This is being posted on my birthday, March 3, 2026. My birthdays are a stupidly big deal to me. Some of it’s for the usual reasons: cake, presents, and having your family sing “Happy Birthday.” It’s a childish fallback to…well, childhood.
Right around my eighth birthday I received (thanks to my mother having written him) a lovely letter from Chester Gould, including a drawing of Dick Tracy, and I think it’s fair to say it started me off on the road I’m still traveling. A birthday present from my folks a year later was a drawing board/easel – I wanted to be a cartoonist until mystery writing took over in my early teens, at which time I received another stellar birthday present from Max Senior and Patricia Collins – a typewriter.
I’ve often talked about another gift my parents gave me, though it wasn’t for my birthday. During high school, when all of my friends were out getting summer jobs, I was told that my allowance would continue through summer vacation – including my meal ticket money, even though I wasn’t in school eating the terrible cafeteria food for those three months! All I had to do was view writing as a job and write every day using my new typewriter.
I would write a novel in the summer and spend the school year trying to market it – emphasis on trying. Let’s stop there, as this is turning into a Horatio Alger story. (Can you picture little Allan Collins at his typewriter, writing away, his cheeks smudged with typewriter-ribbon ink? Not those cheeks!)
So what do I want for my birthday in 2026? Let’s start with another birthday in 2027 (and a few more after that). I find myself contemplating mortality because, first, I will be 78 tomorrow (assuming I wake up), and second, I still have books to write.
This birthday has an uncomfortable resonance because Max Allan Collins, Sr., died on his birthday at age 78. My father didn’t like thinking about death, and got angry if the subject came up (it took my mother forever to get him to get their wills made, and another forever or two to get him to purchase cemetery lots). He really never had to deal with dying. Never faced it.
And he didn’t have to, because on the morning of his 78th birthday, he said to my mother, “I think I need a nap” (or words to the effect) and went off to do that and passed away peacefully in his sleep.
My father and I had a sometimes contentious relationship – I was a headstrong smart-ass (not much has changed) and he was a sports guy and I wasn’t interested. But he was also a musician – his male chorus was around for fifty years under his leadership and won multiple national competitions – and that was common ground. During my rock ‘n’ roll days, specifically the last ‘60s, I grew a full-face beard and he didn’t speak to me for about two years. When I trimmed it to a mustache, I taunted him: “You gonna speak to me half the time now?” He smiled – he had an excellent sense of humor if not of irony – and the long family nightmare (“Ask your son to pass the salt”) was over.
For a period of a year or so, Dad and I sat in the country club (he was a member, I was not) over lunch and in the lounge, while I interviewed him about his experiences in the Navy in the Pacific during WW 2. These experiences were the basis of my novel USS Powderkeg (also published as Red Sky in Morning by Patrick Culhane). He didn’t live to see it published, but he (obviously) knew it was in the works. If you haven’t read it, the USS Powderkeg edition is revised and my preferred version, under my name, available at Brash Books.
I am pleased to say my relationship with my son Nathan, Barb and my only child, is closer and warmer than I enjoyed with my father. But I loved Max Collins and I’m not talking about myself – I was always “Allan” and “Al” until a publisher slapped the “Max Collins” byline on my first novels and I was stuck with it, adding “Allan” after a while, at Don Westlake’s suggestion. Yes, my real name is somehow my pseudonym.
Obviously father-and-son relationships are at the heart of my work – not intentionally, but when I look back at it, there it is. Road to Perdition is the most obvious example (several scenes from my life with Dad are reworked there, in particular the driving lesson). But Nolan and Jon are a surrogate father-and-son relationship. So are Quarry and the Broker (Quarry’s own father turned his back on him). And, in Road to Purgatory, Michael O’Sullivan and Frank Nitti are father-and-surr0gate-son. Strained familial relationships inform the Mommy movies and novels; the Jack and Maggie Starr series; and the Antiques novels, although that’s more about Barb’s relationship with her mother.
Pardon all this reflection, but it may be the only positive thing about birthdays at my age. They are like Thanksgiving, minus the turkey: I think about what I’m grateful for. At the top of that list are Barb and Nate and grandchildren Sam and Lucy (their mother, Abby, is a gem, too). Next would be my collaborators in writing and music, everyone I played rock with, a joyously long list headed up by the late Paul Thomas but also my Seduction of the Innocent bandmates, including the late very much lamented Miguel Ferrer. Then come my collaborators on fiction and comics, not including a couple who were difficult but definitely including the likes of Barb (again), Terry Beatty, Matthew Clemens, Dave Thomas and (most recently) Robert Meyer Burnett. My collaborators in the seven movies and two documentaries I’ve made is an incredibly long list, headed up the late Michael Cornelison, though Phil Dingeldein and Chad Bishop rate at least a mention. And Patty McCormack – my God, what an honor and pleasure knowing and working with her.
Hey, I’m leaving so many people out it indicates it was a mistake even getting into this. But I’ve somehow managed to live an interesting life while never moving away from Muscatine, Iowa. Life has taken me to Hollywood and New York and all around Chicago. Band jobs in San Diego and Omaha and Atlanta and St. Louis, opening for the Rascals and Gary Puckett & the Union Gap and the Buckinghams and the Turtles (Flo and Eddie) and Peter Noone and the Grassroots and….
It’s been a trip. Visits to England and Germany and Italy, but never France (had to turn down an all-expenses-paid invite to a Paris mystery con because I was about to shoot Mommy).
But the most important gift I’ve received, other than my family’s love, is a career that let me make a living writing. It really is readers that fuel my engine. And the reason why I want to stick around for a few more years, pacemaker and all, is this: I still have stories to tell. The only thing that could kill me, besides time and maybe dementia, is not having anybody out there who wants to read me.
That I couldn’t survive.
I don’t believe I’ve ever done this before, but I want to share a review from Amazon with you. It’s the first Death by Fruitcake review we’ve received there, and it’s a beauty.
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2026
Verified Purchase Death By Fruitcake is an adaptation of a novella by Barbara Allan from the Trash ‘n’ Treasures cozy mystery series. Allan is the pen name used by noted crime and mystery writer Max Allan Collins and his wife Barbara who co-write these adventures of antiques store owner Vivian Borne and her daughter Brandy. The film is set in small-town Serenity, Iowa and focuses on a community theater production of a Christmas play centered around local fruitcake production during the FDR administration. Vivian is directing the production and it stars local star Louise Lamont, who has recently returned to her hometown roots while on the downside of her successful career in soap operas and other stage shows. Things go awry when Lamont, a diva who has rubbed the rest of the cast and crew the wrong way, dies in the middle of a dress rehearsal. Vivian, who views herself as something of an amateur sleuth, takes it upon herself to assist local police chief Tony Cassato in solving the crime.
The film stars Paula Sands, a long-time news anchor and reporter in the Quad Cities area, as Vivian Borne and Alisabeth Von Presley, best known for her music career and as a former contestant on
American Idol, as her daughter Brandy. The film also features Rene Mauck, who portrayed Velda in the filmed stage radio-style production of Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder, as Lorraine; Rob Merritt (Richard Stone in Blue Christmas) as Chief Cassato; and Chris Causey (Jake Marley in Blue Christmas) as Paul, the theater’s lighting guru. While the cast may not contain a number of household names, there are some solid performances in the film. Sands does a solid job as Vivian, although some of her delivery certainly points to her past at a news desk. Von Presley, who had a minor role in Blue Christmas, stands out with an ability to easily speak to the camera in several scenes designed to break the fourth wall. Merritt, who was strong as the lead in Blue Christmas, puts in another solid performance as does Chris Causey, who has the presence of an experienced character actor (making it somewhat surprising that he’s not had more roles according to his IMDb profile). Kimberly Kurtenbach also stands out as Clara Buffet, head of Lamont’s fan club.The film is a low budget, independent production, but that works just fine given that this is a character-driven, quick (89 minutes) whodunit film that takes place entirely in one setting (the community theater). There are several funny spots and one-liners as well as an ending with a twist that is to be expected in these types of mystery stories. Although I’m unfamiliar with the book series this is based on, it’s safe to assume it is a fairly true adaptation given that it is written, directed and produced by Max Allan Collins and also produced by series co-writer Barbara Collins. Overall fans of the series, of cozy mysteries, or of Collins’ work in general are likely to find this film a worthy watch.
(It’s signed: zagain.)
Now that’s a birthday present!
We had an open-to-the-public table read of my horror script, House of Blood, at the Muscatine Community College “Black Box” theater on Friday and Saturday evenings.
Much of the cast were veterans of either Blue Christmas, Death by Fruitcake or both (I read the stage directions). Friday was lightly attended, but we had a nice house on Saturday.
Will House of Blood be my next micro-budget production? Don’t know. The audience’s reaction at the reading was encouraging, and most of the actors would be asked back for the film, if there isone and they are available.
But the only way there will be another micro-budget M.A.C. production is if we do reasonably well with Death by Fruitcake. We have a new distributor (DeskPop) who have issued a DVD and got us onto a slough of streamers. Here, again, are the links.
AppleTV
YouTube Movies
Google Play
Amazon Digital Buy/Rent
Amazon DVD
Oldies.com
What would “reasonably well” be? Simple: if we make back our investment and enough beyond that to make another movie.
The reason why House of Blood is the probably our next film (again, if there is one) has to do with its ability to be staged on a micro-budget. A Death by Fruitcake sequel would require a bigger budget project based on one of the Antiques novels, which means more locations and more shooting days…and more money spent.
The day, alas, is gone that we had numerous mystery-oriented magazines. Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock are still around, publishing short fiction and limited reviews.
But Mystery Scene is kaput, and only The Strand remains above water.
One of the best fanzines available by subscription is Deadly Pleasures from editor George Easter. It reports news about the genre and has an impressive stable of top reviewers – a fanzine at its best.
It is, thankfully, still around, although strictly in digital download form. The current issue includes three (count ‘em, three) reviews of Return of the Maltese Falcon.
Finally, I know you’re wondering what you can give me for my birthday. If you like Return of the Maltese Falcon, let people know by way of Amazon comments, B & N and Goodreads. If you like Death by Fruitcake, on DVD, comment at Amazon; ditto at streaming services. Same goes for True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak, wherever you bought it whether as a download or physical media. (Big True Noir event coming!)
As I reflect on my career, I am convinced that everything good that has happened has to do with loyal readers. So all I ask (and I know it’s a lot) is keep reading me…and favorably commenting. Smart word of mouth is everything.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep blowing out those candles.
M.A.C.
