MAX ALLAN COLLINS (b. 1948, Muscatine, Iowa) was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2017. He is the author of the Shamus Award-winning Nathan Heller historical detective novels and the innovative Quarry series, recently adapted for TV by Cinemax. Road to Perdition, his graphic novel (with artist Richard Piers Rayner), became an Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks. His other comics work includes the Dick Tracy comic strip (1977-1993), Batman, and his own Ms. Tree and Wild Dog (both co-created with artist Terry Beatty).
There's a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate. The king of hard boiled crime fiction. Spillane is a legend of the blood-soaked whodunit, a pioneer of tough guy ethics and New Age vengeance. Spillane almost single-handedly created the market for 'pocket books' in the late 1940s, and he was one of the first authors media-savvy enough to promote himself as a character. -- Eddie Muller, host of Noir Alley A full-dress biography of the most polarizing practitioner of 20th-century crime fiction.... Fans who've been waiting for a life of Spillane will gobble this up. -- Kirkus Illuminating ... This definitive work is indispensable for any fan of the revolutionary Spillane and his two-fisted novels. -- Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW A knockout biography ... A thoroughly engrossing life story and an indispensable account of the rise of paperback publishing. -- Booklist STARRED REVIEW An engaging, capacious and largely celebratory account, presenting the writer, his works and their multimedia adaptations as worthy of serious consideration. -- Wall Street Journal A superbly written and exhaustive portrayal of the life of a writer who changed the mystery genre in the last half of the 20th century.... There is so much here to sink your teeth into and enjoy. Great biographies must capture the individual portrayed-his spirit, his accomplishments, and the times in which he lived and worked. SPILLANE does all of this so expertly that it reads almost as well as a Spillane novel. -- BookReporter