4/5

Another gem. I’m glad I finally decided to start these. They have been a fun diversion from what I usually listen to. Sometimes Mike Hammer is too much of a tough guy. But M.A.C helps tone him down. ( )

Hard-hitting! Action-packed! Pulpy! Awesome! This is the twentieth Mike Hammer novel, the first thirteen published in Spillane's lifetime and the last seven a collaborative effort between Spillane's notes and outlines and Collins' work. This one may be more Collins than Spillane, but, in the end, does it really matter who wrote which chapters? It's a brand new Mike Hammer novel! As long as it has Mike and Velda and Pat in it and as long as Mike doesn't take any nonsense from any two- bit punk, it is a must-read.

This one takes Mike and Velda back to 1954 and the action whisks Mike and the readers all the way to South Florida.

And it is dripping with pulpy goodness right from the first page. Mike's been drinking steadily for four months since Velda left a note and disappeared and now he's just stumbling around in the gutter, looking for someone to pick a fight with.

Velda is his secretary and a part of the greatest love story to ever grace the printed page. Tall, lithe, with black pageboy hair and a body that looked like it just stepped out of a calendar. But, except for a bottle, Mike's all alone. He's tight as a bowstring with his brain "a seething, squirming nasty mess that wouldn't let (him) think." And Velda's gone and with someone else.

This book is as good as it gets. If you've never read Spillane before, this is as good a place to start as any. If you've read everything published since "I, The Jury," you'll eat this up like you haven't had a full meal in a year. ( )

KILL ME, DARLING, you will learn in the CO-AUTHOR'S NOTE at the front of the book, was one of the unfinished Mike Hammer PI manuscripts handed off for completion from Mickey Spillane to Max Allan Collins shortly before the Hammer series author's death in 2006.

This is the first Mike Hammer book I've read. Since I like trying different writers and varied PI mystery series, and since it's the first book my local library has of either writer, I couldn't pass it by. I'm somewhat familiar with Mike Hammer PI because of the old TV series in which Stacy Keach played Hammer. Besides that, the movie version of Max Allan Collins' ROAD TO PERDITION is one of my favorite crime-themed movies. Nor can I fail to mention here that once, many years ago, on a late-night TV show, I saw Mickey Spillane interviewed by Tom Snyder, and (I'm paraphrasing now) Spillane said that every story, even if not a mystery, should be written as one. A story's resolution should not be presented until the very last page, last paragraph, last sentence, or, preferably, the last word. Spillane admitted that he'd only managed a last-word resolution once, yet nonetheless thought that it should be the writer's aim.

As readers, don't we just love it when the resolution, or a surprise, brings a story to its close?

In this one, Mike Hammer's secretary, partner, and love interest, Velda, has left him with nothing more than a good-bye note. He's been hitting the bottle too much since her leaving and then hears in one of the dives that he haunts that a cop, Wade Manley, a former "brother in blue" of Mike's has been murdered. Manley was the vice-squad head and is the one who'd introduced Mike to Velda way back when. Another cop friend, Captain Chambers, now investigating Manley's murder has Hammer brought to him. The reason behind Mike being summoned was not only that Chambers wanted to sober PI Hammer up, but also to send him after Velda--now known to be in Florida. She has taken up with a mobster, Nolly Quinn, who's rumored to being involved with drug trafficking from Cuba. Once down in Florida, all the usual suspects and hardboiled happenings occur with numerous beatings and murders in their wake. Some of the bad guys get it, yet a few good people get caught up in the violence too. Which ups the stakes for PI Hammer. Down deep, Hammer's character and motivation is all about bringing on justice--albeit street justice.

The time frame of this story is around 1954, so I was drawn to and liked its nostalgic tone. It brings a sense of when something old is new again. It's only the first PI Mike Hammer book I've read, but the first-person narrative wit that I remember from the TV series remains. The collaborative writing of Spillane and Collins, so seamlessly interwoven, also holds a freshness that makes me think I'd enjoy another newly written PI Hammer episode.

And of course, in this one there's that awe-inspiring surprise finish on the very last page!