STEVE CARROLL WRITES

The First Quarry  (2008)  by Max Allan Collins Having recently taken the plunge into crime fiction, I was excited to check out the  Quarry  series from prolific author, Max Allan Collins. I have read that Collins’ primary inspiration for Quarry was the legendary  Parker  book series by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). There are immediate similarities in regards to ruthless men doing ruthless acts of crime within a specific code of honor, even as they operate well outside of the law.  Though it is the 8th in the series as written, as the title implies,  The First Quarry  details the first mission that our anti-hero protagonist takes on as a young man of 22, recently returned from war in Vietnam. Simply put, Quarry is a hit-man assassin. His mindset is straightforward—if it was acceptable to kill for the government and his country, then he can now kill for pe...

Close Combat  (1969)   by Jack Ehrlich I recently discovered and developed a deep appreciation for author Jack Ehrlich through his remarkable western,  The Laramie River Crossing . Ehrlich writes hard-edged, gritty books with painfully realistic characters navigating tricky plots while fighting their own base desires for violence and moral decay.  Such is the case with  Close Combat, a Vietnam-set tale that starts off deceptively resembling a straight-up “men on a mission” war adventure. Our main character, J.J. Hogan, is hand-picked to lead a force into the jungles of Cambodia to destroy The Monster, a top-secret radar installation that is decimating US air power in the region. The task is likely a suicide mission, but critical to the US war machine. The catch is that every aspect of the mission has to remain deniable for the US government, whether successful or not.  This geo...