Kemper's Reviews > Quarry's Ex

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Especially if you’re a hit man and you’ve killed several people while there.

Quarry used to just murder people for money, but he now he works a new angle. Using info he accumulated while in the business, he now tracks other hit men while they’re getting ready to kill their latest target, and then he approaches the marks with an offer to dispose of the other hit men first. For a bonus fee, he’ll try to figure out who paid for the contract.

This gig has brought Quarry to Vegas where he finds a couple of killers working on setting up an accident for a movie director working on a new film. Quarry persuades the director to engage his services, but there’s a big complication when it turns out that his ex-wife is involved with the movie production. Since Quarry’s life of crime started after he murdered the man he caught her cheating on him with, this makes the situation just a little touchy…

The Quarry series got revitalized by the Hard Case Crime line, and they’re among the most reliable of their books. They aren’t knock-outs, but they’re pretty entertaining. Since Quarry has been established as older and retired in previous books before he found new life with HCC, these are set in the past, and Collins has some funs with his ‘80s setting in this one with things like casual comments about how the rising popularity of VHS is changing the movie business.

The idea that he’s a hit man targeting other hit man allows Collins to have his cake and eat it too by making Quarry a murderous anti-hero but giving him noble enough motives that you don’t feel too bad for rooting for him since the people he kills are all ‘bad’. It’s a bit of a cop out, but done well enough that it’s not overly bothersome, and Quarry still has enough of an unsavory edge you’d expect from a hired killer.