Colleen Collins's Blog

The Mob Forced a Man to Drink Poison


















By McAleer, Andrew, Marks, Paul D., Collins, Colleen, DuBois, Brendan, Gaylin, Alison, MacDonald, Tom, Mallory, Michael, Palumbo, Dennis, Rogers, Stephen D., Shepphird, John



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I based my noir short story “Look Your Last” (in the noir anthology of short stories Coast to Coast...

Some claim to have seen the ghost of madam Mattie Silks at her former brothel, now a restaurant-bar in downtown Denver.

It’s that time of year when leaves turn golden, the air gets nippy, and ghosts and goblins make their Halloween appearances. During October, several older hotels here in Colorado have been hosting ghost-hunting parties and spooky tours. Silly fun...or are these hotels truly haunted?

I Think My House Is Haunted, Can You Help Me?

Over the years a few people have called our agency, askin...haunted?

I

Cyberstalkers are internet bullies who hide behind bogus identities.

Updated August 26, 2019

A few years ago, a defamatory “book review” showed up on Amazon—the term book review is in quotes because in no way was it a review of a book. Instead, it was a malicious character attack written by someone hiding behind a bogus ID. Unfortunately, I’m not the only author to have dealt with such non-book-related reviews written by people with personal agendas.

Amazon and Vengeful Reviews

By vengeful, I m...

via GIPHY

Bogie and Books

Humphrey Bogart’s fame rests on his tough-guy roles in movies where he played gangsters and private eyes for hire, but in reality he grew up amid wealth and privilege (his family was in the New York social register). Although he was a poor student, and eventually expelled from the prestigious Phillips Academy (some sources claim his expulsion was from Yale), he had a lifelong love of reading, and could quote Plato, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Shakespeare.

My father mainl...

Renowned photographer Carol Highsmith donated her entire collection of photographs (approximately 150,000, and that number is still growing) to the Library of Congress. One subset of this collection are her extraordinary photographs of libraries across the US.

Ms. Highsmith has gifted these photos, copyright-free, to the American people. An index of these libraries is below the slideshow.

(Click on photo to slide to the next one—some computers might require a double-click to move to next photo)

Interior of the Wi...

slideshow.(ClickUS.Ms.

The rancher lived on 800+ acres in the middle of nowhere

Every Thanksgiving, I remember my husband (and PI partner) visiting a rancher in jail where he'd been sitting since October on two charges of attempted murder. My husband sat with the rancher, who wept as he'd never been away from his family on a holiday. 

I can't even imagine how that rancher felt sitting in jail all those weeks, facing a possible 48-year prison sentence if he were to be found guilty of attempted murder. A man who had...

It’s that time of year when leaves turn golden, the air gets nippy, and ghosts and goblins make their Halloween appearances. For the last month, several older hotels here in Colorado have been hosting ghost-hunting parties and spooky tours. Silly fun...or are these hotels truly haunted?

I Think My House Is Haunted, Can You Help Me?

Over the years a few people have called our agency, asking if we could investigate ghosts they believe are haunting their homes. We’ll decline, explaining that we a...

In A Lawyer's Primer for Writers: From Crimes to Courtrooms, we cover the in's and out's of trials, lawyers, courtrooms and a whole lot more, including a section dedicated to ten of our favorite legal films, and what they can teach writers.

Below is an excerpt about the classic film Adam's Rib that featured Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn as married lawyers who face off as opposing lawyers in a murder trial.

Book ExcerptTop Ten Legal Films: Adam's Rib

Adam's Rib (1949): Starring: Spencer Tr...

Updated April 10, 2018

Welcome to the second part of "Private Investigations and Crime Scene Investigations," based on a series of classes my husband and I taught for Kiss of Death, the mystery-suspense arm of the Romance Writers of America. It's also timely as this past week we returned to investigate a crime scene for an attempted homicide charge that involved multiple vehicles. The incident occurred several months ago, yet we found physical evidence (pieces of broken parts that matched the...

Opening footage: The Long Goodbye, via YouTube.

Vilmos Zsigmond on Filming The Long Goodbye

Vilmos Zsigmond, the cinematographer on The Long Goodbye, said it was the funniest comedy he had ever filmed, due to Elliot Gould's characterization of Philip Marlowe.

Elliot Gould was never better than in [“The Long Goodbye”]. He plays this private eye who looks really dumb but he’s not dumb.

— Vilmos Zsigmond

In a Rolling Stone interview, Zsigmond said "a cinematographer can only be as good as the di...