Quarry in the Black

August 8, 2016
The 1972 presidential election provides the backdrop for Collins’s entertaining 13th Quarry novel (after 2015’s Quarry’s Choice). In October of that year, the Broker, who’s the “buffer between the respectable people who wanted someone dead and the disreputable types who made them that way,” meets Quarry at the hit man’s home in Wisconsin to offer him the job of eliminating the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, a charismatic civil rights activist who’s campaigning for McGovern. When Quarry says he doesn’t kill good people, the Broker assures him that Lloyd is largely funded by gangsters and is using the campaign tour to distribute drugs. Quarry drives to St. Louis, where Lloyd has his headquarters, and soon learns that white supremacists are also out to get Lloyd. Memorable scenes include a cross burning that turns violent. Series fans will cheer as Quarry bests his opponents with commendable ease. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

Just in time to celebrate his debut on the small screen in a Cinemax series, veteran hit man Quarry (Primary Target, 1987, etc.) returns to bookstores to execute a contract on a noted civil rights leader.He's using the name John Blake for the assignment, but that doesn't much matter, since Quarry's not his real name either. And this time not even a purse of $25,000 makes him eager to pull the trigger on the Rev. Raymond Wesley Lloyd. What overcomes his scruples are his broker's assurances that although Lloyd may have found Jesus during his prison term, he didn't lose his affinity for drugs, which he's now peddling to finance the St. Louis Civil Rights Coalition and, incidentally, his campaign on behalf of Sen. George McGovern's hopeless candidacy for the presidency. Partnered again with Boyd, a facilitator whose homosexuality sparks some back and forth that seems suspiciously ahead of its time for 1972, Quarry settles with his confederate into a nondescript house also tenanted by Becky, a local waitress whom he saves from a pair of louts who paw her and who rewards him for his chivalrous rescue with unfettered access to the body she shrank from having pinched. His fling with Becky soon alerts Quarry to the unwelcome news that his client may be loathsome Cmdr. Zachary Taylor Starkweather, founder of the White Christian Freedom Party--and that the contract he's accepted may not be the only one taken out on the target. The inevitable friction between killers with very different agendas pays off in gory scenes and tawdry revelations that won't shock a soul. But historical-noir specialist Collins (Better Dead, 2016, etc.) provides appropriately retro pulpy pleasures along the way. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2016
It's 1972, and you're a Vietnam veteran turned hit man, but the deal you've made with your boss is that you're only going to kill mopes who deserve to die anyway. But what happens when your new assignment is to eliminate a much-loved civil rights leader who may be a drug dealer? The drugs help tip the moral scales a bit but not enough, especially when you learn there's another hit man on the job who's been hired by a neo-Nazi Klansman. It's a hit man's nightmare: you don't want to kill your target, but you'd be happy to whack the Klansman, if only somebody would pay you to do it. Fortunately, Collins' enterprising hit man, Quarry, is a whiz at keeping his moral scales in balancewell, sort of, given the plethora of dead bodies that litter these pages. Hard Case Crime has been republishing the early Quarry novels, but this one is brand new, even though it takes place in the '70s. No problem. We're happy to jump around chronologically if that's what it takes to get a steady diet of Quarry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)