MOURN THE LIVING

The first of Collins’s five mystery series to see print, the pulp-action Nolan books, opened with Bait Money (1973) and apparently ended with Spree (1987). Now along comes the author’s previously unpublished first novel, written while he was in college, featuring a ten-years-younger Nolan without a sidekick to keep him company, mired in ’60s dialogue, drugs, and attitude. A gang called the Boys has put a $250,000 price on Nolan’s head because they disliked his whacking one of their own, then embarking on a one-man vendetta and robbing them every chance he got. So Nolan stays far away from Chicago, the Boys’ home base, until Sid Tisor, who hid him when he needed this, asks him to investigate his daughter Irene’s death leap from a rooftop during an LSD trip. Venturing to the town of Chelsey, within shooting distance of Chicago, Nolan runs smack into the Boys, an enforcer for the Commission of Families, a mob-connected cop, and the odd babe, including Irene’s roomie, Vicki Trask, and Lyn the hippie, who, like Irene, hung around the drug-dealing musician Broome at the Third Eye nightclub. A few punch-ups later, Nolan is virtually tripping over bodies, facing down .38s and .45s, and uncovering two mysteries, one leading to bad guys in New York and the other to the secret about Irene’s short life and sudden death. Simplistic plotting, mucho macho confrontations, and drugs, drugs, drugs. But die-hard Collins fans might be curious to read how his career started, and heartened to see how much better he’s gotten.