 Max Allan Collin's first published novel, Bait Money, appeared in 1973.
In 1983, True Detective, Collins's first Nathan Heller novel hit the shelves. It quickly
won that year's Best Novel Shamus award from the Private eye Writers of America. Its story had
fictional Chicago private eye Nate Heller mingling with with real-world gangsters Frank Nitti
and Al Capone, and involved the attempted assassination of FDR in 1932, in which Chicago mayor
Anton Cermak was killed.
Nathan Heller would return, always mingling with real-world people and events, often with the detective solving real-world mysteries.
The first three Heller novels, sometimes known as "The Nitti Trilogy," featured the historical Frank Nitti as a father-figure for Heller.
The second Heller book, True Crime saw print in 1984.
Stolen Away (1993) featured the Lindbergh kidnapping and won the Best Novel Shamus award, the second for the series.
Angel in Black (2001) has Heller solving the famous Black Dahlia murder in 1947.
Collins also wrote novelizations for a number of films, including
In the Line of Fire,
The Mummy, and
Saving Private Ryan.
In addition to his novels, Max Allan Collins wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip from 1977 to 1993, succeeding the strip's creator, Chester Gould.
He consulted on the memorable 1990 Dick Tracy movie, also writing the novelization.
He also wrote a number of comic books, from
Batman
to Wild Dog (which I remember fondly) to Ms. Tree.
Collins became controversial for a time with the True Crime trading cards of serial killers, which America greeted with horror in 1993.
Collins had written the trading cards on gangsters for a trading card series entitled G-Men and Gangsters, only to have the publisher package them with a new name and other cards on serial killers.
The following are projects by Max Allan Collins are available:
Following these is a list of other sites of interest.
|
