I'll murderlize you!

Murderlized, by Max Allan Collins and frequent collaborator Matthew V. Clemens, reminded me a lot of the movie Grindhouse.  That film, also by two frequent collaborators, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, celebrated the violent, sexy, over-the top world of drive-in cinema of years past: tales of rough men and beautiful, deadly women, monsters human and otherwise, extreme violence, and sexy hijinks that barely got the "R" rating it required for exhibition. 

Most of the stories in this fun collection reminded me of Grindhouse and the movies it paid tribute to, and even the couple of the more traditional Collins/Clemens crime thriller stories included here are still a little out there.

The lead story, for example, Murderlized, is a nice piece of historical crime fiction, except of all people the real-life person trying to solve a murder is Moe Howard of The Three Stooges. And that's one of the more normal stories.  From there we move onto stories about a werewolf terrorizing a sex-starved wife in the Bayou, a vampire P.I. taking on a particularly formidable serial killer, and a James Bond-type figure whose sexy night with his wife keeps getting interrupted by femme fatales from his spy career who want to bed him down, too, and- oh, yes- then kill him.  All over the top, but intentionally so, making all of them a lot of fun. 

A couple of down to earth crime stories, of both the historical fiction and modern crime investigation variety, are also entertaining.  But it's the crazy stuff that really shines, in part because it's fun to see examples of Collins and Clemens working ousidet of their usual, more polished and disciplined comfort zones.

Bookending these day-glo stories of supernatural monsters hiding in the fog, human monsters who are even scarier, and normal but clueless men being helplessly manipulated by gorgeous women, is an efficient, informative introduction on how the Collins/Clemens collaborative relationship came about and an index telling us where the stories originally appeared.  Both are interesting and helpful.  But it's the stories with all their craziness that you'll remember.  Grab some popcorn and curl up with them one night.