The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,1
novels.
“Right,” I said, waiting for a shoe to drop.
“Those are great! I love those books!”
My eyes tightened. “Really?”
He reared back and laughed, once. “Why? Don’t you believe me?”
“Well...it’s just that I never met anybody before who’s read my books...at least, that I wasn’t related to.”
“Well, I’m a fan. Big fan.”
This was a first for me; and a moment I’ll never forget.
“Muscatine, Iowa,” he said, reading my name badge further. “Is that ‘Port City’?”
Port City was the fictionalized version of my hometown that I used in the books.
“Sort of,” I admitted.
“Where is it?”
“On the Mississippi—between Iowa City and the Quad Cities.”
“Like in your books!”
“Like in my books.”
We shook hands and fell in alongside each other, walking and talking.
“What do you think of this place?” Randisi gestured around a dealers’ room rife with rare books and vintage paperbacks.
“It’s heaven,” I said. “Also, hell.... I can’t afford any of this stuff.”
“I know the feeling.... Y’know, there are some big writers here. The Guest of Honor wrote the book that Steve McQueen movie came from—with the car chase? But the really cool thing is...Walter Gibson is here.”
“Really? The guy who created the Shadow?”
“ ‘Maxwell Grant’ himself—pretty spry for an old boy, too.”
“How old is he?”
“Late seventies, I think. Still writing. Still doing magic tricks. He knew Houdini and Blackstone and all those guys, y’know.”
Robert J. Randisi and I continued to walk and talk, and so began a friendship that endures to this day. In ensuing years, Bob would found the Private Eye Writers of America, and become a bestselling writer of Western fiction, as well as authoring many fine mystery and suspense novels.
That evening, we wound up having dinner together—meeting up with Barb—at the now-defunct George Diamond’s Steak House, where the fillets were the size of a football and the salads were half a head of crisp cold lettuce slathered in three dressings that mixed so well I’m salivating now. My lovely blonde wife lived up to Bob’s high expectations of the standards of a “successful” hard-boiled mystery writer.
And I was impressed to learn he’d sold a story to Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine; I’d never been able to crack the short story market (ironically, the first short story I would publish was sold to Bob, editing a PWA anthology, about ten years later).
After dinner, Barb headed to our room at the Palmer House to “play with” the things she’d bought, while Bob and I retired to a corner of the hotel bar. We talked for several hours about our respective dreams—many of them now realized—and he paid me the huge compliment of asking me to describe, in some detail, the three Nolan novels that were as yet unpublished, and at the time languishing in a publisher’s inventory, fated not to see print till the early ’80s.
Bob, it turned out, was a civilian employee of the Brooklyn P.D., taking what are now 911 calls, and I was further complimented that a guy who worked in a world where he encountered real crime and criminals could be impressed by my imaginary ones. I told him I thought his writing future was bright—he was damn near a cop, and that was useful in lots of ways, from background info to PR possibilities.
A handsome, sharply dressed young black guy swung by the table—Percy Spurlock Parker, a mystery writer who was also just starting out—and informed us about a cocktail party in a hotel suite, where the con’s Guest of Honor...who I’ll call Lawrence R. Trout...was holding court.
I was not particularly a fan of the Guest of Honor. Under his real name, he remains held in high esteem by a lot of writers and fans, particularly those in the New York area who have long been active with the Mystery Writers of America; a major mystery award in his honor is given by the MWA. Among his crowd, Trout must have been a nice enough guy, and no writer has a long career without talent and ability. But at the time I found his work dull and unremarkable. (Truth be told, I still do.)
Still, he was a pro, and I’d met precious few of those—a real-life successful mystery writer. He’d even had a Steve McQueen movie made out of one of his novels—what would that be like, I wondered, having a major movie star bring one of your characters to life! So I eagerly followed Bob and Percy onto an elevator and up to a small suite, where lots of mystery writers and fans were crowded in.