Collins has created a series of mysteries that take place in the midst of real historical events. He does considerable historical research and then places his character, Nate Heller, a Chicago-based private detective, as a composite or semi-fictional participant. Writing a novel around real events can be tricky and, for me, always problematic because I then get a compulsion to read more about what actually occurred. Fortunately, the good historical novelists will always provide an epilogue or foreword that lays out the sources and defines the historical reality. Collins has done his research, and I tracked through much of it to verify what appears at first to be speculation. The story he lays out is more than plausible.

Nate is hired to deliver a package to Huey Long, now a senator, but still a powerhouse in Louisiana. The present is sent by Seymour Weiss, a longtime Long confidant, and it contains a bullet-proof vest. Rumors are rapidly traversing Baton Rouge suggesting that Long will be assassinated. Huey has chosen to take these rumors seriously, and he hires Nate to join his bodyguard squad. Collins uses Nate's investigation into the rumors to set the stage. History records that Long was shot and killed by a deranged physician, Carl Weiss (no relation to Seymour), upset because the Long machine was spreading rumors that the Weiss family had black blood, a cardinal sin in the south of the thirties. Even at the time, there were doubts as to the veracity of this story. Weiss was killed in a hail of gunfire from the bodyguards and persistent gossip suggested that Long was killed not by Weiss but from stray bodyguard shots. In 1992, Long's body was exhumed and a well-known forensic scientist performed an autopsy should have been done at the time of his death. The result was inconclusive that Weiss had shot him. The Mutual Insurance Company released its files around the same time.

Apparently, Long had a life insurance policy with them and his wife filed a double-indemnity claim that Long had been killed by accident. They sent an investigator (played by Heller in Collins' book) and the report confirmed that Long died from bullets fired by the bodyguards. Without giving too much of the plot away, let me say that Collins presents a credible case that Long was shot deliberately by his bodyguards, that Weiss was a patsy, and the reason was that Long was opposing taking money from the New Deal government of FDR (whom Long hated). This might cut off the flow of federal funds that were being channeled into the pockets of corrupt politicians, something Long's cronies could not tolerate.

T. Harry Williams's biography of Huey Long is a great biography for those who long for the facts.


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3263. Blood and Thunder, by Max Allan Collins (read 31 Oct 1999) The author lives in Iowa and I thought I should read something of his. This book, based on the Huey Long assassination, is fiction, but there is some fact in it. The book's thesis is that Huey was killed by his bodyguards. Nate Heller, the Chicago detective, is immoral and in the book accepts a bribe from Mrs. Huey Long in order to get Mutual Life Insurance to pay double indemnity for accidental death--which it apparently would not have done if he was assassinated. The writing is the usual hard-boiled detective style. So what I liked about this book was its account of fact--the fiction part detracted from it. For folk who would like to know the facts about Huey Long, an excellent biography is The Kingfish and His Realm The Life and Times of Huey P. Long, by William Ivy Hair (which I read 18 Apr 2001). I do think that biography is better than the more well-known biography by T. Harry Williams, entitled Huey Long, which I read 5 July 1970 and which won the Pulitzer Biography prize for 1970. ( )