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Dying in the Post-War World (Nathan Heller, Bk 5)
Dying in the PostWar World - Nathan Heller, Bk 5 Author:Max Allan Collins Includes five short stories and the novella that gives the book its title which was previously unpublished. — Nate Heller, president and sole employee of Chicago's A-1 Detective Agency, takes on six real-life unsolved mysteries in this collection of stories set in the 30's and 40's. As Ed Gorman points out in a brief introduction, pul... more »pmeister Collins freely mixes fact and fiction, with uneven results. The two shortest stories, "The Strawberry Teardrop" and "Scrap," are little more than historical reconstructions, though a post-Chicago Eliot Ness enlivens one of them. In "Private Consultation," "House Calls," and (especially) "Marble Mildred," Collins is able to mix true crime, seedy-jokey atmosphere, and hard-boiled detection more successfully; and the title novella, asking whether the Chicago's most notorious serial killer ("stop me before I kill again") is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of a little girl, is worth the price of admission by itself -- a tough, nervously sentimental tale that ranks with Collins's best.« less