Showing results by author "Max Collins" in All Categories

Mike Hammer, the toughest PI of all, draws a seemingly routine assignment—playing bodyguard to diva Rita Vance on the eve of her big Broadway comeback. But Rita is an old flame of Hammer’s, and when their romance is rekindled, the detective finds the actress facing death threats and himself the target of one hit man after another. When the actress disappears, the show must go on, which, with Mike Hammer, means swift, violent retaliation.

Mike Hammer is a popular guy. At least with certain people. Several failed assassination attempts have got him riled, so apart from preventing the kidnapping of a famous New York socialite, he's hell-bent on figuring out who wants him dead...someone who's desperate for the kill of his life.

It starts with a few near-accidents: A car almost swipes Mike Hammer when he’s crossing the street. A junkie robs the notoriously hardboiled detective at knifepoint. A fight on a subway platform comes close to pushing him in front of a train. While any one of these could be a coincidence, together they make a conspiracy—one that Hammer will have to end in order to survive. And when it comes to finishing something—or someone—nobody does it better than Hammer.

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.

Jordan Rivera is an ordinary kid with an ordinary family, until a vicious killer takes it all away, sparing her, but leaving her broken. The murders of her father, mother, and brother destroy something inside Jordan, who spends ten long, mute years in an institution. Catching a glimpse of a news report about another family slaying, Jordan at last breaks her silence. Now she's out, and she molds herself - body and mind - into an instrument of justice.

During a brutal winter in rural Virginia, women are inexplicably vanishing. The only clues to the bizarre disappearances are the grotesque human remains that are turning up in snow banks along the highway. A disgraced priest has begun to experience strange and disturbing visions connected to a terrible secret. But are the images haunting a fallen man of God to be trusted...or are they the deadly lies of a twisted mind?

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.

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?

Heist-man Nolan is enjoying his retirement from crime, running his own restaurant, when the president of a bank he robbed two years ago shows up with a blackmail demand. All Nolan has to do is rob the bank again — and play patsy to a sexy girlfriend’s murder scheme.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fall 1942. When her Hollywood private detective daddy is called back to uniform, Fancy Anders is issued orders of her own - answer the phone, make referrals, and keep the place dusted. But the 24-year-old Barnard grad - whose hobbies include shooting, flying, and jujitsu - isn’t having any. At Amalgamated Aircraft, a young female worker chosen to pose for patriotic photos and posters has met with a suspicious “accidental death”. Fancy takes the victim’s place on the swing shift, fitting in well with coworkers very much not from high society circles.

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

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.