Quarry in the Black E-Book

Max Allan Collins

• Herausgeber: Hard Case Crime
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

With a controversial presidential election just weeks away, Quarry is hired to carry out a rare political assignment: kill the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, a passionate Civil Rights crusader and campaigner for the underdog candidate. But when a hate group out of Ferguson, Missouri, turns out to be gunning for the same target, Quarry starts to wonder just who it is he's working for.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Acclaim for the Work of Max Allan Collins!

Also by Max Allan Collins

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Author’s Note

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Also Available from Hard Case Crime Book

Acclaim For the Work ofMAX ALLAN COLLINS!

“Crime fiction aficionados are in for a treat…a neo-pulp noir classic.”

—Chicago Tribune

“No one can twist you through a maze with as much intensity and suspense as Max Allan Collins.”

—Clive Cussler

“Collins never misses a beat…All the stand-up pleasures of dime-store pulp with a beguiling level of complexity.”

—Booklist

“Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”

—New York Times Book Review

“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st-century Mickey Spillane and…will please any fan of old-school, hardboiled crime fiction.”

—This Week

“A suspenseful, wild night’s ride [from] one of the finest writers of crime fiction that the U.S. has produced.”

—Book Reporter

“This book is about as perfect a page turner as you’ll find.”

—Library Journal

“Bristling with suspense and sexuality, this book is a welcome addition to the Hard Case Crime library.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A total delight…fast, surprising, and well-told.”

—Deadly Pleasures

“Strong and compelling reading.”

—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Max Allan Collins [is] like no other writer.”

—Andrew Vachss

“Collins breaks out a really good one, knocking over the hard-boiled competition (Parker and Leonard for sure, maybe even Puzo) with a one-two punch: a feisty storyline told bittersweet and wry…nice and taut…the book is unputdownable. Never done better.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Rippling with brutal violence and surprising sexuality…I savored every turn.”

—Bookgasm

“Masterful.”

—Jeffery Deaver

“Collins has a gift for creating low-life believable characters…a sharply focused action story that keeps the reader guessing till the slam-bang ending. A consummate thriller from one of the new masters of the genre.”

—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“For fans of the hardboiled crime novel…this is powerful and highly enjoyable reading, fast moving and very, very tough.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Entertaining…full of colorful characters…a stirring conclusion.”

—Detroit Free Press

“Collins makes it sound as though it really happened.”

—New York Daily News

“An exceptional storyteller.”

—San Diego Union Tribune

“Nobody does it better than Max Allan Collins.”

—John Lutz

“Would you have done it, Boyd?”

“Not for the kind of money we usually get. Not even for ten grand.”

“But if the money were right?”

“…I think so. Retirement money, yeah, you bet.”

“Martin Luther King. How about Bobby Kennedy? Or Jack?”

He thought for a few moments. “High six figures. Political hits are high risk in lots of ways, but sure, I’d take a flier.”

I finished my Coke.

“What about you, Quarry?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

That seemed to annoy him. “Why not? Yeah, yeah, I get you, they’re good people, decent men, maybe great men. But they’re like anybody else we take out—they put themselves there. They made enemies. If somebody’s gonna get rich, why shouldn’t it be us? You? Me?”

Rich like Oswald? Or Sirhan Sirhan? Or James Earl Ray?

Boyd said, “What makes you so holier than thou, all of a sudden?”

Going down the stairs, I thought, Sure you’d have taken on King or the Kennedys. All you’d have to do is surveil the fuckers…

HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS BY MAX ALLAN COLLINS:

QUARRY

QUARRY’S LIST

QUARRY’S DEAL

QUARRY’S CUT

QUARRY’S VOTE

THE LAST QUARRY

THE FIRST QUARRY

QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE

QUARRY’S EX

THE WRONG QUARRY

QUARRY’S CHOICE

QUARRY IN THE BLACK

DEADLY BELOVED

SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT

TWO FOR THE MONEY

DEAD STREET (with Mickey Spillane)

THE CONSUMMATA (with Mickey Spillane)

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK(HCC-125)First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2016

Published by

Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark StreetLondon SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

Copyright © 2016 by Max Allan Collins

Cover painting copyright © 2016by Laurel Blechman with Glen Orbik

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print edition ISBN 978-1-78329-814-3E-book ISBN 978-1-78329-815-0

Design direction by Max Phillipswww.maxphillips.net

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

For Quarry’s friendsGraham Gordy& Michael D. Fuller

“Man was born into barbarism, when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING

“Look who’s protesting! Shoot first is my motto.”

FEARLESS FOSDICK

OCTOBER 1972

ONE

You may think, reading this one, that I’ve gone soft. Let me assure you that the only time I go soft is after fucking. Then I suffer an understandable physical reaction as well as a sleepy emotional affection for the female, whoever she might be, that lasts a good thirty seconds.

Now soft in the head, that’s another matter altogether. For me to take on a contract like the one the Broker proposed to me at my A-frame on Paradise Lake that crisp fall evening, I had to be stupid or half-nuts or maybe completely greedy since it did, after all, involve a lot of dough.

In my defense, I was fairly new to the game. I had been killing people for money for less than two years, so maybe my relative inexperience played a role. Of course, really I’d been killing people for money a number of years longer than that, if you counted Vietnam; but the targets were “gooks,” as we used to inelegantly put it, and the employer was Uncle Whiskers, not the Broker, who paid better—much better, in this instance.

With his rich man’s tan and perfectly coiffed white hair with matching mustache—and his blue-plaid sportcoat, white pointed-collar sportshirt, navy slacks, and blue-toed white loafers—the Broker might have been a bank president or the dean of a small college on his day off. But he wasn’t. Not a banker or a dean or on his day off, either.

This was a business call. And this distinguished-looking man’s business was brokering contract killings, serving as the buffer between the respectable people who wanted someone dead and the disreputable types who made them that way. For money.