The Big Bang: The Lost Mike Hammer Sixties Novel, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Otto Penzler, May 14, 2010)
This is exciting: a "lost" Mike Hammer novel coming out in 2010. Spillane
began The Big Bang in the mid-sixties
but put it aside for another deadline. He never finished it and in 1989 handed
the manuscript to Max Allan Collins.
Spillane and Collins spoke about the novel in
detail, including the surprise ending, one of Spillane’s favorites.
Spillane and Hammer Spillane (1918–2006) was America's best-selling crime fiction writer of the 20th century. His detective, Mike Hammer, is always motivated by “something personal." A story begins with the PI swearing revenge and closes with him exacting it—guns blazing.
Author Lawrence Block boils down Spillane’s appeal
in two words: “comic books.” Spillane started as a comic writer.
“The fast cuts, the in-your-face immediacy, and the clear-cut, no-shades-of-gray, good vs. evil story lines . . . come straight out of the comic book world.”
The Big Bang The story begins with Hammer leaving a client’s building. An old car cuts off a clean-cut kid on a motorbike. Two guys emerge, “shoulder-length hair flying, bellbottoms flopping” and beat the kid with a chain and club.
“What they
didn’t figure on was me [Hammer] being in the doorway.”
One of Spillane’s signature fight scenes follows. Hammer’s opponents are less formidable than usual: “chintzy little shits” with
“spindly needle-pocked arms,” they are “taking on an old tiger.”
A broken arm, flying teeth, a snapped jaw, and a
“place kick” to a groin end the battle, leaving two dead (the driver, trying to
escape, runs over one of his pals) and one critical.
This incident begins a chain of events that leads Hammer through attempts on
his life, a sit-down with a mob boss, a gun battle in a psychedelic nightclub
(on LSD), and the hunt for a “big bang”—an
enormous drug delivery.
The kid on the bike was Billy Blue, making a
delivery for a hospital. He is as straight as they come—and a special favorite of the esteemed Dr. David Harrin.
Harrin’s own son, a popular high-school athlete, had died, supposedly of a
heart attack. But was it related to drugs?
Things quickly get complicated as Hammer finds connections between Billy and the addicts who attacked him. They grew up in the same neighborhood, and all have been seen at a quiet little Greenwich Village ceramics shop.
Hammer On the Case Hammer's curiousity in this case brings two attempts on his
life—one by a knife-wielding dandy (who had worked at the
ceramics shop) and another by two hoods from St. Louis. Both attempts
result in slam-bang action scenes.
Now it’s really personal. Hammer is on the case—no client, no pay but he’s on it. And he's on the case with the beautiful, sexy Velda, his secretary since I, the Jury (1947)
“A tall woman, with dark, almond-shaped eyes, rich with mystery, and a lush red-lipsticked mouth that made a guy consider doing the kinds of things that would get you arrested in some states . . . .”
Velda also has a PI license, packs a few rods, and does much of Hammer’s actual paid detective work.
The addicts who attacked Blue, Hammer learns, wanted
him to sneak drugs from the hospital. But there’s a bigger scenario. The
streets are dried up of drugs because police and Treasury agents recently intercepted huge drug shipments.
Drug trade is at a standstill. But there’s a
major shipment—a big bang—due soon; or is that false information?
Hammer wants to know who’s trying to kill
him and how that ties in to the big bang.
Spillane Style Spillane is at his best with mood-drenched description,
bloody action, and steamy sex.
Describing the New York rain:
" . . . a rain that is apart from seasons. It settles like a big gray
blanket over the city and grumbles a while and just when you figure the threat
is an empty one, the stuff sheets down, slicking the streets, fogging the
windows, and promising nothing but a slate-gray sky when it’s done."
Then later with a bit of philosophy added:
The rain had
let up, but behind its glowering gray face, the sky was clearing its throat,
threatening any second now to spit its derision at the humans below, pitiful creatures
presumptuous enough to think they were in charge . . .
A Spillane action scene:
I kicked the
six-inch open switchblade knife over beside him and looked down at his mashed
face bubbling with blood. My mugger was damn well-dressed—that was no off the
rack suit he was wearing.
For the steamy sex scenes . . . find 'em yerself.
Not Spillane's Best Some of the dialogue is stilted, unnatural. As one character explains a scientific process, (“With his expertise as a research scientist and master chemist, he developed . . .”), I envisioned a 1950s sci-fi film.
Hammer’s method of finally solving the puzzle seems
contrived. The friend of one perp,
tells Hammer:
"He told me a
story. He said it was just a story, anyway. A kind of
fantasy of his. Purely hypothetical . . . ."
The “fantasy” is true, it turns out. Between this and an obscure, twisty interpretation of a gift he received, Hammer solves the mystery.
Rousing Tale, Great Climax But don’t go to Spillane for intellectual stimulation or logic. These are tales of action, good vs. evil, luscious sex, and bloody revenge.
The Big
Bang has one of Spillane’s best endings. The story teeters
on a near-cataclysm, holding readers on edge until the final sentence.
Give It a Shot Everyone should read at least one—and maybe a
few—Hammer novels. The style, the action, the surprises, everything about them can be addictive.
So give The Big Bang and Mike Hammer a shot. Just hope that Hammer doesn’t shoot back.
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Guest Reviews: Ann S. on Spillane
Ann S. is probably the biggest Spillane fan I know. She's also highly articulate and a published author herself. I became acquainted with her her through the Amazon Film Noir discussions. Thanks to Ann for these two great Spillane reviews.
Vengeance Is Mine was the third of Spillane's novels featuring P.I. Mike Hammer. Gritty and vivid, it takes the reader through the nightmare of murder, mayhem and deception. Hammer's license has been confiscated by the D.A., who also hopes to pin a murder charge or two on him.
As the story begins, Hammer is slapped from a drunken stupor by police in a hotel room with a dead man lying on the floor. A dead man with Hammer's gun in his hand. Suicide, decides the D.A., but Hammer knows better. Murder, obscure and complicated.
With no ticket (license) and his gun confiscated by the police, Hammer turns to his faithful girl Friday, Velda, to legitimize his search for the killer and the answer to why Chester Wheeler, his old Army buddy, died that night. Now Velda's the agency boss - or so Hammer says. But what a girl Friday! Velda with a gun in her bag and a P.I. ticket of her own. Velda of the silky, black hair and body built like a brick house --make that a mansion.
One would think that Velda would be more than enough for any man but then Hammer meets Juno, queen of the gods, who happens to run a very earthly model agency that is tied to Wheeler's night on the town before Hammer crossed his path.
Juno mesmerizes him.
"She leaned toward me and my head filled with the fragrance of a perfume that made me dizzy. She had gray eyes. Deep gray eyes. Deep and compassionate. Eyes that could talk by themselves."
If Hammer can't immediately hook up with Juno, he can with one of her models, who takes him down the same tour route his friend took that night - down to the Bowery, which is suddenly dotted with "in" places amongst the down-and-outers who live in the area. Funny how some familiar faces from Hammer's past have settled in here to become players.
Vengeance Is Mine has a neat little twist at the end, one that is suggested subtly at several points in the book but never becomes obvious until the last page.
Vengeance Is Mine is a complicated and devious tale told in Spillane's wonderfully readable style. One doesn't just read a Spillane novel but rather jumps on for the ride. Though the topics may be rough, the writing is of a higher quality than much of what is acclaimed today.
Like Dashiell Hammett, who started on the pulp shelves, Spillane had a strong grasp of good usage of the English language.
"The sky had clouded over putting a bite in the air. Here and there a car coming in from out of town was wearing a top hat of snow. . . . By the time I reached the street there were gray feathers of snow in the air slanting down through the sheer walls of the building to the street."
Spillane's prose flows. It's like riding a river. For a while it's a smooth run, moving along at an easy clip then suddenly there are the rapids and it's a rushing roller coaster, sending the reader's eyes dancing over the words, speeding to gobble up the story.
In 1947, when Spillane burst on the scene with I, the Jury, his graphic violence and sex were too harsh, too raw for the critics of that era.
Spillane scorned the critics, pointing to public response to his Mike Hammer novels.
The Deep (1961)
Though he is best know for Mike Hammer, Spillane's finest product - in my opinion - is The Deep. The Signet paperback edition shouts from the back cover: "Nobody can beat Spillane and The Deep is the Champ at his rough, raw best!" It's difficult to dispute that claim.
Juvenile delinquent Bennett who grew up to control a big hunk of the city has been bumped off. His old buddy Deep, who left twenty-five years earlier to give Bennett a solitary claim to the territory is back to claim his inheritance and get the man who killed the partner of his youth.
Deep has several things in common with Mike Hammer. He's tough. He's independent. He likes his broads big and beautiful. He doesn't care who he has to lean on--or shoot--to get what he wants. And what he wants, he gets.
Nostalgia is an interesting aspect of The Deep. Everything--including the reason Bennett was killed-- seems to revolve around the old Knight Owls clubhouse. From the setting for a takeover by a new "king" --disrupted by Deep when he arrives to fulfill his debt to Bennett--to the key to the puzzle, the clubhouse and the old days on the street hold it all.
"I waited until he'd [the doorkeeper] had a good look at me then peeled my sleeve back so he could see the old K.O. [for Knight Owls] scars engraved on the back of my wrist by a knifeblade."
"His face changed then. It was something that always happened to the new ones. That K.O. was prewar and wide enough to stay livid and each period was made with a lit cigarette butt."
The old days on the street were brutal, and in his search for Bennett's killer, Deep brings back the old times. This is not a story for the faint of heart--or stomach.
Harsh and breath-taking, The Deep is truly "the champ at his best." The characters are vividly drawn and varied. Cat, Irish Helen, Roscoe, Augie, Wilse, Dixie, Benny-from-Brooklyn, Tally, Sobel, Sullivan the beatcop, Sgt. Ken Hurd, Hugh Peddle, even Jocko, the bartender, and of course Deep himself fill the pages with their auras AND their memories. Every step Deep takes brings a flashback to a younger time. This use of flashbacks adds a richness to Spillane's finest tale.
If the story is a little tawdry and shrieks pulp roots, so what? The writing is solid; the action is riveting; the trashy characters have their own appeal. Only the snobbish or squeamish could resist the draw of The Deep.
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Thanks again to Ann.
Till next time, let's end with some Spillane cover art, photos and movie posters.
Take care,
ML
.
