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Title: Flying Blind: A Nathan Heller Novel (Nathan Heller Mystery Series) by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0-451-19262-1 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.57 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: one of the better Nate Heller books
Comment: Having read all of Collins' Nate Heller casebooks, I would rank this one as fitting into the top 5 or so. Not as snappy as the early Chicago-based ones and certainly nowhere close to the pinacle of the series Stolen Away (about the Lindbergh kidnapping), this book still has all of the best features of these books: Great background, terrific characters, funny dialogue, ample sex (using charmingly veiled language without lapsing into cute-ness), and a plausible plot that finds our man in the midst of one of the 20th Centuries best mysteries. If you haven't read a Heller book, seek out True Crime and True Detective, then jump to Stolen Away and then come here. You'll be glad you did.
Rating: 3
Summary: Well written and entertaining, but offputting
Comment: It's been a while since I've read a Nathan Heller novel. I loved "Stealing Away" and enjoyed the others I've read, but I figured that the more we saw, the harder it would be to swallow just how many famous mysteries Heller was involved in. And that's what happened here, especially since Heller is far more involved with Amelia Earhart than he's ever been with a client or a victim.
That involvement colored the rest of the book in a way that was a bit more cynical than usual and that made Heller a lot harder to take. I appreciate that the speculation about history's truth is just that, and that we can disregard the whole thing, but Heller's love for "Amy" makes almost every other character in a position of authority seem sordid if not evil. The result is a rather simplistic narrative. That Collins would treat Huey Long with more sympathy than any effort to spy on Japan in preparation for the inevitable war is perpelxing.
This is still a fun read, but it's just not the same as the earlier works. And after you've had your hero sleep with Amelia Earhart, what's next? Eleanor Roosevelt?
Rating: 2
Summary: Collins take historical speculation too far
Comment: Flying Blind troubled me in ways that none of the other Nate Heller books have troubled me. (I've read a total of nine.) The most important source of my reservations is Max Allan Collins' portrayal of Amelia Earhart's sex life, which seemed speculative to the point of presumption. While historians and biographers have long wondered if she was bisexual or lesbian, that speculation is a long way from having Heller, in one scene, discover Ms. Earhart in bed with another woman. The mistake is aggravated by the fact that Collins doesn't use his interpretation of Ms. Earhart's sexuality to illuminate her character--the same night she's been with the woman she goes to bed with Heller, just like any of Heller's numerous other girlfriends. The two carry on an intermittent affair throughout the rest of the novel, even talk about marriage--but the subject of Ms. Earhart's feelings for women never comes up again, leaving the impression that Collins employs it solely as a sensationalistic plot twist. (Toward the end, in a passage that is less important but even more outrageous, Heller asserts that Ms. Earhart's favorite heterosexual position was woman-on-top. Exactly where in his research did Collins find that "fact"?)
Amelia Earhart is a genuine American heroine. She deserves better treatment than this.
In Collins' favor, the book resembles the others in the series in that he has done a great deal of research, most of it accurate, and often manages to render the atmosphere of Depression-era America convincingly. Occasionally, however, inaccurate or anachronistic details jar--another reviewer has mentioned a Packard's automatic transmission and Heller's 9 mm sidearm. My personal favorite occurs when Collins has James Forrestal, assistant secretary of the Navy, tell Heller that the Japanese are developing a carrier aircraft called by two names--"Claude" and "Zero." Historically, Claude and Zero (aka "Zeke") were two different fighters, a fact still widely known and easy to find out. That Collins gets it wrong undermines a reader's faith in his other research.
The Heller series started off as a chronicle of the detective's adventures in the politically-corrupt and mob-run city of Chicago, fertile ground for Collins' brand of historical fiction. Recent installments, however, have found the character evolving into a 1930s version of James Bond who takes his investigations to exotic locations like Hawaii, New Orleans, and the Caribbean. Heller's abortive rescue of Earhart on the Pacific island of Saipan is blatantly unbelievable, leaving me wondering when he's going to get back home. Surely Heller must have been connected somehow to Mayor Daley's Democratic machine and the electoral hanky-panky that won Illinois for John Kennedy in 1960. Surely Heller must have investigated the 1968 Democratic convention riots and the trial of the Chicago 7. How about future Heller books on those? They'd get him back where he belongs.
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Title: Stolen Away by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0451202414 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 06 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Majic Man (Nathan Heller Novels (Paperback)) by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0451199456 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 08 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Damned in Paradise: A Nathan Heller Novel (Nathan Heller Novels (Paperback)) by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0451191048 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 01 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Blood and Thunder: A Nathan Heller Novel by Allan Max Collins ISBN: 0451179765 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Million - Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins ISBN: 0743474635 Publisher: Ibooks Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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