Neon Mirage - Softcover

Max Allan Collins

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575048387 ISBN 13: 9780575048386

Publisher: Gollancz Crime, London, 1990

Synopsis

In 1946 Chicago, Nathan Heller―president of the flourishing A-1 Detective Agency―is hired to protect racing-wire gambling chief James Ragen, who is nonetheless shot down on the streets of Chicago. Not one to take such an affront sitting down, Nate goes after the killer, but he’s in for the biggest surprise of his career. Demonstrating once again that he is the master of true-crime fiction, Max Allan Collins’ story of the birth of Las Vegas―and the dirty deeds that floated all around it―is a masterpiece of modern noir. Heller follows the trail as it leads to Hollywood and Las Vegas, specifically to Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, but when he proves Siegel’s innocence, Heller and the suave gangster wind up friends...and rivals for the love of Nate’s life. Bugsy hires Heller as security chief of the under-construction Flamingo hotel, where mob bag woman Virginia Hill is a dangerous, if glamorous, distraction. It all comes to a boil with a shocking mob assassination in Beverly Hills that sends Heller into fever-dream ride of vengeance.

About this title

About the Author:

Max Allan Collins is the author of the Shamus Award-winning Nathan Heller historical thrillers; his other books include the New York Times bestseller Saving Private Ryan and the bestselling CSI series. His comics writing ranges from the graphic novel Road to Perdition, source of the Tom Hanks film, to long runs as scripter of the “Dick Tracy” comic strip and his own innovative “Ms. Tree.” Collins is also a screenwriter and a leading Indie filmmaker. He lives in Iowa with his wife, writer Barbara Collins, and their son, Nathan.

From Publishers Weekly:

The fourth chronicle of Collins's Nate Heller (True Detective et seq.) is set in Chicago and Las Vegas in 1946. When a gangster shoots the private detective's client, gambler James Ragen, Heller assigns himself to investigate the case. During his sleuthing, Heller meets and falls in love with Ragen's niece, Peggy Hogan. She's one of the few fictional characters in the nostalgic story that features real people and parallels actual incidents of the times. The assault on Ragen is a minor part of the events when Heller and Peggy become involved with Ben ("Bugsy") Siegel, Virginia Hill and other notorious mob figures in Las Vegas. Generating suspense, the author describes Siegel's murder with the detective at the scene and details the shaky beginnings of the Flamingo Hotel, Siegel's unrealized dream of a luxury mecca for gamblers. There is such immediacy in narrator Heller's voice that the reader doesn't need the afterword about the novel's historic base.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gollancz Crime, London
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0575048387
• ISBN 13: 9780575048386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304