CHAPTER 4 Taylor Farr liked a lot of things about being a police officer in Cambridge, but the headquarters building on Sixth Street was not one of them. The six-story brick building was distinguished by a new façade with large LED lighting fixtures on the roof tied directly to the emergency dispatch computer. Electronic cues…
Sam Spade Appearing in one novel and a handful of short stories, Dashiell Hammett’s dream private eye—“he is what most of the detectives I worked with would liked to have been”—remains the prototype. As good as Hammett’s Continental Op stories are, their nameless narrator lacks the charisma and iconic appeal that Spade engenders, even without…
Masquerade for Murder by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins is the latest Mike Hammer novel from Titan Books. Mike Hammer, a WWII veteran/private detective, witnesses a hit-and-run outside of a steakhouse in Manhattan. The victim—a young, powerful Wall Street broker named Vincent Colby—survives the incident when a red Ferrari nearly crushes him. But he’s…
Years before Max Allan Collins wrote Road to Perdition—the eponymous source for the Oscar-winning movie starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law—before his Quarry novels were turned into a Cinemax original series, before Collins was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America or took over writing the Mike Hammer novels from…
Killing Quarry is the newest book in the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins. Collins has written several other Quarry novels for Hard Case Crime, a Quarry graphic novel, and his Quarry character was the focal point of Cinemax’s eponymous series. It is not the most recent novel, in terms of series chronology, as Collins…
Girl Most Likely from New York Times bestselling and award-winning crime master Max Allan Collins follows Krista Larson, 28-year-old police chief of a small midwest town. Krista braces for more excitement than usual when the town hosts the high school reunion, which is followed up by a triple murder investigation. Max Allan Collins’ new novel, Girl Most Likely,…
Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most! This week, Steve Berry's latest Cotton Malone thriller combines with the final completed Mickey Spillane novel to highlight a killer week…
Last night, the Mystery Writers of America presented the 71st annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. Celebrating the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, and television published or produced in 2016, the yearly event gathers a veritable who's who in the genre. Below is a list of all…
The Will to Kill is the latest Mike Hammer novel, originally started by the now-deceased Mickey Spillane and finished by the deft hand of Max Allan Collins. Mike Hammer predates James Bond and was a contemporary of Phillip Marlowe. Let that history sink in, and then celebrate that we have a brand-new Hammer novel. Typically,…
To a detective character from a big city like New York or Los Angeles, the Midwest might look like one big flyover zone. But to plenty of mystery writers (myself included), the Midwest looks like home—and a good setting for a crime novel. We have plenty of cynicism to counteract that apple-cheeked, earnest idea…
