In the mob-choked Chicago of 1932, private detective Nathan Heller may be willing to risk his life to earn a Depression dollar, but he never sacrifices his slicing wit. That’s why mystery fans and critics alike rank the historical thriller True Detective at the top of their lists—and why the book swept up a Shamus Award for best novel from the Private Eye Writers of America. Now, author Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) reissues the contemporary classic that introduces the inscrutable, wise-cracking Nathan Heller in all his guts and glory. Mayor Cermak aims to scrub up Chicago’s rancid reputation for the World’s Fair, and that daunting task comes down to the youngest plainclothes cop in town, Nathan Heller of the pickpocket detail. When the Mayor’s “Hoodlum Squad” brings Heller along on a raid with no instructions but to keep his mouth shut and his gun handy, he finds himself an unwitting, unwilling part of an assassination attempt on Al Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti. Soon, he’s smack in the middle of a power struggle between the mob and the mayor, and it’s up to the young detective to upend a potentially nation-shaking political assassination in Miami Beach. In Collins’ eruptive and evocative large-landscape historical thriller, readers consort with the likes of “Dutch” Reagan, George Raft, and FDR himself, as the author weaves the intricate history of the Chicago’s Century of Progress with a classic noir mystery. Rich in riveting plot turns, including a beautiful female client and a heartbreaking romance, True Detective is one of the most highly entertaining and unlikely coming-of-age stories ever written.

Private detective Nathan Heller goes undercover into the dark and violent world of the Chicago outlaw gangs of the 1930s to find a farmer's daughter turned gun moll, search for the truth that leads to a confrontation with J. Edgar Hoover. Reprint.

From a foxhole on Guadalcanal (shared with Barney Ross) to the glitzy underworld of Hollywood in the '40s, Nate Heller fights his memories and the Mob. Something happened at the Canal, something Heller's blocking out. What he can't block, though, is the wound he received—the "million-dollar wound," the one that got him home. Back in the States, and back in Chicago, he becomes involved once again with Frank Nitti during the gang boss' last violent days, and with the gangland attempts to take over the movie unions. The homefront is every bit as violent as the war-torn Pacific, and even the solace of Sally Rand can do nothing to ease Heller, who is haunted by the death of a friend in Guadalcanal, and surrounded by the mayhem of gangland murders.

Chicago, 1946. Gambling chief James Ragen is shot right before the eyes of the man hired to protect him: A-1 Detective Agency's Nate Heller. Which mob boss hungry for Ragen's gambling action has made a fool of Heller: cold-blooded Capone heir Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik or hotheaded, movie star-handsome Bugsy Siegel? The answer's not in the mean streets of Chicago, because the city's mob wars have moved west, to the glitz of Hollywood and the fabulous-and illicit-potential of a shabby little desert way station they call Las Vegas(.

A $50,000 ransom. No police involvement, or else. These were the demands. And this was the crime . . . A man sneaks into the Lindbergh family home and snatches up twenty-month-old baby Charles, Jr. and disappears. So begins the kidnapping that shakes the nation... Two months of torment shared with reporters and police, socialites and psychics, crooks and cranks... Enter detective Nathan Heller, handpicked by Colonel Lindbergh himself to work on the case. His search for truth takes him from a train station in Chicago to death row in the New Jersey state prison and finally, to a secluded farmhouse in Michigan. It's a twisted trail of deception, betrayal, and danger that ends in the most explosive act of violence Heller has ever seen...

For Chicago detective Nathan Heller, coming to the Bahamas is anything but a vacation. Seems billionaire recluse Sir Harry Oakes wants Nate to get the goods on his new son-in-law, and his pockets are deep enough to get Nate to agree to anything. No sooner is Nate on the island than Sir Harry is murdered in his bed. With his client—and meal-ticket—suddenly gone up in smoke, Nate's left without a case. Until Sir Harry's beautiful daughter convinces him to take on her problem. Her husband has just been accused of murder ... Nate's a talented guy, however, and still has time to hobnob with exiled royalty, challenge the mob, battle shadowy Nazis, and romance the lovely ladies of this tropical paradise. Tough work. Page Numbers Source ISBN: 161218097

The place is Louisiana. The time is 1935. Huey Long, the Kingfish, former governor, current U.S. senator, and absolute dictator of this sweet Southern state, is riding high. He has become the most potent challenger to the Presidency, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has good reason to fear the next election. Nathan Heller, president (and everything else) of the A-1 Detective Agency out of Chicago, has been lured to New York by Long's trusted adviser to present Huey Long with a birthday gift. The gift is a bulletproof vest, and the message is quite clear. Huey Long, with his indomitable quest for power, has made one enemy too many. Rumors of a plot to assassinate Long are circulating, so Heller is hired to uncover the truth. But saving Long's life may be the biggest challenge of Nathan Heller's career - if he himself lives that long. From his passionate and (he thinks) secret affair with the woman Long spurned to his plot to infiltrate Long's known enemies, Nathan Heller walks a dangerous line, and at any time could lose his already precarious balance. Nathan Heller finds, though, that nothing can keep Huey Long from his destiny, and suddenly, in a fiery burst of gunfire, he knows this is far from the end of his case. It's just the beginning.

Nathan Heller has tackled the most notorious crimes of the century over the course of seven novels, and now he faces one of the greatest challenges of his career, the famous Massie case. Clarence Darrow is past his prime but still a brilliant defense attorney when he asks Heller for a meeting at New York's celebrity hangout, Sardi's. Darrow wants Heller along when he takes on the tragic and twisted revenge murder of a "native" Islander who was one of five men accused of raping a beautiful socialite, Thalia Massie. The defendants are, surprisingly, the woman's husband and mother, along with two Navy men. The case is sordid, tainted with bigotry and lies, and filled with contradictions. The job, then, is this: uncover what really happened. As tensions mount and the case finds its way to the courtroom, the truth becomes disturbingly clear. Darrow's performance is spellbinding, but will the final verdict spell justice?

The intrepid fictional Nathan Heller discovers the truth behind the disappearance of famed aviatrix Amelia EarhartSeven times a nominee for the Shamus Award given by the Private Eye Writers of America, Max Allan Collins has twice been recipient of the honor. His craft has never been as evident as it is in his latest Nathan Heller novel, Flying Blind. Collins' fictional character has solved some of America's most notorious crimes including the Lindbergh kidnapping—he's brought down Al Capone—and uncovered the truth behind the assassination of Huey Long. Now Nathan Heller is faced with something quite different—not a crime but a disappearance. More painful still, the disappearance of someone he'd known long ago, famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. He'd been hired to protect her years ago after the discovery of threatening letters. But even Nathan Heller couldn't protect her once she boarded her plane and soared away into the horizon. Now, decades later, he's about to discover what really

Heller gets involved the alien case at Roswell.

In Los Angeles to help launch a West Coast branch of his detective agency, Chicago private detective Nathan Heller becomes caught up in the notorious Black Dahlia homicide when he discovers that the victim, Elizabeth Short, is a young woman whom he had known in Chicago and who had contacted him shortly before her death. Reprint.

It's 1950, and P.I. Nathan Heller has returned home to Chicago, where a congressional probe into organized crime sparks an all-out mob war—with Heller's partner among the victims, An astonishing mix of fact and fiction, this new Heller thriller features such notable characters as singer Frank Sinatra, mobster Sam Giancana, Senator Joe McCarthy, and Hollywood bombshell-in-the-making, Jayne Mansfield.

It’s 1962, and Twentieth Century Fox is threatening to fire Marilyn Monroe. The blond goddess hires Nate Heller, private eye to the stars, to tap her phone so she will have a record of their calls in case they take her to court. When Heller starts listening, he uncovers far more than nasty conversations. The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia—even the Russians—are involved in actions focused on Marilyn. She’s the quintessential American cultural icon, idolized by women, desired by men, but her private life is... complicated...and her connection to the Kennedys makes her an object of interest to some parties with sinister intentions. Not long after Heller signs on, Marilyn winds up dead of a convenient overdose. The detective feels he owes her, and the Kennedys, with whom he busted up corrupt unions in the 1950s. But now, as Heller investigates all possible people—famous, infamous, or deeply cloaked—who might be responsible for Marilyn’s death, he realizes that what has become his most challenging assignment may also be the end of him. PI Nathan Heller returns in his first new novel in a decade, as Max Allan Collins brings to life a vivid star-studded cast, from JFK and RFK to Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford, from Jimmy Hoffa and Joe DiMaggio to Hugh Hefner and Sam Giancana. Bye Bye, Baby is a Hollywood tale you never thought could happen…but probably did.

Long before November 22, 1963, Nathan Heller, "P.I. to the Stars," knows that a conspiracy is in the works. Several years earlier, Heller had been involved with the Kennedys, the Mob, and the CIA in the early stages of a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro. Shortly after, Heller's Mafia contact is murdered. After being interrogated by gangsters and contacted by U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Heller realizes that he may be the one person who can prevent a devastating political assassination. Only he knows all the players; only he knows why a web of conspirators has targeted the man known to the Secret Service as "Lancer," John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Rigorously researched, Max Allan Collins' Target Lancer is far more truth than fiction.

Chicago, September 1964. Beatlemania sweeps the nation, the Vietnam War looms, and the Warren Commission prepares to blame a "lone-nut" assassin for the killing of President John F. Kennedy. But as the post-Camelot era begins, a suspicious outbreak of suicides, accidental deaths, and outright murders decimates assassination witnesses. When Nathan Heller and his son are nearly run down on a city street, the private detective wonders if he himself might be a loose end... Soon a faked suicide linked to President Johnson's corrupt cronies takes Heller to Texas, where celebrity columnist Flo Kilgore implores him to explore that growing list of dead witnesses. With the blessing of Bobby Kennedy—former US attorney general, now running for Senator from New York—Heller and Flo investigate the increasing wave of violence that seems to emanate from the notorious Mac Wallace, rumored to be LBJ's personal hatchet man. Fifty years after JFK's tragic death, Collins' rigorous research for Ask Not raises new questions about the most controversial assassination of our time.

Nathan Heller tangles with Joe McCarthy in Max Allan Collins' thrilling novel Better Dead: "Collins combines the historical and the hard-boiled thriller into a new genre-uniquely American, and uniquely his own."—Andrew Vacchss It's the early 1950's. Joe 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. When famous mystery writer Dashiell Hammett comes to Heller representing a group of showbiz and literary leftists who are engaged in a last minute attempt to save the Rosenbergs, Heller decides to take on the case. Heller will have to play both sides to do this, and when McCarthy also tasks Heller to find out what the CIA has on him, Heller reluctantly agrees. His main lead is an army scientist working for the C.I.A. who admits to Heller that he's been having misgivings about the work he's doing and elliptically referring to the Cold War making World War II look like a tea party. And then the scientist goes missing.

Do No Harm is the latest mystery in the Nathan Heller series by New York Times bestselling author Max Allan Collins. It's 1954 and Heller takes on the Sam Sheppard case—a young doctor is startled from sleep and discovers his wife brutally murdered. He claims that a mysterious intruder killed his wife. But all the evidence points to a disturbed husband who has grown tired of married life and yearned to be free at all costs. Sheppard is swiftly convicted and sent to rot in prison. Just how firm was the evidence...and was it tampered with to fit a convenient narrative to settle scores and push political agendas? Nathan's old friend Elliot Ness calls in a favor and as Nathan digs into the case he becomes convinced of Sheppard's innocence. But Nate can't prove it and has to let the case drop. The road to justice is sometimes a long one. Heller's given another chance years later and this time he's determined to free the man...even if it brings his own death a bit closer.

True Crime detective Nathan Heller returns in a brand new case that connects a millionaire’s kidnapped child to Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign to bring down union boss Jimmy Hoffa. Nathan Heller, star of MWA Grandmaster Max Allan Collins’ most acclaimed series of novels (more than 1 million copies sold to date!), comes to Hard Case Crime for the first time in an all-new thriller drawn from the pages of history. A millionaire’s son is kidnapped and private eye Heller is called in to help. But when half of the record $600,000 ransom goes missing, Heller must wade through a morass of deception and depravity to blow the lid off a notorious crime whose consequences reach into the corridors of power in Washington D.C., where Bobby Kennedy works tirelessly to take down crooked union boss Jimmy Hoffa…

Tough, cynical, and clever, Nathan Heller has been called "the perfect private eye", the best investigator that Chicago (where 'lightning' means gunfire) has to offer. In this engaging collection of thirteen stories, Heller encounters gangsters and petty crooks, noble doctors and quacks, loving wives and wanton women, and even the occasional honest cop. All of the stories are based on real cases of the 1930s and '40s, meticulously researched by award-winning writer and Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins. Heller's adventures feature some of the biggest names in twentieth-century American crime history: Eliot Ness, Frank Nitti, Mickey Cohen, and Jack Ruby, just to name a few. Whether he is investigating a union shooting, going toe-to-toe with the female leader of a vicious hold-up crew, or playing a homeless man to pose as bait for an insurance racket, Heller's humorous, wryly cynical tone, and knack for keen social observation make for a cracking good read.