Better Dead

March 28, 2016
In trying to cover too much ground, Collins dilutes the impact of the main investigation in his 18th historical whodunit featuring PI Nate Heller (after 2013’s Ask Not). In 1953, Sam Spade–creator Dashiell Hammett hires Heller to find whatever evidence he can to secure Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are on death row for treason, a new trial. The investigator adroitly persuades U.S. senator Joe McCarthy, whose Communist witch hunt is at its height, and columnist Drew Pearson, a former McCarthy ally, to help fund his work by promising to reveal anything he finds to them as well. After learning how flimsy the government’s case was against the couple, Heller pursues some leads he gets from a visit to Julius and Ethel in Sing Sing. The truth proves to be more nuanced than any of his employers believes, and Collins again does an effective job of bringing the past to life and making a complex cause célèbre accessible. Recent disclosures about the so-called atomic spies, however, lessen the suspense. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

March 1, 2016
The prolific Collins (Ask Not, 2013, etc.) finds veteran gumshoe Nathan Heller in the McCarthy era, when Wisconsin's demagogue senator looked for a Commie under every bed and his counsel Roy Cohn manipulated the Rosenbergs into the electric chair. Read this one as two novellas, loosely connected by McCarthy's appearance. The senator summons Heller to Washington while noted author Dashiell Hammett takes the Fifth at a Senate hearing. Later, Hammett hires Heller to conduct "an eleventh hour investigation" into the Rosenbergs' case. McCarthy--"big off-white smile blossomed in the blue-jowled face"--wants to stick his nose in the atomic-bomb spy case, too. With that, and bringing in an interesting cast of real-life characters sure to be familiar to baby boomers, Collins offers another homage to the noir detective genre, albeit laced with post-Vietnam/Watergate knowing cynicism. Book 2 festers with nuclear-age conspiracies and the CIA running amok. Institutional paranoia has the spooks conducting LSD-25 experiments on its own people, and innocent civilians, while using the mob for a bit of wetwork. There's a tenuous link between the two books--Heller's hired to pry McCarthy's file from the CIA in Book 2--but Collins generally navigates that tightrope fine, all while keeping both plots logical, the pace electric, and scenes powerful--Nate's observation of an LSD-induced suicide is cringe-inducing. Characters real and imaginary are believably sketched, and Collins' take on 1950s New York City, especially Greenwich Village--dancing at the Village Barn, breakfast at the Waldorf Cafeteria--is impeccable. Veteran author Collins knows detective novels work best when there's a rugged, flawed, self-aware sleuth, a shades-of-gray atmosphere, a righteous quest, and a bed-ready damsel, Bettie Page filling the bill here.

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May 1, 2016
Chicago private eye Nate Heller has investigated most of the last century's headline-grabbing crimes and, thanks to Collins' impeccable research, has always come up with believable explanations of what really happened. So it's no surprise that Heller was in the mix in the 1950s when the Rosenbergs were executed for being Soviet spies. But we all know that Julius was guilty, and Ethel was a sort-of accomplice, so what's left for Nate to uncover? Plenty. It starts with a superb premise that has Nate playing both ends against the middle, helping Joe McCarthy hunt for Reds in the CIA and, at the same time, working for Dashiell Hammett and a group of literary lefties trying to uncover new evidence that will exonerate the Rosenbergs. His investigation, though, leads him to another, equally juicy scandalat least for today's readerinvolving a real-life CIA scientist, on McCarthy's hit list, who disappears after Nate contacts him. The shocking, little-known story of what happened to Frank Olson makes a great true-crime subject, but it's even better in the hands of fact-fiction maestro Collins.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)