Quarry's Return

What do you do with an aging character? Some authors choose to pretend that their characters are immortal and never age. This is great for churning out the content, but it does hamstring you into writing the same type of story as you can never move on in fear of making the protagonist too old. Max Allan Collins has been around long enough to know better and has been writing new novels set in his character’s twilight years. Quarry should have been dead a hundred times over but is still alive and kicking (if a little slowly) in Quarry’s Return. 

Quarry, ex-soldier, and ex-hitman is now retired and runs a set of remote lodges that he hires out to rich holidaymakers, but even past 70 his past still comes back to haunt him. Sometimes this is a good thing; a daughter he never knew existed. Other times not as good; a killer in disguise. When Quarry’s daughter goes missing while she is investigating a new True Crime novel, our antihero teams up with an old flame (and killer) to find out if his last remaining relative is dead or alive. 

Long time fans of the Quarry series will have a good sense of the books at this point. They have a tone of vintage pulp but are set through Vietnam to present day. The secret sauce is Collins, an experienced author who can write a modern story in a classic pulp fashion. Return is based in the present day but has that dark edge and sense of smoky bar rooms that comes from classic pulp.  

This is the seventeenth outing for the character and at this point Quarry is both a layered character and a remarkably simple one. He is living a new life but still has the willingness to kill. Your bones may get old, but a gun is the great equaliser. Layers come through in the history of the character. The reader is reminded of past exploits, including the welcome return of one femme fatale. 

Layers are not just in the characters, but in the structure of the book. The Quarry series is written as if the author is the hitman, and he has changed a few locations and names to protect his identity. He has written seventeen dime store novels and has never been revealed. Now his daughter, the true crime specialist, is around and she is retelling a fictionalised ‘truth’ of Quarry’s life, and this has sold a lot better. Are people starting to figure out who Quarry’s latest nom de plume is? 

Does all this history and meta writing sound too complex for your average pulp novel? Luckily, these are just the magic sprinkles that Collins adds to the story. You can read the book as pure escapist fun. It is a thrilling and fun story of a killer being chased by two people who are even worse. There are gun fights and fist fights, all are heightened, but also grounded. It is pulp so people die, but Collins never forgets that this is a 70+ year old man trying to do what he used to find easy.  

What holds the book together is the skill and experience of the author. Collins almost writes two parallel books; one for long terms fans of Quarry who love the layers and one for fans of pure pulp fiction. The book works on both levels. An action thriller with a mystery at the centre that I was unable to unpick until the reveal. This may truly be Quarry’s last outing, but I hope there is life in the old dog yet.