Showing results by author "Max Collins" in All Categories

Private eye Mike Hammer is no stranger to murder, but this time he has two to untangle - the killing of the Captain, a legless, homeless panhandler, dismissed by the police as minor, and the slaying of gambling kingpin Marty Wellman, whose lady friend, Helen Venn, turns to the P.I. for help when the Mob fingers her for the next kill. Seems the new kingpin, Carmen Rich - with whom Hammer has a violent history - thinks Helen made off with ten mil in skim money courtesy of her late lover, or anyway, so Rich claims.

Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, is at the peak of her popularity, internationally famous, universally admired by women and desired by men. But she’s also famously insecure and temperamental and is being pilloried in the press for delaying the production of Something’s Got to Give. When the head of Twentieth Century Fox threatens to cancel her contract, Monroe hires “PI to the stars” Nathan Heller to tap her phones and record calls that might affect legal action. Less than three months later, Monroe is dead from an overdose....

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.

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.

Private investigator Mike Hammer and the beautiful Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case from I, the Jury. Walking along the boardwalk, they witness a brutal beating at the hands of some vicious local cops - and Hammer wades in to defend the victim.

A killer blizzard sweeping across the Southwest threatens the livelihoods of everyone in the town of Trinidad. But it's two gunshots that fell Sheriff Caleb York's unlucky deputy. York knows it was a case of mistaken identity. The bullets were meant for him. It's the first nasty step in a plan rustled up by former Quantrill's Raider Luke "Burn 'Em" Burnham - eliminate the law, corral a team to rob a bank in booming Las Vegas, New Mexico, then lay low. Then they get wind of one little hitch: not only is York still alive, but he's gunning for justice - and revenge. 

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....

It starts with an abusive, drunken young scoundrel who resists arrest, holds a barmaid hostage, and gets what he deserves from the blazing .44 of Sheriff Caleb York. The New Mexico lawman doesn't regret taking such deadly action, but the late youth's powerful mother, cattle baroness Victoria Drummond, seems bound to feel differently. To York's surprise, Victoria takes the news with stoic resignation - all she asks of him is a favor: Help her convince Willa Cullen - the love of Caleb's life - to sell her the spread that Willa's late father had carved out of the wilderness.

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

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.

The mob couldn’t kill him, the cops couldn’t catch him, and even time wouldn’t slow him down. His name’s Nolan...a shrewd, restless tough guy with a talent for theft. With a lifetime of heists under his belt and a bullet in his side, he’s ready to retire. And the Mafia’s eager to help him along...permanently. They think he’s got a debt to pay - with his life. But at all these years, they might be willing to settle for 100 grand instead. Nolan’s got to pull a bank job to try to save his ass.

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.

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.

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.

In "Dying in the Post-War World", Heller returns from combat to find his marriage in shambles and himself square in the middle of the notorious Lipstick Killer case of 1946. "Kisses of Death" follows the PI into the 1950s, when he is hired to guard Marilyn Monroe. Finally, in "Strike Zone", Heller is hired by baseball boss Bill Veeck to investigate the 1961 murder of a famous pinch hitter whose private life will pull Nate into a dangerous new world of little people and big sins.

March 1932. After the recently incarcerated Al Capone offers to negotiate the return of the kidnapped son of Charles Lindbergh, Nathan Heller of the Chicago P.D. is sent to Hopewell, New Jersey, as a police liaison. As a part of Lindbergh’s inner circle, Heller investigates crooks, cranks, socialites, and psychics in a frustrating, fruitless attempt to solve the case. Max Allan Collins makes the crime that captivated a nation the focal point of yet another fascinating and thoroughly spellbinding foray into his world of historical crime fiction.

In 1946 Chicago, Nathan Heller - president of the flourishing A-1 Detective Agency - is hired to protect racing-wire gambling chief James Ragen, who is nonetheless shot down on the streets of Chicago. Not one to take such an affront sitting down, Nate goes after the killer, but he’s in for the biggest surprise of his career. Demonstrating once again that he is the master of true-crime fiction, Max Allan Collins’ story of the birth of Las Vegas - and the dirty deeds that floated all around it - is a masterpiece of modern noir. Heller follows the trail as it leads to Hollywood and Las Vegas....

It’s 1949 in Washington, D.C., and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, convinced he has been targeted for murder, hires Chicago P.I. Nate Heller for protection. Heller must deal with Beltway infighting, Communist paranoia, Israeli agents, and a mysterious military group called the Majestic Twelve in his journey to protect Forrestal. With his client locked away in a mental ward, Heller begins to doubt his own sanity as he explores reports of flying saucers landing near the tiny desert town of Roswell, New Mexico.

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....

Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The perfect place for a honeymoon… and the worst possible time for a murder. Vacationing private investigator Nate Heller finds himself a suspect in the LAPD’s investigation of the notorious Black Dahlia murder case. Problem is the butchered starlet, Elizabeth Short, is an old Chicago flame of Heller’s — and only the P.I. himself knows she was blackmailing him for abortion money.