Literary Up: Radio Quarry

I’m on a Max Allan Collins binge: Quarry’s Ex (where the hitman deals with filmmakers in Vegas), Bye Bye Baby (an early ‘60s riff for Nate Heller), The Consummata (Collins’ collab with the late Mickey Spillane), and gearing up for the graphic novel Return to Perdition.
In the midst of this MAC-to-the-max, another of the author’s Quarry adventures, A Matter of Principal, has been adapted for BBC radio, as the first episode in the second series of Pulp Fiction.
Collins has been one of my favorite writers, regardless of genre or medium, for decades, so I applaud gesture of having him be the lead-off guy for the program. I have issues with the production however, since it shoves the author into pigeonholes which, when left to hits own devices, he nimbly avoids. Narrator Peter Marinker, a Canadian actor often used as a token American voice for British radio, gives the story the direct, expressionless just-the-facts-ma’am voice we associate with radio noir. Problem is, the “hero” here isn’t a private detective or a police inspector or someone else for whom that voice makes sense, i.e. someone used to detailing adventures nonchalantly because, as if transcribing them for paperwork, because it’s his business to do so. The protagonist here is a hitman, and Marinker’s ‘40s trenchcoat persona simply doesn’t fit either the character or his detailed Midwestern mid-to-late 20th century surroundings.
So read the story. (A Matter of Principal has also been filmed, twice; I haven’t yet seen either). Then read all those other books. We’ll compare notes another time.