Quarry in the Middle [Large Print] [Hardcover]

There are quotes in the front of Quarry in the Middle from Dashiell Hammett, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone. What do these men have in common? All three have written or directed a version of the same story: a loner playing both parties of a situation for his own profit. It's a very old story, at least as old as Carlo Goldoni's 18th-century commedia dell'arte Servant of Two Masters, but Hammett brought it to 20th-century readers in his "Continental Op" novel Red Harvest.

Red Harvest is considered to be a direct influence on Kurosawa's samurai film Yojimbo (though Kurosawa himself cited The Glass Key). Leone later remade Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars. (Leone was sued by Kurosawa for neglecting to purchase remake rights; Kurosawa stated he made more money off Leone's film than his own).

Interestingly enough, all three protagonists are "men with no name": Hammett's hero is known only as "the Continental Op," Kurosawa's samurai names himself after a plant he sees nearby, and Leone's character has popularized the phrase to the extent that he personifies it. But enough with the history lesson; a good portion of readers probably know all that stuff, anyway.

Where The Last Quarry showed the end of his career and The First Quarry showed the beginning, Quarry in the Middle understandably fills in some blanks. It's set in the mid-1980s. (I'm guessing late 1986; Collins doesn't say outright, but he gives various historical clues.) No longer working for The Broker, Quarry has begun a new kind of business. Using The Broker's files, he gets hired killers' targets to hire him to kill the killers. How very meta!

Following his latest ... uh, quarry ("a guy named Monahan"), Quarry finds himself in a town with the unlikely name of Haydee's Port, Illinois -- home of the Paddlewheel ("a mini-Las Vegas under one roof") and its official digs, the Wheelhouse Motel -- and a hell of a place to be unless you can think on your feet. Luckily, our hired-killer-with-no-name (at least not one he's telling us) has shown himself to be quite adept at thinking ... on his feet, on his back, etc.

Quarry finds out Monahan is gunning for Richard Cornell, owner of the Paddlewheel, and that he's been hired by Jerry G, son of mob-connected Gigi Giovanni, owner of Cornell's main competition, the less-classy Lucky Devil. A man who knows how to turn every situation to his best advantage, Quarry takes an assignment to knock off the Giovannis.

The Quarry series contains Collins's leanest and tightest writing, and Quarry in the Middle is no exception. Collins blends past and present seamlessly, alternating between telling Quarry's back story and the current one with unmatched skill.

I finished Quarry in the Middle in two sittings, or about an hour and a half. It's a very quick read and one you may want to start right over again from the beginning. Collins's take on Yojimbo is fresh yet familiar, and it's always fun to watch Quarry do his thing. Here's hoping the series continues, filling in even more blank spots in the timeline along the way.

Usual Max Collins lightning-paced, razor-sharp read gives fans of the "Quarry" series a new, "previously untold" tale of the sardonic hitman, star of six or seven other involving, often funny, and always dark adventures. On that last point, you know a series is dark when the most admirable, moral person in the stories is usually the central hitman character! Well, each book tends to feature a stripper or hooker with a heart of gold type, too, because- after all- Quarry needs a little company. Here, in a story set in the big-hair, disco-ball, neon-laden 1980's, Quarry offers his services to a corrupt but charming casino owner targeted for termination by parties unknown, those services being along the lines of "I'll kill the guy who was hired to kill you, and also kill the guy who hired the guy to kill you." All for a generous fee, of course. The 200 or so pages of sex, violence, mystery, and wry observation (a favorite element of mine in this series) fly by.

Max Allan Collins's cool and deadly professional hit man, Quarry, is back for another serving of mayhem and murder - and this time he's taking a cut right out of the middle. As the title suggests, Quarry In The Middle takes place in the middle of Quarry's career, somewhere in the 1980s. Quarry has left the employment of the Broker, the man who first hired him to be a paid assassin. Quarry didn't leave without a retirement plan, though. He took the Broker's files and is currently making a living tracking down other hit man and killing them - provided their targets pay for his services.

Once in Haydee's Port, Illinois, Quarry discovers the small town is divided between two criminal enterprises. Richard Cornell, the owner of the Paddlewheel Casino, is a marked man. As Quarry observes the setup, he believes Jerry G., the owner of the Lucky Devil, has hired the other hitmen in town. Quarry kills both hitmen and goes into business for himself against the odds.

As usual, Collins deals out lethal violence, raw sex, and wisecracks at a blistering pace. Although written in the 21st century, Quarry In The Middle feels like one of the old Gold Medal novels I devoured as a kid. There aren't many good people in this novel, and the few that are there are trapped by bad circumstance. The atmosphere the whole tale is gritty and harsh. Quarry is only a hero because he's better than everyone else in the book, which is what I want in my crime fiction.

Collins also plays fair with the 1980s. As I read along, I picked up on all the songs the author laid down. It's funny, but the music he mentions tied me into that time frame even more than the story. When Collins mentioned a particular song, the scenes filled up with the memories I had of that time and similar places like the casinos he writes about. The 1980s weren't as volatile as the 1970s, at least for me, but there were a lot of touchstones anchored by music.

The novel plays out small to a degree, bouncing back and forth between a small cast of characters. It's like a tight B movie that shows you just enough to keep everything moving and doesn't hesitate about kicking you in the teeth when you least expect it. I finished the book in a couple of hours, never once had to stop and figure out what was going on, and had a blast tooling around riding shotgun to Quarry.
I don't know where Collins is going to take Quarry next, and there haven't been any announcements concerning future books, but I hope this isn't the end of the series. I enjoy the character and the unrestrained violence, as well as the dark world where Quarry lives.

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