Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul Barrett (modern history)

Author Paul Barrett has been writing about the gun industry for 15 years at BusinessWeek. Given this breadth of experience, he seems unequivocably qualified to write this history.

Glock: The Rise of America's Gun tells the story of the firearm that rose from humble beginnings to eventually supplant the revolver as the United States's preferred Roscoe. This unassuming plastic piece was designed by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer with no experience in gun design, and this proved to be what was needed to bring his gun above the fray.

The Glock seems to have an equal-opportunity appeal, drawing everyone from police officers to gangbangers, from drug dealers to hobbyists, and seemingly every other gun enthusiast in between. Not being one of those myself, I was astonished at how drawn in I was by the tale of the Glock. Barrett's prose is smooth, and the story he tells is surprisingly involved and entertaining.

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield (historical Greco-Persian Wars fiction)

Author Steven Pressfield's epic retelling of the legendary battle of Thermopylae ("hot gates"), Gates of Fire, is told by the sole Greek survivor, a Spartan Perioikoi named Xeones, slain via spear, but revived by King Xerxes to tell "the infantryman's tale."

Xeo begins in childhood, begging His Majesty's pardon, when his hands were broken and he lamented that he would never hold sword, shield, or spear. But later he discovered that hands that don't close can still hold an archer's bow steady and pull back the string with two fingers.

He goes on to describe his time as the battle squire of Alexandros, a gentle youth housing great bravery, and delves further into Alexandros's own military training, including a humiliating lesson on keeping one's shield battle-ready, the conquering of fear, the identifying of the slain, the unconventional work of their commander Dienekes, and a particularly grueling session from Polynikes:

"Imagine the pleasure that awaits you when you clash in line of battle.... Killing a man is like fucking, only instead of giving life, you take it. You experience the ecstasy of penetration as your warhead enters the enemy's belly and the shaft follows. You see the whites of his eyes roll inside the sockets of his helmet. You feel his knees give way beneath him, and the weight of his faltering flesh draw down the point of your spear.... Is your dick hard yet?"

(Read more from that passage here.)

Gates of Fire covers every aspect of the battle from the lengthy preparations through the skirmishes themselves to the aftermaths.  Pressfield does not shy away from — and seems to sometimes relish in — descriptions of carnage, from "carpets" of corpses trodden upon by those still fighting; to calf-deep lakes of blood, urine, and "unholy" entrail fluids.

We read about spears torn from one body then thrust into another, flying battle axes, arrows shot at point-blank range, split oaken shields, and numerous other spoliations that will please any reader who enjoys the barbaric nature of real hand-to-hand combat before guns made everything so... distant.

Pressfield keeps the immediacy of the action through gore and the intensity of leaders through their frequent use of insults and swearing.  A highlight of a different sort comes via an amusing and surprising conversation between Xeo and Lady Arete.

While reading Gates of Fire, I was surprised at the variety of other works it reminded me of.  It seems to take inspiration from I, Claudius and Shakespeare histories like Henry V, and from heroic fantasy authors like Robert E. Howard and George R.R. Martin, as much as from the actual history of the Greco-Persian Wars (if not more so). 

It's easy to see why it has become required reading in the Marines and at West Point, preparing students for the fact of their own mortality and for situations when their greatest fear will be not of death but of hesitation.

Re-Kindling Interest: True Detective, True Crime, and The Million-Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins (Nathan Heller series of historical private eye novels)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print novels that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Though they've been out of print for most of the last decade, I was happy to learn that Amazon's new mystery imprint, Thomas & Mercer (named for the cross streets where the offices are located) would be reprinting all of author Max Allan Collins's Nathan Heller novels. Now they're available in trade paperback and e-book formats.

Recently, the first book in the series, the Shamus Award–winning True Detective, was promotionally priced at $0.99 and shot to #1 on the Kindle charts. As of this writing, it's still at the reasonable $1.99: an easy impulse buy.

True Detective is a stunning mix of fact and fiction. The setting is 1930s Chicago, and Collins paints the city of that time with a bold brush. Nathan Heller is a city cop who gets roped into a messy situation by his fellow officers. When he ends up killing a man with the same gun Heller's father used to commit suicide, Nathan's own, that's the last straw that leads to Heller's quitting the force, despite the efforts of the higher-ups to get him to reconsider.

But working as the president of your own detective agency (called "A-1" so it will appear first in the telephone directory) is by no means boring — not when your best friend is Eliot Ness and you have connections to Frank Nitti, Al Capone, mayor Anton Cermak, Walter Winchell, George Raft, and a young future actor who goes by the name "Dutch" Reagan. (Gangster John Looney, whom Collins would feature in Road to Perdition fifteen years later, even shows up.)

Collins took five years to research the place and time, and this, combined with his immense storytelling skill, make True Detective an immersive experience. The World's Fair comes alive in his hands, as do the characters, who have never seemed so real (even in The Untouchables) as when they are dealing with the fictional Nathan Heller.

The Nate Heller series continues with True Crime, also the second book in the "Frank Nitti Trilogy." Taking place just months after the events in its predecessor, True Crime centers around the famous killing of gangster John Dillinger in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater. (Manhattan Melodrama was the picture that he, a girlfriend, and the famous "Lady in Red" had just seen.)

Nate has just begun a relationship with renowned feather/bubble dancer, Sally Rand, when a man comes into his office asking Heller to find his wife. How this connects with Dillinger, and how Heller then gets mixed up with Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker and her boys, and J. Edgar Hoover is a narrative of historic proportions.

True Crime was originally meant to be part of True Detective, but Collins realized that what was supposed to be a novel was slowly turning into an epic, and that cutting the entire Dillinger plot was what was needed. So, when the editor who bought the first asked if Collins had ideas for a sequel, he had an instant answer.

The accuracy of Collins' details and the amount of research done to get the facts right (sources are named in the back) are an example of the dedication Collins has to his craft. That he is able to whip up a plot that uses these facts, but does not rely on them for a crutch, while inserting a fictional character into the midst of the fracas, is nothing short of remarkable.

Collins sends Heller off to war in The Million-Dollar Wound, the third in the series to be nominated for a Shamus Award. (Note: The title refers to a war wound that gets a soldier sent home, but doesn't kill him.)

A little male pride, some misplaced patriotism, and a few drinks too many land Heller, too old for the draft, in the Marine enlistment office in 1942, right alongside best friend and ex-boxer Barney Ross. Far too soon after, they find themselves smack dab in the middle of Guadalcanal Island, surrounded by "Japs" and fighting death in both its projectile and contagious forms.

An especially bad case of malaria finds an amnesiac Heller back in the States with a fuzzy memory but a thriving investigation practice, and a request to testify against Frank Nitti, now in control of the territory left vacant by Al Capone's prison sentence. The story quickly flashes back to 1939. Those used to the linear narratives of the first two novels in the series, and their relative chronological proximity to each other, may be thrown by The Million-Dollar Wound, which takes place nine, then six, then ten years after the events in True Crime.

The Million-Dollar Wound was Max Allan Collins's most complex novel, both emotionally and narratively, up to that point. The weight of the combat experience weighs heavily on Heller's mind throughout the remainder of the novel, especially the bad dreams he has involving a fellow Marine's death by "friendly fire." Did Heller fire the fatal shot? He can't remember. This lends a gravity to this third entry that only enhances the reading, offering a deeper sense of character through Heller's reaction to the truth.

This Frank Nitti trilogy is only the first three novels of this long-running series of "memoirs," which includes the most recent novel, Bye Bye, Baby, wherein Nate Heller investigates the death of Marilyn Monroe. Also upcoming are two collections. Chicago Lightning contains all the Heller short stories produced throughout the last 30 years, previously collected and uncollected. Triple Play contains three Heller novellas written to date: “Dying in the Postwar World,” “Kisses of Death,” and “Strike Zone.”

Black Hills by Dan Simmons (unabridged audio book read by Erik Davies and Michael McConnohie)

Sometimes a book is simply so good that it exceeds my ability to write about it. Everything I write sounds dumb because it's just superlative, superlative, superlative, and it all gets redundant after a while. And often the best books are hard to summarize because so much happens in them that trying to outline it with any semblance of thoroughness is likely to give away surprises.

As you've probably guessed by now, Black Hills is one of those books. Dan Simmons is one of the most interesting authors writing today. You just never know what to expect from him, and his three most recent novels show this most admirably. They display the potentials of historical fiction in a way usually unseen in the work of a single author.

The Terror was pure horror about a stranded ship and the mysterious creature that stalks it, and Drood was a thriller concerning Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. Both were distinctly British.

Then came the last thing I expected: a Western. But Black Hills is really only part Western, with a twist. The opening is instantly engaging. As Paha Sapa, an 11-year-old Lakota whose name means "Black Hills" (a rare event as Lakota are almost never named after sacred locations), "counts coup" on the dying George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876, the ghost of the infamous commander invades the young Sioux.

Almost instantly, his head is soon filled by Custer's remembrances of his sexual dalliances with his beloved wife Libby. Custer's spirit fills Paha Sapa's nights with recitations (in the unfamiliar language of the whites) of all his memories. (If you ever wanted to hear a poetic play-by-play of Custer's dalliances with his wife, this is the book for you.) Paha Sapa will hear Custer's voice in his head for most of the rest of his life.

Black Hills jumps around in Paha Sapa's life, covering his name-change to Billy Slow Horse and Billy Slovak, his courtship with the beautiful Rain, his strife to solely destroy the three faces on Mount Rushmore before the fourth can be placed, his time in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and so many other events that they begin to run together.

Simmons is so interested in giving the listener the full scope of Paha Sapa's life that his writing sometimes gets in the way of his storytelling — much as his need to present all the facts often supersedes the development of his fiction. But in combining the two — in creating a wholly believable world wherein the grounded, the spiritual, and the made-up coexist seamlessly — Simmons produces in Black Hills a shining example of what historical fiction can achieve when approached with verisimilitude.

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

Author S.C. Gwynne takes a most interesting approach in his history of the Comanche Indians. He does it by focusing on the events before, during, and after the life of the Comanches' last chief, Quanah Parker, the half-breed son of a white female captive, Cynthia Ann Parker, and another Comanche chief, Peta Nocona.

Empire of the Summer Moon begins with the murder and capture of most of the James W. Parker family, including the taking of 9-year-old Cynthia Ann. (The seemingly endless search of Parker for his family inspired Alan Le May's novel The Searchers and the subsequent film.)

Gwynne uses the book written by Cynthia Ann's sister Rachel (also abducted) as his main source for this material, as very little is known of Cynthia Ann's own time with the tribe until much later, when it was revealed that she had had multiple opportunities to escape and had refused to leave her husband and children.

One portion I found especially engrossing was the chronicle of the Texas Rangers, essentially a group of organized vigilantes. In order to be on equal ground and successfully fend off attacks upon the reluctant "nation" of Texas, the Rangers learned to fight like the Comanches — including their impressive skill at shooting with accuracy from a galloping horse. Gwynne also offers insight into the Comancheros, the half-breed traders who were the only non-Indians the tribe would deal with directly.

Under the guise of telling Quanah Parker's story, Gwynne produces a fairly comprehensive tribal history. Empire of the Summer Moon is one that anyone should read who only thinks of Comanches as the bloodthirsty savages of traditional Western fiction. Gwynne's prose is smooth and unadorned, resulting in a history without pretensions. He lets the story take the spotlight; his tenure with Time Magazine was apparently excellent training for this career move.

I have only reached the halfway point — Gwynne has barely touched upon Quanah himself — yet I feel confident in recommending Empire of the Summer Moon to both those with prior interest in its subject who wish to expand their knowledge, and those wanting an introduction to the topic. Both, I wager, with be well satisfied.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner (unabridged audio book read by Mark Bramhall)

When her widowed father marries her best friend Sarah, Elsa Norgaard, disgusted, moves from her Minnesota home to her uncle Carl's house in Hardanger, North Dakota. There she meets Harry "Bo" Mason, and they begin a life that covers the early years of the 20th century.

Author Wallace Stegner's novel The Big Rock Candy Mountain focuses on the couple in a connected series of vignettes, broken by gaps in time but told chronologically from the characters' points of view. At first, these are primarily Bo and Elsa. Then, when they get older, their sons Chester and Bruce take the stage.

Bo is a rolling stone with an itch to make it big whatever the risk and wherever he can find "the big rock candy mountain": the "land of milk and honey" where "rivers run gold" and gambles pay off in spades and not just frustration. (The book's title comes from a song describing a hobo's idea of heaven.) To that end, he runs a series of blind pigs (places that secretly sold liquor during Prohibition) and other projects that take him and the family to different locations.

Bo tries to find the balance between security and predictability, and having the wanderlust and a fiery temper. This has both immediate and long-ranging consequences for him and his family that culminate in the fallout of a tragic event near the end of the book. Stegner reportedly based The Big Rock Candy Mountain on his own family, and long, detailed digressions from the main story into family history lend the book the feel of a saga.

At the end of the book, Bruce (Stegner's representation of himself) tries to understand the motives of his father and the actions he took, and The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a testament to his success at this. Fictionalizing the characters allows for separation that lets him get deep into the thoughts of these people and creates a novel of lasting impact.

Blackstone Audio has recently produced a selection of Stegner audiobooks. Mark Bramhall reads The Big Rock Candy Mountain. With just a slight change of voice, he manages to capture each character's individuality and brings gravity to the narration. All of this results in a literary experience that I found unexpectedly engrossing, as I could not seem to spend much time away from these people and wanted to get back to them as soon as possible.

Even now, having completed the book, I find myself thinking about its characters now and again as if I actually knew them. The fact that this was Stegner's second novel, published when he was 34 (with portions written even earlier as short stories), makes it all the more impressive.

Wallace Stegner has written a novel that will please fans of literary fiction and historical fiction (including longer Westerns). And I think it would be especially well recommended to those who enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie series but would like something a little more grown-up. The Big Rock Candy Mountain is all of that and more.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (unabridged audio book read by Scott Holst)

Author Seth Grahame-Smith spearheaded the public-domain horror-mashup genre with his huge bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was popular not because it was well done (it wasn't particularly; Ben H. Winters's Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is much better executed) but because people loved the idea of it and had to have a copy for their shelf, unread, to occasionally pull out and chuckle at.

Suddenly, Grahame-Smith was in demand, so he brought out an idea he'd had the year before. In 2008, author Seth Grahame-Smith noticed that all the books in the front of his local bookstore seemed to be either Abraham Lincoln biographies (the sixteenth president's 200th birth anniversary was approaching) or the Twilight saga and its ilk. So, why not combine them?

Now the author has produced an original novel with another great high-concept title: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. (He had been impressed by Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, among others, and credits the Internet with making this book much easier to research.)

Like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the title of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter alone will sell the book — or at least encourage curiosity. But it's more than that: this book is also the story of its "author," who whiles away nearly a decade behind the counter of a small-town five-and-dime store, trying to write then abandoning novel after novel until the day a friendly regular leaves him a package wrapped in brown paper, containing letters and journals, on the condition that he write a book about them. The first line: "This is the journal of Abraham Lincoln."

The fellow obsesses for seven months over these documents, losing his family then nearly his mind as he pores over the secret diaries of our sixteenth president and his lifelong pursuit to rid America of the bloodsucking menace that had run unchecked since the founding of Jamestown in 1607, and eventually would become the deciding factor in the beginning of the Civil War. Mostly because one killed his mother.

The journals cover Lincoln's life from his frontier boyhood through his presidency and death, with Grahame-Smith inserting necessary historical details to fill in the gaps. Lincoln writes of the suspicious deaths of his aunt and uncle and then his mother, who was called "milk sick" until the truth came out. Lincoln learns from his father Thomas that vampires killed his own father and Abe's mother. Thomas owed a debt that could not be paid, and the vampire shylock took payment in another way.

At age 12, young Abe writes, "I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America" and proclaims God as his enemy for allowing such things to happen. For a while he devotes himself to occult studies and physical improvement, such as developing his ax-wielding technique. Also pivotal is Lincoln's first encounter with slavery. He finds that "bargain" slaves (the weak, the old, etc.) are being bought in great numbers to be used as vampire food. Since no one cares what happens to a slave, there's not the trouble with the authorities that results when "real" people are sucked dry. In that way, the vampires were the first equalizers, realizing that blood is blood, whatever the skin color. Lincoln soon realizes that "So long as this country is cursed with slavery, so too will it be cursed with vampires."

Grahame-Smith takes a while to find his way with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. At first, it seems to have been put together in much the same way as his Jane Austen zombie novel. In the beginning, the historical chronicle of Lincoln's life is readable and engaging, but the vampire aspects feel dropped in and not part of the whole, as if he wrote the history first and the fiction later.

So clumsily are some of these early portions added that I began to question whether perhaps the author had perhaps merely obtained an extant Lincoln biography (in the public domain or even unpublished) and added his own parts to it. (Before you scream "libel," just remember that even the best historians are sometimes accused of plagiarism. Controversy only sells more books.)

Later, as the main conceit takes precedence over the genuine history, this is much less of a problem. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter tells of Lincoln's political ambitions (and his vacillating nature toward them), and of his friendships with Edgar Allan Poe and his close and complex friendship with his mentor, the uncommon Henry Sturges. This relationship is one of the highlights of the book and shows Grahame-Smith's skill with masculine emotions.

Audiobook reader Scott Holst has difficulty overcoming the dry nature of the prose early on. But he shines in the "quoted" materials from the letters and journals, using a subtle country twang to embody Lincoln and his forebears with skill. The audiobook contains a conversation with the author; a bonus PDF document of historical photographs, paintings, and engravings; and a preview of Michael Koryta's novel So Cold the River.

The book's main success is also its greatest weakness, which is that it reads like a genuine history, but with vampires folded into the reality. Thus, I think it would appeal only to those readers who enjoy history and vampires: history buffs will likely balk at the liberties taken with the facts — a good deal of true stories from Lincoln's life are included, some of which are even more interesting than the slaughter of the undead — while horror fans will be disappointed in the long spans between kills.

Grahame-Smith makes at least one mistake for the sake of narrative immediacy, telling the last moments of a dying man from the perspective of omniscience, therefore reminding us we are reading fiction and breaking the spell momentarily. He also falls prey to the easy out, giving nearly every person who disagrees with Lincoln on any minor point connections with vampirism. It becomes so predictable, that when names like Jefferson Davis, Stephen Douglas, and John Wilkes Booth come up, you'll immediately guess "vampire" and nearly always be right.

But even with its flaws, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter not only solidifies Grahame-Smith's standing as a genre-blender, but also shows bright spots of creativity, suggesting that a completely original novel might not be too much of a stretch. He manages the impressive feat of making the reader believe — if only during the reading — in an Abraham Lincoln that could have been.

I know I'll never look at a five-dollar bill the same way again.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (mixed-genre novel)

A drunk porn actor gets in a car accident, which results in burns all over his body. (The liquor he was drinking, and spilled in his lap, flares up and does an especially bad number on his penis, leaving him with little more than a flap of skin).

During his recover in the hospital, a possibly schizophrenic gargoyle sculptor named Marianne Engel visits him regularly, saying she knows him from when she was a nun working in a monastery scriptorium (a room dedicated to Bible translation and transcription) in the 14th century. Marianne tells him stories of their life together 700 years ago, as well as myriad other stories from her multilingual experience.

The Gargoyle is a completely immersive experience. Author Andrew Davidson's debut — the product of seven years of research and writing — has something for everyone: history, horror, mystery, religion, romance, terrific storytelling, and well-crafted prose.

The story of Marianne Engel and the unnamed narrator/protagonist is one of and for the ages. Not only did reading The Gargoyle entertain and literarily satisfy me, but its breadth of scope and Davidson's unconventional style (including humor that ranges from the subtle to the laugh-out-loud — there's even a throwaway Caddyshack reference that will get past a lot of people) inspired me to try new things in my own writing.

As Marianne herself states at one point, "It was apparent from the start that the writing was unlike anything I'd ever read." The Gargoyle combines portions of Dante's Inferno, the One Thousand Nights and a Night, the Gnaden-vita, the Bible, and likely others I simply didn't recognize. It is multilayered and multilingual, and even though the novel sometimes asks a little much in the realm of suspension of disbelief, Davidson never stretches plausibility too far, especially once you give yourself over to its mythic structure and its motif of arrows and fire.

Lincoln Hoppe reads the unabridged audiobook of The Gargoyle, and his grasp of the characters is stunning. From Vikings to nuns to a man with a scarred larynx to the "bitch snake" that only morphine will quiet, he offers believable portraits of all of them. And he is not slowed in the least by all the foreign idioms and accents that he is required to master. Hoppe's reading may even make the book more accessible to those that find it a difficult read.

Darwin's Origin of Species by Janet Browne (unabridged audio book read by Josephine Bailey)

Notable Charles Darwin biographer Janet Browne (Voyaging and The Power of Place) focuses on the evolutionist's landmark work in Darwin's Origin of Species, part of the Books That Changed the World series from Atlantic Monthly/Grove Press. Browne lightly covers the history and legacy of the work from Darwin's first inspirations to the controversy that followed the 1859 publications of On the Origin of Species to its effects on science to the present day. She only hits the high points, making it ideal for beginners to the subject.

Refreshingly, Browne is not afraid to cover some of the more embarrassing consequences of On the Origin of Species (like eugenics), making Darwin's Origin of Species a well-rounded "biography" and a perfect stepping stone into deeper investigation. Browne's prose is dry by necessity — after all, she's trying to cover a lot of information in a few words: about 200 years in the same number of pages. Reader Josephine Bailey does her best, but she still ends up sounding like a lecturer (though since Browne is a professor, perhaps that was the intent).

This year, the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and also the 200th anniversary of its author's birth, would seem to be an ideal time to revive appreciation of both. Darwin's Origin of Species certainly piqued my curiosity, especially regarding some of Darwin's later works. The next one I intend to tackle is the particularly intriguing The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin's 1872 study tying human psychology with evolution.

Red Sky in Morning: a novel of World War II by Max Allan Collins writing as Patrick Culhane

Max Allan Collins's second mainstream novel under the Patrick Culhane byline, Red Sky in Morning, is a marked improvement over the first, Black Hats. Once again the action takes place in the past, but this time all the characters are fictitious, with only mentions of famous personalities — and a much closer connection to the author's own past.

Ensign Peter Maxwell has had it easy during his stint in the U.S. Navy, spending his days heading the chorus and spending his nights with his pretty wife, but there's a war going on around him, and damned if he doesn't want to be part of it. So, the newly promoted Lieutenant Maxwell and his best friends — known collectively as the Fantail Four, a vocal quartet best known for their Ink Spots impression — sign up for duty aboard the U.S.S. Liberty Hill Victory, an ammunition ship with an all-"colored" crew and an openly racist captain. (Liberty Hill is Maxwell's hometown, and he sees this as an omen.)

Slowly, the Four realize they've put themselves into a potentially life-threatening situation — a point the nearby Port Chicago disaster drives home — but they decide to do what they can to make it work, including teaching the mostly illiterate crew how to read (especially the "no smoking" signs posted next to the explosives).

But when the white X.O. (executive officer) and then a black crewmember are murdered, Maxwell is promoted to the post, then relieved of his duties to investigate the crime. He makes his first executive decision by choosing another black crewmember (and fellow jazz enthusiast), Seaman Ulysses Grant Washington — known as "Sarge" from his years as a Chicago homicide detective — to accompany him on interrogations, and to essentially run the investigation.

The murder mystery is well plotted and satisfyingly solved, but the real appeal of Red Sky in Morning lies in the characters' relationships and in how Culhane/Collins shows them realistically, not shying away from popular conceptions (and epithets) of the era. This way, we are offered a complete portrait of a time and place that is likely not very familiar even to World War II aficionados.

Red Sky in Morning was inspired by stories Collins's father (the book is dedicated to him) told him of his own time in the Navy, making this his most personal book yet. The author states that the book is mostly fictional, but that several details are lifted from those reminiscences.

The rest came from Collins's imagination and his usual exhaustive research of the setting and period. He and co-author/research associate Matthew V. Clemens (see My Lolita Complex) plotted the story together, much like they did for Collins's CSI novels. With Red Sky in Morning, Culhane/Collins once again showcases his inimitable skill at making a time period come alive. I for one am glad that Max Allan Collins, Sr., shared his experiences with his son, so that he could in turn share them with us.