The First Quarry (Hard Case Crime)

This gripping story takes readers back in time to the very first job of Quarry, a ruthless killer-for-hire, when he is hired to eliminate a college professor whose sins are far worse than his liaisons with his young students. Original.

Indefatigable genre veteran Collins brought back his hit-man hero Quarry two years ago (The Last Quarry, 2006) after a 30-year hiatus. Now he flashes way back to reveal how Quarry got in the killing business. Naturally, it started in Vietnam, where ne’er-do-well Quarry found something he was good at—killing people; later, after a wrong turn or two back in the States, he hooks up with a broker who runs a murder-for-hire business. Quarry’s first target: a philandering college professor whose latest conquest happens to be the coed daughter of a Chicago mafioso. Rationalizing that the prof is a dead man whether or not Quarry does the deed, our antihero takes the job. Like Lawrence Block in his hit-man series starring the similarly one-named Keller, Collins manages the neat trick of engendering sympathy for a killer by muddying the moral waters: plot complications change the terms of the deal, requiring Quarry to do his killing out of self-preservation rather than cold-blooded commerce. Either way, Collins knows the terrain, mixing pulp-style action with just enough character building to keep us going. Great entertainment from a pro’s pro. --Bill Ott