Showing results by author "Max Allan Collins" in All Categories

FBI agent Patti Rogers finds herself paired with the unpopular former agent on a task force investigating the killing of Supreme Court Justice Henry Venter. Reeder - nicknamed "Peep" for his unparalleled skills at reading body language - makes a startling discovery while reviewing a security tape: the shooting was premeditated, not a botched robbery. Even more chilling, the controversial Venter may not be the only justice targeted for death.

The ruthless professional killer known as Quarry long ago disappeared into a well-earned retirement. But now a media magnate has lured the restless hit man into tackling one last lucrative assignment. The target is an unlikely one—why, Quarry wonders, would anyone want a beautiful young librarian dead? And why in hell does he care?

Crooked Sheriff Harry Gauge rules the town of Trinidad, New Mexico, with an iron fist. His latest scheme is to force rancher George Cullen into selling his spread and to take Cullen's beautiful daughter Willa for his bride - whether she's willing or not.

A killer Mike Hammer's old friend Captain Pat Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, seemingly indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if this outwardly placid, very odd old man might somehow be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes. At the same time, Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout - some of it mob, some of it federal government - over the $89billion cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago.

A Mystery Writers of America “Grand Master” - author of the gangster classic Road to Perdition, longtime Dick Tracy writer, and multiple Shamus Award winner - teams with an acclaimed rising young historian in this riveting, myth-shattering dual portrait of Al Capone, America’s most notorious gangster, and Eliot Ness, the legendary Prohibition agent whose extraordinary investigative work crippled his organization.

In a small Midwest town, twenty-eight-year-old Krista Larson has made her mark as the youngest female police chief in the country. She’s learned from the best: her father, Keith, a decorated former detective. But as accustomed as they are to the relative quiet of their idyllic tourist town, things quickly turn with Krista’s ten-year high school reunion. With the out-of-towners holed up in a lakefront lodge, it doesn’t take long to stir up old grudges and resentments. Now a successful TV host, Astrid Lund, voted the “Girl Most Likely to Succeed” is back in town

Quarry doesn't kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them…and then removing that problem, as well. So far he's rid of the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman's hitman have the wrong quarry in his sights?

1934 Chicago dazzles with fast action and calculating, cold-blooded meanness as private detective Nate Heller combs Chicago’s North Side looking for John Dillinger. But things take a turn for the strange when self-aggrandizing G-Man Melvin Purvis shoots down a Dillinger double in front of the Biograph Theater. Full of muscle and oozing Chicago’s tough-guy persona to the hilt, Max Allan Collins’ Nate Heller is the ultimate private investigator.

When Mayor Cermak’s “Hoodlum Squad” brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he becomes an unwitting, unwilling part of a hit on Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. As a result, Heller quits the force to become a private eye. His first job: head off a nation-shaking political assassination in Miami Beach. With the Chicago World’s Fair as a backdrop, Heller encounters a ragtag array of crooks and clients, including Al Capone, George Raft, “Dutch” Reagan, and FDR himself.

In Eastern Europe four CIA agents are dead - geopolitical pawns caught in border dispute cross fire. Why were they there? Who sent them? Not even the President knows. Back in Washington, the Secretary of the Interior dies from an apparent allergic shock. As details emerge, so do suspicions that she was murdered. Investigating their respective cases, ex - Secret Service agent Joe Reeder and FBI Special Situations Task Force leader Patti Rogers recognize a dangerous conspiracy is in play.

Thirteen bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors are contained in this first of volume of a must-listen collection.

Max Allan Collins became Spillane's friend and collaborator, continuing the Mike Hammer series for years after the author's death, building upon unfinished manuscripts the writer left behind. Now, with coauthor James Traylor, Collins has produced the first comprehensive and authoritative profile of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. It is a must-listen for any fan of the author—or of the generations of crime writers that were influenced by his work.

Presidential candidate - and force of nature - Huey Long, the “Kingfish,” is in fear for his life. After Nathan Heller delivers the former Louisiana governor a bulletproof vest, the Kingfish hires the Chicago private eye to investigate death threats from political rivals. Soon Heller runs head-on into an IRS investigation seeking millions skimmed from state workers for Huey’s “de-duct box”... and into the arms of the ex-governor’s lovely ex-mistress. When the charismatic politician is shot down by a seemingly crazed doctor, Heller gets a new employer....

Nathan Heller, star of MWA Grandmaster Max Allan Collins’ most acclaimed series of novels (more than 1 million copies sold to date!), comes to Hard Case Crime for the first time in an all-new thriller drawn from the pages of history. A millionaire’s son is kidnapped and private eye Heller is called in to help. But when half of the record $600,000 ransom goes missing, Heller must wade through a morass of deception and depravity to blow the lid off a notorious crime whose consequences reach into the corridors of power in Washington D.C.

Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him, that was the day he returned stateside from Nam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too. He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one - by expecting trouble. What he didn't expect was ever running into his ex again....

The professional hitman known as Quarry - star of the Cinemax TV miniseries of the same name - has put killing behind him. But after a beautiful writer of true-crime best sellers drops by to announce he's the subject of her next book, killers descend to give him some of his own deadly medicine, forcing Quarry to journey into his bloody past to find the answers - and settle old scores.

It’s 1950 in Chicago, P.I. Nate Heller’s old stomping grounds. But things are different now, and the wind is blowing in a different, decidedly more dangerous direction. Congressman-with-a-cause and presidential-hopeful Estes Kefauver creates the Committee on Organized Crime to put the squeeze on the mob - and anyone who ever associated with them. Heller tries to lay low, but when ex-cop Bill Drury cooperates and mafia moll Jackie Payne sings, Heller finds himself catapulted into the middle of the investigation.

The concluding Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to summer, 1973. Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation—this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling’s seventeen-year-old sibling, Mikki. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer—filled with contempt for dope dealers—goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about.

Nolan was still alive; his wounds healed and his money was safe - all $800,000 of it. It was Nolan’s birthday, and he was sitting happy. Until Planner was killed. Planner was an eccentric antique dealer; Planner had the $800,000 in his safe. But now he was dead, and the money was gone. Caught up in the sizzling crossfire of double-dealing, danger, and death, Nolan was up against the “Family” again.

Taking a midnight stroll along the Hudson River, Mike Hammer gets more than he bargained for: a partial corpse on an ice floe. The body is that of a butler who spent the last years of his life working for a millionaire -- also now deceased -- and his notoriously privileged children. Were both master and servant murdered? Captain Pat Chambers thinks so.