Max A. Collins Livres

A riveting novel by MWA Grand Master Award winner Max Allan Collins. In Eastern Europe four CIA agents are dead--geopolitical pawns caught in border dispute cross fire. Why were they there? Who sent them? Not even the President knows. Back in Washington, the Secretary of the Interior dies from an apparent allergic shock. As details emerge, so do suspicions that she was murdered. Investigating their respective cases, ex-Secret Service agent Joe Reeder and FBI Special Situations Task Force leader Patti Rogers recognize a dangerous conspiracy is in play. When suspects and government contacts are killed off with expert precision, their worst fears are confirmed. As the country edges closer and closer to war, Reeder and Rogers must protect the President--and each other--from an unseen enemy who's somehow always one step ahead. The stakes have never been higher, against killers who might be anywhere, and Reeder and Rogers have no one to trust but each other.

When a murder-for-pay assignment goes horribly wrong, Quarry sets out to find out who hired him - and take revenge.

Legendary lawman Wyatt Earp straps on his six-shooter to battle a new breed of bad man in a new land -- rising gangster Al Capone and his machine-gun toting killers on the streets of New York City. It's the 1920s, the glittering jazz age, and the beginning of the blood-soaked prohibition-era. The wild west and the gunfight at the OK Corral are fading memories, even for aging lawman Wyatt Earp, who is toiling in Los Angeles as a private eye and a technical consultant on cowboy movies. When Doc Holliday's son, who is running a glitzy nightclub in Manhattan, is targeted by the mob, Wyatt gladly leaves the tamed west for the wild east to defend him, pitting himself against a brutal, young gangster named Al Capone "Wyatt Earp versus Al Capone - a wild, exciting ride." David Morrell, author of FIRST BLOOD "Highly entertaining....Collins has outdone himself in this tale of bad guys, bullets, and booze set at the start of the Prohibition era." Library Journal "Wyatt Earp vs. Al Capone - it might seem an improbable situation, but it could have happened, and Collins makes it work in this wild blend of classic Western and gangster characters, all set in Prohibition-era New York City" Philadelphia Inquirer

"Roscoe Kane is one of the last - and, in Mallory's opinion, best - of the old-school mystery writers. Back in the day, he turned out crime thrillers filled with babes, bullets, and tough-guy banter. But today Kane is filled with bitterness over the nosedive his career took after he sued a publisher. For Mallory, who learned his craft at Kane's knee, it's tough watching his literary hero drown his sorrows in booze - but it's a million times tougher finding the old master drowned in a hotel bathtub. Some call it ironic that Kane meets his end in the middle of Bouchercon, the famed convention that's a mecca for mystery writers. The Chicago coroner calls it a drunken mishap. But Mallory spies treachery mingled with the tragedy. Just like a classic whodunit, there's a gallery full of suspects - from a scorned ex-wife and an ostracized gay son to an underhanded publisher and a roster of rival writers with axes to grind. Throw in a knockout dame who gives Mallory a private eyeful, an alluring widow who's not too sad to be seductive, and a clutch of thugs who let their knuckles do the talking, and Mallory has his hands full finding justice for his hero"--Author's website.

In 1946 Chicago, Nathan Heller--president of the flourishing A-1 Detective Agency--is hired to protect racing-wire gambling chief James Ragen, who is nonetheless shot down on the streets of Chicago. Not one to take such an affront sitting down, Nate goes after the killer, but he's in for the biggest surprise of his career. Demonstrating once again that he is the master of true-crime fiction, Max Allan Collins' story of the birth of Las Vegas--and the dirty deeds that floated all around it--is a masterpiece of modern noir. Heller follows the trail as it leads to Hollywood and Las Vegas, specifically to Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, but when he proves Siegel's innocence, Heller and the suave gangster wind up friends...and rivals for the love of Nate's life. Bugsy hires Heller as security chief of the under-construction Flamingo hotel, where mob bag woman Virginia Hill is a dangerous, if glamorous, distraction. It all comes to a boil with a shocking mob assassination in Beverly Hills that sends Heller into a fever-dream ride of vengeance.

Presents a 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.

The ruthless professional killer known as Quarry long ago disappeared into a well-earned retirement. But now a media magnate has lured the restless hitman 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?

Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him that was the day he returned from Vietnam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. When he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too.

Behind the doors of an illegal casino, will Quarry find Lady Luck or a lady killer? As part of his plan to target other hitmen, Quarry follows one from steamy Florida to the sober Midwest. But this killer isn’t a man at all – she’s a sloe-eyed beauty, as dangerous in bed as she is deadly on the job. Has Quarry finally met his match? The longest-running series from Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition, and the first ever to feature a hitman as the main character, the Quarry novels tell the story of a paid assassin with a rebellious streak and an unlikely taste for justice. Once a Marine sniper, Quarry found a new home stateside with a group of contract killers. But some men aren’t made for taking orders – and when Quarry strikes off on his own, God help the man on the other side of his nine-millimeter…

A rival sets out to take over the killing-for-hire business, and Quarry finds himself in the crosshairs.