Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother

To celebrate Noirvember this year, I dug into the latest compilation of Ms. Tree stories, One Mean Mother. And when I say latest, it has been some time in coming. Ms. Tree is a series that begin in the heyday of independent comics, the early 1980s, when it bounced around a couple of different publishers during its 50-some-odd-issue run. In the 1990s, the series ended up at DC Comics, where it was published as a series of larger-size, self-contained quarterly stories. This volume collects the first six of those tales.

Michael Tree is a classic, hard boiled detective. She runs her agency with a few trusted allies, and she is at constant war with the Muerta crime family, who were responsible for the death of her husband. Here, the family appears to be moving into more legitimate ventures as it is trying to extricate itself from crime altogether under the leadership of the latest young hotshot Don Donnie. Ms. Tree is not so sure that this clean streak is for real, and of course there are lots of conflicts, double crossings, and subterfuge.

Adding a different wrinkle to the works is that Ms. Tree gets pregnant and has a baby in the middle of this volume. Never one to shrink from conflict, she finds herself in new territory in having to think differently before throwing herself into violent situations. It is interesting to see how she adjusts her life after becoming a parent while still being a kick-ass heroine.

These stories are well crafted crime tales, with snappy dialogue and a good share of action and violence. Tree is a tough as nails woman who has her own code of justice, and I very much enjoy following her adventures. Occassionally, this book has a few dated references to things like Thirtysomething, but they do not really detract from the general timelessness of the tales. If you like classic crime stories told and drawn in excellent manner, this is a book for you.

Ms. Tree was created by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty. Collins is a mystery writer with years of experience writing short stories, comic books, novels such as his Quarry series, the Dick Tracy newspaper strip, and the graphic novel Road to Perdition, which was made into a major motion picture. Beatty has drawn lots of comics over the past four decades, including the co-creating the Wild Dog series with Collins and inking many issues of Batman Adventures. Both creators speak about the return of Ms. Tree to publication in this article.

I have not been able to locate many reviews of this book, but the ones I have seen are positive. C.J. Bunce wrote, "As you’d expect from Max Allan Collins, this is another great read.  It has good characters, nicely plotted mysteries, and Terry Beatty brings in a classic noir style." You can find more reviews at Goodreads, where it has a 4.12 (out of 5) star rating as of this writing.

Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother was published by Titan Books/Hard Case Crime, and they offer more about it here.