Two for the Money - Max Allan Collins

Hard Case Crime collect Max Allan Collins's first two Nolan crime thriller series here as a well-named Two for the Money. In fact this was never meant to be a series, but, as you can tell from the first book Bait Money, the character and the situations were too good to leave at that point. Collins even killed Nolan off at the end of the first book, but was encouraged to rewrite the ending. It was a good move, as the second book Blood Money is just as tense, thrilling and visceral as the first.

Considering the time it was written in the early 70s, it has to be said that the attitudes can appear to be incredibly sexist and misogynist by today's standards, but this was a book pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable, even then in the genre of pulp crime fiction. Nolan, for example, is not a good guy, or if he appears to be, it's only in relation to how ruthless and unprincipled the others are that he comes into contact with in his line of work. That work is putting together and pulling off bank and shop robberies - anywhere really with the potential for a big haul.

Nolan is getting too old for this and knows that the time has come to get out of the business while he still can. He's almost fifty and this is a young man's game. He has the scars to show for it too, recovering from a gunshot wound. Unfortunately, the shooting has come because he was seen back in Chicago, which is not a good place for Nolan to be since he killed the brother of Charlie, one of the city's mafia families, stole their money, and consequently has a price on his head. Not only that, but he has lost the secret identity that he was building up as insurance for his retirement.

Now he has no choice but to negotiate with Charlie, who demands a large payment of $100,000, on the condition that it comes from a new job, not from his stash. Nolan knows he can't trust Charlie, but he has no option and plans a big bank heist. Nolan's stock is low in the crime world now, so he has to work with a couple of rookies, one of them a druggie, Grossman, the other Jon a collector of comic books. They do at least have insider knowledge of the bank through Shelly, the girlfriend of Grossman, so there are possibilities if everything goes according to plan.

Needless to say, things don't go quite to plan, but by the time of the second book Blood Money, Nolan (having been revived by Collins) still manages to claw back his gains and a place as a manager of a club owned the Family. The money he is going to invest from the bank heist however is stolen from its place of safekeeping, and Nolan finds himself drawn back in to a dangerous situation with everything to lose. The pace never lets up, Collins playing hardball with his characters, putting them through all manner of trouble, keeping the action, drama, violence and thrills coming in a double-bill book that is certainly value for the money.