Mystery writer and Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumnus Max Allan Collins will read from his new novel, Target Lancer, at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 3, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Collins 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 has also written two sequel novels to Road to Perdition: Road to Purgatory and Road to Paradise. And he wrote three more graphic novels starring the characters from Road to Perdition.

The details of Target Lancer: Long before Nov. 22, 1963, Nathan Heller, “P.I. to the Stars,” knows that a conspiracy is in the works. Several years earlier, Heller had been involved with the Kennedys, the Mob, and the CIA in the early stages of a plan to assassinate Fidel Castro. Shortly after, Heller’s Mafia contact is murdered. After being interrogated by gangsters and contacted by U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Heller realizes that he may be the one person who can prevent a devastating political assassination. Only he knows all the players; only he knows why a web of conspirators has targeted the man known to the Secret Service as “Lancer,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a graduate program in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

For more information or special accommodations to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights, 319-337-2681. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.