Quarry

I had been intrigued by the “Quarry” series for a couple of years mainly by the Hardcase Crime covers and now the Cinemax TV Show but this is my first dip in the pool.

Quarry is a hit man for hire in the mid nineteen seventies. A returned home Vietnam veteran that knows how to kill and now does it for money back home in the USA. He has been a hit man for a few years now and is very good at what he does for a living. Knowing that and the other characters involved I hope to read about earlier hits.

Quarry is a great flip on the murder mystery genre because Quarry is the hit man, so the mystery is, not who the murderer was, but who hired him to kill this person and why? I'll leave out the details so that you can solve the case yourself, but it was a great book and a lot of fun to read. And don't think of him as a hero. He is a tough guy that does horrible things to mostly innocent people so be prepared for that.

Max Allan Collins has a easily read style of writing, that only the great writers seem to have like Donald E. Westlake or Stephen King that bring you in to the main character's thought process quickly and clearly.

Overall I give “Quarry” four out of five stars. Although it's good book it was an early one for Collins and he has a jarring transition in the middle of the book that seemed out of place to me. Overall a good read and I look forward to the rest of the series.