Michael Collins (American author)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Michael Collins is the best-known pen name of American author Dennis Lynds (1924–2005). He wrote mostly mystery novels and short stories. Over about 40 years, Lynds published around 80 novels and 200 short stories in mystery and literary styles. He won several awards, including the Edgar Award, the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lynds was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the child of actors who were touring at the time. He grew up in New York City and served in Europe during World War II, earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He studied chemistry (B.S. 1949) and journalism (M.A. 1951). After working as a magazine editor, he moved to California in 1965 to write full-time. He was married to thriller author Gayle Lynds and lived in California until his death.

As Michael Collins, he created the Dan Fortune private eye series. The first book, Act of Fear (1967), won the 1968 Edgar Award for Best First Novel and helped popularize modern detective fiction. Collins’s work is often considered part of the modern age of the detective novel.

Lynds also wrote science fiction, including Lukan War (1969) and The Planets of Death (1970). He published many other books under different names. From 1968 to 1989, he wrote 14 The Three Investigators novels under the name William Arden, and five Kane Jackson novels. As Arden, he wrote the espionage short story “Success of a Mission,” which was a finalist for the 1968 Edgar Award for Best Short Fiction.

In addition to these, Lynds used pseudonyms such as Mark Sadler, John Crowe, and Carl Dekker. He published for several major publishers and was often listed by The New York Times as one of the nation’s top mystery writers. He also wrote The Shadow books under the byline Maxwell Grant.

Beyond mysteries, Lynds published literary works and about 100 literary short stories. Five of his stories were honored in Best American Short Stories, and he was twice shortlisted for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His mystery stories appeared in Best Crime & Mystery Stories of the Year many times. In the late 1980s and 1990s, he began blending detective fiction with short stories, biographies, and symbolic pieces, a style that influenced later mystery writers. He is remembered as a prolific and influential figure in American crime writing.