Antiques Knock-Off (26 page)

BARBARA ALLAN

is a joint pseudonym of husband-and-wife mystery writers, Barbara and Max Allan Collins.

BARBARA COLLINS
is one of the most respected short story writers in the mystery field, with appearances in over a dozen top anthologies, including
Murder Most Delicious, Women on the Edge, Deadly Housewives
and the bestselling
Cat Crimes
series. She was the coeditor of (and a contributor to) the bestselling anthology
Lethal Ladies,
and her stories were selected for inclusion in the first three volumes of
The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories.

Two acclaimed hardcover collections of her work have been published—
Too Many Tomcats
and (with her husband)
Murder—His and Hers.
The Collinses’ first novel together, the Baby Boomer thriller
Regeneration,
was a mass-market bestseller; their second collaborative novel,
Bombshell
—in which Marilyn Monroe saves the world from World War III—was published in hardcover to excellent reviews.

Barbara has been the production manager and/or line producer on various independent film projects emanating from the production company she and her husband jointly run.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS
has been hailed as “the Renaissance man of mystery fiction.” He has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations for his Nathan Heller historical thrillers,
True Detective
(1983) and
Stolen Away
(1991). A new Heller novel,
Bye Bye, Baby
will be published in 2011.

His other credits include film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including the
New York Times
bestsellers
Saving Private Ryan
and
American Gangster,
which won the Best Novel “Scribe” award for excellence in tie-in writing.

His graphic novel
Road to Perdition
is the basis of the Academy Award–winning Tom Hanks film. Max’s other comics credits include the “Dick Tracy” syndicated strip; his own “Ms. Tree”; “Batman”; and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” based on the hit TV series, for which he has also written six video games and ten bestselling novels.

An acclaimed, award-winning independent filmmaker, he wrote and directed the Lifetime movie
Mommy
(1996) and three other features, including
Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life
(2005). His produced screenplays include the 1995 HBO World Premiere
The Expert
and
The Last Lullaby
(2008).

Max’s most recent novels include
You Can’t Stop Me
(written with Matthew V. Clemens) and
The Big Bang
(completing an unfinished Mike Hammer novel from the late Mickey Spillane’s files).

“Barbara Allan” live(s) in Muscatine, Iowa, their Serenity-esque hometown. Son Nathan lives in St. Louis and works as a translator of Japanese to English, with credits ranging from video games to novels.