In 1983, Max Allan Collins created a brand new
sub-genre, something very few writers have ever done. In TRUE DETECTIVE, his first Nathan Heller
novel, he wedded the street-wise private detective novel with the historical
novel.
The advantages to
this approach were enormous. The big blockbuster historical novels were all too
often stagey and wooden. Heller not only
brought a sense of humor to the dance, he treated the historical figures he dealt
with as human beings who farted, told dirty jokes and had the kind of mundane
personal problems the big blockbusters never dealt with. In other words, he
brought reality to the table.
In BETTER DEAD
Heller is hired by Senator Joseph McCarthy to prove that all the victims Tail
Gunner Joe is pursuing are actually “Commies.” His particular interest is
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who sit in prisons awaiting their execution. This
is just how I imagined McCarthy, a drunken, ignorant Mick rummy bent on
achieving massive power. He is assisted in this by none other than Roy Cohn, a
vile and treacherous figure who just happened to be (half a decade later) one
of Donald Trump’s mentors.
But Heller also
signs on to help an ailing Dashiell Hammett find evidence that the Rosenbergs
have been set up and are innocent.
Collins recreates the zeitgeist of the era
very well. Yes, there were a lot of Communist sympathizers back then, mostly
older men and women, intellectuals often, who saw the suffering during the
Depression and thought—mistakenly—that Communism was the solution. (I started
college in 1962 and took a history class from an elderly professor who was
still a Stalinist, despite the fact that we now knew that Uncle Joe Stalin had
slaughtered millions and millions of his own people.)
But these weren’t “Communist agents,” just disillusioned intellectuals
(The Coen Bros. wittily address this in their latest film “Hail Caesar”).
Collins’
sociological eye never fails. Here’s a description I’ve now read three or four
times just because I enjoy it so much. Heller is in the Bohemian heart of
Greenwich Village.
“The clientele
this time of time of night was mostly drinking coffee, and a good number were
drunk, some extravagantly so as artists and poets and musicians sang their own
praises and bemoaned the shortcomings of their lessers. These were self-defined
outcasts, their attire at once striking and shabby, drab and outlandish.”
Bravado writing on
every single page.
Max
Allan Collins not only created a new sub-genre–he is its undisputed master.
