BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

Crime fiction readers know Quarry, the ruthless killer-for-hire, from Max Allan Collins’ acclaimed novels – most recently THE LAST QUARRY, which told the story of the assassin’s final assignment (and was the basis for the feature film The Last Lullaby).

But where did Quarry's story start?  For first time ever, the best-selling author ofROAD TO PERDITION takes us back to the beginning, revealing the never-before-told story of Quarry’s first job: infiltrating a college campus and eliminating a professor whose affair with one of his beautiful, young students is the least of his sins…

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

Violent and volatile and packed with sexuality…classic pulp fiction --USA Today

Collins witty, hard boiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud --Entertainment Weekly

As cool as an Eskimo Pie on a hot summer day and as sharp as a Ginsu knife --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel