Quarry's Blood: Quarry

by Max Allan Collins

Overview

The hitman hero of the acclaimed series Quarry on Cinemax returns for his final act. By Quarry’s creator, the award-winning author of Road to Perdition!

QUARRY'S VIOLENT PAST COMES LOOKING FOR HIM

The professional hitman known as Quarry — star of the Cinemax TV miniseries of the same name — has put killing behind him. But after a beautiful writer of true-crime bestsellers drops by to announce he's the subject of her next book, killers descend to give him some of his own deadly medicine, forcing Quarry to journey into his bloody past to find the answers — and settle old scores.

QUARRY’S BLOOD brings the hitman’s decades-long saga right up to the present day as MWA Grand Master Max Allan Collins explores the startling final act of Quarry’s professional career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789096682
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	02/22/2022
Series:	Quarry , #16
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	517,269
Product dimensions:	4.96(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Max Allan Collins was hailed in 2004 by Publisher's Weekly as "a new breed of writer." A frequent Mystery Writers of America nominee in both fiction and non-fiction categories, he has earned an unprecedented eighteen Private Eye Writers of America nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). In 2002, his graphic novel Road to Perdition was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law and Daniel Craig. He lives in Iowa, USA.

Editorial Reviews

09/20/2021

MWA Grand Master Collins’s fine, action-packed 16th Quarry novel (after 2019’s Killing Quarry) brings the series to a fitting close. In 1983, Quarry, a former hit man who now goes after hit men, returns to the seedy club on Mississippi’s Biloxi Strip where, 10 years earlier, he murdered the owners. Luann, his humorless former sweetheart who helped in the killings, has since taken over running the club. Quarry has been following a hit man whose target appears to be Luann. His subsequent execution of the gangster behind the hit, Alex Brunner, leads to unforeseen complications. While raiding Brunner’s safe, he comes across two computer disks containing evidence of bribery incriminating Dixie Mafia biggies, cops, and politicians—evidence of local corruption that could put dozens of people in jail. He leaves town. Not until 2021, when a bestselling true-crime author tracks down the 69-year-old Quarry in the Midwest, does he discover what became of Luann and the floppy disks. Intriguing backstories, crafty revelatory connections, tongue-in-cheek humor, and blistering present-day battles make this entry sizzle. Noir fans will be sorry to see the last of Quarry. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

[Quarry] still operates at a more ruthless clip than almost anyone he encounters. This is a sure-footed ending to a series that marinated in the excesses of pure pulp.”—New York Times

"Smoothly written and fast paced"—Deadly Pleasures

"Any fan of paperback-spinner noir, with plenty of blood spatter seasoned with a little interpersonal complexity, will have no trouble getting acclimated." - Booklist

"Easy listening for readers whose preferred soundtrack is muffled gunfire." - Kirkus Reviews

"A gripping fast-paced epilogue and so much fun ... This is one of the best Quarry books ever." - Pulp Fiction Review

"A nostalgia fix and incredibly fresh and up-to-date, catching up with Quarry pushing 70 in a post-COVID existence ...a serving of more of that gritty tone and realism Collins fans will be accustomed to reading, with doses of violence and sleaze and sex typical of the series." - Borg

From the Publisher

2021-09-01
In yet another final installment of his pulpy franchise, retired hit man John Quarry meets his daughter, who turns out to be a chip off the old block.

After a prologue in 1983 Biloxi in which Quarry dispatches the team of killers who’ve targeted his former lover Luann Lloyd, a former pole dancer who manages her own club, the story leaps to the present, a most unfamiliar time frame for the hero, who’s now pushing 70. Tracked down by true-crime author Susan Breedlove, who, like him, has based several of her books on his exploits, he’s reluctant to revisit the past—“I hadn’t killed anybody in fifteen, sixteen years!” he protests—until he figures out that she’s his daughter, come to warn him that yet another contract has been taken out on his life. The leading suspects she’s identified after a careful study of his adventures are Montgomery Climer, the Memphis impresario who revitalized the struggling Climax empire by putting a blue-collar, right-wing spin on the magazine and its clubs; Jeffrey Kinman, who inherited control of the Quad Cities’ Concort Inn from his late uncle, a partner of the Broker, the former liaison Quarry killed; and Theodore Brunner, whose brother Alex ended up in the trunk of one of Quarry’s many cars after he took out that 1983 contract on Luann. Since Quarry is Quarry, he winnows the field of suspects by arming himself and confronting each of them face to face, unearthing yet another unexpected offspring (not his this time) along the way. A coda, “Quarry’s History,” explains how this unlikely sequel came to be and acknowledges that more may well follow.

Easy listening for readers whose preferred soundtrack is muffled gunfire.

Kirkus Reviews