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

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.

Crime fiction readers know Quarry - the ruthless killer for hire from Max Allan Collins' acclaimed novels - but where did Quarry's story start? For first time ever, the best-selling author of Road to Perdition takes us back to the beginning, revealing the never-before-told story of Quarry's first job: infiltrating a college campus and eliminating a professor whose affair with one of his beautiful young students is the least of his sins.

Two nights before the devastating military strike on Pearl Harbor, a young half-Japanese singer is found dead on a Honolulu beach. The murder appears to be a simple crime of passion, but writer Edgar Rice Burroughs - creator of Tarzan and John Carter - has his doubts. The writer’s suspicions lead him and his son Hully to conduct a sub-rosa investigation into the sultry singer’s death. Their pursuit of the killer coincides with rumors of an imminent Japanese attack against the Pacific fleet stationed in Oahu.

Under the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine, Wright has booked passage on what would be the luxury liner’s disastrous final crossing. He claims to be interviewing celebrity passengers, but the reporter is actually investigating rumors that the ship is ferrying an illegal cache of weapons to aid the British war against Germany. His investigation is put on hold when three German stowaways are discovered and then - in an unexpected and violent twist - killed.

In 1942, Chicago P.I. Nate Heller and his childhood pal, boxer Barney Ross, join the Marines and see bloody action together at Guadalcanal. Upon his return to gangland Chicago, the shell-shocked Heller - more dangerous than ever - is thrust into the midst of an inter-gang war to depose Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti, whose minions are infiltrating Hollywood movie unions.

After nearly fifty years in the killing business, the hitman known as Quarry was enjoying a comfortable retirement–until the grown daughter he only recently met mysteriously went missing. Now it’s up to the old man to show he hasn’t lost a step and, with the help of a femme fatale from his past, prove he’s as ruthless, deadly and unstoppable as any man half his age.

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.

Killer-for-hire Quarry is trying to lie low when he gets a midnight visit from two gunmen sent by an old associate. Someone wants Quarry off the scene - for keeps. This early crime novel by the author of The Road to Perdition shows once again that nobody is harder-boiled than Quarry. With a new afterword by the author.

First there was The Last Quarry, then there was The First Quarry - now look who's caught in the middle.

The enigmatic hit man Quarry - star of seven celebrated novels and an award-winning feature film (The Last Lullaby) - is back in this violent, steamy tale of warring crime families. When two godfathers set out to bump each other off, guess who winds up with both contracts….

Ginnie Mullens was many things in her life: tomboy, hippie, businesswoman, and inveterate gambler. Now, she’s just dead - apparently by her own hand. But “apparently” doesn’t pass muster with mystery writer Mallory, because no matter what else she may have been, Ginnie was first and foremost his friend. There’s nothing Mal won’t do to prove she didn’t go into that good night willingly…and nothing that will stop him from coming down hard on her killer.

Tough, cynical, and clever, Nathan Heller has been called "the perfect private eye", the best investigator that Chicago (where "lightning" means gunfire) has to offer. Created by New York Times best-selling novelist and Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins, the classic PI comes vibrantly to life in this collection of 13 stories, all based on real cases of the 1930s and '40s.

New York Times best-selling author Max Allan Collins has won multiple Shamus Awards for his detective novels featuring Nathan Heller. The third book in his JFK trilogy, Ask Not finds Heller investigating a bizarre string of deaths among the witnesses to JFK’s assassination—and tracing blame to LBJ’s right-hand man.

A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician's killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and members of the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power - or death.

The onetime world-class thief Nolan - now happily gone straight with his own restaurant/nightclub - whisks his longtime lover Sherry off to Vegas for a trip to a wedding chapel and a honeymoon stay. But an eye-in-the-sky security cam at a casino spots Nolan, whose past catches up with him when he’s thought to be casing the joint. An old “friend” sees Nolan as the perfect patsy for a scheme to heist the weekly skim haul....

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.

Where does a hit man draw the line? With a controversial presidential election just weeks away, Quarry is hired to carry out a rare political assignment: kill the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, a passionate civil rights crusader and campaigner for the underdog candidate. But when a hate group out of Ferguson, Missouri, turns out to be gunning for the same target, Quarry starts to wonder just who it is he's working for.

On October 30, 1938, rising radio star Orson Welles boondoggles the American public into believing that Martians have attacked Earth. With his clever adaptation of The War of the Worlds, the great showman proves he can get away with anything - maybe even murder. Minutes before the fictitious invasion goes live on the air, a dead body is found in the studio and the polarizing Welles is the obvious suspect.

In July 1943, Nate Heller flies to Nassau where multimillionaire Sir Harry Oakes wants dirt dug up on Count De Marigny, the playboy who has married Harry’s beautiful, underage daughter, Nancy. But the investigation has barely begun when Sir Harry turns up dead in bed - burned to death in a real-life locked-room mystery - and Heller is soon working for Nancy, whose husband faces murder charges. Chicago P.I. Heller is on his most intriguing - and dangerous - mission yet in this devilishly clever thriller filled with surprising twists....

Mallory is back and facing a two-fisted whodunit: Who’s responsible for the just-discovered “lost novel” by the celebrated author of The Maltese Falcon? Is it the master, Dashiell Hammett, himself, or a very cunning counterfeiter? And who’s behind the shocking, suspicious demise of Roscoe Kane, a hard-drinking, hard-boiled crime-novel pioneer? Aptly enough, this one-two punch of a puzzle is the talk of Bouchercon, the famed convention where mystery scribes gather to honor (and murder?) their own.

Memphis, 1975. "Raunchy" doesn't begin to describe Max Climer's magazine, Climax, or his all-hours strip club, or his planned video empire. And evangelists, feminists, and local watchdog groups all want him out of business. But someone wants more than that, and has hired a killer to end Max's career permanently. Only another hit man - the ruthless professional known as Quarry - can keep Climer from becoming a casualty in the Sexual Revolution.