The Snake

The Snake is Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer #8, and for the first time follows on directly from the previous book. #7, The Girl Hunters, which ended abruptly as Mike was about to be reunited with Velda after 7 years of thinking her dead.

As a regular reader might come to expect, a gunman gate-crashes their reunion, and minutes later two more - and we are only a few pages in and the body count is 2 dead one wounded! And so Mike Hammer is wrapped up in another adventure.

The return of Velda wraps up the last story, but she has with her a girl who is hiding from her step-father who she thinks is trying to kill her. He turns out to be a prominent politician running for Governor...

This book also sees Hammer back in the good books of Pat Chambers, police captain, but a new DA is out to rid Hammer of his agency ticket - (obtained in the previous book) which he brandishes to override the wishes of the cops when he needs to, protecting him and antagonising them in equal measure.

This all rolls into a connection to a 30 year old heist where three million bucks was taken and never recovered.

This is more of a return to form for Hammer - local crime, no international plot for world power, and there were a couple of Spillane worthy twists to the story, but really the very end is so implausible it was a bit of a let down.

3 stars