Quarry's Ex (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback)) [Paperback]

Max Allan Collins (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 20, 2011 | Series: Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback) (Book 102)

BECAUSE HOMICIDE 
BEGINS AT HOME 

Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him that was the day he returned stateside from Nam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too. He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one -- by expecting trouble. 

What he didn't expect was ever running into his ex again.... 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The ninth Quarry novel (after Quarry in the Middle) finds Jack Quarry, hit man with a difference, still going down a list of planned hits from his former boss, the Broker. He tracks down the Broker's targets and offers to remove the threat... for a fee. This time out it's 1980 and Quarry's in Boot Heel, Nev., a small gambling town where the latest target, director Arthur Stockwell, is filming an action movie. Quarry knows who the hit men are, but he doesn't know who ordered the hit. Suspects abound: Stockwell's betrayed wife, a spurned starlet, the mob boss financing the film. Quarry is discreet and up to the task, even when his own hated ex-wife turns out to be married to Stockwell. Fans will enjoy the violence, sex, and glimpses into Quarry's past in this perfect piece of sardonic pulp noir.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Collins brought Quarry, his hit-man hero, back to life after a 30-year absence with The Last Quarry (2006), detailing the antihero’s last job as a killer for hire. Following a flashback to Quarry’s beginnings (The First Quarry, 2008), Collins found a way to keep the series going by having the “retired” Quarry—now in possession of a sort-of hit-man who’s who—track down hits in progress and offer his services to the intended victim: for a tidy price, Quarry will hit the hitter. His new role, defined in Quarry in the Middle (2009), continues here, as the intrepid Quarry ventures to Boot Heel, Nevada, to avert the murder of an action-movie director in the middle of a shoot. Complication: the director is married to Quarry’s ex-wife, and she could be the person who hired the hitter. Collins remains the quintessential modern-day pulp writer. His no-nonsense prose evokes the great John D. MacDonald; he has an unfailing knack for devising devilishly clever plot premises; and, like Lawrence Block in his Keller novels, he manages to make his hit-man hero both tough as nails and somehow downright endearing. --Bill Ott

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Hard Case Crime; paperback / softback edition (September 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0857682865
• ISBN-13: 978-0857682864
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #481,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Max Allan Collins is a New York Times bestselling author of original mysteries, a Shamus award winner and an experienced author of movie adaptions and tie-in novels. His graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION was made into a major motion picture by Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#32 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers

#83 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#32 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers

#83 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Collins has proven again and again over the years how great a writer he is. Quarry is one of his greatest creations... September 30, 2011

By Bookreporter

Format:Paperback

QUARRY'S EX is a terrific addition to both the series created in 1971 by Max Allan Collins and the Hard Case Crime collection. It was originally planned to be released in 2010 by Hard Case Crime when Dorchester, their partner and distributor, went out of the paperback business. Now it is has been released as one of the first four books issued by the reborn Hard Case Crime.

It illustrates perfectly why crime and mystery fans love this publisher. Collins created ex-Vietnam vet turned hired killer Quarry while still a student at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He wrote five Quarry novels in the 1970s. Then the series remained quiet until Hard Case Crime came along, and Collins did three new Quarry books for them. QUARRY'S EX is the fourth.

Collins has said that he was trying to pay homage to his mentor Donald E. Westlake's noir antihero series starring the ruthless heist man with only one name, Parker. But Quarry, unlike Parker, is an ordinary, generally pleasant fellow who just happens to be capable of incredible acts of violence. Make no mistake, QUARRY'S EX is pure hard-boiled noir. By page 31 of the book, Quarry has driven a car over the head of an ex-associate who was passed out drunk at the time. And we're just getting started.

Collins writes, "You're probably wondering how a nice guy like me could end up killing people for money. A lot of nice guys, particularly young ones, start out their adult lives by killing people for money. It's called being a soldier."

Quarry comes home a day early from his job as a sniper in Vietnam and finds his wife in bed with another guy, who is soon killed. His wife, it turns out, is a petty grifter who, unknown to Quarry, has married two other soldiers --- "naďve young schmucks" --- before him and collected on their insurance when they didn't come home. Quarry doesn't end up on trial but does find work opportunities when he is approached by a mysterious "broker" who urges him to turn his killing skills into a career as a hitman.

Collins then gives a wonderful switch to the hitman story. Quarry eventually has a falling-out with the broker, who soon also dies violently and inherits the brokers list of 50 other killers for hire. So he soon goes around tracking the killers as they seek their prey. He then approaches the prey and offers to hit the hitman for a big fee. Then for another fee, he will hit the person who ordered the hit and eliminate that threat.

Quarry does these jobs maybe once a year. It is on one such hitman extermination expedition that he finds himself in the Nevada desert, where he learns that the intended victim is a movie director making a biker film on location. Quarry soon finds out that the director is married to none other than his ex-wife. Coincidence? Perhaps.

QUARRY'S EX is set in 1980. The Empire Strikes Back is in movie theaters, Blondie songs are playing in bars, and people are walking around wearing "Reagan for President" buttons. And there are these places called video stores popping up where you can rent cassette copies of movies. A stunning new world for those of us alive at the time, but only a preview of the technological revolution about to hit. And it is fascinating to watch Quarry as he maneuvers around and tries to find out who is behind the contract on the director.

Collins writes, "But remember --- anybody designated for a hit is somebody who almost certainly has done something worth getting killed over. Such an individual tends not to be a sterling model citizen... My hunch had been that these people would welcome help, especially when the other option was to take a bullet or get run over or fall down icy stairs..."

Just as there are not really hookers with a heart of gold, so too Quarry is not a hitman with a heart. He is a businessman with a specialty line in the dawning of the Age of Reagan, and he is good at what he does. In the desert, besides the hired killer, he will have to figure out how involved his ex is with the hit and deal with his unresolved feelings for her. Then there is the sexpot blonde starlet who just happens to be the boyfriend of the mobster who is financing the movie.

What results is an extremely satisfying noir read. Quarry says close to the end, "All roads were lonely when you got run over on them." John Garfield or Tom Neal couldn't have said it better in a 1940s film noir voiceover.

Max Allan Collins has proven again and again over the years how great a writer he is. Quarry is one of his greatest creations. Read QUARRY'S EX and you will see why. Then read the other three Hard Case Crime Quarry novels from the last decade before seeking out the books written 40 years ago.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

5.0 out of 5 stars Another EXcellent Quarry March 1, 2012

By Ryan's Papa

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Max Allan Collins has again returned to days of the pulp fiction paperbacks. And as far as I am concerned may he journey on. Like the original four Quarry novels about a hired hit man and the more recent follow-ups, this one too explains how Quarry became the man he is and how he left his wife to only find her again under unusual circumstances. He is now on his own without Broker, and hires himself out to protect a movie director who has been set up as a target for another hit man. Where his ex-wife comes into the story I will leave up to the reader to find out. Another fine Kindle purchase.

4.0 out of 5 stars In the Beginning February 13, 2012

By Ted Feit VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Max Allan Collins writes noir crime novels which read very much like Mickey Spillane, with whom he was a close friend and collaborator [and completed some started by the late author]. This novel is no exception, and is full of sex, violence and hard-boiled prose. It is a prequel to a long-running series about a hit man who has turned the tables on other assassins by developing a new business: collecting his fees from intended victims by eliminating killers and those who hired them.

This novel takes us back in time, providing the back story for the Quarry series, when he was a young marine, met Joni and married her, returned from Vietnam to find her in be with another man (who he murders) and then going off the deep end. After a while, he is contacted by the "broker," and becomes a paid assassin, until he kills his "employer" in a double-cross and stealing his files which identify other murderers. With this information, Quarry turns the tables, targeting them for elimination and saving the intended victims.

This brings us to the present story during which, purely by accident, Quarry finds his ex-wife married to a movie director, the latter the target of a pair of killers Quarry knows from the files. The ex is really incidental to the story, which revolves around Quarry's efforts to save the director's life and identifying who retained the killers. It is fast and furious, with colorful characters, entertaining with panache, and is recommended.