Max Allan Collins Books in Order

Private eye Mike Hammer vows to avenge the slow, cruel murder of his war buddy Jack Williams by killing the culprit in exactly the same way. His hunt drags him through New York’s nightclubs, clinics, and mob hangouts, where every ally might be a liar.

After Mike Hammer gives a down-on-her-luck redhead enough cash to escape the streets, she turns up dead in an apparent hit and run. Convinced it is murder, Hammer tears into a prostitution and blackmail ring that stretches from waterfront dives to high society.

Hammer wakes up in a hotel room with a hangover, a dead war buddy on the floor, and his own gun as the supposed suicide weapon. Stripped of his licenses, he digs into a modeling agency and blackmail racket that powerful people will kill to protect.

Shaken after a judge calls him a killer, Hammer wanders a rainy Manhattan bridge and stumbles into a woman’s death and a stranger’s murder. The trail leads to Communist cells, political fronts, and a conspiracy that turns his personal crisis into a Cold War battlefield.

In a seedy bar on a stormy night, a desperate man kisses his baby goodbye, walks into the street, and is gunned down. Hammer shoots back, then takes responsibility for the child and launches a relentless hunt for the men behind the killing.

Speeding home from Albany, Hammer almost runs down a terrified hitchhiker, then is run off the road by killers who torture and murder her. His investigation uncovers a tangle of mobsters, spies, and stolen atomic secrets that make this one of his most explosive cases.

Seven years after Velda vanished on a case, Hammer is a drunken derelict pulled off the streets to hear a dying man’s confession: Velda is alive and in deadly danger. To save her, he has to sober up and face a Soviet assassin known only as the Dragon.

Picking up after *The Girl Hunters*, Hammer spirits Velda out of hiding and discovers she has been sheltering a runaway young woman. Protecting the girl from her murderous stepfather throws Hammer and Velda into a decades-old robbery mystery and a hunt for a faceless schemer called the Snake.

A routine bodyguard job turns into a nightmare when the teenage son of Hammer’s wealthy client disappears. The kidnapping ties back to a fourteen-year-old crime and a killer whose warped motives make him one of the most venomous foes Hammer has ever faced.

Hammer hears a child’s scream in the night and finds a terrified boy beside the whipped, murdered body of a model. As similarly brutal killings mount, he dives into fashion houses, hidden clubs, and an underground circle where jaded elites pay to watch women die.

A dying friend’s phone call pulls Hammer into the shabby death of a small-time pickpocket. Under the cheap suit and alleyway violence he uncovers a deeper plot, where political players and faceless bureaucrats are ready to write off innocent lives as acceptable losses.

Hammer walks into his office to find Velda unconscious on the floor, a mobster butchered in his chair, and a note from a killer signed “Penta.” With the DA, FBI, CIA, and the Mafia all crowding in, Hammer has to find out who really owns the corpse on his carpet.

Still recovering from bullet wounds and presumed dead by many who knew him, Hammer returns to New York and to an old army buddy on his deathbed. The friend whispers one last secret, pointing Hammer toward a hidden cache of Mafia billions that every hood and fed in town wants.

In this tie in to the television series Bones, Dr Temperance Brennan and FBI agent Seeley Booth investigate a plastic bag of mixed skeletal remains left on federal steps. As Booth pursues a Chicago mob case, Tempe uncovers a serial killer hidden in the chaos.

On the eve of retirement and marriage to Velda, Hammer stumbles into an attack on two young archaeologists carrying a mysterious giant thigh bone. The relic is tied to biblical legend, Middle Eastern politics, and a terrorist plot that forces Hammer back into bloody action.

Recuperating in Florida from a mob shootout, Hammer learns that his old NYPD mentor apparently killed himself. He refuses to believe it and heads home, only to find a murdered woman, Nazi loot in the shadows, and enemies who thought the old cop took his secrets to the grave.

Set in the swingin’ sixties, Hammer is just back from a near-fatal run-in with the mob when he stops a gang mugging a young hospital messenger. The kid was carrying lifesaving drugs, and the ambush leads Hammer and Velda into New York’s growing heroin trade and a looming mega shipment.

Notorious thief Morgan the Raider owes his life to a group of Cuban exiles in Miami, and when seventy-five thousand dollars of their money is stolen, he agrees to get it back. The favor leads him into Latin clubs, federal pressure, double crosses, and the dangerous mystery behind the name Consummata.

On a supposed beach vacation with Velda, Hammer crosses paths with a crooked small-town cop and a missing party girl. When the woman turns up naked and dead on a statue in the town square, he digs into illegal gambling, mob money, and local officials with plenty to hide.

Driving upstate, Hammer spots a dog guarding something off the road and finds a mangled corpse with only a single hand intact. Teaming with an ambitious young reporter who soon vanishes, he uncovers grave robberies and a monstrous killing method that even he has never seen before.

Acting as security for a controversial anti-Communist politician, Hammer is snatched off the streets and hustled behind the Iron Curtain. Imprisoned, interrogated, and written off as a dead man, he has to fight his way out of Soviet captivity and untangle the political game that put him there.

In this short Mike Hammer caper, a notorious mob boss dies, leaving behind rumors of a ledger listing every payoff he ever made. Hired to find the book before it ruins politicians and gangsters alike, Hammer rips through the don’s family and enemies, knowing everyone has a price in mind.

As Hammer and Velda finally plan their wedding, an assassin’s bullet nearly kills him outside his office. At the same time a serial killer of cops is about to walk free and everyone suspects Hammer knows where billions in hidden Mafia cash are stashed, painting a massive target on his back.

Velda has vanished from Hammer’s life, and he is coming off a four-month bender when an ex-vice cop she once worked with turns up murdered. Learning that Velda is now on the arm of a Miami gangster, Hammer heads south to find out why she walked away and who wants her dead.

In Trinidad, New Mexico, Sheriff Harry Gauge rules with a fast gun and greedy eye on rancher George Cullen’s land and daughter, Willa. When a mysterious stranger rides in and refuses to be pushed, a struggle for the town’s soul erupts, and Caleb York’s name becomes a legend.

This collection gathers eight Mike Hammer stories completed from Spillane’s drafts, beginning with a string of “accidents” that nearly kill him. The cases range from subway platform brawls to mob vendettas, showing Hammer at different ages but always ready to finish what someone else started.

A hired gun bursts into Hammer’s office and nearly puts him in the ground, then a newsstand vendor takes a bullet meant for him. While hunting whoever signed the contract, Hammer is hired to guard a producer’s glamorous fiancée, only to stumble into another deadly kidnapping attempt.

Hired as town marshal in a settlement teetering between law and lawlessness, Caleb York faces rustlers, crooked businessmen, and a fast-gun rival who wants the star for himself. The inevitable showdown forces York to choose between cleaning up the town and walking away from its problems.

A midnight walk by the Hudson brings Hammer face to face with a partial corpse drifting on an ice floe. The dead man was a former cop turned butler to a wealthy family now beset by suspicious deaths, and Hammer must sort through heirs who all have good reasons to kill.

In this “lost” first Mike Hammer case, the young PI hops a freight to the mill town of Killington and is promptly accused of rape and murder. A powerful senator’s beautiful daughter gives him an alibi at a price, and Hammer digs into the local corruption that made him a convenient suspect.

The first issue of a graphic Mike Hammer adventure, based on an unproduced Spillane script, finds the PI drawn into a case called “The Night I Died.” A chance meeting with a dangerous woman brings mob retaliation, leaving Hammer dodging bullets and wondering who set him up.

Continuing the comic-book arc begun in issue one, Hammer digs deeper into the mob war that exploded after his run-in with a femme fatale. As the body count climbs, he closes in on the hidden mastermind and delivers his brand of justice with fists, wisecracks, and a .45.

Rancher George Cullen is ready to fight the Santa Fe Railroad’s plan to push a spur through his land, even if everyone else in Trinidad welcomes it. York is sent to talk him down, but the return of an old partner and the arrival of a killer preacher turn a business dispute into a bloody showdown.

Outlaws hijack the morning stage from Trinidad, not for cash but for a banker and two women York cares about, Willa Cullen and saloon owner Rita Filley. Held in a ghost town called Hell Junction, the hostages become bargaining chips, and York has to infiltrate the gang before the ransom turns into massacre.

Hammer is hired by a New York senator and the senator’s sharp, charismatic wife to stop a blackmailer who threatens a White House bid. As suspects die one by one, he finds himself neck-deep in political secrets, bedroom scandals, and a plot that goes far beyond a single kompromat tape.

A killer blizzard slams into New Mexico just as York’s deputy is gunned down in a case of mistaken identity. The bullets were meant for York, fired on orders from an old guerrilla fighter planning a bank robbery, and the sheriff must hunt a gang that thinks the storm will cover their escape.

Witnessing a Wall Street hotshot mowed down by a speeding red sports car, Hammer is hired by the victim’s broker father to find the driver. What looks like a hit and run leads to a series of bizarre murders tied to a forbidden martial-arts technique and a killer hiding in plain sight.

When Sheriff Caleb York guns down an abusive young brute in Trinidad, the dead man’s mother, a ruthless cattle baroness, demands revenge and Willa Cullen’s ranch. York is caught between two iron-willed women as hired guns converge on Sugar Creek, the only water that can save Willa’s herd.

Set between *Kiss Me, Deadly* and *The Girl Hunters*, Hammer reels from Velda’s disappearance when an old bootlegger friend is murdered. To avenge him, Hammer hunts for a secret ledger packed with the names of corrupt officials, drawing fire from mobsters and power brokers who all want it.

In 1964 a hit and run nearly kills Velda’s mother and quietly reveals that Velda’s father is not who she believed. Hammer and Velda travel to Arizona’s Dreamland Park, a retirement haven for ex-lawmen guarding criminals in Witness Protection, and collide with missing robbery millions and graveyard violence.

Beginning at a twenty-first-century funeral then flashing back to the summer of 1973, Hammer accompanies Velda to Long Island to watch over her teenage sister, Mikki. When drugs enter the picture and Mikki is targeted, Hammer wages war on the dealers, knowing the final reckoning still lies ahead.