Maxima Library

New York Times bestselling author Max Allan Collins seamlessly blends fact and fiction to recreate the twentieth century’s most notorious crimes. Now, in this spellbinding tale of suspense, detective Nathan Heller leaves behind the glamour of Hollywood for a wild ride in the Windy City...


Chicago, 1950 — the target of America’s first-ever congressional inquiry into organized crime. Big trouble for anyone who knows where the bodies are buried, and Nate Heller has buried more than a few of them himself. He has no illusions about his civic — he prefers to stay alive and in business, mixing with the likes of starlet Jayne Mansfield and singer Frank Sinatra. But certain high-level gangsters, including Sam Giancana and the Fischetti brothers, aren’t so sure Heller will stay discreet
After all, the private eye’s partner, ex-cop Bill Drury, is cooperating with the feds in a big way. And soon Heller finds himself at the center of a federal squeeze play as Red-baiting senator Joe McCarthy weighs in with his own threats... and a strange hidden agenda When Drury becomes the target of Syndicate assassins, and a troubled showgirl is sadistically victimized, Heller stands up against the mob — not in court, but with his own brand of rough justice.


From the Ferris wheels and roller coasters of Riverview Park to the dark alleys and sleazy strip bars of the Near Northside, Chicago Confidential showcases Max Allan Collins, the “master of true-crime fiction (Publishers Weekly), at his innovative best.

Chicago, September 1964. Beatlemania sweeps the nation, the Vietnam War looms, and the Warren Commission prepares to blame a “lone-nut” assassin for the killing of President John F. Kennedy. But as the post-Camelot era begins, a suspicious outbreak of suicides, accidental deaths, and outright murders decimates assassination witnesses. When Nathan Heller and his son are nearly run down on a city street, the private detective wonders if he himself might be a loose end...

Soon a faked suicide linked to President Johnson’s corrupt cronies takes Heller to Texas, where celebrity columnist Flo Kilgore implores him to explore that growing list of dead witnesses. With the blessing of Bobby Kennedy — former US attorney general, now running for Senator from New York — Heller and Flo investigate the increasing wave of violence that seems to emanate from the notorious Mac Wallace, rumored to be LBJ’s personal hatchet man.

Fifty years after JFK’s tragic death, Collins’s rigorous research for Ask Not raises new questions about the most controversial assassination of our time.