Heller - The Big Bundle

by Max Allan Collins

Overview

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…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789098525
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	01/24/2023
Series:	Hard Case Crime
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	152,966
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Max Allan Collins was hailed in 2004 by Publisher's Weekly as "a new breed of writer." A frequent Mystery Writers of America nominee in both fiction and non-fiction categories, he has earned an unprecedented eighteen Private Eye Writers of America nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). In 2002, his graphic novel Road to Perdition was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law and Daniel Craig. He lives in Iowa, USA.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/03/2022

In MWA Grand Master Collins’s superb 18th Nathan Heller novel, (after 2020’s Do No Harm), the PI crosses paths with Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa. It’s 1953 in Kansas City, Mo., when millionaire Robert Greenlease retains Heller’s services after his six-year-old son, Bobby, is kidnapped and ransomed for $600,000. Greenlease makes the payment, but the kidnappers delay returning the child. Heller uses his underworld contacts to try to get a lead on Bobby’s whereabouts by attempting to trace the marked bills used for the payoff, though he fears that the boy is already dead. Flash forward to 1958. Heller is working both for Hoffa, the corrupt Teamsters leader, and Kennedy, then chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee, who’s looking to nail Hoffa. With half of the ransom never accounted for, Kennedy hopes Heller can help him prove it ended up in the Teamsters Pension Fund. Heller’s search for the money and the truth behind Bobby’s abduction proves perilous. Collins again artfully uses a real-life crime, one now obscure but headline-making in the 1950s, as the springboard for a crackerjack plot. This is another standout in a consistently good series. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for the author:

"Nathan Heller is the perfect private eye."—New York Daily News

"Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art." —New York Times

"A unique private eye series with a believable, enduring hard-boiled hero." —Los Angeles Times

"The master of true-crime fiction." —Chicago Magazine

"Collins has not only devised an original take on what may well be the most-written-about crime in history but also made Heller's role in the case plausible." —Publishers Weekly on Target Lancer

"Target Lancer brings us a different, fact-based assassination scenario, eerily paralleling the Dealey Plaza nightmare." —Kirkus Reviews on Target Lancer

"Collins spins a fascinating tale with appearances by Jack Ruby, Jimmy Hoffa, and Bobby Kennedy. Gripping from the get-go, this will satisfy both Heller fans and assassination wonks ever eager for a new spin on the story." —Booklist on Target Lancer

From the Publisher

2022-10-12
A real-life 1953 abduction sends veteran fictional Chicago shamus Nathan Heller to Kansas City and far beyond.

Whoever snatched 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease from his school is exasperatingly dumb. By the time Bob Greenlease, the wealthy owner of a chain of Cadillac dealerships, calls Heller in on the case, the kidnappers have already sent several garbled messages with unclear directions about how to drop off the record $600,000 ransom they’ve demanded and haven’t shown any inclination to pick up. Greenlease’s faith that Heller’s matchless underworld connections will turn up a new angle pays off in a tip Heller gets from cabdrivers’ union rep Barney Baker, a former bouncer for Bugsy Siegel. Barney tells Heller that top-flight St. Louis mobster Joe Costello has been approached by Steve Strand, an insurance agent looking for a “real nice girl” for the night and a way to launder some serious money. Could it be the Greenlease ransom? Heller makes contact with Costello, who’s as hard-nosed as you’d expect; with Strand, who’s one slippery customer; and with Sandy O’Day, that real nice girl. Students of history, or readers who’ve peeked ahead into Collins’ entertainingly detailed appendix, will know that things won’t end well for most of them. And they’ll be surprised to find Heller, five years after half the ransom money disappears, invited back on the case by Rackets Committee chief counsel Robert F. Kennedy, whose money he won’t take, and Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, whose money he will. Neither Heller nor Collins supplies the closure Bob Greenlease longs for; this case unfolds more like a maze of Midwestern fleshpots than a whodunit.

In the words of the character who has the most to lose, “It’s been like something out of the Marx Brothers.

Kirkus Reviews