The Wrong Quarry (2014) by Max Allan Collins

A former contract killer named Jack Quarry spends his retirement years hunting and killing contract killers, and, occasionally, the contractors. But, is Jack’s quarry innocent?

The Wrong Quarry slams like a slug from a .44 and doesn’t stop until the last body has dropped to the floor.

Max Allan Collins, New York Times bestselling author of Road to Perdition, presents a hard boiled, gritty, killer on the loose pulp fiction novel in The Wrong Quarry. Everything here, from the vivid descriptions, lurid sex, profanity, and vicious deaths, is straight out of the old pulp novels of yesteryear but is every bit as entertaining and fresh today.

I have read more of the science fiction pulp novels than any other sort, but The Wrong Quarry, as my first of the kind, kept me reading from page one straight till the end. So well done was this novel that I remembered why I loved reading in the first place: the journey. The journey that starts the first time the protagonist speaks until the last line of the book. This was certainly a fun and twisty journey, full of great sights and meticulous detail.

Jack Quarry, as protagonist and narrator, is fun and easy to listen to, and you can almost imagine him telling you the tale in some truck stop dive somewhere over a greasy hamburger and a sweating Coca Cola. His sense of humor crackles just as much as his knack for story telling, and both are a credit to Collins’ creative ability.

The Wrong Quarry is about a dance instructor who has landed on the bad end of a town’s ire over a missing schoolgirl, and the man who is out to save his life from the killers hired to kill him by killing them. It may be a sleepy little town in the Midwest, but it is about to see a whole lotta action. Or is it? Quarry is as quiet as he is ruthless, but his hunt may more noise he intends.

Pick it up The Wrong Quarry when it releases on this 7th of January and enjoy yourself a good old fashioned crime novel from Max Allan Collins. You can read Collins’ blog here and follow him on Twitter @MaxAllanCollins.

I was provided a copy of the book by the publisher for review purposes, but my review and my opinions are my own and cannot be bought.