Chicago Lightning: The Collected Nathan Heller Short Stories

Tough, cynical, and clever, Nathan Heller has been called the perfect private eye, the best investigator that Chicago (where lightning means gunfire) has to offer. Created by New York Times bestselling novelist and Road to Perdition creator Max Allan Collins, the classic P.I. comes vibrantly to life in this collection of thirteen stories, all based on real cases of the 1930s and 40s. In The Blonde Tigress, Heller encounters a vicious hold-up crew with a brutal female leader, while in Scrap he investigates a union shooting that has national implications. In The Perfect Crime he goes Hollywood to protect the lovely Thelma Todd, with tragic results. The private eye finds himself tangling with notorious mobster Mickey Cohen in a Shoot-out On Sunset and with Al Capones successor, Frank Nitti, in Screwball. Hellers friendship with Eliot Ness finds the two men working together in both The Strawberry Teardrop, in which Heller encounters Americas first serial killer, and Natural Death, Inc. Heller tackles each case with his trademark cynicism and humor, digging into the grimy underbelly of twentieth-century America to uncover the truth at any cost. See more