a passage in CANNERY ROW for English class about fishing boats, and wanting pretty desperately to be able to evoke the kinds of senses that Steinbeck was evoking with his writing. I’d always been a voracious reader, and writing came pretty naturally.

  As far as writing for a living, it’s been a gradual process, not in terms of deciding it was what I wanted to do, but more reaching a point where I was able to take the leap and try to sustain myself with the proceeds from my writing.

  For me, the path to becoming a published author was comprised of long stretches of self-doubt and angst, interrupted by brief moments of glorious validation, and that validation would fuel me through the next doubtful stretch. I still feel like my situation, as a working writer is pretty tenuous, though it really is awesome. I suspect it’ll be this way as long as I’m writing.

  D (&K): What has been your favorite moment in writing so far? The moment that when you read it on the page, you smiled and said, “That was so cool!”

  OL: I find it so cool looking back at the published books and tracing their evolution from that first germ of an idea. I write very much off-the-cuff, without planning or outlining anything, so when I sit down to write a book I generally don’t have much of an idea where the characters will end up.