Quarry's Deal - Max Allan Collins

Having got out of the business of being a professional hitman in the first thriller Quarry and clearing up some loose ends in Quarry's List (that's two novels worth of plotting, killing and screwing summed up in a few words), Quarry has a few ideas for a new career in Quarry's Deal. Unsurprisingly, it involves more killing and screwing. A lot more.

Admittedly, there aren't too many career path options for a Vietnam veteran and professional killer. You can put a lot of distance and money between your past and future, but if you have the list of contacts - as Quarry does - you can take over as the new Broker and run the business. Quarry however has found another interesting new angle to pursue. He's planning to use the list to find out who the hitmen are, find out who they are going to hit, and get the potential targets to pay him to protect them from the killers who are now working for new brokers.

His first job takes him to a Florida beach resort filled with wealthy women in skimpy bikinis looking for men, a task that Quarry is finding wearying after a week. He is watching a hot woman on his list, "Ivy", a glamorous woman with "Oriental eyes" and "awesome breasts". He is waiting for the "dragon lady" to make her next move, and when she does take off, it's back in Iowa, where he finds her working as a barmaid at the Red Barn Club, a restaurant and gambling joint.

"I learned a lot of things in Vietnam, not the least of which was the meaninglessness of life and death, and the importance of survival". Collins can sum up a character and their motivations in a few concise and pertinent lines. Quarry however is playing a dangerous game for someone wanting to survive, but then again he doesn't have a lot of choice. He has the death of a federal agent on his hands from Quarry's List, and the Chicago mob might be looking for him too. And then he has decided to go out as a professional hitman of hitmen.

It doesn't make things easy, but it certainly makes things exciting, particularly since the first target is a woman. It certainly makes finding out her activities rather more interesting when when he embarks upon a hot and torrid affair with his "dragon lady", clearly starting to fall in love with her, but knowing he might have to kill her. That creates some nice ambiguity and danger that feeds into the writing, which again is just compelling, with short punch chapters, plenty of smart dialogue and tense situations.

In his afterword, Collins notes that this is his favourite of the original 1970s run of Quarry novels, and you can see why. It does however feel more than a little outdated in its sexist references that border on misogyny, but you have to admire just how far the situation pushes Collins and how much he is willing to push the envelope here to capture the full intensity of the relationship. He doesn't leave too much to the imagination.

Reading notes: Quarry's Deal is published by Hard Case Crime, who are publishing the original first four novels written in the seventies, an additional one added in the eighties and the still continuing adventures of Quarry. Read from the paperback edition.