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

In Depression-era Chicago, private eye Nathan Heller is caught between the Mob and City Hall in a battle for control of the 1933 World’s Fair while he attempts to find a lovely actress’ missing brother. Along the way, Heller meets an array of famed heroes and villains from Eliot Ness to Al Capone, climaxing with the detective dangling off a beam of the Fair’s sky tower.

Legendary editor, Maxim Jakubowski, delivers another chilling anthology collecting stories of cold-blooded murder, revenge and crimes-gone-wrong from the best of the best in crime fiction. Spine-chilling and gripping, these tales will grip you with their devious narrators and crafty twists.

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?

Mike Hammer is summoned to a meeting with Jamie Winters, a US senator from New York, and Jamie's lovely, very smart wife, Nicole, considered by many to be the power behind the throne. Winters is being blackmailed, and Hammer is given a list of suspects who may be behind the threats to the senator's career. But when the suspects begin to drop like flies, Hammer realizes there is more to this case than just a salacious tape.

In a small Midwest town, twenty-eight-year-old Krista Larson has made her mark as the youngest female police chief in the country. She’s learned from the best: her father, Keith, a decorated former detective. But as accustomed as they are to the relative quiet of their idyllic tourist town, things quickly turn with Krista’s ten-year high school reunion. With the out-of-towners holed up in a lakefront lodge, it doesn’t take long to stir up old grudges and resentments. Now a successful TV host, Astrid Lund, voted the “Girl Most Likely to Succeed” is back in town

When private investigator Mike Hammer accompanies a conservative politician to Moscow on a fact-finding mission, he is arrested and imprisoned by the KGB on a bogus charge. He quickly escapes, creating an international incident by getting into a firefight with Russian agents. On his stateside return, the government is none too happy with Hammer. Russia is insisting upon his extradition, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs our hero: Why him? Why does Russia want him back, and why was he singled out to accompany the senator to Russia in the first place?

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.

Mike Hammer is on the case, this time hunting the murderer of his old friend and bootlegger-turned-legit-businessman Packy Paragon. Already torn up by the disappearance of Velda, his beloved secretary, Mike Hammer carves a brutal path for vengeance. Drinking heavily, his relationships fraying, his behavior self-destructive, Hammer has to track down Paragon’s black book, with the names of every corrupt official in town. With deception everywhere, and a whole host of reasons to want the ledger, Hammer has to pull himself together and solve the case before all hell breaks loose.

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.

Legendary mystery writer Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel about detective Sam Spade: The Maltese Falcon, the most famous private eye story ever told. But the case was never really solved—the priceless golden, bejeweled bird that men and women had been dying to possess turned out to be a fake.

A killer Mike Hammer's old friend Captain Pat Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, seemingly indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if this outwardly placid, very odd old man might somehow be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes. At the same time, Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout - some of it mob, some of it federal government - over the $89billion cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago.

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.

When Mayor Cermak’s “Hoodlum Squad” brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he becomes an unwitting, unwilling part of a hit on Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. As a result, Heller quits the force to become a private eye. His first job: head off a nation-shaking political assassination in Miami Beach. With the Chicago World’s Fair as a backdrop, Heller encounters a ragtag array of crooks and clients, including Al Capone, George Raft, “Dutch” Reagan, and FDR himself.

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.

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.

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?

The course of true love never did run smooth for PI Mike Hammer. His secretary and partner, Velda, has walked out on him without explanation, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then an old cop turns up murdered - a cop who once worked with Velda on the NYPD Vice Squad. What's more, Mike's pal, Captain Pat Chambers, has discovered that Velda is in Florida, now the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn.

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.

Winter, 1969. After a hit-and-run accident nearly kills her mother, Velda learns her father is not who she thought he is. Seeking to uncover her true heritage, Velda and Mike Hammer travel to sunny Dreamland Park, where retired law enforcement officers keep an eye on notorious criminals held under the Witness Protection Act. Just as Velda and Mike’s search leads to a dead end, a brutal attempt on their lives and a missing fortune in mob money leads them to a deadly midnight confrontation in a cemetery where secrets are buried and open graves await.

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?