Baby Bye Bye Bye

It appeared that Bill Doolan’s death was a suicide. He was dying of cancer. He had just gotten word from his doctor that he could expect to live about three more months, and they would be filled with pain. And so, Doolan put his affairs in order: he even called a cemetery and bought a plot there. Then, while listening to music in the dark, he shot himself.

The medical examiner, the cops, the next of kin... everyone agreed this must be what happened. Everyone, that is except Mike Hammer, who has spent a year away in Florida, trying to keep a low profile after having gunned down Sal Bonetti, the sadistic son of a notorious gangster. Mike can’t shake the feeling that something is off, and so he begins a separate investigation into the death of his former mentor. Before long, the corpses begin piling up as Mike Hammer makes his grand return to the streets of New York, dispensing his particular brand of violent justice…

Hear Me Roar

Mike Hammer is really getting too old for this job. He ought to retire sometime soon. Just this morning, as he was on his way to his office, he narrowly escaped an assassin’s carefully-aimed bullet thanks to a conveniently placed dictionary. But while the Mike Hammer of I, The Jury or One Lonely Night would have jumped up, pumped the bad guy full of lead and declared war on the guy who ordered the hit, this Mike Hammer needs to take a few minutes to catch his breath and recover. Who tried to kill him and why? It wouldn’t have anything to do with that $89 billion dollars Mike is hiding, would it?

Meanwhile, Mike’s good cop friend, Captain Pat Chambers, is dealing with a spot of trouble of his own. One of his old cases has come back to haunt him – it was the case that made Pat Chambers a captain, but years and years later, it seems that the wrong man may have been arrested. As though that weren’t enough, cops around the city are dropping like flies. Some get killed in the line of duty, some are in the wrong place at the wrong time, at least one of them drops dead from apparently natural causes. But all the same, the statisticians don’t like it – the odds of this many cop fatalities in so short a time are astronomical. And before long, Mike Hammer begins to concur with the statisticians.

Mike the Giant Killer

Times are sure a-changing. And nowhere is that more obvious than in Mike Hammer’s New York. The city has not forgotten that fateful September 11^th of 2001. The Communists are of course gone. Organized crime is no longer the main threat. No, what people really fear is a repeat of those terror attacks. All it might take is a single spark to set the powder keg off. That spark might just come from an unlikely source, from a Biblical giant who’s been dead for thousands of years.

Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath, of course… and when two post-graduate students uncover a massive human thigh bone in the Valley of Elah, the circumstantial evidence seems to point towards Goliath as the bone’s original owner. A crisis ensues. Islamic terrorist groups begin to target the students and their loved ones, trying to get the bone of a fallen hero. The Mossad is also expressing its concerns – after all, for Jews around the world, the bone of Goliath would represent a victory over a seemingly-unconquerable opponent. And Mike Hammer is damn interested, because he just saved the kids from getting shot in a subway terminal by shooting the gun out of their assailant’s hand…

The Case of the Constant Suicides

It’s 1964. Beatlemania is sweeping the nation, and Chicago private eye Nate Heller is taking his son to see the group live onstage. Heller is working security for the group, and as a result, he even manages to give his son one kick-ass birthday present when he brings him to meet the group and they sign a napkin for him. All in all, it was a terrific evening, even if the Beatles’ screaming fans threatened to permanently damage Heller’s hearing.

But I suppose something worse could happen. For instance, a car might try to run Heller and his son down, and damn near succeed at ridding the world of the feisty P.I. once and for all. But Heller’s son is too quick for the driver, and succeeds at getting his dad out of harm’s way. But Nate Heller got a look at the driver, and he’s pretty sure he recognizes him. It’s somebody that he dealt with almost a year ago, a Cuban who was connected with the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy… in Chicago. The plot, described in detail in 2012’s Target Lancer, was ultimately foiled, but didn’t do much good: Kennedy met his death in Dallas a few weeks later, and the supposed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed two days later by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

If I Had a Million Dollars...

Max Allan Collins’ third Nate Heller novel, The Million-Dollar Wound, is very different from its predecessors. For one thing, it skips forward in time considerably. The previous book in the series, True Crime, took place in 1934. The Million-Dollar Wound opens in 1943. Nate Heller has returned to the States after fighting in WWII alongside his friend Barney Ross, but he returns a changed man.

Heller is brought back home from combat early because his testimony is wanted at an upcoming trial, one which could finally see Frank Nitti, Louis “Little New York” Campagna, and other gangsters on charges of extortion. But if there’s one thing Heller knows, it’s that double-crossing Frank Nitti is a very dangerous way of living, especially in Chicago, Nitti’s town…

Of Gangsters and Outlaws

Private eye Nate Heller is now in his second year of operations. His first year was described in detail in the novel True Detective, and all things considered it was a good first year. Unfortunately, Year Two has been much more quiet, with clients few and far between. After all, it is the Great Depression, and Heller has been watching the proceeds from his first year slowly dwindle…

And then he gets a case. It all starts when a shifty guy named John Howard comes to see Heller at his office. Howard is a travelling salesman who is worried that his wife, a pretty girl named Polly, is having an affair while he’s on the road. He pays Heller an exorbitant $100 in advance to follow Polly around and to determine whether or not she is being faithful. But right from the start it’s an odd job… and after a while, Heller finds that Polly is seeing a man all right… and that man looks remarkably like John Dillinger.

Not-so-funny funny books

Comic books are destroying the youth of America! Consider the evidence: they promote and glorify violence as a way of life. They actively promote racism and intolerance. Some comic books, such as the tales of Batwing and his young ward Sparrow, promote some of the ghastliest sexual perversions. And how do we know all this? Simple. Dr. Werner Frederick says so.

As a result, the comic book industry is in a tough place. Congress is getting set to examine the problem of comic-books and how they defile the moral fabric of America’s youth. Angry parenting groups are burning comic books and the industry is losing money. Enter Jack Starr, the Starr syndicate’s troubleshooter. Whenever trouble rears its ugly head, Jack has to go and take care of it, and Dr. Frederick’s passionate anti-comic-books crusade certainly qualifies… This forms the plot of Max Allan Collins’ Seduction of the Innocent.

Marked for Murder

In Target Lancer, we once again meet up with Nate Heller, who has managed to soldier on well into 1963. In fact, it’s almost November of 1963, and there’s a conspiracy in the works. The people involved intend to kill President John F. Kennedy, and they have enough firepower to do just that. Here’s the thing: they’re planning to do it in Chicago, about three weeks before the assassination that took place in Dallas.

It’s a good thing, then, that Nate Heller is brought onto the case. And before long, Nate links up the assassination plot with some other mysterious occurences, including the murder of a friend of his. But who is involved in this conspiracy? What do they hope to gain by it? And will they succeed? The answers can be found in Target Lancer.

The Return of Mike Hammer

By Gad, sir, you are a character.

- Casper Gutman, The Maltese Falcon

Regular readers of my blog know that when I read I, The Jury, the first Mike Hammer novel, my reaction was very negative. Well, that’s the nice way of putting it: truth be told, I was positively disgusted by the “hero” and the graphic violence. In fact, I chose it as one of my worst reading moments of 2011. But like him or not, Mike Hammer’s influence on the genre cannot be denied.

Indeed, the best defenses I’ve read of the character come from Max Allan Collins. In the collection Books to Die For, Collins wrote about Spillane’s I, The Jury. He drew some surprisingly astute comparisons between the book and an Agatha Christie plot – although no mention was made of the major plotholes, which were pointed out by Bill Pronzini in Gun in Cheek. But once again, I found myself impressed with Collins’ defense of the series, though it didn’t make me like Mike Hammer any more. Last week, when I reviewed Collins’ novel True Detective, I was honoured when Collins himself visit the blog and left a comment, where he asked me not to give up on Mike Hammer.

Gangsters and Gunsels and Gals (Oh My!)

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

—Maxwell Scott, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Max Allan Collins is something of a recurring figure on this blog. I’ve quoted an interesting article he wrote on “The Hard-Boiled Detective” in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa. I’ve read two of his Batman short stories. But I hadn’t yet read any of his novels. I finally took the first step in that direction a while ago, where ten of Collins’ Nate Heller books formed the Kindle Daily Deal – each priced at $1.99. I bought all ten of them. But then I figured to myself, why start in the middle of a series I know nothing about? Why not start where the series started? And so I bought True Detective, the first novel in the Nate Heller series.

The Kindle edition begins with a terrific introduction from the author. He talks about how he came up with the concept for this series and how this book came to be. He tells readers how he named his son, how his literary idol Mickey Spillane complimented him on this book, and how (due to its length and content) it was a challenging book to sell. He also expresses a genuine hope that readers will enjoy the book. I know for a fact that there’s at least one insane reader in Canada who loved every page of it.

Batman the Bird Watcher

The Penguin has just been released from prison on parole, but the Batman is not happy about this. So he’s sure to welcome the jailbird and warn him that one of his hobbies is bird watching. However, it seems that this time, the Penguin (whose real name is Oswald Cobblepot) has turned over a new leaf. There are no more crimes bearing his signatures: umbrellas and birds. But Batman isn’t quite satisfied, and for good reason…

That’s the plot of Max Allan Collins’ Robber’s Roost, a Batman story collected in The Further Adventures of Batman Volume 2: Featuring the Penguin. The Penguin seems like an odd choice to get his own volume of stories. He’s one of the more preposterous villains, a gentleman thief whose shtick is umbrellas and an obsession with birds. Which isn’t to say anything against the Penguin; he’s just one of the hardest villains to treat realistically, which seems to be what stories in these books try to do.

Batman Returns

This is the second instalment in my unofficial series on Batman stories. To catch up on why I am doing this, feel free to read the first post in the series, which is also a review of Edward D. Hoch’s The Pirate of Millionaire’s Cove.

***

Although I have yet to read one of his novels, Max Allan Collins is no stranger to me, or to this blog. When I did a series of reviews of hardboiled mysteries, I kicked it off with one of his quotes and agreed with the general sentiment (though I expressed reservation at the generalisation of it). A while ago, he did a slideshow for The Huffington Post where he chose his “game changers” in the mystery genre—not necessarily personal favourites, mind you, but people who really transformed the genre in different ways. And this list was an interesting one! Kudos to Collins for praising Agatha Christie’s characterization and for including Ellery Queen on the list, and also for an excellent defense of Mike Hammer, although it is not a defense that makes me warm up to the character. (Also, the comments are frankly depressing, and if I hear one more person praise an author as “transcending the genre”, it’s to the guillotine for them!)

But I bring up Collins today because as it turns out, he too wrote a Batman adventure that was collected in The Further Adventures of Batman. Entitled The Sound of One Hand Clapping, this is a story that includes Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime—The Joker!

Are you a detective?

Macdonald constructed his plots rather than improvise them, thereby merging his novelist’s concern for his themes with the reader’s desire for a good (and fairly clued) mystery. The plot was everything with Macdonald. Beginning with The Galton Case (1959) (…) all Macdonald’s novels have the same plot. A murder in the past traumatizes a child and poisons the present, threatening a relationship and causing more murders. The themes of child’s loss of parent and parent’s loss of child (Macdonald experienced both) are rendered poignantly again and again.

—William DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa

Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald

When I moved, I started to attend Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School. This is the same high school that Margaret Millar and her husband Kenneth Millar (better known under his pseudonym Ross Macdonald) attended. For what it’s worth, I despised the school, which is full to the brim of bad memories for me. I don’t recall a single enjoyable day I had between those walls, and returning for a single evening to obtain a diploma was one the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I left five minutes after the general reunion got underway.

Perhaps it’s one of the reasons I’ve been interested with the work of Ross Macdonald, a prolific writer of hardboiled mysteries starring private eye Lew Archer. I have no idea how he and his wife enjoyed the high school experience, but I walked through the same corridors as they did for a few years. What really surprises me is how long it’s taken me to read something by Macdonald: I decided to acquaint myself with his work through The Galton Case, which he apparently considered the book in which he broke off from the influence of Raymond Chandler and started writing his own way.