We should not be that surprised when accomplished film directors end up writing good books. Directors must be jacks of all trades and the best ones write and edit well. Francois Truffaut, Nora Ephron, Woody Allen, Derek Jarman, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Werner Herzog have all written excellent books.
Michael Mann’s novel Heat 2 is a deft and ingenious addition to this niche genre. Co-written with Edgar Award-winning novelist Meg Gardiner, it takes the Godfather 2 approach to Mann’s 1995 crime movie, Heat, by which I mean it is both a prequel and a sequel to the original film.
Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna and Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley in Michael Mann’s 1995 movie Heat.
Heat was an exciting cops and robbers story that dared to give equal billing to the cops and their families and the robbers and their families. The leads, LA Robbery-Homicide Detective Lt Vincent Hanna and his brilliant criminal nemesis, Neil McCauley, were played by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but the cast was deep and the supporting characters rich.
The book opens the day after the climactic events of the film with Hanna and his team chasing down the remaining members of McCauley’s crew. As Mike Nichols actually showed us in The Graduate, it is always fascinating to see what happens after a traditional Hollywood ending and there’s a great scene in Heat 2 when Hanna goes to McCauley’s sterile home and takes in the empty, melancholy life of the man he has just killed.
Heat 2 then flashes back to 1988 with McCauley preparing for his latest job. Heist books (and films) always follow a classic formula: part one is the assembling of the crew, the second act is the heist and the third part (the best part) is how the robbers cope when it all goes horribly wrong.
Mann on the set of his 2015 cyber thriller Blackhat and, inset, the cover of Heat 2.
Heat 2 doesn’t ignore these tropes, but it’s also a more thoughtful and interesting book than that. It takes place in three time-lines. Past, present and future. McCauley, of course, does not feature in the future bit but Chris Shiherlis does, the sole survivor from McCauley’s original crew in the film.
One cannot help but think of Shiherlis as Val Kilmer, then in his pomp as one of the most preening and charismatic actors in Hollywood. Kilmer played Shiherlis as a pony-tailed man-child prone to temper tantrums but who was also a brilliant thief who could think on his feet. Kilmer’s sun shone too brightly as a leading man and his best performances came in supporting roles such as Heat.
Here in Heat 2, however, readers will relish their time spent with Shiherlis. Living anonymously in Paraguay he knows he is not fulfilling his true potential working as mere muscle in the world of rogue capitalism.
To say any more would be to spoil the threads that Heat 2 sets up, but if all that you remember of the original is the gunfight in the LA streets you can rest assured that Gardiner and Mann haven’t forgotten to give us plenty of action in the final act.
Heat 2 by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner is published by HarperCollins, $32.99.
Adrian McKinty’s most recent novel, The Island, is published by Hachette.
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