Quarry in the Black

Author’s Note

I wish to thank my son and daughter-in-law, Nathan and Abby Collins of St. Louis, Missouri, for answering my location questions and pointing me toward research materials. That said, the St. Louis of this novel is one of my imagination and any blame for geographical blundering is my own, with no apologies forthcoming.

I would like to cite the book The Days and Nights of the Central West End (1991), Suzanne Goell, editor; Richard Rothstein’s American Prospect article, “The Making of Ferguson” (2014); and Mark Groth’s blog, St. Louis City Talk, for information on the Ville.

Quarry was created in 1971 at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in Iowa City, and first appeared in print in 1976. An odd and oddly satisfying aspect of writing new Quarry novels for Hard Case Crime has been continuing a series that began as contemporary but is now a period piece. I don’t consider these new books, with their ’70s and ’80s settings, to be historical novels exactly — more like my autobiography published in installments with more sex and violence. Well, more violence.

One autobiographical aspect of Quarry in the Black is the Leonard Nimoy rally for McGovern in October of 1972, which my wife Barb and I attended at NIU in DeKalb, Illinois, as supporters of both McGovern and Star Trek. In the ’90s, I was thrilled to meet Mr. Nimoy when we were both developing comic books for the same company.

Half a dozen years ago, I saw George McGovern standing in the lobby of a hotel in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and was able to chat with him briefly and shake his hand. I introduced him to Barb and said we’d both voted for him. His smile was bitter-sweet as he said, “I wish there’d been more of you.”

“So do we, Senator,” I said.