Skim Deep

by Max Allan Collins

Overview

The first new Nolan novel in 33 years from one of the masters of the genre, Max Allan Collins, award-winning author of Road to Perdition.

The onetime world-class thief Nolan - now happily gone straight with his own restaurant/nightclub - whisks his longtime lover Sherry off to Vegas for a trip to a wedding chapel and a honeymoon stay. But an eye-in-the-sky security cam at a casino spots Nolan, whose past catches up with him when he's thought to be casing the joint. An old "friend" sees Nolan as the perfect patsy for a scheme to heist the weekly skim haul, and when the former thief's young frequent accomplice, Jon - a musician in the casino's house band - finds the couple mysteriously, suspiciously missing, it's up to Nolan's Best Man to keep wedding bells from tolling a funeral march.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789091397
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	12/10/2020
Series:	Hard Case Crime
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	279,648
Product dimensions:	4.80(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(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

"This jaunty caper novel has a definite dark side—Nolan is no ersatz antihero—but Collins, as always, mixes blood and badinage with gusto." - Booklist

"The prolific Collins resurrects Nolan...for another adventure that will return him to the dark side...No doubt about it: It’s great to see Nolan back in action." - Kirkus Reviews 

SKIM DEEP contains everything that aficionados of noir crime fiction love, including sex, violence, gunshots and double-crosses." - Bookreporter

From the Publisher

2020-12-25
The prolific Collins resurrects Nolan, the thief who’s tried to go straight since his multivolume criminal career began, for another adventure that will return him to the dark side.

Is it ever too late to settle down? Nolan, who owns and manages an Iowa restaurant and lives with Sherry, the hostess he rescued from the kidnapper Coleman Comfort in Spree(1987), decides that 55 isn’t too old to pop the question to his 23-year-old lover. Flush with excitement, the two head to Vegas, get hitched at the Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel with the Everly Brothers in attendance, and settle into the French Quarter Casino, whose executive host, Harry Bellows, is an old friend. Life looks sweet, and it gets even sweeter after a brief, violent mix-up leads to Nolan and his bride’s getting comped to one of the French Quarter’s honeymoon suites. But all good things must come to an end, and soon Collins is asking whether Nolan and Sherry will survive a double-cross whose perpetrator plans to frame them for stealing the casino’s latest take and leave them dead—and, even if they do, how they’ll fare once they’ve encountered Cole Comfort’s brother, Daniel, a white-sheep loan officer who’s reluctantly agreed to kill Nolan on orders from his grieving mother. Nolan can’t compete with his acknowledged model, Donald E. Westlake’s dead-eyed thief, but fans who aren’t hopelessly besotted with Parker will find Nolan’s comeback as fleet and efficient as it is free of surprises.

No doubt about it: It’s great to see Nolan back in action.

Kirkus Reviews

10/19/2020

MWA Grand Master Collins’s disappointing ninth crime novel featuring professional thief Frank Nolan picks up six months after the events of 1987’s Spree. Now retired, Nolan is enjoying running his supper club in Moline, Iowa, a far cry from his days tangling with the Chicago mafia. To further his efforts toward respectability, Nolan and Sherry, his decades-younger girlfriend, abruptly elope to Vegas to be married in the casino hotel run by an old friend, Harry Bellows. Nolan can’t even wander a casino without alerting the suspicions of security, who rough him up believing he’s casing the place. Bellows realizes this gives him the perfect scapegoat for his plan to steal the monthly skim, with the mob none the wiser. Predictably, the plan involves kidnapping Nolan and Sherry. Some awkwardly written sex scenes may appeal to middle-aged male fantasies. This long in the tooth homage to Donald Westlake’s Parker series is strictly for Nolan fans. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly