The Big Kill

This is the Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer #5 book in his series. In his previous book, Mike takes on the communists, so this book is a step back in scale - in my view, a welcome one.

In this book we mix with loan sharks, reformed safe crackers, ex-film starlets, gangsters and racketeers. For what is a fairly small scale story, the body count in this one is high, and for a change the various love interests of Hammer are not in the victim list!

Hammer seems a little out of character, showing a soft side when, at the beginning of our story, he witnesses a man kissing his baby son goodbye then walks out of a dive bar knowing it is the end of his days. After hammer fails to prevent the man's murder, he leaves the bar with the baby, and sets about avenging the orphan. Luckily, he has a retired nurse in his building who looks after the boy until the adoption services can get their placement sorted out.

While there are some good twists, and we get to witness Hammer struggling to piece all the moving parts together, there are unfortunately some parts to this book which test the readers ability to believe. In particular the end is just ludicrous! We still get to see Hammer test his friendship with the cop, Pat Chambers, and we get to see him wind up the DA and avoid jail time through the deals he makes with him.

Having said that, there is still more than enough in this book to keep the hard-boiled noir fan entertained. There are another ten Mickey Spillane books in my shelf (only some of them are Mike Hammer), and I expect to work through them all eventually.

This one, three stars.