Better Dead: A Nathan Heller Thriller

Better Dead: A Nathan Heller Thriller by Collins, Max Allan. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780765378286.

Better Dead: The latest Nathan Heller Thriller from Max Allan Collins! Its the early 1950s. Joe McCarthy is campaigning to rid America of the Red Menace. Nate Heller is doing legwork for the senator, though the Chicago detective is disheartened by McCarthys witch-hunting tactics. Hes made friends with a young staffer, Bobby Kennedy, while trading barbs with a potential enemy, the attorney Roy Cohn, who rubs Heller the wrong way. Not the least of which for successfully prosecuting the so-called Atomic Bomb spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. When famous mystery writer Dashiell Hammett comes to Heller representing a group of showbiz and literary leftists who are engaged in a last minute attempt to save the Rosenbergs, Heller decides to take on the case. Heller will have to play both sides to do this, and when McCarthy also tasks Heller to find out what the CIA has on him, Heller reluctantly agrees. His main lead is an army scientist working for the C.I.A. who admits to Heller that hes been having misgivings about the work hes doing and elliptically referring to the Cold War making World War II look like a tea party. And then the scientist goes missing.