Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins (born 1948) is an American crime novelist and comics writer, best known for the graphic novel Road to Perdition (1998) and the Nathan Heller historical mysteries.

Collins was born in Muscatine, Iowa, on 3 March 1948. He sold his first two novels in 1972 while a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has since written more than a hundred novels. Early series include Nolan, about a professional thief working the Midwest, and Quarry, about a former Marine sniper turned hired killer, later adapted as a Cinemax television series. The Nathan Heller books, which follow a Chicago private detective through real historical cases, began with True Detective (1983) and run to 19 novels; he won Shamus Awards in 1984 and 1992.

In comics he took over the Dick Tracy newspaper strip from its creator, Chester Gould, and created the private eye Ms. Tree. Road to Perdition, drawn by Richard Piers Rayner and published by Paradox Press, an imprint of DC Comics, in 1998, became the 2002 film starring Tom Hanks. He has written ten novels based on the television series CSI, film novelisations including Saving Private Ryan and Air Force One, and, after Mickey Spillane's death in 2006, completed fifteen unfinished Mike Hammer novels. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master in 2017.

For collectors: The key first editions are the 1998 Paradox Press Road to Perdition, a 304-page graphic novel and the basis of the Tom Hanks film, and True Detective (1983), the first Nathan Heller novel.