Showing results by author "Max Collins" in All Categories

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....

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....

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Joyce Lackey was a classic baby-boomer. She had it all: a high-paying position, a beautiful condo, a BMW. But there was one thing she didn’t have any more—her youth, and that was what she needed most. Her boss fired her because he wanted someone with “young blood and young ideas.” Joyce was forced to start all over again. But could she compete with all the beautiful young kids who were so hungry for what she had?

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.

Each person worked for the same company, Kemco, which has a dicey history of manufacturing deadly chemicals. Coincidence? Journalism student Crane doesn’t think so, especially since one of the dead was his fiancée. Determined to uncover the truth, Crane teams up with a local environmental activist named Boone, whose ex-husband works for the chemical giant. Together, they aim to expose the town’s corrupt elements and bring Kemco to justice.

No sooner do Hot Rod and the Pistons reunite for their induction into the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame than two band members take a final bow. Both alleged suicides. A tragic way to go out. A bum way for one-hit wonders to be remembered. But it’s Labor Day weekend. The show must go on. With replacements at the ready, the Pistons are back on home turf to headline the first ever Rock and Country Music Fest. Police Chief Krista Larson and her father, Keith, are there listening. Because they suspect there may be more to the band members’ untimely deaths than anyone else can see.

In an attempt to soothe growing Cold War tensions between America and Russia, Premier Nikita Khrushchev visits the US to see all that his “enemy” has to offer. Top of his to-do list? A trip to Disneyland and an introduction to sexual icon Marilyn Monroe. Thanks to the impossible security requirements, Disneyland is out of the question. Marilyn, on the other hand, jumps at the chance to put on a show for the Russian official. During her appearance, she overhears the details of an assassination plot designed to spark an atomic holocaust and devastate both superpowers.

John Sand may be married, but he’s not dead. In the early 1960s, John Sand just retired as a British secret agent. On his honeymoon with his new wife, Stacey Boldt - the heiress to a Texas oil fortune - they are interrupted by an unfriendly blast from the past. Now an executive with Boldt Oil in Houston, Sand finds himself, and his bride, pulled back into the world of espionage when JFK himself recruits him for a dangerous job in Cuba.

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.

It's the early 1950s. Ju McCarthy is campaigning to rid America of the Red Menace. Nate Heller is doing legwork for the senator, though the Chicago detective is disheartened by McCarthy's witch-hunting tactics. He's made friends with a young staffer, Bobby Kennedy, while trading barbs with a potential enemy, the attorney Roy Cohn, who rubs Heller the wrong way. Not the least of which for successfully prosecuting the so-called Atomic Bomb spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Collins became a next generation Mickey Spillane, creating memorable titles and characters of his own such as Road to Perdition and Quarry. He's worked in all kind of media, from scripting Dick Tracy daily comic strips from 1977-93 to writing the novelizations of movies such as Saving Private Ryan, Air Force One and American Gangster and creating his own one-man show Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life. The crowning achievement of his career, however, may have been when Mickey Spillane - the best-selling mystery writer of the 20th century - chose Collins to be his literary executor.

What’s a good mystery story without a beautiful blonde to set things in motion? When the femme sharing a bench with Mallory in the Port City, Iowa, bus station is accosted by a scar-faced, one-eyed thug, the aspiring writer stops minding his own business and leaps into the fray with nothing but his fists and a well-aimed Pepsi bottle.

Budding mystery writer Mallory was just trying to impress a politically correct girlfriend by delivering hot meals to little old ladies. The last thing he expected was to find his elderly charges such fascinating company, and when one sweet old gal meets an unexpectedly grisly fate, Mal sets out to find and stop the burglars who this time stole a life. The last thing the local sheriff needs, however, is a meddling civilian.

Everybody has someone they’d secretly like to kill. For Mallory and his fellow professional mystery authors, that someone is caustic book critic Kirk Rath. And while that’s no secret, it’s certainly a surprise when a busload of writers takes part in a mountain resort’s Murder Mystery Weekend - and discovers their archenemy has been cast in the plum part of the victim. What’s more surprising is how well Kirk Rath plays dead - until Mallory discovers the most hated man on Mohonk Mountain isn’t playing.

In 1935, Nate Heller is hired to escort Amelia Earhart on a speaking tour because of numerous cut-and-paste death threats against her life. Heller suspects the threats are a stunt by Earhart's publicity-hungry husband, and the detective’s growing closeness to the bisexual aviatrix leads to a steamy affair. Two years later, when Earhart embarks on her flight around the world - and mysteriously disappears over the South Pacific - Uncle Sam enlists Heller in a clandestine search of Japanese waters for the popular Earhart....

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.

John Sand, former MI6 agent, is keeping a secret from his new bride, Stacey – he has been tracking the supposedly dead Jake Lonestarr, her Texas oil tycoon father's traitorous business partner. When Stacey disappears, is Lonestarr or Las Vegas godfather Anthony Morello responsible? Is it the shadowy figures at the new international spy agency trying to recruit John Sand?

Sierra Kane—who has bounced from one foster family to another—faces an uncertain future when she receives an unapplied-for scholarship to Barnard College specifically designed for orphans whose academic records are merely above average. A second unexpected boon comes her way when another recipient of that somewhat mysterious scholarship offers her a part-time courier job. Soon, Sierra is caught up in a whirl of espionage and murder, with a new boyfriend who may or may not be part of a plot, a college mentor with a possible agenda of her own, and an FBI agent who rebuffs Sierra’s plea for help.