Over the years
since I first discovered his work, Max Allan Collins has become one of my favorite writers. He seems to do everything well: thrillers, straight crime, his tie-ins, non-fiction, the Nathan Heller and his disaster series, which mix real life people with fictional characters and situations. It doesn’t matter.
WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER deals with a serial killer, not a new subject to be sure. But even here, Mr. Collins throws a different twist. First off, he’s not even suspected by the police.
There is one though.
Jordan Rivera was sixteen when her parents and older brother were brutally murdered by a man who forces himself into their home. She’s forced to move the bodies of her family together for pictures, then the man rapes and says he wants her to tell his story.
For ten years Jordan lives in a hospital without speaking one word. Until that day she see a report on TV that a family had been brutally murdered and she knows he;s still out there.
She speaks up then and is soon out with plans to find him. Somehow. Part of her release is she attend a support group for people like her: those with whole families slain. She realizes, or intuits, something else. They are all victims of the same killer and they want her to help find this monster.
Also a young cop is working the case with the same thoughts. He knew Jordan, and liked her back in school, but like most young males was terrified to approach her. It’s what drove him to become a cop, what happened to her family.
Mr. Collins does a good job sprinkling clues throughout the novel as both the group and the young cop close in. Unknown to them, the killer was closing in on them as well.
Another winner from a fine writer.
Worth checking out and can be pre=ordered HERE.
Not The Baseball Pitcher 
I’ve got a collins coming in soon.
I’ve just started on his Nolan series of books, but this one looks interesting as a follow on for him when I’m done with that series,
I’ll probably read the Quarry books as well!
The Nolan series is a fine set of books. But one can’t actually go wrong with anything by Mr. Collins. There’s a new Quarry coming soon, in the fall I believe. That’s another consistently good set of books.
Randy ,I’m a bit OCD in that I feel the need to read them in order and not jump around. I’m 3 Nolan’s in with 5 to go, following with maybe 9 or 10 Quarry’s. I’m rationing them out to 1 a month so I’m a fair way away from catching up.
It seems to me that his Heller series is his most popular, but I’ve not tried that. I have a real fondness for hit men and heists in my reading,
Great blog by the way, I was only over here 10 minutes and picked up a few recommendations already – which isn’t always a good thing!
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