Michael Collins is the best-known pseudonym of Dennis Lynds (January 15, 1924 – August 19, 2005), an American author who primarily wrote mystery fiction.
As Collins, Lynds is largely credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age: "After naming Lynds the Best Suspense writer of the 1970s", Baker and Nietzel continue, the Crime Literature Association of West Germany praised him as follows: Baker and Nietzel point out a popular phenomenon that began with Collins's first book: "Act of Fear ... inspired the by-now monotonous chant by critics about each new hard-boiled author being 'the best since Hammett,' 'the new Chandler,' and 'the heir to Ross Macdonald.'
Fortune enjoys a senior status among modern private eyes", predating Lawrence Block, Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Hansen, Joe Gores, Michael Lewin, and Bill Pronzini.
When suddenly the society is attacked by a very dangerous enemy, they are called upon to fight and die to protect the same people who were treating them so badly not long before.
Beginning in 1968 with The Mystery of the Moaning Cave and ending in 1989 with Hot Wheels, Lynds wrote fourteen novels under the pen name William Arden for the juvenile detective series The Three Investigators, which was originated by Robert Arthur, Jr.
He began lacing his detective novels with short stories, biographies, and symbolic vignettes, a literary technique that recent mystery writers have copied and expanded.