Orrin J. (oj) reviewed on 2/14/2006

Helpful Score: 1

Pulp Faction is as good a name as any for the genre that Max Allan Collins may have created and certainly made his own with his Nate Heller series. Nate is a former Chicago cop turned private eye who has any eerie way of ending up in the middle of famous murder cases and solving them too boot. It all started in 1933, with the assassination Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, True Detective, and here it is 1935 and Nate has been hired to deliver a bullet-proof vest to Huey Long, who's been getting death threats. Mr. Collins takes full advantage of Long and the colorful cast of real-life characters who surrounded him, as well as of the physical and moral miasma that was Long's Louisiana. Nate is a dogged investigator, equally quick with a quip, a gun, and a dame, but as the girlfriend who Long pretty much throws in his lap says: "You know what I like about you? You're shifty, but you have standards." Those standards are challenged when the Kingfish is killed, nearly dying in Nate's arms, and he's hired by mutual agreement of the insurance company and Long's widow to determine whether it was an assassination or an accidental shooting as bodyguards tussled with the purported killer, Dr. Carl Weiss -- who then became a convenient patsy. Mr. Collins offers a plausible contrarian solution to the mystery and provides a fascinating history in the process, while entertaining the heck out of us along the way.

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