DEADFALL & QUARRY'S VOTE

I started reading DEADFALL (1967) by Desmond Cory the other day. It was a paperback copy that I'd had on my shelf for years. I've been trying to work my through some of my older books lately under that adage that "you bought 'em, you read 'em". This one had a decent pedigree. It was published by Fawcett and served as the basis for a film of the same name starring Michael Caine.

 I've never seen the film but I have no desire to do so because I couldn't finish this absolutely horrible book. I kept trying to get interested in the plot but the writing was so turgid and the characters so unlikeable, that after forcing myself to plow through three-quarters of the book, I finally decided that life's too short and I don't have to spend time reading a book that just isn't working for me. It's the author's fault, not mine as Cory strains mightily to produce an existential caper novel (an unworkable combination), in this murky tale of a master jewel thief, his bizarre employer, Moreau and Moreau's beautiful (and much younger) wife. I'm quite sure that had I stuck it out to the end, the big reveal would have been that Moreau's "wife" would have turned out to have been his daughter. Yawn.

The point is dear readers, I feel no obligation whatsoever to continue reading a book that I'm not enjoying. I fully and freely give myself permission to stop reading a book at any time and move on to something else that I have a better chance of liking. It's a liberating experience and I urge you to adopt this practice if you haven't already done so.

I'm glad I bailed out on DEADFALL because what I immediately picked up was QUARRY'S VOTE by the ever reliable Max Allan Collins.

Originally published in 1987 under the title PRIMARY TARGET, Hard Case Crime republished the book in 2015 as QUARRY'S VOTE. Sporting a terrific cover painting by the great Robert McGinnis, VOTE finds professional hit man Quarry retired from the killing game. He's married and his young wife is pregnant with their first child when Quarry's past comes calling. He's offered one million dollars for a hit on a third party presidential candidate, an offer he refuses. Quarry's refusal gets his wife and her brother dead and Quarry on the warpath. Note to foolish would be master criminals: don't fuck with Quarry.

Only a cheetah can move faster than the rate at which I turned the pages on this superlative thriller. I've read several of  the QUARRY novels over the years and Collins has yet to disappoint. VOTE is classic Quarry with plenty of violence, smart-ass dialogue, a penetrating look at the modern American political system and a plot twist or two.

I devoured this book in a couple of days, all the while silently giving thanks that I had quit reading the dreadfully dull DEADFALL. I know that it's not entirely fair to compare these two novels because they are, as the saying goes, apples and oranges. But they are both crime novels, a genre that contains certain tropes and elements that, in the hands of a skilled storyteller, can spin gold out of pulp straw. Collins, as he has proven in many of his books that I've read over the years, can perform this feat. Cory, at least in DEADFALL, cannot.