My Lolita Complex is a collection of nine scintillating suspense stories. A British super spy, a sexy vampire slayer, an aging crime boss, and others discover just how many boundaries they're willing to cross in the name of love.and lust. In "A Pebble for Papa," a Mafioso gets a lesson in betrayal and redemption. "A Woman's Touch" features a Civil War femme fatal. "Eastside, Westside" is a sexy re-take on Nick and Nora from The Thin Man. "Stakeout on Rush Street" takes place in the Buffy universe (sans Buffy). Graveyard Shift" teaches a room-service Romeo that women are not the "weaker" sex. In "Sand on the Beach" and "Lie Beside Me," the "real" James Bond fights old foes while traversing the far-more terrifying pitfalls of being a newly-married man. "I Had Bigfoot's Baby!" is a send-up of urban legends and tabloid papers featuring Hellboy. And if Nabokov had written "Double Indemnity, you'd get "My Lolita Complex," the title story.
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About the Author
Max Allan Collins is the author of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Road to Perdition, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. His other credits include such comics as Batman, Dick Tracy, and his own Ms. Tree; film scripts for HBO and Lifetime TV; and the Shamus-award-winning Nathan Heller detective novels. He lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife Barb, a writer. Matthew V. Clemens has collaborated with Collins as co-plotter and forensics researcher on eight USA Today-bestselling CSI novels, two CSI: MIAMI novels, three Dark Angel novels and the recent Bones: Buried Deep. He and Collins have published more than a dozen short stories together. He is the author of the true-crime regional bestseller, Dead Water. He lives in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife, Pam, a teacher.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Murder Most Sexy,
By
This review is from: My Lolita Complex and other Tales of Sex and Violence (Perfect Paperback)
In this great little anthology of nine stories, you'll be transported from the Civil War, to the rollicking gangster era of the 1920s, to the women's empowered 1940s, to the dangerous world of a deadly spy, and to the deadly embrace of a manipulative teen. The authors don't pull any punches and quickly demonstrate their mastery of short fiction, plunging the reader again and again into a breathless tour de force of the crime and passion waiting out there.
Max Allan Collins has been writing tough guy fiction, private eye fiction, and mysteries for decades. He's a master of the craft. Author of the award-winning Nate Heller mysteries, he and his sometime writing partner Matthew V. Clemens pen the new and continuing adventures of the Las Vegas CSI team. In addition to getting ten stories, the authors graciously acknowledge the markets and the circumstances that led them to write each of the stories. Readers don't just get entertainment. They also get some insight into the craft of writing as well as an education of how dedicated a craftsman has to be to ply his trade. "Stakeout On Rush Street" -- one of the best in the collection -- was originally from a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER anthology. "I Had Bigfoot's Baby" -- a lot of fun, and not just because it was in the Hellboy universe -- was from a Hellboy anthology. "Graveyard Shift" was originally the first chapter of a CSI novel. The opening story, "A Woman's Touch", overs a peek under the skirts of the Civil War that has a vicious twist. "A Pebble For Papa", in addition to having an interesting history, also offers a view of the 1920s gangster that meets THE SOPRANOS head-on. "East Side, West Side", "Sand on the Beach", and "Lie Beside Me" were all first chapters of projected novels, but stand well enough on their own. "My Lolita Complex" is mean and nasty, a story that compares to the grittiest noir novels out there. If you want a walk on the wild side with Crime's bad boys, pick up MY LOLITA COMPLEX and have a blast. It's a great compilation to take with you on errands or to read a story before bedtime. If you can stop there.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sexy, violent crime stories,
By
This review is from: My Lolita Complex and other Tales of Sex and Violence (Perfect Paperback)
Matthew V. Clemens has collaborated with Max Allan Collins on the research and plotting of all of the popular series of CSI and CSI: Miami novels written by Collins, in addition to the recent Bones: Buried Deep. In between novels, they have also been slowly building a cache of short stories in various magazines and anthologies. My Lolita Complex and Other Tales of Sex and Violence collects nine of those stories. It is a slim volume, but it really packs a punch.
It is a motley collection, to be sure, with stories based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hellboy, as well as pastiches of such cultural landmarks as James Bond and The Thin Man. Those only familiar with Collins's and Clemens's TV tie-in work will be surprised by the variation present in My Lolita Complex, but not by the authors' adeptness with the characters of others, displayed in five of the nine stories. Putting the weaker tales at the beginning isn't the greatest idea, but it gets them out of the way. Still, if you skipped over "A Woman's Touch," a mostly pointless Civil War story with an admittedly surprising ending, and "A Pebble for Papa" (the authors' first collaboration), a tedious Prohibition-era mob tale, you wouldn't be missing much. I don't know how Collins and Clemens managed to write a story faithful to both the Buffy the Vampire Slayer mythos and also to Collins's specialties (1940s private eye with connections to Frank Nitti), but "Stakeout on Rush Street" offers the best of both worlds. Hellboy meets cryptozoology in "I Had Bigfoot's Baby!" which shows the crimson hero investigating the title legend for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense and finding more than he bargained for. In "Sand on the Beach" and "Lie Beside Me," Collins and Clemens bring forth international superspy John Sand, "inspiration" for James Bond, and show that even a retired and newly married intelligence agent has made too many enemies to expect peaceful marital bliss, even when that marital bliss is as healthy (and happens as often) as occurs in these stories. There is a lot of humor especially in "Lie Beside Me," as Sand discovers that, even in marriage, sexual shenanigans can be dangerous. In "East Side, West Side," Collins and Clemens bring their own touch to Nick and Nora Charles from The Thin Man (here Mickey and Maryanne Ashford, though Mickey still looks like "a taller, unmustached William Powell"), as they solve their first mystery as a couple. The inclusion of celebrity cameos harkens to Collins's Nathan Heller series, but the lighter tone reminds me more of Stuart Kaminsky's Toby Peters mysteries. All three of the previously mentioned stories were originally the first chapters of novels for a publisher that wanted to produce sexy books for and about married couples, and Collins and Clemens add a lot of spice to these relationships. Another story that was originally the first chapter of a novel (the inaugural CSI release, Double Dealer) was "Graveyard Shift," which has been rewritten with a more shockingly unexpected finale that suits the theme of My Lolita Complex perfectly. So, it is too bad the title story, "My Lolita Complex," is a bit of a disappointment. It is lurid in all the right ways, despite the predictable outcome, but the details of Clemens's life used as atmospheric details were distracting. Had I not known that another story held this title, I would have thought this was Collins's and Clemens's first collaboration. It is not a bad little tale; it simply lacks the originality necessary to take it to another level and end the collection with a "wow finish." All in all, My Lolita Complex is an entertaining volume of sexy and violent stories. Editor Tina Jens could have reordered the stories to better effect, however that would only have covered over the existent flaws until they became apparent in the reading. Fans of Max Allan Collins's novels, though, should enjoy this other side of his fictional output (of which novel readers are likely to be unaware, as I was), and be grateful that Twilight Tales has brought them together in a form that properly showcases them.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Christmas Gift!,
By Rebecca (Sudbury, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Lolita Complex and other Tales of Sex and Violence (Perfect Paperback)
Clemens and and Collins have compiled some of the most entertaining, wry and racy yarns that I've read in quite a while. This book is at the top of my gift list this year -- I know my husband is going to get a big kick out of finding this in his briefcase for his next business trip.
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