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.