2018 is the centennial anniversary of Mickey Spillane’s birth! Spillane got his start in comic books, then caused a sensation with his 1947 novel I, THE JURY, introducing the world to that hardest of hardboiled PI’s, Mike Hammer. Hard Case Crime, an imprint every pulp fiction fan should know about, celebrates Spillane’s birth by releasing THE LAST STAND, The Mick’s last completed novel, with a bonus unpublished novella from the early 1950’s.
Mickey’s literary executor and friend Max Allan Collins writes the introduction. Collins is no stranger to the hardboiled genre himself, having been Chester Gould’s replacement on the long-running comic strip Dick Tracy from 1977-92, author of the graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION, and the Quarry series of books (made into a Showtime series in 2016). Since Spillane’s death in 2006, Collins has been editing and completing the writer’s (“I’m not an author, I’m a writer”, he once said in an interview) unfinished works.
The unpublished 50’s novella “A Bullet for Satisfaction” is up first, and fans of Spillane will rejoice – it’s truly Vintage Spillane, a brutal tale of corruption, gangsters, violence, and femme fatales! Ex-cop Rod Dexter (how’s that for a macho name!) wades through this sordid tale filled to the brim with murder, sadism, and plenty of sex. You can tell where Collins did some editing and rewriting here, because good as he is, nobody captures Spillane’s voice quite like Spillane; multitudes have tried, but The Mick is unique! Take this example from Page 42:
“Three days ago I was a cop. Now the cop was gone. What was left? Nothing but a thirst for booze, quenched by a bender, and vengeance, which I’d quench a whole other way. And when you’re playing a game like this, there’s only one way to play it, and that’s a hell of a lot rougher than they do.
“They were going to die. Every last one of them would feel pain and I would receive satisfaction by watching their expressions as I pulled the trigger“.
Or this gem found on Page 116:
“A blast from the open door took her head off and splattered it against the far wall, where dripping blood and chunks of bone and gobs of gore and one lonely eyeball stuck there like the work of some cut-rate Picasso. Then a body getting no signals from an obliterated brain toppled on its back with a rattling thud, and the headless body lay limply on the floor”.
See what I mean? Vintage Mickey Spillane!
Next is “The Last Stand”, Mickey’s final novel published for the first time anywhere. This one finds a – dare I say it? – much more mellow Spillane, now 88 years old but still writing in his signature voice. The sex and violence are toned down, but that terse style is still there, only with a touch more humor that comes with reflective old age. More of an adventure than hardboiled crime, it follows ex-serviceman Joe Gillian (named after Mickey’s friend, longtime Charlton Comics writer Joe Gill) as he’s forced to land his vintage plane in a Southwestern desert. There he encounters Sequoia Pete, a young Indian whose horse has thrown him, and the unlikely pair banter their way through a desert trek, where Joe discovers the joys of eating rattlesnake, and an ancient arrowhead loaded with radioactivity.
Returning to Pete’s village on the rez, Joe will meet his new friend’s gorgeous sister Running Fox, whose jealous would-be beau Big Arms sets out to kill his white rival. The plot involves hidden treasure, gangsters, FBI agents, and a threat to national security. With “The Last Stand”, Spillane shows us he’s still a master storyteller, older and knocking on Jehovah’s door but still managing to entertain his audience. Fans of Mickey Spillane will definitely love THE LAST STAND, and for the uninitiated the book gives you a chance to read him in both his early, hardboiled phase and his last, more seasoned work. I’m a huge fan, so don’t just take my word for it: go out and buy a copy, and prepare to be thrilled!
cracked rear viewer 