Double Down by [Max Allan Collins]

I thought I was the only one who thought of basing a fictional character on actor Lee Van Cleef, who played the man in black in those spaghetti westerns, like “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” I used Van Cleef as the model for Mordecai Slate, the bounty hunter protag of “Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto” and “Hunting Monsters is My Business.”

Turns out Max Alan Collins had the same idea years ago for a character he called “Nolan,” a professional thief modeled on Donald Westlake/Richard Stark’s character Parker.

As Collins says in the intro to “Double Down,” “We’re all thieves.”