To The Last Page

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 tog...

David Mark can come up with some nasty characters involved in some gruesome dark crime situations in his DS McAvoy series, and some even more horrific scenarios in his standalone books, but he outdoes himself with the premise behind The Guest House , a dark tale involving the illicit dealing in body parts from unwilling and unwitting donors on a remote part of the Scottish west coast. The police and special services have mounted a covert operation however including one agent deep undercover, Nicholas Roe. Unfortunately there are a number of innocent people involved, Ronnie, the owner of a little guest house in the area and her estranged husband Callum. Things aren't working out well not just in their marriage but with three kids to manage and anger issues to control over a cheating husband, Ronnie is finding it a struggle to keep the business going. Some of the current guests are a bit on the dodgy side too. In some respect this is typical David Mark, on the one hand creating some ...