A Glimpse of Heller

A bit of good news comes out of John Kenyon’s excellent interview with Max Allan Collins at Things I’d Rather Be Doing: the mondo-prolific Iowa author says his historical series detective, Nate Heller (last seen in Chicago Confidential, 2002) may not be history, after all. Says Collins:

It looks like I may get to do Nathan Heller again, and I will very likely write the final two books, to make sure the series has a sense of having been finished. If they are successful, I’ll fill in with earlier stories, but I have always intended to do Marilyn and Kennedy as Heller’s last cases.

Fantastic news. Being interested in history as well as mystery, I’ve long been a fan of the Heller yarns, and have talked with Collins myself about both subjects. This year’s substitutes of the kinda-pseudonymous novel Black Hats (written as “Patrick Culhane” and featuring Wyatt Earp in the private-eyeing role) and A Killing in Comics (the beginning of a series about nefariousness in the 1940s comic-book biz) went a ways toward satisfying my taste for Collins’ work, but didn’t leave me wholly satisfied. I hunger for more Heller. Good to know that his creator is on the case.