True Detective

other things, he said he could help with the sometimes complicated geography of the city and its many neighborhoods. He asked me about the story I had in mind.

'Well,' I said, 'Nate Heller is a young plainclothes cop who is forced to do something corrupt. He quits the force out of moral indignation, and opens his own detective agency.'

When he stopped laughing, George said, 'Max, you gotta leave all that Philip Marlowe nonsense behind, if you want to write about Chicago. This is the Depression we're talking about- a young guy would try to get on the Chicago cops for the graft. To take advantage of the corruption. And you couldn't get on the force at all without a Chinaman to pull the strings.'

A Chinaman, he explained, was not an Asian gentleman, but someone rich enough, or anyway connected enough, to get a person a prized slot on the Chicago police force.

Later. George (and I think Mike Gold accompanied us on most of the trips) would walk me around the Loop, pointing out key buildings and the sites of various murders and other crimes. One time, we stopped for a Coke at a bar on Van Buren and George discreetly pointed out a transaction taking place: the bartender was paying off the beat cop.

'That's Chicago. Max,' George said.

A very well-respected mystery writer wrote a negative review of one of the early Heller novels, criticizing my detective because he broke Philip Marlowe's 'code.' He could hardly have known that I set out with malice aforethought in True Detective to break every one of the rules that Chandler set for private eyes, in his famous 'down these mean streets' speech. Heller takes bribes, he despoils virgins, he does any number of un-Marlowe-like things.

And yet I think he remains a hero, the best man in his shabby world- that much of Chandler I wanted to retain. The other thing was the easy-flowing poetry of Chandler's great first-person voice. (What came from Hammett was a certain way of looking at the world, and from Spillane came the level of violence and action, and Heller's thirst for getting even.)

Ironically, the use of Chandler-esque first-person in this novel was one of the most controversial aspects of True Detective, prior to its sale, anyway. Conventional publishing wisdom was, you didn't write a first-person novel as long as this one- readers didn't like being trapped inside one voice that long. Also, a mystery novel was supposed to be 50,000 or 60,000 words long- not over 100,000 words, like this one.

My agent at the time, a very prestigious one. didn't think True Detective should be about a private eye, and he thought the novel should be told in the third person, from multiple points of view. One of my favorite writers, a valued mentor of mine (very famous), agreed with my agent and told me either to re-work the novel as a non-P.I, third-person book, or just put it in a drawer.

I fired my agent, and ignored my mentor. (Fortunately, my other, even more famous mentor- Mickey Spillane- also read the manuscript, called me up and said it was the best private eye novel he'd ever read. Let me tell you- that felt good.)

Because this novel broke so many rules, I had to write it on 'spec'- that is, I could not just send a proposal to one of my publishers and hope for a contract. The writing of it was an ordeal for my wife Barb and me. The historical nature of the novel meant that the research was ongoing and ever-shifting, and for the longest time, I could not get past the first chapter, which I rewrote and rewrote (and retyped and retyped on my trusty IBM Selectric). So I ended up selling one of our two cars to buy a newfangled gizmo called a word processor. It cost five grand and was an amazing machine, fast as the wind- 16k!

Shortly after the manuscript was completed, I was informed by my wife that she was pregnant. After the ultrasound told us we had a boy on the way, Barb- caught up in the novel herself- asked if maybe 'Nathan' wouldn't be a good name for our son.

'Okay,' I said. 'If we sell the book before you deliver the kid, he's Nathan. But if we haven't sold it, we'll go with something else- I'll be damned if I'll have a walking rejection slip running around this house.'

Our son, Nathan Allan Collins, was bora November 5, 1982.

True Detective- my original title, by the way. was Tower Town (how glad I am my editor asked to come up with something else!)- sold to the first publishing house my new agent. Dommick Abel, approached. The book won widespread and glowing reviews, as well as the 1983 Best Novel Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, in a very tough year- the other nominees included the likes of James Crumley, Robert B. Parker and Stanley Ellin.

In addition, the novel set me on a new path as a writer of historical crime fiction- eleven more Heller novels have followed, as well as four Eliot Ness novels and another half-dozen historical crime novels, including The Titanic Murders, a paperback bestseller a few years ago. Heller also led to my writing a graphic novel called Road to Perdition, which takes place in the same world of Frank Nitti, Al Capone and Eliot Ness that you are about to enter. But Road to Perdition, as successful as it's been (thanks to the Tom Hanks/Paul Newman/Sam Mendes film fashioned from it), is only a spin-off of the Heller series. Specifically, Road to Perdition grows out of the first three Heller novels, the 'Frank Nitti Trilogy,' of which True Detective is the first installment.

I hope you enjoy the novel. I think you'll find Nate Heller good company… even if he does take the occasional bribe. He sleeps around, too.

- Max Allan Collins October

He felt like somebody had taken the lid off his life and let him look at the works.

- Dashiell Hammett

The Blind Pig December 19- December 22,

I was off-duty at the time, sitting in a speak on South Clark Street drinking rum out of a coffee cup.

When two guys in topcoats and snap-brim hats came in and walked over without crawling out of 'em, I started to reach for the automatic under my jacket. But as they neared the table, I recognized them: Lang and Miller. The mayor's bagmen.

I didn't know them exactly, but everybody knew them: the two Harrys- Harry Lang and Harry Miller, the detectives handpicked by Mayor Cermak to handle the dirty linen. Lang I'd spoken to before; he