The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins

First published in 2008, “The First Quarry” is the eighth novel to be published in the series, but as the title suggests, it is a throwback to Quarry’s first gig. An origin story if you will. Readers new to the series will likely choose this one as a place to start although these books can really be read in any order. Regardless, this one makes for an excellent place to dive in to the world of Quarry. Marking the success of the novel, Hard Case Crime has now published a second printing in 2025, in the larger trade paperback edition.

The story begins with Quarry on his very first assignment, holed up in an unoccupied house, conducting a stakeout of a libidinous professor. One at a time, several good-looking female grad students parade into the prof’s home, presumably to get additional study aid over the Christmas break. Of course, they’re really getting aid of a different kind. Soon, we are treated to a flashback sequence describing how Quarry came to be in this place, including his recent return from ‘Nam, the discovery of his wife at home in bed with another man, and his subsequent jail time for crushing that same man under a vehicle he was working on. After a shortened incarceration due to an understanding justice system, we learn how he was recruited as a hitman by a man going by the name of “The Broker”.

What should be a straightforward hit on the professor (the contract also requires the destruction of all notes and written pages of a book the professor is writing), becomes increasingly more complicated. Things become murkier when Quarry discovers that he’s not the only man staking out Byron’s house and after he meets the jealous wife, as well as one of the students who also happens to be the daughter of a Chicago mob boss, that straightforward assignment becomes dicey as Hell.

This is a terrific crime novel, as I’ve come to expect from the pen of Max Allan Collins. I’ve read several Quarry novels before, but it was great fun to see how it all began. Despite the relative violence of the book’s premise, there is a fair bit of humor laced throughout. Quarry, as always, is a fascinating character, and his worldview (shaped by his experiences in Vietnam) allows the reader to root for him, especially considering his targets are despicable people.

Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver

 

In the year 2050, our planet's climate crisis has reached devastating consequences. Ten years previously, a massive heatwave killed millions of people in the Persian Gulf. In order to turn the tide of such ongoing destruction, the people of Earth have come together to decide they need a single leader, a Protector, for all of us so that we can move in one direction and successfully combat these threats for our own survival. 

Thus, an election was planned. Now, the primaries have been completed, and we're down to just two final candidates: a former United States president, and an "artilect", an advanced AI personality who is already serving as Governor of the "Floating States".  But Marcus Tully, a well-known trustworthy investigative journalist has been contacted by a whistleblower which leads him down a dark and emotion-filled rabbit hole of multiple conspiracies and political intrigue. And murder.

I didn't know what to expect when I first began to read this book. But right from the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised. A near-future science fiction yarn with political overtones was right up my alley, especially when it doesn't hit me over the head with endless technobabble. But then the novel morphed into a rather complex murder mystery, also near and dear to me heart. But it didn't stop there as it morphed again into pure sci-fi thriller territory. And then it dawned on me. It wasn't morphing at all but rather was firing all those aspects at me simultaneously. That makes it sound like chaos, but the prose made it entirely engaging and readable. The characters, especially Tully and the chief security officer October were fun to watch as they tried to get to the bottom of the murder. Of course, a major theme/question throughout the novel surrounded the wisdom of putting an AI in charge of humanity's future and in fact, whenever the AI politician, "Solomon" was depicted in a scene, I was torn between really wanting to trust it versus wondering if he/it would turn out to be like HAL or a Terminator.

Author Thomas Weaver describes himself as a writer and serial tech entrepreneur. Certainly, he has devoted a lot of thought to what the future may hold for us. This novel seems extremely rooted in logical assumptions of our own near future and the extrapolations of current tech and societal evolution (impact of social media, conspiracy theories, election interference, etc.) seem spot on. That makes this book both a nice balance between an intriguing future, and a scary one. The ending could serve as a finale even though nothing is neatly tied up and we don't get definitive answers or outcomes to all the events in the book.

Rumor has it that Weaver is planning a sequel, although he states that he envisions a duology and not a series. Count me in when that book becomes available.