In this great little anthology of nine stories, you'll be transported from the Civil War, to the rollicking gangster era of the 1920s, to the women's empowered 1940s, to the dangerous world of a deadly spy, and to the deadly embrace of a manipulative teen. The action comes fast and furious, and a lot of it has a mean streak as well as sexy curves as dangerous as those on a femme fatale.
The authors of My Lolita Complex don't pull any punches and quickly demonstrate their mastery of short fiction, plunging the reader again and again into a breathless tour de force of the crime and passion waiting out there. Not many people can pull off an exciting story, complete with history and social commentary, in a matter of a few pages, but these authors can and manage to do it again and again in this volume.
Max Allan Collins has been writing tough guy fiction, private eye fiction, and mysteries for decades. He's a master of the craft. He's also the author of the award-winning Nate Heller mysteries, the graphic novel that spawned The Road to Perdition starring Tom Hanks, the Mallory novels, the Quarry novels, and a loose series of “disaster” novels that combine various authors in their best known time periods with mysteries and world-changing events.
The War of the Worlds Murder features pulp novelist Walter B. Gibson (author of The Shadow pulp stories under his pen name Maxwell Grant) and a young Orson Welles on that fateful Halloween night the Martians invaded. The Pearl Harbor Murders pits adventure writer Edgar Rice Burroughs against a cunning murderer on Hawaii on the eve of World War II.
In addition to being a film director (Mommy and Real Time: Siege At Lucas Street Market), Collins, along with his writing partner Matthew V. Clemens, pens the new and continuing adventures of the Las Vegas CSI team and, so far, one novel based on the television show Bones. Collins acknowledges Clemens as the backbone of the research department, but he does a lot of the writing as well.
In addition to delivering ten stories, the authors graciously acknowledge the markets and the circumstances that led them to write each. Readers don't just get entertainment. They also get some insight into the craft of writing as well as an education of how dedicated a craftsman has to be to ply his trade.
"Stakeout On Rush Street" — one of the best in the collection — was originally from a Buffy the Vampire anthology. Collins writes about this period with real intensity and knowledge. Most of the Nate Heller novels were set during this time. I recommend mystery and private eye fans who haven’t read this series to get familiar with it. No one does 1940s crime fiction better.
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