Mallory Books In Order

Publication Order of Mallory Books

The Mallory series is a well known book series of mystery, crime fiction, thriller, and suspense genres. It is penned by a prominent American novelist named Max Allan Collins. This series is comprised of a total of 5 books, which were released between the years 1982 and 1986. Each and every book of this series features the chief protagonist in the role of a young man named Mallory. He is described as being a student from a small town in Iowa and works as a mystery writer. All the books are primarily set in Iowa by author Allan Collins. The plots of all the novels of this series generally feature Mallory as taking up the works of investigation of numerous mysterious cases. Such cases keep taking place all over Iowa and whenever Mallory catches the attention of any case, he does not rest until he has reached to the bottom of its mystery and unraveled it. During his investigations, he gets great help from his combat skills that he gained from being a veteran of the Vietnam War. Whenever Mallory lands himself in any difficult situation, he uses his special skills and tactics to come out of them without any harm. Over the years, Mallory makes numerous enemies in the form of the criminals whom he puts behind the bars in all the criminal cases and mysteries. In addition to the character of Mallory, author Collins has described a several other important characters. One such character that keeps making appearances repeatedly alongside Mallory is Sheriff Brennan. Every book of this series is highly famous among the masses. Their immense success helped author Collins to establish himself as a noteworthy writer during the initial days of his writing career. Many reviewers and critics have reviewed this series’ books with great reviews. They even appreciated the writing style and characterizations of author Collins. The widespread success also allowed author Collins to form a fan base for himself. And as the days passed by, his popularity as a novelist kept on increasing, thereby enabling him to increase the number of his fans even more.

Author Max Allan Collins is a reputed author from the United States, who is fond of writing mystery and historical fiction novels, and short stories. He was born on March 03, 1948 in Muscatine, Iowa, United States. Throughout the course of his literary career, Collins has written and published multiple mystery series. The most popular one among them is the Road to Perdition series. This series was adapted into a Hollywood movie of the same name. Also, his works have been published in different formats over the years. Prior to the beginning of his career, author Collins used to write a newspaper strip named Dick Tracy. Later, he even penned many books based on this character. In addition to using his original name for writing his novels, Allan Collins also uses a couple of pen names for publishing his non-mystery works. These include Barbara Alla and Patrick Culhane. Author Collins is known to have written comic books, short stories, screenplays, movie novelizations, comic strips, novels, and trading cards. Among his character creations and developments, there is Ms. Tree and Dick Tracy. For writing the stories of the latter, author Collins took over from its original creator named Chester Gould. Collins has even written a comic book on Batman in 1987. While he was doing this, he also gave a new origin to the character of Jason Todd. In the same year, Collins collaborated with an artist named Terry Beatty for the creation of Wild Dog for DC. They introduced this character in a limited series titled by themselves. This character went on to become a regular character in the television series Arrow, in which it is played by Rick Gonzalez. Author Collins completed his studies from the Iowa University’s Workshop for Iowa Writers. He says that he is a die hard fan of the great mystery writer named Michey Spillane. He used to read his works from his childhood days and later befriended him after becoming a popular mystery writer himself. Collins and Mickey even worked together on a comic series in 1990s. Other than writing, Collins also has great interest in making movies. He has written & directed 4 movies so far. He has even performed with the rock band called Crusin to pursue his interests in music. Allan Collins is happily married and lives with his loving wife named Barbara Collins. He has a son named Nathan. Collins has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 1982 Inkpot Award and the Shamud Award, which he won on two occasions.

The debut book of the Mallory series written by author Max Allan Collins is entitled ‘The Baby Blue Rip Off’. It was released in the year 1982 by the Tor Books. At the start of the book’s story, it is described the Mallory is a former cop and a Vietname vet. He has been involved in many things from construction work to hippe life and others. Finally, he decides to move to his small hometown in Iowa and try to make things work out for him in the field of writing. Amidst his struggles to create a story, Mallory does some community service by providing hot meals for the old ladies. He is forced to take the path of the investigation once again after he learns about the brutal murder of one of the old women during home invasion. As Mallory worries about the elderly victim, he comes to know that there have been several other cases of homicide in the city. He realizes he must act fast and catch the killer before another old woman loses her life. Local sheriff, Brennan, warns Mallory to stay out of the investigation as he is not authorized to do it. But, Mallory cares more about saving other lives than the sheriff’s warnings. His survival skills and soldier’s instincts come in handy in his brave attempt of doing the righteous deed.

The next book in line is called as ‘No Cure for Death’. It was also published by the Tor publishers in 1983. At the beginning of the story of this book, it is depicted that a beautiful blonde is attacked by a scarfaced thug at a bus station in Iowa’s Port City. Seated next to the victim at the same bus station is Mallory, who witnesses everything from a close range. He comes to the woman’s rescue and makes the thug run away fearfully. Mallory thinks it was the end, but sadly it wasn’t. The same woman appears in Mallory’s life again later, but this time she is lifeless. With Mallory being involved with the woman on the previous occasion, he fears that the real problem has just started and he is going to have a hard time ahead. When Sheriff Brennan learns about the woman’s death, he hurries to close the chapter by declaring it as an accidental death. By doing so, Brennan tries to hide the involvement of some powerful people with political ties. But, Mallory seems not at all ready to agree to believe it. He knows that the woman has been murdered and starts looking for clues to prove it.