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 Keep-Your-Mouth-Shut Files #1: Mickey Spillane

I’ve been blogging for more than two years now, and I like doing it. I use this blog to record my thoughts, feelings, and opinions on the mystery genre, and to steer readers in the direction of books they might enjoy. I try to read every book based on its own merits and to judge them all fairly. And I think I’ve done a decent job overall. That being said… I’m only human. I make mistakes. It took me a while to figure out just what a “proper” review was and how different criteria will apply to different subgenres. It took some time for me to accept that the modern crime fiction scene is far more interesting than I at first gave it credit for. And every once in a while, I went out and said something very… er, opinionated.

The funny thing about opinions is that they can change. And it can take you off guard. And boy, I’ve sure thrown around a lot of opinions here on this blog. Sometimes, I think back on what I wrote a year or two ago, and wonder just what on earth I was thinking at the time. And so I’d like to introduce a new feature on this blog, one which I hope will prove interesting: “The-Keep-Your-Mouth-Shut Files”. Although I might change the title if I think of something better, this is the part of the program where I revisit old blog posts and confirm everyone’s impression of me as an opinionated jackass who should just keep his mouth shut sometimes. And I can think of no better an inaugural subject than Mickey Spillane.

Too Tough To Die

It’s late at night, the rain is pouring down hard, and Mike Hammer is walking on a bridge. He’s feeling depressed, humiliated, and completely alone. Just that day, Hammer was berated in court by a judge, whose speech began calmly and turned into a vicious, hateful speech. The judge accused Hammer of being a violent, unrepentant psychopath who had gotten a taste of death during the war and who couldn’t get enough of it now. He condemned Hammer as evil incarnate, the worst kind of criminal scum, and he prophesied that a rain of purity would wash him into the sewer with the rest of the scum. Hammer left the court humiliated, his soul laid bare and dissected for all to see, feeling cut off from society and bitter about it.

That’s when he sees the girl. She’s running from something, terrified. She falls into Mike’s arms and begs for his help. That’s when a fat man comes out from the shadows, a gun in his pocket pointed at Hammer. The fat man grins and prepares to shoot them both down, but Hammer’s gun is quick: he shoots the fat man in the face with a .45. But the girl is terrified. She thinks Hammer is “one of them”, and in desperation, she throws herself off the bridge. Hammer is left stunned, with only the corpse of the fat man for company. And that’s how Mickey Spillane’s novel One Lonely Night kicks off.

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.

We like to get the trial over with quickly, because it's the sentence that's really the fun!

It’s rare for me to be thoroughly disgusted by a novel. There have been plenty of unpleasant reading experiences, such as Anthony Wynne’s The Toll House Murder or Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. I have been alarmed a handful of times, such as with a disturbing central character in Peter Lovesey’s Mad Hatter’s Holiday. But until now, only George Baxt’s The Affair at Royalties had thoroughly disgusted me— I can now add Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury to the list.

Spillane was once the most vilified writer in America. His hero, Mike Hammer, is as politically incorrect as they come. He refuses to forgive the Japanese for the war, he plays games with his secretary, he sleeps with every woman he comes into contact with on the job, and he threatens or beats up half the suspects he interrogates. And that’s just the first few chapters.