Max Allan Collins

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Max Allan Collins (born March 3, 1948 in Muscatine , Iowa ) is an American novelist , screenwriter and comic book writer .

Life and work

Max Allan Collins, 2002, at the comic fair "Comic-Con International"

Collins, who has made a name for himself primarily as a mystery author, has published novels, short stories, comic books and strips, scripts and book-like film adaptations over the past three decades.

As a writer, he created the Heller novels around a private detective named Nathan Heller who lived in Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. The first novel in the series, True Detective , won the 1984 Shamus Award for Best PI Story from the Society of Private Eye Writers of America . In 1992 a second Shamus followed for the novel Stolen Away , a retelling of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Other novels in the series were Flying Blind (1999) and Chicago Confidential . From Collins Short Stories, Kiss of Death won the Herodotus Award in the Best Historical Short Story category in 2002. The The Historical Mystery Appreciation Society (HMAS) honored Collins for a second time in 2002 with the Herodotus Award in "recognition of his previous literary life's work." In 2005, Men's Adventure Magazines received the Anthony Award for Best Non-Fiction . In 2017, Collins received the Edgar Allan Poe Award Grand Master Award together with Ellen Hart .

In addition, Collins has written adaptations of novels to television series such as CSI , Bones and Dark Angel and some history and fiction-mixing books about the career of the legendary police officer Eliot Ness .

The novels in the five-part "Mallory" series are about an Iowa mystery writer who solves crimes. The most commercially successful novel in the series was "A Nice Weekend for a Murder".

Collins' work as a comic book writer includes work on the newspaper comic strip Dick Tracy created by Chester Gould , the authorship of the traditional series Batman , for which he succeeded Frank Miller in issues # 408-411 (1987) and worked on the one he created Road to Perdition series that was filmed in 2002 with Tom Hanks in the lead role, based on a script written by Collins himself. There was also the series of the same name about the private detective Ms. Tree . Based on the Road to Perdition comics, he wrote the novels Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise .

Collins has directed three film projects: Mommy , Mommy 2: Mommy's Day , and Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market .

Bibliography (excerpt)

Nathan Heller

  • 1. True Detective - Chicago 1933
  • 2. True Crime - Gangster Brides 1934
  • 3rd Million Dollar Wound - Gangster War 1942
  • 4. Neon Mirage - Las Vegas 1946
  • 5. Stolen Away - Kidnapping
  • 6. Carnal Hours
  • 7. Blood and Thunder
  • 8. Damned in Paradise
  • 9. Flying blind
  • 10. Majic Man
  • 11. Angel in Black
  • 12. Chicago Confidential
  • 13. Bye bye baby

Mallory

  • 1. No Cure for Death - The one-eyed
  • 2. Baby Blue Rip-Off - Veteran Returns Home
  • 3. Kill Your Darlings - Murder Congress
  • 4. Shroud for Aquarius - The flower children too
  • 5. Nice Weekend for a Murder

Quarry

  • 1. Quarry / Broker - Quarry and the broker of death
  • 2. Quarry's List / Broker's Wife - Quarry and the List of Death
  • 3. Quarry's Deal / Dealer - Quarry and the killers
  • 4. Quarry's Cut / Slasher - Quarry doesn't give up
  • 5. Primary Target - Quarry and the million dollar contract
  • 6. Quarry's Greatest Hits
  • 7. Last Quarry - Last Quarry
  • 8. First Quarry
  • 9. Quarry in the Middle
  • 10. Quarry's Ex

Eliot Ness

  • 1. Dark City - Dark City
  • 2. Butcher's Dozen - killer in the dark city
  • 3. Bullet proof
  • 4. Murder by the Numbers

Frank Nolan

  • 1. Bait Money - bait for Nolan
  • 2. Blood Money - blood money for Nolan
  • 3. Fly paper
  • 4. Hush Money
  • 5. Hard cash
  • 6. Scratch fever
  • 7. Spree
  • 8. Morn the Living

Disaster

  • 1. Titanic Murders
  • 2. Hindenburg Murders
  • 3. Pearl Harbor Murders
  • 4. Lusitania Murders
  • 5. London Blitz Murders
  • 6. War of the Worlds Murders

Web links