Hush Money (21 page)

Then he went into the front room, where Jon was watching Elmer Fudd shooting Bugs Bunny with a shotgun and getting nowhere. He said, “I thought you were going to write a letter.”

“When this is over.”

“Do me a favor.” He tossed the package to Jon. “Mail that. First class.”

“Sure.” Jon looked at the address. “Carl H. Reed. Who the hell is he?”

“Never mind,” Nolan said. “Just mail it.”

   About the Author

Max Allan Collins, who created the graphic novel on which the Oscar-winning film
Road to Perdition
was based, has been writing hard-boiled mysteries since his college days in the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. Besides the books about Nolan, the criminal who just wants his piece of the American dream, and killer-for-hire Quarry, he has written a popular series of historical mysteries featuring Nate Heller and many, many other novels. At last count, Collins’s books and short stories have been nominated for fifteen Shamus awards by the Private Eye Writers of America, winning for two Heller novels,
True Detective
and
Stolen Away
. He lives in Muscatine, Iowa with his wife, Barbara Collins, with whom he has collaborated on several novels and numerous short stories. The photo above shows Max in 1971, when he was first writing about Nolan and Quarry.