Quarry's Choice

March 9, 2015
Mickey Spillane fans will relish Collins's 11th novel featuring the hard-hitting hit man who goes by Quarry (after 2014's The Wrong Quarry). In 1972, a year after Quarry finished his tour of duty in Vietnam, he's settled into his new career as a murderer for hire, working for a middleman known as the Broker. After a failed attempt on the Broker's life, he himself becomes Quarry's client, setting the mercenary on the trail of a Dixie Mafia leader, Jack Killian, whom the Broker believes wants him dead. Quarry finds getting close to Killian easy, but the assignment becomes an emotional challenge as his target becomes human to him, as does a hooker with the clichéd heart of gold . A few twists bolster the fairly predictable story, as dolean prose and well-constructed action sequences. Impressively, Collins manages to make his violent, brutal, and efficient killer somewhat sympathetic rather than merely repellent. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

Though this is Collins's eleventh Quarry story, he takes listeners back to the beginning, when Quarry returned from Vietnam and became a young hit man. Thanks to Collins, and narrator Stefan Rudnicki, you can't put your headphones down. Quarry is sent to Mississippi by his "broker" to kill a Southern Mafia hood. Along the way, he manages to befriend a hooker and dispatch eight additional wrongdoers. Rudnicki's voice is deep and entrancing. Perhaps a little too deep for the young killer. On the other hand, he's got a fine Southern brogue and moves this hard-core story along at a frenzied clip--almost too quickly to savor. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine