Max Allan Collins (born March 3, 1948) is a prolific American mystery writer who has been called "mystery's Renaissance man". He has written novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips, trading cards, short stories, movie novelizations and historical fiction. He wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition (which was developed into a film in 2002), created the comic book private eye Ms. Tree, and took over writing the Dick Tracy comic strip from creator Chester Gould and one of the Batman comic books for a time. He wrote books to expand on the Dark Angel TV series. He has also served as the creative consultant for a number of major productions, and has written books and comics based on the TV series franchise CSI. More recently, he has written a book, Buried Deep, based on the TV Series Bones.
He has also written two novel sequels to Road to Perdition, Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. In addition to these, he also wrote three more graphic novels starring the characters from Road to Perdition. These graphic novels, called collectively On the Road to Perdition, form the basis of the film.
He also co-founded the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers with Lee Goldberg. The IAMTW is an organization for writers of tie-ins and novelizations.
Collin studied at the University of Iowa.