Max Allan Collins has been writing about his
hardboiled former Chicago cop turned private dick Nathan Heller for 30 years,
which translates into 15 novels and four short story collections. Nate first
appeared in True Detective (1983) and
most recently in Ask Not (2013). In
1991 the first collection of Nathan Heller stories appeared, and its title
story—the best in the collection—was a Shamus nominated novella titled “Dying
in the Post-War World”.
“Dying in the Post-War World” is set in Chicago.
July, 1947. Heller’s wife, Peg, is pregnant, and while business at his A-1
Detective Agency is slow—no one is getting divorced in the post war
euphoria—life isn’t bad. That is until Bob Keenan, a high level administrator
at the Office of Price Administration (OPA), calls with an emergency, and Peg
tells Nate she wants a divorce. In that order, and just that quickly.
The emergency. Bob Keenan’s six year old daughter
JoAnn was kidnapped from her room. The window open. A broken down ladder
outside, and a note on the floor of the girl’s room:
“Get
$20,000 Ready & Waite for Word. Do Not Notify the FBI or Police. Bills in
5’s and 10’s. Burn this for her safety!”
“Dying in the Post-War World” is an intriguing
retelling of Chicago’s Lipstick Killer. The names have changed—William Heirens
(the real world convicted Lipstick Killer) is now Jerome Lapps, and Suzanne
Degnan (the kidnapped girl) is now JoAnn Keegan. Mr Collins also plays with the
timeline, and adds an appealing mob connection in form of one Sam Flood (aka
Sam Giancana). The details are interesting, but the magic is in the telling. The
smooth integration of fact and fiction. The old world Chicago. A Chicago where it
was both possible to buy, and people actually wanted, a brand new Plymouth. The
humor—“crooked even by Chicago standards.”
The story is written in first person. It is something
of a nostalgic memoir. It is hardboiled, lean, and tough as the Windy City. It also
has a bunch of post war angst. The sort of angst we all feel; a little hope and
a lot of fear for the future. Not necessarily our own future, but the future we
leave our children—
“For
that one night, settled into a hard hospital chair, in the glow of my brand-new
little family, I allowed myself to believe that that hope was not a vain one.
That anything was possible in this glorious post-war world.”
1 comment:
Lovely, generous review. But I should point out that the most recent two collections -- CHICAGO LIGHTNING and TRIPLE PLAY -- replace the earlier two (DYING IN THE POST-WAR WORLD and KISSES OF DEATH). LIGHTNING has all the short stories to date, including a few previously uncollected, while TRIPLE PLAY has the three novellas to date (including "Dying in the Post-War World"). Thank you again.
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