Book Review - "Better Dead" by Max Allan Collins

Back in March, I touted you all to the news that Max Allan Collins would be releasing a new Nate Heller novel this spring, "Better Dead".

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2016/03/closing-book-on-nate-heller-or-so-i.html

I just finished reading this newest Heller "memoir", and I am happy to report that Collins and Heller have teamed up for another terrific story;

As in all of the past Heller chronicles, our hero gets himself involved with real historical figures and real historical crimes.  "Better Dead" takes place in 1950, and among the people that Heller encounters in this one are Senator Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Robert Kennedy, Drew Pearson, Dashiell Hammett, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Senator Estes Kefauver, Bettie Page, and Frank Olson.

The thrust of the book concerns the case of Frank Olson, a real life person with whom I was unfamiliar.  He was a scientist who worked for the CIA back in the post-WWII era in the development of biological and chemical weapons. I the course of these events, Olson was "slipped a mickey" one night at a CIA retreat that contained LSD, a relatively new and unknown drug at the time.  Olson reacted badly to the drug, and developed paranoia and mental illness.  One night, while the CIA was attempting to get treatment for him, Olson committed suicide by leaping from the 18th floor of his hotel in New York.

Or did he?  There is a lot I could write here about the Frank Olson case, but I will not do so.  No spoilers. Better you should read "Better Dead" and other resources on this case.  It is really quite fascinating.

That is the thrust of the second half of the book, and Collins wraps things up nicely in the final chapter with a sort of "whatever became of..." segment about what happened to everyone, how each of the strands of the story worked out, and how Collins' alternate theories of  history actually could have been true.  Even the names of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield pop up in here.

I don't know how many, if any, more Heller stories Collins has left in him, but I sure hope that there will be more.  "Better Dead" proves that Collins has not lost a thing off of his metaphorical fast ball when it comes to the Memoirs of PI Nathan Heller.

Oh, I mentioned Bettie Page.  Yes, Collins always seems to include a real life pretty dame in these stories, and yes, as with all of the others, Miss Page and Nate become an "item" in this one.

Yep, that is the famous 1950's pin-up model Bettie Page above in one of her, ahem, more inhibited poses.  Why am I including it in this post?  Well, why not!!

Closing the Book On Nate Heller (or So I Thought)

While on vacation in Florida last month I finally got around to reading "Chicago Confidential" by Max Allan Collins.  This novel featured Collins' fictional private eye, Nate Heller.  I have written of Collins and Heller often in this blog (just type their names in the search box of this blog and see), and regular readers know how much I love these stories.  

I had "Chicago Confidential" downloaded on my Kindle for over a year and was reluctant to read it because, you see, once I did, I would have read all of the Heller novels that Collins had written, and I just didn't want to think that there were no more Heller adventures awaiting me.  However, a nice vacation was a good opportunity to surrender to the inevitable, and the book did not disappoint.

"Chicago Confidential" takes place in 1950 and it opens with Nate working out of the A-1 Detective Agency's west coast office in Los Angeles.  In the first chapter, Nate takes on as a client a beautiful young UCLA coed named Vera Jayne Palmer, who is seeking protection form an abusive boyfriend, who is actually he husband, Paul Mansfield.  Yes, Vera Palmer turns out to be Jayne Mansfield, and, yes, as readers might guess, Nate does end up working, shall we say, extremely close  with Miss Mansfield, long before she became a star, during the course of his investigation.

Jayne Mansfield is not the real star of the book, although she does end up playing a key role in the case as it unfolds.  Real historical figures such as Estes Kefauver, Joseph McCarthy, Drew Pearson, Frank Sinatra, a trio of Chicago mobsters named Fischetti, Sam Giancana, Jack Ruby, and assorted Chicago politicians and hoods also play a role in the tale.  It is another terrific yarn from Collins, and fans of Nate Heller - and I know that I have tipped a few of you out there to this series - will know what I mean and really like the book.

As I said, I was sad when I finished the book, because I knew that there were no more Nate Heller memoirs left for me to read, but lo and behold, while checking Mr. Collins' website in preparation for writing this post, I learned that there will be another Heller novel that will be released on May 3 of this year.  Talk about an early Christmas present!

The book is called "Better Dead" and it will center around the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950's.  In this one, Heller will once again tangle with Senator Joe McCarthy, and will also become involved with such historical persons and Robert Kennedy, Roy Cohn, Dashiell Hammett, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  I can't wait, and the only question is, will I read it right away, or will I wait for another vacation later in the year in order to savor the anticipation.

In case you are interested, I thought I would give you a list of all of the Heller cannon:

• Nate Heller Chronology
• Novels:
• Better Dead (2016)
• Ask Not (2013)
• Target Lancer (2012)
• Bye Bye, Baby (2011)
• Chicago Confidential (2002)
• Angel in Black (2001)
• Majic Man (1999)
• Flying Blind (1998)
• Damned in Paradise (1996)
• Blood and Thunder (1995)
• Carnal Hours (1994)
• Stolen Away (1991)
• Neon Mirage (1988)
• The Million-Dollar Wound (1986)
• True Crime (1984)
• True Detective (1983)
• Short Story Collections:
• Triple Play (2012)
• Chicago Lightning (2011)
• Kisses of Death (2001)
• Dying in the Post-War World (1991)

I cannot say enough, and God knows I've tried, about these books as far as terrific and entertaining stories.  While it isn't necessary to read this books in order, I would suggest that you read the first three - True Detective, True Crime, and The Million-Dollar Wound - sequentially, as these were Collins' so-called "Capone trilogy".  Likewise, Bye, Bye Baby, Target Lancer, and Ask Not comprise Collins' "JFK Trilogy" and should also be read in order.  As for the others, pick them up and read them any time in any order.  You won't be sorry.

Mr. Collins himself has recently undergone some serious surgery, but is recovering according to plan as he reports on his website, www.maxallancollins.com.  That is good news for him, his family and his fans.

A Movie and A Book from 1999

In recent days I have aught up with an old book and an old movie, both of which hit the marketplace, coincidentally, in 1999.

The first was the following movie...

My long aversion to prison movies long outweighed my liking of Tom Hanks, so I had never seen this Academy Award nominated movie (it didn't win).  However, at the urging of my friend Bill Montrose - he loaned me his DVD of the flick - I finally watched this, and, yes, I liked it.  It was long and leisurely (three hours), and well acted.  Like "The Shawshank Redemption" (another prison movie that I finally got around to watching thanks to Mr. Montrose), it was directed by Frank Darabont and based on a story by Stephen King.

I thought Shawshank was a better movie.  Green Mile leaned a bit too heavily on mystical or supernatural elements for my tastes, but that's Stephen King for you, and I've never been a fan of his.

Still, the movie featured Tom Hanks and that can never be a bad thing.

After one has seen an older movie like this one, it is interesting to go on line and read reviews off the movie that came out when the movie did.  "The Green Mile" was far from a unanimous hit with the critics back in 1999.  It has, however, stood the test of time fairly well, thanks in large part, I believe, to the performance of Tom Hanks.

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The book that I read was "Majic Man" by Max Allan Collins. This was another in his series featuring private eye Nate Heller, and if you read this Blog, you know I love these stories.  

This one takes place in 1949, and finds Nate working for real life Secretary of Defense James Forrestal.  Along the way, Nate also gets involved with muck-raking Washington DC columnist Drew Pearson, the supposed UFO landing at Roswell, NM in 1947, has dinner with Harry Truman, gets beat up and kidnapped by the Air Force, almost gets killed, has sex with a beautiful woman (of course, he does!), meets up with several other real life historical figures, and offers an alternative theory to Mr. Forrestal's suicide in 1949, and a theory of what REALLY happened in Roswell.  Like all of the other Heller novels, it's a really fun and terrific read.

Max Allan Collins has written fifteen Nate Heller novels, and, I am sad to say, that only one, "Chicago Confidential" (2002), remains for me to read.  I think I will put of reading that one for awhile, because I know that there will be no more Heller stories left once that one is done.  

Book Talk - Nathan Heller and Charlie Chan

 While on our recent trip to Hawaii, one of the books I chose to read was Max Allan Collins' 1996 Nathan Heller novel, "Damned in Paradise".  I chose this one because it just so happens to take place in Hawaii, so why not read it when we are actually there, right?

Like all the Heller novels, this one is based on an actual crime, the so called "Massie case" that took place in Hawaii in 1931-32.  In involves the alleged rape of the wife of an American navel officer stationed in Pearl Harbor by a gang of native Hawaiians, and the subsequent murder of one of the suspects by the mother and husband of the victim.  The actual defense attorney in the case was the famous Clarence Darrow, and, of course, for the purposes of this story, Darrow has hired Nate Heller, at the time still a young member of the Chicago police force, as his chief investigator as he prepares for trial.

As he does with all these stories, Collins sticks to the main facts of the actual case, but manipulates history just enough to create a fun and entertaining story.  Another story in the Nate Heller series that I would highly recommend.  And as with all of these stories, there are many real historical figures included.  Besides Darrow and the principals of the Massie case, the story also features a Honolulu police detective named Chang Apana, and the interesting thing about Apana is that he is said to have been the inspiration to author Earl Derr Biggers for his famous fictional detective, Charlie Chan.

Upon finishing "Damned in Paradise", I was prompted to search Amazon for this book, "The House Without a Key" which was the first Chan novel that Biggers wrote.  In fact, Biggers wrote only six Chan novels.  "The House Without a Key" was published in 1925, and the style of the writing is a bit, shall we say, dated.  Charlie Chan himself is also almost a minor character in the novel, but it is set in Hawaii, so it was a fun read while vacationing there.

Reading this also made me remember the great "Charlie Chan Theater" which ran for a couple of years as a late night movie on Channel 4, WTAE, in Pittsburgh, and was hosted by Dave Crantz back in the early 1970's.  The fact that Hollywood cranked out dozens and dozens of these Chan movies in the '30s and '40s made for easy and no doubt cheap programming for a Saturday late night movie.  The movies starred Warner Oland and, later, Sidney Toler as Chan and were lighthearted and fun movies, although probably so politically incorrect (as were, no doubt, Crantz' introductory and commercial break commentaries) that they are seldom shown today.

Anybody else out there remember watching those movies on Channel 4?