Showing results by author "Max Collins" in All Categories

Hammer is at a high society party when a wealthy and well-respected man, Colby, is hit by a car and badly injured. When all he expected was a night on the town, Mike is hired to find out who was driving the car. His search leads him on a trail of murders, the victims often exhibiting the same kind of strangulation as the cause of death. How are they connected to an accident involving Corby, and why is the man himself acting so strangely?

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?

The Santa Fe Railroad wants to build a spur through Trinidad, New Mexico, linking the town to the cattle trade. Only one man stands against it - rancher George Cullen. At the request of the town council, Sheriff Caleb York rides out to the Bar-O to reason with his old friend. Even Cullen's daughter Willa, Caleb's former flame, is for the railroad. But the stubborn blind rancher won't budge. Cullen's former partner, Burt O'Malley, has recently returned from a 20-year stint in the pen for manslaughter.

Nathan Heller is Chicago’s most celebrated private detective, hobnobbing with Hugh Hefner, getting written up in Life magazine, enjoying the fruits of a long career that began in a one-room office and now is a coast-to-coast agency. When he does a small favor for a friend - who handles PR for the Teamsters - Heller runs into an old West Side mob crony, a small-time hustler named Jack Ruby. And when that friend is found dead, warning signals start to flash. Suddenly Jimmy Hoffa wants to talk to Nate...and so does Hoffa’s arch enemy, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Nolan and Jon have put their lives of crime behind them—but when a cruel adversary from their past resurfaces, they’re forced back into the heist game with a brutal ultimatum: pull off an insanely ambitious overnight robbery or Nolan’s kidnapped lover won’t live to see the morning. Appearing in bookstores for the first time in thirty-five years and on audio for the first time, this is Nolan’s biggest and deadliest job.

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.

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....

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.

Beautiful, homicidal Julie has one lethal solution for every problem. And now Nolan and his sometime sidekick Jon have gotten on Julie's “problem” list. If a pair of out-of-town hitmen can't do the job, Julie will do it herself.

Nolan is a pro, a veteran of mob vendettas and decades of high-tension heists. All he wants in his advancing middle age is his slice of the American pie - a way to make capitalism pay without having to drag guns into it. But a bullet-scarred life does not come without its bad karma, and Nolan - and his young cohort Jon, whose own dream is to confine the violence to the comics he draws - often find themselves facing old enemies and new temptations.

Just when Nolan’s looking for a way out of his dead-end job, trouble comes knocking, and he’s back in business. Someone harboring an old grudge has just picked off Joey DiPreta, a crooked businessman with ties to the mob, and the guy’s family is out to get whoever’s responsible. So is Nolan’s family - in Chicago - and they offer him big bucks and a piece of a swank hotel if he’ll protect their interests.

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.

Leslie Charteris had no way of knowing that the Hindenburg was hurtling toward catastrophe. But like his crime-fighting character, the Saint, Charteris has an eye for trouble. First the famous mystery writer suspects the German airship has received a bomb threat. Then he discovers a passenger has mysteriously disappeared. Convinced the man was pushed overboard, Charteris conducts a covert investigation. But the vanished man turns out to be an undercover Nazi agent....

In 1968, Nate Heller is there when Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel. Heller takes it upon himself to investigate the murder when a friend of his and Bobby’s raises doubts about the LAPD’s investigation. Heller strongly suspects the involvement of Jimmy Hoffa (currently imprisoned), but Hoffa seems to be in the clear as the private eye looks into the possible presence of CIA enemies of RFK’s on the murder night, the apparent manipulation of Sirhan Sirhan into a Manchurian Candidate-style assassin, and a probable second shooter.

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....

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 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....

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....

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.

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.